My folks came out here from Ireland around 1800 and I reckon times were about as bad as they could be back then. There’s this idea that all the Irish transported out here were thieves, rapists and murderers but that ain’t right. Mostly they were just plain poor, and pretty much all of them had been beaten down by the laws against Catholics. The lucky ones who had any education were feared ‘cos they had just enough brain to be rebels; any protest from them got them thrown in jail, hanged or shipped out.
I don’t think too much about those days. I reckon there’s enough to be doing without whingeing on about the English. My family got stuck in and made a life without any help from anybody. Things are getting tough for us though. We’ve always got by on the land and done alright, and it’s been tough before. It’s hot, it’s dry, there’s not many folks around and the work’s hard, but I own this place, and that’s good enough.
I don’t know the answer to this one though. We’ve had five dry winters now, but this last winter’s been about the driest ever. Everything’s tinder dry. It’s like you could just look at the ground and it’d go up, and they’re saying that 92% of New South Wales is in drought. I’ve been offloading my sheep before summer starts – I’d have to buy feed and water for them and I can’t do that. Water’s evaporating right out of the dams into the sky and the river beds are bone-dry. Even the Darling’s down to a muddy trickle.
The bushfires here are really something. You reckon on them going up after Christmas but we’ve got them now, even in the Snowy Mountains and Kosciusko, and that’s unheard of. Most of the south-east is on extreme fire danger alert. This guy on the radio was saying we’re going to have more hot weather and less rain, maybe for the rest of my life.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that. My little girl’ll have to go to the city for work and that’ll be about as strange for her as for my folks coming all the way out here from Europe. She’s smart and quick, but she ain’t ever going to set the world afire and she’d be as much use in the city as a sheep shearer in a beauty parlour. Anyhow, they’ve got all kind of water restrictions in the cities and they’re still wasting it. Those city boys ought to come out here if they want to see what restrictions means.
I don’t listen to the politicians; they all fight among themselves saying we’ve got to stop burning coal and get on with investing in new technology. Talking’s alright but I reckon those scientists and politicians had better get a move on. I’d like to see them out here with a pick and shovel and getting the job done. Seems to me if the air’s so dry we’d better think about living underground.
The wife says we brought it on ourselves because we wouldn’t sign the Kyoto Protocol back in ‘97. Now she is the smart one. I’m mostly outside. I don’t pay much attention to these radio talks like she does. The city and heavy industry are just another world to me. I’m working every day till I drop, looking out for the sheep, maintaining the pens and fences, keeping down the vermin and out digging channels to keep the irrigation system working. Jeanie’d adapt better than me if we had to take off. I know some wheat farmers who’ve been told they can’t export this year, that things have got so bad we can’t risk sending abroad what we’re going to need ourselves. It seems odd to me that these politicians can’t see trouble coming. They should’ve talked to my Jeanie.
She’s getting rattled now though, says we can’t stay on much longer. We’ve run up a fair bit of debt from the last five years of drought. The government say they’re going to help us farmers out, but I don’t reckon they’ll pay off the debts we’ve got going back a ways.
She says we should think about getting out, maybe going over to New Zealand, or even Ireland. That would be a laugh. If my folks got all the way over here poor and starving and I take my family back just the same we won’t have done ourselves much good for two hundred years of hard labour. Anyway, that’ll be quite a shock, going from eating and breathing dust to a place where it rains every day.
I’ve spent my whole life in this place; it’s what I know. I said I’d think about it though. Once she’s got an in idea in her head it’ll spin on around in there till I get with it. I’ve learned that much. She’s going to get us some books to look at so we can see what it’s like. It might be a good thing for my little girl, open her eyes a bit. Ireland’s not such a bad place these days and there’s work there now I hear.
But this land’s mine. I’ve worked every inch. It’s a big thing to think about leaving everything I know behind and starting again and who’s gonna want this place like I do? I reckon it’s easier when you’ve got no choice. Just go. Maybe we’ve got no choice.