A letter to Gillian Mears

Gillian Mears was a great Australian writer who was stricken with multiple sclerosis and died in 2016. In her last years she converted an old ambulance into a mobile home and toured widely while continuing to write. She became a friend as well as colleague. On her last visit to us, she complained about the difficulties of boiling water, which was addressed in our correspondence.

Dearest Gillian,

I contemplated your tea dilemma while the full moon slipped in and out from behind the clouds, which we were warned threatened horrific weather but instead merely gave us an intermittent moon.

Under the influence of this erratic glare I have come to a number of conclusions. First and foremost: light a small campfire. Uncle Muns Hammond had a very economical method. Arrange three good sticks like the Mercedes or anti-nuclear symbol and scatter dry kindling on top. Allow embers to develop and place three or four good river stones at the perimeter. The stones should be about the size of a gobstopper.

Prepare a set of wattle tongs before your tea is served. A good green branch the thickness of a Victorian’s index finger is best. Notch the back of the branch with a sharpish knife and bend the wattle at the notch. With these tongs take one of the hot stones and place it in the cup. Expect some bubbling, a bit of steam and a little chariness to the tea, something like Russian Caravan. Once the tea is drunk, replace the stone beside the fire. Remove battery from smoke alarm.

I learnt the hot stone trick from Muns. I never met him, but on my Maramingo farm I sometimes came across his little economical three-stick fires. My novel Bloke is dedicated to him and carries his tea-making recipe. Uncle Herb (really, there’s nowhere near enough time to talk about Uncle Herb) told me about Muns’ stones and tongs but also how he made a little billy coolamon from the elbow bark of a young black wattle in which he would warm water before dropping in the hot stone and – sim sala bim – the water would boil.

But Uncle Herb wouldn’t know Russian Caravan tea from a Jayco Freedom van, he just liked whatever came from Coles, and he preferred it on the hour every hour. We used to camp together in flash hotels when white people with guilt complexes would put us up so we could explain to them why Aboriginal people would never regain their land. Of course the agenda never said any such thing, but the consequences were always the same. Herb would tell the organisers that we liked to share a room because of our equal devotion to tea. They could never work out why I went from being the most equable blackfella they’d ever met to a raging demon in four days. Lack of sleep or lukewarm tea can do that to perfectly good people.

But this has nothing to do with Uncle Herb. Thank goodness. Or we’d never get anywhere. It’s not about Uncle Muns either, except that he has been responsible for an unexpected and permanent change in my outlook.

You know how apologetic I’ve been about my slim Aboriginal heritage. Even when it became less slim and spread a chubbier glow over a greater portion of the island than one could possibly have anticipated, I was still circumspect in deference to those families who had more robust family credentials. Well, I was chugging along in this fashion, preparing to die without the real accoutrements of an Aboriginal man, when I was asked by the local Yuin people to assist in the preparations for young men to pass into manhood.

I thought my role would be to impress bored youth with the greatness and integrity of the culture by using the rewards of my bookishness and erudition. I packed enough clothes for just two days.

When I got there, they said, “No, dummy, we would actually prefer it if you didn’t speak at all. You’re here to go through the business, to become a man at 67.” Suddenly I was being asked to paint up, to dance, to remember a thousand religious stories about mountains, rivers, rocks, lyrebirds and blue wrens.

I was exhausted. For nine days we got up at dawn and didn’t get to bed until one the next morning. I was like a flayed camel, and then I realised that I was on the most extraordinary journey of a long life. Emotionally, physically, intellectually and spiritually, I had never done anything approximating the difficulty of this journey.

It dawned on me that the only thing standing between me and attaining initiation was an injury to myself or one of the ceremonial leaders. I started crawling out of the river on hands and knees lest I slip over and break an ankle. Last thing before the stars above my swag shut my eyes, I prayed, selfishly, for the health and mobility of the elders.

You’ll remember that I only had enough clothes for two days and the work we were doing was incredibly rigorous so I smelt like an abattoir, thus the need to swim in the Brogo River at least twice a day.

Of course, I’ve digressed from tea recipes to talk about myself, but there is a connection because the man who cut me was the last man to be cut and initiated by Muns Hammond, the maker of campfire tongs and bark billies, and the leaver of doused Mercedes-shaped campfires on my farm. So, just when you thought this a digression comes an opportunity to rejoin the main thread of the cloth, and here we are back with Muns Hammond and tea recipes.

Second conclusion: As you mentioned to my old dog, Reg, yesterday, it is interesting to realise that he liked his tea-making ceremony too. He liked to sit by the fire while I was fencing. There was this long run up and down the sand dunes of Cape Otway. The dunes were formed in the last ice age and have since welcomed a manna gum forest. Lovely country but tricky to fence because every hollow and hill needs a separate arrangement to take the strain and keep the posts from leaping from the ground like Caledonian cabers. (I really like the word arrangement used in fencing vernacular.)

Needless to say, I was on this line for some weeks. Reg would guard the fire and the billy, and was reasonably happy except for the presence of gang-gang cockatoos, which he thought untrustworthy. Lyn was trying to recuperate a gang-gang that flew into a car. It never seemed to regain flight or humour. We thought it was kind of quaint for it to ride on our shoulders, and the bird had just enough sense to behave itself beside the face of its breadwinners but took enormous delight in biting our son on his ear. When it got the chance it would do the same to Reg, who would flick a look of admonition in my direction, as if to say, You threaten me with a rolled up newspaper if I even look at a bird, but a bird turns my ear into a tram ticket and you do nothing.

Even though Reg liked the prospects of tea he never enjoyed the beverage himself, so, on reflection, this information is useless to you.

Three: Brim had her own morning ceremony. Once the currawong had called at sunrise she knew I would get up a minute or two later and she would rise from her own cushion, stretch elaborately and then dash to the stairs where she would wait for me on the fourth tread. Once I was on the first tread she was at just the right height for me to take her head between my hands and kiss her on the forehead, right where her little smudgy blaze began.

The deal was that I would then rub her beneath the jaw and around the ears, but if I did not spend the requisite amount of time in this sunrise devotion she would shuffle her bum along the tread to block my path. I was then to smooth the silk of her head and ears, and tell her she was the most gorgeous dog I had ever known. When satisfied, she would allow me to pass and pad behind me to the kitchen, where I would open the flue on the stove, lift the damper and shift the kettle into position.

But Brim had no interest in tea either, so, once again, this information is as useless as a conscience to a politician or an executive hired so that half the workforce can be sacked in the search for world’s best practice.

Four: There is a device, however, which may solve the dilemma. It is called a Norpro 300 Watts Instant Electric Immersion Liquid Heater. It costs $5.68 and at the moment is post free. The idea is that you just plug it in, submerge the wand into the disappointing cup, and it brings it back to the boil. My first thought is that one would have to remember where one had placed this magical instrument if one was not to be galvanised by 240 volts to the buttocks, or worse.

Personally I prefer the campfire, but I can imagine there are some health professionals who may not appreciate the romance.

Having spent a good part of the day selling books at the market, I have arrived home tired and so intend to be in bed by no later than nine, and I promise to turn my mind to the cold-tea problem once more.

I will be helped by Yambulla, once he has finished thrashing about on the doona. For the first two minutes of the 10 allowed him on our bed at night he thrashes about on his back, flinging himself from one side to the other and then turning to me to see if I appreciate the extremity of his droll humour. He will not perform this stunt while Lyn is looking because he is a very astute dog and covetous of his privileges.

While this is going on, Wangarabel leaves the position to which she is notionally bound and squirms up the bed until she is breathing into my face. I have to pretend nothing of the sort has happened. It is not unusual for us both to fall asleep in this arrangement.

There’s that word “arrangement” again, so that I can pretend I have wrought a very tight and dextrous circle, while knowing I have done next to nothing to solve the tea dilemma. But that’s art for you.

In tannin, Bruce