Shelter

Quite probably the sound I most love in the world is rain on a tin roof. It is an affection spawned of this part of the world, and I have spent the last couple of days immersed in it, pausing frequently to drink it in.

Rain on tin has always meant safety, shelter, comfort. Growing up on farms you spend a lot of time outdoors. Farm life is intimately tied to weather, and it's a complex relationship. Seasons dictate a rhythm – a time to sow, a time to reap and all that jazz. Some days are spent in the blazing sun, some in howling gales, some in – well, really rather lovely conditions, truth be told. And some days it just belts down. Much of the time you still have to get the bloody work done, so much of the time you're pretty uncomfortable, and all of those times the tin of a shed or house roof brings blessed relief. But there's something deeply special to me about the sound of the rain on corrugated sheeting.

My earliest clear memory of such involves a woodshed. Nothing more than an old water tank that had been cut in half and repurposed – farmers are nothing if not resourceful – it stood against the back of the carport, and was kinda the first place I could say that I felt was my own.

I was young when I first picked up an axe. Right about the time I could lift one, in fact. Farms, yeah? Where if the kids can take on a task, they bloody well do, because there's always plenty of other stuff that needs to be done. Explains why I was driving at the age of ten, and all.

So one day I was wandering around doing whatever it was I did as a farm kid and for whatever reason I found myself out at the wood shed with Dad. There was an old set of sheep yards that had just been rebuilt or repaired, and that left us with a nice supply of very well-seasoned old timber, all planks, straight-grained and prime firewood. Dad was wielding an axe, reordering a part of the world into serried ranks of fuel-in-waiting and the scent of split hardwood, and damn me but that looked like fun. So like the idiot child I was, I asked if I could have a turn.

From that moment on, the daily supply for the water heater was my responsibility. I was young and fit, and I was also right: it was fun. Even when we ran out of that lovely old yard planking, and then the eucalypt rounds, and I was left tackling the Gordian Knot that is the mallee root; well, it was still fun. Bloody hard work and let's be honest goddamned annoying at times, but in aggregate I enjoyed it. I was in my space, attending to my task, and getting quite a lot of satisfaction from it. And I did that task every day until I left home at seventeen.

Some days it rained. And when the heavens opened and the thunder rolled, there was still fire that needed fuel, so I'd find a spot under the tin to sit and wait it out. Surrounded by the fruits of my labours, breathing air redolent with petrichor and woodchips, warm and dry and inches from the misery of downpour. Safe.

And so the sound of rain on tin overhead brings me back to those moments, and I breathe deep and feel the cares of life wash away for a time. A gift granted in this place, in that time.