growth

The years following Olive’s birth were a time of great change for Karabup. The roads into the district were widened, and some of them sealed to give better access for the logging companies whose bulldozers, loaders and trucks cut their way deeper into the forest. With the improved infrastructure the school bus also extended a spur from the schools in Manjimup to Karabup and the 20-odd square miles of farms and forest that the local school serviced. The school closed and the two teachers transferred to town, leaving the small wooden building to serve as the local children’s playgroup twice a week, before being moved to town many years later as a historical relic of the failed Group Settlement Scheme. The local store would battle on for another decade, but would eventually succumb to the larger range of goods available in town. So too the post office received and distributed the local mail for nearly 20 more years until the postmistress Ms Giacomo finally dies of old age. And so for all intents and purposes- other than for the local’s themselves- the district of Karabup merged into yet another part of Manjimup. The road signs notifying travellers of its existence still pointed the way from the highway, and the old postcode remained; relics of an age lost but for the memory of the few.

Given Olive’s proclivity for hands-on work, by the time she had started school Beth had put her in charge of looking after the chooks and a small patch of the veggie garden. Just like her father and grandfather before her, Olive took to these tasks with verve. No sooner had she jumped off the school bus, ridden her bike down the track and dumped her bag in the corner of the kitchen, than she would be outside in the mud scratching away at the dirt pulling out the smallest of weed sprouts or searching for earthworms, so that by the time it came to clean up she would be caked in a layer of drying mud. Phillip and Beth would joke at night about how this daughter of theirs seemed to think that it was the chickens that were her parents and not them at all.

So life continued. The men continued the cycles of crops, stock and hay; never tiring of tinkering with what they grew, when, where, and with what machinery. They didn’t tend to be the type of farmer who has to always have the latest machine or gadget, preferring to mainly keep with that which was tried and true (kind of the opposite to how they were with crop selection, really) and modify that which was no longer ideal so that it functioned just as well as the new machines, only not as pretty or shiny, with strange additions welded onto the side. They were of the opinion that there was no point in spending all that money on some new machine when you could knock something up yourself that did the trick nicely, and for just a fraction of the price. They also had a firm faith in the versatility and practicality of wire, and if anything ever needed fixing the first thing they would call on was the roll of wire in the back corner of the machinery shed.

With the savings they made from adapting their own instruments to suit new causes- not to mention the profits that kept consistently rolling in from the farm- the youngest Spring family decided it was their turn to build a house they could completely call their own. They settled on a design of stone and wood- 4 x 2 with a verandah surrounding the northern and eastern sides catching the sun and looking out over the lake. The kitchen, and master bedroom would take advantage of these views through wall-to-ceiling windows, with the other bedrooms and bathrooms sheltered behind, and a loft that would serve at various times as a storeroom, a guest room, a study and a library. During their mornings and evenings Phillip and Beth, and later also Olive, would look over to the lights illuminating Phillip’s grandparents old cottage across the weir, along the bank to the cloister of trees sheltering his parents, and directly over the old Craig house and across the lake to the old Monroe’s. As the sun graced the horizons its light would play on my skin and through my thinning branches, my form a shining silhouette against the pink sky.