The Back 'o' Bourke

“I’d forgotten how dry and bleak this place looked in drought. I don’t think I have ever seen it at it’s best. You used to go on about how great it was to grow up here,” Sylvie said to her husband as they drove along the old dirt road that would take them to the place of his birth. Dave Barrett was literally born there, in the old barn out the back of the house where he spent his childhood.

Finally, around midday, after setting out from Bourke early that morning, Dave and his wife Sylvie, bumped over the final cattle grate to enter the homestead paddock. Driving toward the main buildings, he was saddened by the state of the place. The weatherboards on the house were all peeling paint and rot from years of being forgotten. The corrugated iron roof was ruddy with rust and no doubt as useful as a sieve when it rained. Not that it rained often out here on the old sheep station, not for years. There was barely a blade of grass to be seen, nothing but the red dust typical of central Australia. Dave had always thought it curious how people would go on about something being out the ‘back o Bourke’, when describing a place that is a long way away. It was simply home to him, that’s where he had lived, on Barrett Station, about 175 kilometres west of Bourke, New South Wales. It had been in the family for generations.

“You know, Mum tried to burn the house down as we were leaving, what is it, 27 years now. Shit, it’s been that long,” he said. “You wouldn’t think it would be that hard, being so dry, but we barely had enough fuel to get to town and she had already packed the matches. She was so pissed off.” “Why did she want to burn it down? Sylvie asked. “She didn’t want the bank or anyone else to have the place. Turns out nobody wanted it anyway.”

They got out of the cool of the air conditioning and stepped into the abhorrent heat of summer. Sure, it was a dry heat, but it sucked the air out of your lungs. Dave wished he could have picked a different time to come, winter would have been nicer, but it was the only time he could get off work. Walking around, looking for any small thing to ignite a memory, he made his way to the house and stopped at the verandah. Broken windows, tattered curtains moving in the hot breeze, the screen door off it’s hinges. It would make a good setting for a post-apocalyptic movie, he thought.

The station had long been abandoned. Drought had devastated the region; water was scarce, and rain was rare. The land was unworkable. In the end after giving so much to the station, they had to walk away. The place had taken so much, there was little left.

Sylvie had wandered off around the back of the house to explore. She had only been here once before, and though she was technically a local, she grew up in Bourke, she had come for a funeral, and they hadn’t stayed long. Dave walked toward the barn, it was what drew him here today. There was something he needed to do.

The barn was a substantial building. You saw it well before you got to the house. A tall iron-clad structure, built over generations from timber felled on the property and hewn by hand from the big gums that dotted the station. It had been altered and added to by successors of the original Barrett, but the basic building was still there with its giant doors and loft second floor. The house was his mother’s domain and she ruled with autonomy there, but the barn was for the men, and the men put it to good use.

Dave had a deeper connection to it than most, because on a stinking hot Christmas eve, in the back of his father’s broken-down Falcon station wagon, David Aloysius Barrett entered the world, feet first. His father wanted to call him 'Jesus' because dad could be funny sometimes. David’s catholic mother didn’t see the humour. Still his father would sometimes call him ‘Jesus’ when Dave did something stupid. Like when he nearly shot the cat with his dad’s .22 rifle. “Jesus, it’s for rabbits mate, not cats,” he would scream. His dad could be funny sometimes.

The barn was full of tools and machinery, as barns typically are, but Dave, his brother Pete and their father would get up to mischief. Many close calls were had there, but so much fun and a lot of laughter. The flying fox dad strung between the barn roof and the nearby gumtree. The broken arm Pete got when the flying fox broke on the first go. The go cart dad made out of and old mower and some bike parts. The near decapitation of his son ‘Jesus’ when he almost drove through the wire fence. It didn’t matter how ridiculous things got, they always had fun. Dave wondered whether his father even wanted to be a farmer. He did what he had to, to make the place work, but it didn’t take much to distract him from it either.

Dave was standing outside the big double doors, contemplating life’s tricks, when Sylvie came up behind him. “Honey, did you get it yet? I have had enough nostalgia for today,” she said. “No, I am…” “Are you ok love, you look pale?” she asked. “This is where Pete found him, hanging from the rafters.” Dave slumped to the ground and sat looking into the darkness of the barn. His wife sat down next to him, “You never told me that. I heard he took his own life, but you never said anything.” “I was at school,” he said. “Dad had dropped me back and went to his appointment at the bank. Mum said she didn’t even know he’d come home. She said he couldn’t handle losing the legacy that was entrusted to him,” Dave gestured a swinging arm. “Some legacy. Look at this shithole of a place. He didn’t want Pete and me to run it. He wanted to be the last. He got his wish, I guess.” Sylvie put her arm around her husband, and they sat in silence, disturbed only by the little black flies trying to get into any open orifice, and the relentless heat.

Dave got up and turned to help his wife to her feet. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” To leave they first had to get what they came for. So, into the big old barn they went. Sylvie couldn’t stop herself from looking up at the rafters and though there was nothing to see, she felt guilty for being so ghoulish. Dave asked her to wait, then he climbed the old ladder that gave him access to the loft. After only a few moments, he returned, with a rusty old biscuit tin, tucked under his arm. “Arnotts biscuits hey, you lot ate fancy out here,” said Sylvie with a silly grin on her face. “No, mum wouldn’t buy biscuits, she made her own. This is my inheritance. For as old as this tin is, and I think it’s pretty old, my father and grandfather and so many before them, put the stamps they received, whenever they got mail, in here. It’s chokkas with old stamps. Dad showed me and Pete a couple of times and just before Pete died, he reminded me of it. I’m sorry to drag you out here, but I had to get them.” Dave said, now staring at his wife with a look of dismay. “No, honey, it’s ok. I don’t mind. Maybe this will be good for you. Like closure or something.” “Yeah maybe. They’re probably worth nothing but, I want to split anything we get with Pete’s kids. He deserved half. They have been through so much; it would be good for them.”

The couple made their way back to the car and with Sylvie at the wheel started back to their hotel in Bourke. Dave was exhausted. He had never been an emotional man, but these last months watching his older brother succumb to cancer, helping his wife with the funeral arrangements and then today; he wasn’t expecting to feel anything today. He thought time would have taken care that, but perhaps that would have been too easy. He knew coming there today was the right thing to do. Maybe he should have done it sooner.

Opening the tin and flicking through the amazing history there before him, he saw his father’s hands and remembered sitting there, in the barn with his brother. His father would tell them about some of the stamps, at least the ones he knew about, and what they meant in their time. Dave had held a lot of anger against his father’s memory, for leaving them, but now looking at this incredible collection, he felt he understood a little better. He never really hated his father, he just missed him.