SUMMER TALES

Inviting strangers on to your property to work for board brings plenty of challenges

Wayne and Sarah’s early-model Hyundai, blowing black smoke and towing a trailer, edges slowly up our gravel driveway. As the car comes closer, I notice the front bumper is held in place with blue baling twine and duct tape. Their emailed resumes, despite the gaps, look promising. They’ve spent time on farms in Queensland and NSW, and their testimonials imply a willingness to work.

Part of me envies their minimal baggage and their itinerant lifestyle. Most of us have struggled at some stage in our lives. We’ve had the dodgy car and the black smoke, a near-empty bank account. We’ve had to steel ourselves and hope things will turn around.

The driver’s side door opens and Wayne gets out. A thick-set bloke with long dark hair tied in a ponytail, he is barefoot and wearing well-worn shorts and a faded Che Guevara T-shirt. He is about 40 years old. He looks out of sorts, but he could just be tired. Towing a trailer all day would be wearying and being on the move again must be a hassle. Sarah has long blonde hair which is also tied back. She is younger, in her mid to late twenties. She smiles and approaches me and we shake hands. I turn to greet Wayne, but he has already turned his attention to unhooking the trailer.

Wayne has enrolled at uni. He is excited about finally getting an opportunity to study. He intends to do a double major in science and maths. Sarah is biding her time until she returns to France to resume post-grad studies in environmental science.

We’d decided to let our cabin rent-free for six months in exchange for some work. Perhaps this cashless transaction helped us reimagine our long-lost hippie selves – back in our premortgage days when we travelled the length and breadth of Australia in a temperamental Kombi with a leaky sunroof, in search of something we never quite found.

After moving from Melbourne to Tasmania, we are struggling to manage our bush block. Our patch of land is sandy and the bracken is rampant. The soil needs enriching and building up if we hope to grow vegetables on a larger scale. But my work is a two-hour return commute and by the end of the day, I’m done. Our hope is that Wayne and Sarah will make a difference.

On the morning after they arrive, we chat at our kitchen bench over mugs of coffee and biscuits. Sarah is rapt about the cabin. It’s way better than the photographs and after weeks in their tent, it’s a luxury. But Wayne seems distracted or perhaps he has too much on his mind. Is he being unrealistic about university? By the time we reach 40, the die is usually cast, and few of us manage to alter our trajectory.

In exchange for accommodation, including utilities, firewood and internet, we are to get 12 hours of work every week. It’s a common scenario all over Australia; carefree, youngish folk working their way across the country. It’s an old-fashioned arrangement, perhaps even a throw-back to agrarian times, when we like to imagine life was simpler. The reality of course, was, no doubt, hardly any kind of utopia.

For the first few weeks, we can’t fault their effort. They are up and about before I’ve brewed my first coffee. Leaves are raked into neat piles like little pyramids. They cut the bush back along our perimeter fence to form a fire break. I come home one evening to discover they’ve cleverly added an extension to the chook yard using some star pickets and old chicken wire. Trailer loads of firewood I’d cut and split are hauled up from the bottom paddock and stacked a little haphazardly in the yard.

At last, the warm weather arrives. On the days when he isn’t at uni, Wayne ambles out of the cabin late in the afternoons as the shadows are lengthening to join Sarah in the garden. The weeks slide past. We add more mulch to the vegetable beds to help keep the ground moist. Spinach, strawberries, lettuce and cherry tomatoes thrive. Sarah and Wayne aren’t fazed by tiger snakes or jack jumpers. They come close to befriending the blue-tongue lizard that has taken a fancy to our ripening strawberries. Kookaburras come and go. News bulletins warn of the increasing likelihood of catastrophic bushfires.

One evening, after we unhitch the mower from the tractor, I ask Wayne what he makes of Trump gate-crashing the White House. I’m trying to garner some kind of connection; to get some sense of his politics. Frowning, he shrugs, saying he and Sarah have no interest in contemporary politics, and he turns away and saunters off to the cabin.

A week or so later, he asks why I keep on working when I have my doubts about the usefulness of my current job. It strikes me as an odd, almost naive question. I’ve worked all my adult life. Work is work. It’s a means to an end, and it enables me to enjoy a reasonable quality of life. Before I can come up with a reply, Wayne is summarising his work history in hospitality, and he bristles as he recounts how much he hated the repetition of the work, and what he called the bullying culture of chefs. His days of engaging in any sort of trivial work are over: university will open doors for him, of that he is certain.

Well before the end of summer, things grind to a halt. For entire days, our beasts of burden remain inside the cabin with the curtains closed. Barely plausible explanations emerge. Wayne is out of sorts. He is suffering from migraines. Sarah can’t quite explain. She isn’t sure of the right word. And then her old back injury resurfaces. She doesn’t know when she might be able to make it into the garden again. She is terribly apologetic.

Wayne disappears for a few days. I wonder if he’s shot through. But then he is back, still looking out of sorts with the smoky Hyundai and its baling twine and duct tape. The lights in their cabin remain on until well after midnight – as if they’re aping the nocturnal marsupials. We aren’t overly fussed.

As autumn approaches and the nights grow cold, my wife and I realise we’ve been naive. Something has to give, but I suspect our helpers aren’t feeling especially good about the situation. We decide we can probably let things slide even if it’s disappointing they aren’t keeping to their side of the bargain.

I begin to rehearse how I’ll confront them. And yet, something holds me back. Anyway, we have no formal agreement. They’ve signed no lease. We’ve essentially invited them to our property, given them the run of the place; and now, can we simply send them on their way? We can, of course, and yet we can’t. Perhaps they will still come good.

I’m loath to delve into their issues; or to call them on their indolence. Are they depressed? Wayne has spoken about being estranged from his siblings. He’s never known his father. Sarah is coolly unsentimental whenever she speaks of her parents and brother back in Paris. But I can hear low laughter and quiet conversation late at night in the cabin. So, I guess they’re probably doing OK.

In the end, their extended stay ends without rancour. Much to our relief, one afternoon, they casually mention they’ll be gone by the weekend. And over the next few days they begin to load up the trailer. When I get home from work one evening, they’re gone. All that remains is the Hyundai’s oil stain in the driveway, and some strips of duct tape that must’ve fallen off the bumper.

The next morning, I go into the cabin. They’ve left some junk behind, but it’s no big deal. Wayne’s discarded lecture notes and all his essay drafts are piled high near the wood stove. I gather them up, and without hesitating, I take the lot outside and add it to the pile of mulch.

For now, the cabin remains empty and eerily quiet. And somewhere, a car and trailer is slowly making its way towards its next destination. Its occupants are staring straight ahead and black smoke is blowing in their wake.