Country Squire: Rob Ingram on life in a small country town called Dunedoo.

AFTER YEARS OF BATTLING TO KEEP HIS GARDEN GOING DURING DROUGHT AND THEN THE BUSHFIRES, ROB INGRAM REFLECTS ON THE EXPERIENCE.

THE CHOSEN ONE called me a curmudgeon the other day, which caused me to scroll through my mental glossary.

Curmudgeon, I thought to myself, might be a sporting fish prevalent in the Nitmiluk National Park. I’m sure I’ve heard fishermen setting out asking fishermen getting back, “Barramundi biting today?” only to be told, “Nah, but the curmudgeon are going crazy.”

Then again it might be a migratory seabird. I vaguely recall David Attenborough sitting on a coastal outcrop watching curmudgeons returning from Siberia. So was I migratory or going crazy? I turned to the dictionary.

It told me — in the nicest possible way — that a curmudgeon is a crusty, difficult, cantankerous

— and usually old — man.

“What was the curmudgeon remark about?” I casually enquired … feigning earlier indifference to being crusty, difficult and cantankerous.

“That ABC report,” said The Chosen One, “… the one that referred to Mother Nature three times.”

Okay, I must admit that references to Mother Nature tend to make me upgrade exasperation into apoplexy.

I don’t play well with people who deny climate change. But my intolerance also extends to those who think we can rely on some old dame called Mother Nature.

Mother Nature is some cornball personification that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it in the form of a mother figure. It’s an extension of the old good mother myth, despite the fact that in recent times her most obvious gifts have been heat, drought, dust and inferno. More like the cruel old stepmother myth from the world of fairy tales.

When we established our garden we didn’t much share the credit with Mother Nature. We knew damned well that it was the result of our own hard toil. Building a garden out here in the prickle belt ain’t easy. We dragged huge railway sleepers into position and covered the parched earth with layers of newspapers to smother the weeds. We built up layers of soil and straw and compost and sheep droppings and let it settle. Then we built it up again.

We gathered rocks — the big heavy ones that bushrangers used to hide behind — and rolled them through the property to build raised rockery beds. Then we scanned the mail order catalogues for the best deals in hernia support belts. We enrolled in a further education course and diligently studied the principles and practice of organic farming and biodynamics and how cows were such placid creatures because they meditated on the life-force energies released by herbage. So we, too, meditated on the life-force energies released by herbage and, in between, we planted and watered and fertilised.

It has all gone now … thanks in no small part to Mother Nature. She cranked up summer temperatures to the mid-40s around here and flash-fried anything that was growing. She dried up the water resources necessary to deliver life-giving nutrients to our plantings and, on days when bright sunshine wasn’t burning the garden to a crisp, thick layers of drought dust and bushfire smoke snuffed out any chance of the vital process of photosynthesis occurring. Mother Nature, in the meantime, has re-invented herself, and even created a totally new school of heroic prose for the post-drought real estate essayist. And it seems all is not lost for the little house on the prairie with no garden.

I’ve just finished reading a compelling House For Sale advertisement that I found on the internet. “Landscaped By Nature” it read. “Previous owners have trodden softly on this pristine block. Minimal interference will delight enviro-lovers. Co-exist with Nature.”

“This will make you feel better,” I told The Chosen One. “We’re not failed gardeners. We’re enviro-lovers who have trodden softly.”

“THIS WILL MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER... WE’RE NOT FAILED GARDENERS. WE’RE ENVIRO-LOVERS WHO HAVE TRODDEN SOFTLY.”