A thin woman with long grey hair was playing the grand piano at the Galleria Coffee lounge in Melbourne years ago. Alongside the piano was a trolley that contained her belongings, for Natalie was homeless.

The most beautiful music I have ever heard rippled endlessly from her fingers.  I have to admit that I am not a fan of piano music; but this was the music of the angels.  Mesmerised, I sat there for I know not how long.

The late winter’s sun had gone and they were cleaning up in the café when Natalie finished playing, closed the piano and put her things in the old trolley. I couldn’t just walk away. I thanked her for her beautiful music. Her face lit up like a 1000 watt light bulb. She said, “Do you know that I have been on the National television news?’ I told her that I had seen it. She asked me where I was from and about my life in the country and was excited that I had come to Melbourne on a train. She talked to me about her love of music until a young woman arrived and said, “I’ve come to take you home Gran.”

I hailed a passing taxi to take me to the station just in time to catch the 6.01 p.m. train back to Benalla.

Meeting Natalie Trayling was one of the highlights of my life.
 

​Beverley Morton.                                                                    

As young teenagers, Margot and I organized a picnic ride for her Melbourne friends to the coastal village of Rhyll.

She has hired riding school horses for them but has made a pavlova that can’t be transported on horseback. She says, “You can drive a horse. I’ve arranged to borrow a horse and jinker for the day.”

The retired, ancient, white horse, Snowy hasn’t been in harness for ten years. Old Mrs Pickersgill harnesses him up for us, looking worried. I pick up the reins and he bolts around the small paddock. When he settles down, we meet up with the girls.  Margot riding shotgun beside me; we hit the open road through the gum trees for the sleepy hamlet of Rhyll.

Grey skies and a strong cold westerly wind are the flavour of the day. We huddle together behind the monument to the early explorers for our picnic. Anticipation runs high when the pavlova is produced. Unfortunately, the whipped cream is sour, but we eat it just the same. By this time the company is looking miserable. It’s wet and cold and they are not used to riding horses!

All the way home the driving rain stings our faces. There is no escape from the rain in a jinker and our horse is as unhappy as the silent Melbourne girls, who look as if they will be eating their tea off the mantelpiece tonight.
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As Margot and I drive home like drowned rats we cannot help laughing. We say, “This is a day we will never forget!”
 
Bev Morton
July 2020
 

When I was a child living in Melbourne in the mid forties, our family car was a log truck, an International K8.  If we went to the pictures or to church on Sundays, we would take the truck. Parking for a large truck complete with timber jinker didn’t seem to be a problem in those days.
Father only came home at weekends when I would examine the truck for damage. On one occasion the back of the cabin was stove in from the load shifting. Frequently the wooden pole of the jinker was smashed.
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A day trip to the forest with him is the ultimate. Dad hauls logs with the bulldozer. At the landing stage the steel wire cables strain to haul the giants up the timber struts. When the log finally rolls into place on the timber jinker, a cloud of dust rises as the truck settles down under the suddenly added weight.

I perch excitedly on the edge of the seat, so that I can see through the windscreen, as we head down the mountain to deliver the logs to the mill. Father winds the truck slowly around the sharp bends of the narrow dirt mountain road; steering with one hand as he eats his lunch sandwiches with the other.  He points out wreckage of trucks that have failed to negotiate the sharp hairpin bends of the road and have plunged down through the tree tops to the valley floor below. “That one there had its brakes fail. This one had the load shift before it went over the edge!” We travel steadily; one false move could push us over the edge as well.

New cars could only be purchased when a permit was issued for special cases. We got an early permit for a new Oldsmobile and ‘the Olds’ came into our lives. “Children, we are going on a drive to the hills,” would often summon us on Sunday afternoons. On our first trip driving through the Dandenong Ranges Dad thought he detected a rattle. Windows were wound down and we all listened. “There it is!” He stopped. It was a bellbird!

After a move to the country the Olds was a large presence in our lives for many years.

I learnt to drive in the Olds. Dad said “It’s time you learnt to drive but I can’t stand to watch. I’m walking with the sheep to Summerlands and you can drive down to fetch me.” I had no idea how to drive. I started it in top gear, muffed the gears and went down a hill in angel gear while I read the manual on how to change gear. The Olds, stately old girl that she was, handled it well.

Reluctantly it was traded in. I saw it years later. There were big holes in the spotless upholstery and rusted holes in the mudguards, but it was still as black and shiny as ever.  Dad had always said, “This, is a motor car.” Someone else loved it too.

 
Bev Morton

When I was twelve we moved from Melbourne to a farm on Phillip Island. My brother and I attend the small school at Ventnor. The teacher is a larrikin who is averse to teaching lessons of any kind. “Okay, you mugs, outside and I’ll challenge you to a game of alleys.” School requisites are your lunch and a bag of marbles.

The winter gales have arrived. Sometimes we walk the mile to school rugged up in jackets and rain coats, as the wind is too strong for me to battle against on my bike with John on the back. There is no such thing as being driven to school.

One wet Monday morning at the weekly flag raising ceremony, we stand at attention around the flag pole in the rain and salute the flag and recite. “I love God and my country. I honour the King. I salute the flag, etc. It’s considered too wet today for lessons, which means too wet to play outside, so we clear the desks from the school room and play cricket indoors. King George the fourth’s picture is still on the wall. He cops a blow to the head as it is struck by a ball hit by the teacher.

The result of this wonderful non schooling is boarding school in Melbourne. Through means both fair and foul, I persuade my parents to let me leave early. Happily I pick up my share of the farm work. It’s a great outdoor life but the wind is a constant challenge.

The following winter Dad visits family in England. I’m fifteen now and can run the farm while he’s away. We have a shocking wet winter. The dams are overflowing and breaking their banks. The sheep must be gone around twice a day in the rain as they are getting cast owing to the weight of their wet wool.

The wild westerly gales rip in to the Island with the force of a freight train. Huge combers charge across the shallow waters of the sand bar in Westernport Bay, like the flying manes of galloping white horses. Seagulls with their wings outspread face into the gale, empowered like albatrosses, floating on the up draught of the wind.

At the further uninhabited end of the Island beyond Swan Lake, we have a good over wintering paddock for five hundred merino wethers. This is a very lonely area; there is no one around for miles. The only sounds are the crash of the surf and the wind whining through old broken telephone wires. 

By the time my father returns I can mend broken dam banks, strain a wire fence and shear a sheep with blade shears.

Rain drops spit and sizzle as they splatter on the hot glass of the hurricane lantern as Dad and I make our way through the stormy night to the shed. Tomato sauce bottles of warm milk are tucked inside our jackets to feed the pet lambs who are waiting anxiously for their late night feed. We sit on hay bales and play with the lambs, listening to the storm raging outside, laughing because Mother thinks we are raving mad to go out on a night like this, when the wind is howling in from Bass Strait.

I often visit friends who live several miles away across the island. There’s no traffic when I’m returning home on winter’s nights. Everyone is tucked down in the warmth of their houses. I have a tall bay mare that has a wonderful turn of speed. I give the mare her head and she takes off. Dark clouds scud across the sky. At times they part and the puddles on the unmade road reflect the silver light of the moon. The mare stands off and jumps every one of them in her path. Her hoof beats echo through the night. Farmers often say “I heard you going home the other night. It was a wild night to be out on a horse.”

Spring brings sunshine and a sparkling blue sea. Horses and cattle are losing their rough winter coats. A light breeze blows across the land rustling through the tops of the tall rye grass that is coming to seed in the paddocks that have been locked up to be cut for hay.
 
He arrives one Sunday afternoon wearing a fresh white shirt, with a stock whip looped casually over his arm and bearing a small posy of strawberry clover flowers. “I heard that you wanted to learn how to crack a stock whip and I picked these for you.” Suddenly life takes on a whole new meaning, full of hope and promise.

Amongst my treasures, carefully pressed between the pages of a book, there is a small bunch of strawberry clover. The tiny flowers have now turned to dust, but when I think of them I am a young girl, back on the Island with the wind blowing through my hair.

Bev Morton

July 2020
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I met Sven out in the wilds of North East Greenland when I travelled with him for four days on his dog sledge.

Sledge journeys are mostly silent as Inuit hunters are not used to company and I find that Sven doesn’t have much English anyway.

The dogs are fresh and excited by the other teams as they are used to travelling alone. The pace is fast over rough terrain. One by one my five companions seem to be falling off their sledges. I am determined that this won’t happen to me but when our dogs bolted up over a snow mound and tipped the sledge up on a rock, I became airborne. Sven was horrified and the dogs were punished accordingly.

From then on, we often travelled alone with no one else within sight, so I was privileged to experience the remarkable peace and solitude of such a beautiful, pristine wilderness.

Travelling by dog sledge is an experience never to be forgotten, with just the swish of the sledge runners on the ice, the patter of the dog’s feet as they move in unison and the quiet commands to the team. Apart from that there is a deep enduring silence.

On the third evening we approached a high snow bank silhouetted against the grey sky. The dogs turned away and tried to jump down the side of an ice cliff. Sven is off the sledge shouting at them and whipping them away from the cliff. Suddenly they plunged over the top of the bank. Sven threw himself onto the sledge and we hurtled down a long steep glacier front onto the frozen fjord below!

Night has set in and the chill damp air is starting to bite. Still we travel on at a good pace until we come to a hut where the rest of the crew are preparing to spend the night. Sven says “Go in, I will bring your things.”

The hut is warm and a meal of polar bear meat has been prepared. Kathleen, our leader goes to serve me but Sven signals her to stop. Solemnly handing me his pocket knife he holds out his plate and I cut my meat from his. This is very ritualistic.  I’m not too sure of its meaning, but I realise this is the only meat I should eat and Sven smiles at me for the rest of the evening.

The next day things have changed! This is our last day and we are silent no longer. Communication is difficult in a mixture of Danish, Greenlandic and English but we are getting to know each other. Sven asks when I am going back over.  (Yes, from the top of the world Australia is down under.)

He likes the summer best, he has a small boat and, “maybe you come?“

Late afternoon a blizzard overtakes us. Sven zips my jacket up tighter and pulls the hood well over my head as we head into the driving snow towards the end of our journey to the village of Ittoqqortoomiit. There’s a snowmobile waiting for me, no time for proper goodbyes. The snow pounds the windows of our house all night.

Next afternoon I am standing on a hill behind the village with a view out across the fjord. I see a familiar dog team heading out across the ice and there is someone on the sledge waving to me.
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I shall always remember the magic of that first sledge journey and the privilege of travelling with such a reliable character from another culture who looked after me so well.     
 
Beverley Morton