My four year odyssey taught me some lessons and I became a country person. I looked like a country person, dressed like one, thought like one (sort of). I blended-in visually if not really. I found a beautiful place for me and the animals to live.
Floating on my back in the cool clear flowing creek, gazing up at the hills in the distance all was peace and calm and bliss in my world. But as I suspected it would end, it did. The new owners wanted 'my' house to live in whilst they built their McMansion on the crest of a windswept hill (fantastic views, terrific winds, but ne're a bird about). The causeway got cemented over and a huge snaking road was rollered into the side of the hill. I was relocated to a cabin down the road and my beautiful home was defiled with rubbish. Rubbish? Yes. Exactly that. I didn't know whether to pick it up or not, the lolly wrappers that blew about the plastic bags the empty dog cans. I returned every day twice a day to feed the dear old Luke. Got fit walking the two and half ks, there, back and forth, and witnessing with some disbelief how the new owners treated my piece of sacred ground, my tenemos.
I continued to care about it and spent many hours of many days hacking out Pattersons' Curse, which I did with good intentions, but which was viewed with some sort of suspicious resent. I was obliquely accused of being 'judgemental' in relation to another who was not, and so I watched the contents of the dog-raided rubbish bins blow hither thither into creek and paddock not daring to pick it up less I be judged as being judgmental. I got invited in and was treated in a most friendly manner. I turned or tried to turn a blind eye to what I can only describe as pathological squalor, the stinking cat tray rarely emptied, the piles of stuff strewn everywhere, rubbish on the floor, piles of clothing everywhere, unmitigated chaos abounding.
Luke died and overnight my interest in pasture management died with him-- it was uncanny. It rained a bit that night the tears of heaven the first rain in ages and it was a relief to not be worrying about a rain-loathing animal standing out in the elements. I no longer had to troop down the road twice a day, and so I stopped with my weeding, I was the only one putting any effort into it anyway, I had to admit it did seem odd.
One day inside, having tea I was asked about the ant problem and whether I had had one? Well not really I said, they used to eat the remnants in the cat bowls and if I left the lid of the sugar . . . Ant rid was now being used liberally in the kitchen. I was appalled and wondered whether 'she' knew exactly how Ant Rid worked? I walked the long straight dusty road back to the cabin, tears streaming, fuming with rage and indignation, realising how futile and powerless I was there was absolutely nothing I could do or say. I did not 'own' the property, if the new owners wanted to litter it up, live like pigs in muck and throw poison around on it's native inhabitants that was entirely their business. I kept my rage to myself as best I could and we continued on with pleasant if not duplicitous relations.
The hospital paddock I had spent many an hour weeding, mowing, liming and caring for got trashed in three days when their four horses were corralled into it for the sake of convenience, with nothing to eat. And so they ate every skerrick of anything remotely green, rendering it a dustbowl. Again I walked back up the road raging, fuming and powerless. The wind I prayed for to stir up the dust came and I hoped with dust swirling around their house from the now desertified hospital paddock, the penny might drop with these incomparably stupid and messy people.
I chatted to the builder who had changed his tune after three months of battling the winds about their choice of location for the new enormously tacky pile on the hill, . He came around to my way of thinking without acknowledging it as much. I heard second hand that his preferred building site would have been down along the creek a notion he had argued against when first I suggested it. "When are you moving back in?" he asked. "When they move all their stuff out" I said. "Gee they've got some stuff" I ventured-- "and they're a bit messy". "Un-be-fucking-lievable" was his reply "the owner of the place they rented before is still ropeable about the mess and crap they left behind". We smiled conspiratorially and I was glad to know I wasn't some sort of anal-retentive control freak. Other people found them hard to stomach too.
The cement causeway over the creek proved to be a bit redundant as the creek dried up to nothing, drained predominantly by their incessant pumping from it. The septic overflowed daily with five people showering and umpteen loads of washing--the place began to stink. The ground water feeding the trough in Sheppie's paddock got tainted with Napisan and other anti bacterials and both Shep and the cattle stopped drinking from it, forcing me to move him into the paddock behind the house now dangerously overstocked by their four horses who lived in a state of perpetual hunger while they-- loving them all the while like spoilt pets were dumb to their suffering from hunger.
They were kind, city, stupid, people, who through laziness and a complete lack of any common sense were reducing their expensive prize to a weed infested, stinking hovel. I soon realised I did not want to go back and have these complete twits as neighbours and landlords. It was all too frustrating. 'Nicer' people you could not hope to meet nor perhaps more stupid. . . . .
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