Gatherers and Hunters Read online

  That is true, yes it is. Pristina had the first kebab house in Australia. More a backdoor business to start off, that flat bread. And they kept goats and sheep, almost from day one. I remember we kids – well, I was in my teens then – we used to sneak down and cadge some of those flat bread rolls with meat in them. Tell the truth, I think that was what gave some of them the idea in the first place. Before you knew it, they had taken over the little bakery that was shut down when the new sliced bread came in, it was right near the pub, and before you could say Jack Robinson they were out and away.

  I always said it was the Kebab House and not the new branch of the Bank of New South Wales that gave the place its little economic boost in the late fifties early sixties. Aha, we thought we were made in those days.

  Well, it was the commercial travellers, see. You think on it: you get sick of pea and pies in the pub, or some dry white bread with ham and sweaty cheese, and those blokes weren’t the ones to stop for a steak and eggs in the Greek cafe and they couldn’t afford to linger over too many beers, not in those years when the competition was really hotting up. No, the Kebab House struck gold.

  We didn’t get Chinese or Pizza Huts, or even Kentucky Fried, oh that was decades later.

  Well of course they did spread out, but Grandpa Weatherhead always said that was the sign of his success; they didn’t move on after the first few years, into the city or the easy fleshpots or the mixing pots down south.

  They kept their own community, that’s what he said. And he was right. Most of the original lot he brought over stuck together, and didn’t they work hard! I think they ended up bringing just about their whole village over, in time. Yes, they spoke their own lingo among themselves, and that was a problem as you say, you know how country people suspect others of talking behind their back, and in a foreign language that didn’t go down well.

  But the kids went to the local school – in fact, because of the increase in numbers we got a second teacher and then a third and it became quite a centre. And then when young Ibrahim showed us all from the outset what a soccer champ he was, or had the potential to be, that was a real turning point, I think.

  Well, the Irish clans all got onside with them and before you knew it it was soccer, soccer all the way. I used to play League myself when I was a kid but by the early 1960s League was dead in this town. We were soccer all the way. It was a real cultural revolution.

  Broke down barriers, I think you’d say. Strange, it was only the family that ran the Greek Cafe who stayed standoffish. Oh, unhygienic, all that sort of stuff. Even had the city health inspector round one time, complained of flies and vermin in the Kebab House, but everyone knew they were business rivals. The nice ending of that story, though, is that the Kebab House was the first to install one of those blue-light electric zappers in their shop. While the Greeks and the people in the pub were still using those sticky flypaper things, you remember those? Well, everybody forgets.

  So, that was a sign of how they were going money-wise. They kept a low profile, though, those years. I think it was the first generation thing. They knew their origins and their village or their farming backgrounds.

  It was in the next generation, really, back in the seventies, when I think you can pinpoint the beginnings of all the trouble.

  Young Ibrahim was the first. I think we all thought he’d go national, or even international, with his soccer success. People were just beginning to pay money to get stars on their team, but no. Ibrahim married the girl he had grown up with and he settled right in town. In the village, I mean. I think he was the first to actually buy a piece of land. Even the Kebab House was done on a lease; yes, we owned all that side of the street.

  Two things I think we didn’t expect. First, that when they bought the O’Reilly farmlet just over the Willowtree Bridge, we assumed they would move into the little cottage there, it was big enough for starters. Second, after they ripped that pretty little place down, and all the garden beds old Doss O’Reilly spent her lifetime pruning and patting and planting, lo and behold, they put up this ugly fortress thing, like a prison compound – it’s still there, people take it for granted now, but when it first went up it caused a near riot, I can tell you.

  I think that was the first time anyone really got the sense we had been invaded.

  No, I’m not putting it too bluntly, that’s what people think. That’s what we really think here, those of us who remember the old days.

  You’ve seen the other farms too, no doubt. The compounds. The place is full of them, they’re everywhere. Miles around. All built the same way: big fences around the house and the house yard, eight feet high some of them, what’s that in the fancy new measurement? And the buildings themselves, some of ’em have bars on the windows have you noticed that? They say it’s to keep the girls in, they’re very heavy on keeping their women under lock and key, a bit like the Italians up in Innisfail, though of course you’ve heard stories too, I bet you have, isn’t that true? It’s all a front, but they’re not joking I’ll tell you that. There have been a few nasty incidents over the years, over the past few years.

  Well that’s true, in more recent times it has gone over the odds, but we’ll get to that. What I was telling you was how it all sort of grew on us, almost so we didn’t notice. Woke up one morning, and there they were, trying to run the place, acting as if they owned it.

  When young Ibrahim went on the local Shire Council I think we all gave a bit of a cheer and that’s the truth. Good to see a local make good. Good to see the lad show some civic spirit also, he was a hard worker, that one. And at that time nobody could have foreseen that I’d be the last of our line, and of the Weatherheads too, I’m the very last one.

  My kids, when they went to the University down in the capital, well I knew the professions were the way to the future, the drought years and the flood years come in cycles but they come all right and both my sons said they were jack of that. Don’t blame them, really.

  And of course the three girls never intended to stay up here, out of it all; their mother made sure of that and they knew perfectly well Roger and Tim would inherit the place. If they wanted it. Only Nessie ever grumbled and whinged about her share and it’s true, I had a soft spot for her and I guess I had led her to expect some part, after all she was the only one came back willingly on holidays, right from boarding school, and seemed genuinely interested in things. She was mad on horses, that one.

  But she was the one who nagged me into the irrigation, while I was still dithering about the cost. Best investment I ever made. Her mother always said she was more a Weatherhead than the Weatherheads but she was my secret favourite.

  Oh, the boys did all right for themselves, all of that. But I’ll still remember the way they mooched around the homestead those last holidays, couldn’t get them out into the sun even, the pair of them.

  Tim’s high in one of those accountancy agglomerates now, I suppose you know that. Spends half his life in Singapore, hope he finds it fun, I didn’t the one time I was there. Yes, Roger’s the one with the dental practice on the Gold Coast, oh rolling in it.

  So I was telling you about Ismael Ibrahim in that dirty big compound of his. That’s what I called it, a compound. And if you’d’ve seen his wife when she was young you wouldn’t believe how pretty she was. Petite, you know, and those big black eyes. Well, after fourteen kids, yes that’s what I said, after fourteen of them, one each year like the Irish used to do, well who’d recognise her now. Hard as nails she is, she was the one that beat me down – not him – over the block of shops in the side street; she fair wore me down, and I still don’t know how she knew before I did about Caffertys Coaches and their planned interstate comfort stop right in the village centre. Beat me down forty per cent on my asking price AND I thought I’d got a bargain, they’d all been empty since the newsagent shot through owing me rent on the corner one, and that would have been two years before. Well, will you look at them now!

  No, I don’t hold that against t
hem. Not really. And after all, the other block of mine on the main street has done very well out of the Caffertys Coaches and their stopover. Real money spinner, matter of fact. And my god, she is a hard worker, though the whole tribe are out there like a pack of demons, day and night almost.

  1970 I think it was, but a lot can happen in the space of a decade or so.

  I think it was only when Tim came up here with his kids two years ago that it dawned on me just how the village has changed.

  ‘Will you look at that!’ he said. ‘Eighty percent of the shops have got foreign names, some even in Arabic. Eighty percent.’ He counted them. ‘And there’s even a mosque. In Pristina, a mosque for Christ’s sake.’

  I think he was more indignant because it sort of crept up on us all, but he came to it fresh and it was all there.

  ‘The mosque’s not really in town’ I said, ‘It’s on their property. And that screen of hawthorn hides it off from the rest of town, really; we don’t notice it.’

  ‘Wasn’t that part of the Weatherhead dairy, that lot?’ Tim said. ‘How did they get hold of any Weatherhead property? What have you been doing, Dad?’

  So I had to explain to him about the bad year after the cannery closed down and the rust got in the wheat and the bloody bank said they’d foreclose. They don’t understand these things, and they don’t want to either, no use burdening them with your worries. So the long and short of it was I had to tell him about selling off nearly half the Weatherhead lands. They were in Mary’s name but it’s all the same in the end isn’t it.

  Oh, the Albanian cooperative I think it was called, it was all drawn up legal and it got me out of a hole I can tell you, don’t you worry.

  You would have thought I had sold the shirt off his own back, to hear him rant and rave. It was the first time I ever heard Tim show any interest in the land so it surprised me. No, it didn’t but you know what I mean. Down deep we’ve all got a bit of the soil in the soul, don’t you agree?

  Still, it did take Tim’s eyes to make me see what was happening and what had happened. He came in with the phone book one day, just before he left, and it was that little area directory, not the official one; the one that has all the phones and the businesses and the listings of all the little townships and villages over the valley. And there was Pristina: most of the names and businesses here are Albanian, he said. There’s been an explosion.

  Population explosion, certainly, I agreed. The Ibrahims set a trend, set an example for the lot of them, I’ve certainly noticed that, I said. They have fourteen kids – and a nicely behaved lot they are too, I said. But his brother-in-law – do you remember Belly Blaga? – Blaga has twenty one kids, what do you think of that? And the whole lot all living, the whole tribe of them. The youngest pair were born only last month, I said, and they’re the third set of twins. Imagine that, three sets of twins in the one family. Belly Blaga, I tell you, must have the highest fertility rate in the valley. Though there are half a dozen others now bidding high to catch up with him. They really believe in large families. I used to think that was not only industrious, it was almost noble. Populate or perish, as we used to say. Now, well it’s suddenly sort of overtaken us.

  But their fourth girl, Melita, she used to help out when I tried the goat’s milk cheese business that time your mother-in-law had all the allergies, thank goodness they cleared up though I don’t know if the goat’s milk did much help. Still, Blaga bought all the bits and pieces and the goats as well so I came out of it without much skin off my nose in the end. But you think of it, mate, twenty one kids. That’ll make you glad you have only the two.

  He didn’t see the joke.

  Before he left he made a point of going round to all the other families, even the Irish lot, though there’s only a quarter of them left, if that.

  Look, I said, if it’s the mosque, or religion, or whatever, forget it. They keep to themselves, and there’s even the Mormons at the other end of town, up on the hill.

  When the Yanks came through with the McDonalds franchise and the Pizza Place, there were a few settled in this area, they were the ones to start the new fashion for toy farms and avocado or pecan nut plantations for their income tax. So check up on them Mormons, and the Christadelphians and the the Lutherans – lots of those further down the valley, I reminded him.

  Tell the truth, I got a bit protective over our local lot. I still remembered Grandpa Weatherhead and his enormous pride in the way his workers scheme had paid off, and what he saw as their loyalty and gratitude.

  Not much gratitude with the younger ones, Tim said to me. Damned sullen and surly, most of them. And of course I realised he must have felt himself treated as a stranger in his own home town. Expected to be recognised, even after all these years. Expected to be hailed and greeted and made much of. But we all nurture a little niggle in our hearts over those who flee the sinking ship. Those who are not prepared to stick it out. Nessie sided with him. And her mother, oh yes, Mary too.

  And I’ve got to confess I am out of it all a bit myself, these days. I know my own crowd and having the shops keeps me up to date on some things.

  But I was a bit taken aback when I heard the other week how the secondary school has just introduced a course on the Koran, and they even passed a majority resolution in the primary school against singing Christmas carols because it was cultural imperialism or something. That’s going to extremes.

  None of the ones I knew went as far as that. Though I do hear with the very young generation there is a growing fashion for the girls to keep their heads covered, even their faces and I did see a group of three schoolgirls, just last week, who looked more like an old Arabic photograph than anything I have ever seen right here in Pristina.

  I think we have avoided some of the siller fashions, that is the good thing about a small country town. True, the boys in the garage down on the main road wore their hair long and ratty years after long hair went out of date, Tim tells me. And there was young Donnie Doolan who worked in the barbershop for a while, he startled us all with his Mohawk. But that soon grew out and he was, you know, a bit of a pansy anyway so it was trying to upgrade his image, to use the modern jargon, and besides, Donnie’s old man threw him out as soon as he shaved his head. I let him sleep in the room above the barber’s for a while but it was clear he was a lost cause and I think we were all relieved when he cleared off. Kings Cross I suppose, somewhere like that. If you don’t stick out like a sore thumb, in this town you get on all right I’m saying.

  I don’t know what will happen with this oriental fashion, but it really did get me a bit unnerved. Especially as old Mrs Gleeson told me just this morning that at the secondary school ninety percent of the girls are all registered as Albanian Muslims – even though the lot of them were born right here, in this country. Well, Mrs Gleeson says the pressure is really on among the peer groups for them all to go what she calls Fundamentalist. And Mrs O’Dwyer is sending her next girl over to Saddleback, to the nuns. It hurts, you know, hearing about that.

  Nobody tells me anything these days, you know that. Part of the price you pay for being old, don’t think I don’t know that. And I would never have believed that selling the rest of the Weatherhead inheritance would have made such a difference in the way people treated you. Or, for that matter, how much that land meant in asserting the status of certain other newcomers in the place. Not that they haven’t worked for it. But there’s no attention paid, these days, to the pioneers and the people who did all the hard yakka of settling the district, making it what it is, giving it its name and its character. That’s all gone.

  No, is that so? A Law and Order squad? And who’s behind all this? Wouldn’t you know, but the pub’s a good centre, course it is. Bet they have suffered too at this upsurge of ­religious puritanism among our Albanian friends. They don’t really believe in alcohol, in the Koran, isn’t that the case? Ernie’s a bit of a hothead, always was. And what does he think can be done about it? No, I hadn’t heard that story, sounds mor
e like a mob of Irish ruffians, you ask me; more like the days when those louts, all fresh back after the War and trained in aggression, you remember them scaring the living daylights out of Mrs O’Donnell down in the petrol pump store, rationing was still on, you remember, and they cleaned her out of all the fuel in the place when they hadn’t a ration ticket among the lot of them, caused her no end of trouble later. But they settled down, all of them settled down after a bit, needed a few girls to get hold of them, put them in order.

  Don’t think this sounds like a case of a few sensible women saying a few commonsense things, not with the way things are, or the way things are going. I don’t like the sound of it. To confrontational by half.

  Well, that’s true of course, but in a sense we’re all newcomers here, in the end. My grandfather might have called this place Pristina and said it was pristine, but that’s only the half of it.

  I bet you don’t even know the old sacred burial ground, down in our far paddock, the original one, way up by the big cliff where the river cuts in, yes the Magic Mountain, that’s the one. We always knew it was secret, an Aboriginal burial place. They would have been here centuries, thousands of years perhaps. So if we are going to talk of ownership and who was here first and all that, we’d better get things into perspective if you know what I mean.

  You go on, then. Leave me out. I was going to say that of course I’ve seen it all developing and running away from everybody, everybody that counts, that is. But I’m too old anyway. This town isn’t the town I grew up in, or the village I knew as a kid. Of course I’d be sad to lose it all, but I will, you know, soon enough.

  Just a minute. You’ve got to get this straight, it’s the key to the matter.

  All of those properties are paid for. Going price, hard cash most of them, not even on credit. Well yes, the prices were a bit low some of them, and I’m as much to blame for that – but you don’t really think them being there devalued the land for others, surely you don’t believe that, that’s only pub talk, sour grapes. No, no no.