gembrook

After two days running training for prospective presenters with The Lizard I sleep like the dead, wake with a start. I hang the washing, water the pots, eat, drive to Gembrook. I’m taking an early morning walk with my former premiership team-mate Carey.

We stroll along, a colour contrast, Carey who could blend into the bush in every sense in work shirt, dark green pants tucked into black socks and work boots, me in open sandals, pink short shorts, black polo shirt.

   

His blog tells me that he knows everyone in Gembrook, where he’s lived for 30 years; everyone his age or older, anyway. A little whirlwind of JRTs accompanies us—snappy Snowy who’s 12, Pip—the apple of his master’s eye—at five, and my own Mister J, whose twelfth birthday is next week. It’s a quiet walk into town, nattering away.

We mosey through J A C Russell Park next to the Puffing Billy station. Carey isn’t keen on the tourist railway; they mucked him round one time, and the word tourist is anathema. He leans on a sign, bends it one degree south. One day it’ll fall over he hopes. There are too many signs; most carry no weight, no message that can’t be done without, he reckons.

Some of his favourite views are gone, disappeared behind new houses. He sighs. Back near Carey’s place, the dogs flush out a rabbit, have no idea where it’s gone. He tells me about the New Zealand flax plants on the roadside. Later we wander through his acre and a half. Every plant here has a purpose, a role.

The business Carey ran then inherited from his father is growing herbs and plants that end up in floral arrangements sold by florists—Queen Anne’s lace, cerulean blue cornflowers, cuttings from this and that and here and there. A tiny pair of snips arrear magically in his hand. He snips stems quickly, efficiently.

He likes things as they were, as we who grow older do. Retirement beckons. He wants to be free of people’s demands on his time, council officials who don’t know what they’re doing, doctors’ imprecations should he not behave as they would like. Let life have its way with us, he says, wicked or otherwise.

I follow his small Suzuki as he heads off to work. Shrubs slap the sides of the small van as it bumps along the dirt track that is his lower drive. We pull up at Hannah’s. Her husband died, left her a half acre of north-facing vegie garden and orchard. Carey tends it for her, the rich ochre soil pushing up broad beans, pansies, kiwi-fruit.

The sun warms us as we wander through the rows. It’s getting on for ten o’clock. I know he has a business to run, but right now I doubt either of us really wants to leave this place, this moment.

Rock on.