Celia's driving into Blandford this summer morning, slowing down from the New England Highway as she nears the rust-worn gates of her family's farm.
She's back, on annual leave, helping out a couple of weeks, pitching in. Window down, Celia smells the sweet strawberry scents of red stringybark eucalypts. They line this long gravel-dirt driveway she used to hurtle down in her battered billycart way back when. Smells like the past.
Where she works, the smells are more chemical, clinical, more attuned to modern worlds.
Smells like the future.
Mum advances to the porch, having clocked the gusts of dust through her kitchen window. Celia gathers her things and takes that longer-than-usual breath before locking the car. They laugh then Celia's shrug becomes a hug and in a blink they're at the table drinking tea.
CELIA draws the strings on her anorak's hood as she helps with hurling hay-bales into the cattle-yard. The weather has turned windy-cold, though it's meant to be summer. Dad's steadily nodding just nearby. He's been checking and mending fences while Mum has been checking and mending the finances. "Looks like you're a little out of practice C. Obviously not getting enough hard work."
"Guess not."
"But I suppose you can tell me all about the science behind the hay and the cattle though?" "Sure. I can tell you cattle are ruminant, that's why we feed them so much in one sitting then let them take such a long time to digest it. I can tell you the sourcing of your hay better be smart because the timing of harvesting has to be spot-on. That, and the methods of storage, have to be top-notch or the poor-quality fodder you spend your hard-earned on will have an adverse impact on your cattle which, in turn, will mean you earn less no matter how hard you work for it."
Celia continues tossing bales, Dad's still nodding. "I know all that. Didn't have to get it from books or teachers or, what is it you've become out there at Chiswick - a research assistant?"
"I was. I'm the Research Station Manager now. You didn't know that. Just like you didn't know you'd bought spoiled hay that time back when I was little. A snake killed by the baling equipment led to toxins in the hay, giving your cattle botulism." It cuts and she knows it. Dad coughs. No bales are left so Celia jumps from the ute. "There's plenty you don't know Dad. I hear you don't know enough to get your leptospirosis vaccinations or see a doctor about that Farmer's Lung you're carrying there." Leaning on the fence, she watches cattle feeding, smells the sweet woodiness of hay. It's nice, she figures, but ultimately smells like the past.
CELIA pauses mid-afternoon, sits on the porch with Mum. The only sounds are low-pitched trills of tawny frogmouths - common residents - and the throaty murmur of a glossy ibis. Mum noticed this bird of passage a year ago after the Pages River flooded. Fortunately, the 'buy-a-bale' campaign helped them out just like it did some years back in the Angry Summer when the temperature in Murrurundi measured a record 40.9 degrees; the drought turned hay to straw.
Celia presents a bottle of organic wine, a prize-winning verdelho made in Pokolbin. "This wine's better for you, better for the environment, made with care to minimise adverse impacts throughout the process. Like what we're doing at CSIRO, exploring smarter ways to farm ethically." Opening the bottle, the aroma is immediate, sharp, smells like the future. "It's lovely," says Mum, sippng. "I still love the Ben Ean wines, they're also local. I remember the Lindeman's song from the advertisement growing up. The wine certainly takes me back." Obviously, thinks Celia, it smells like the past.
Dad's boots on the path signal him shuffling towards them. "Wine-time," he states, although he's never touched a drop. Celia looks at him, thinks of nearby Wallabadah Rock, the largest monolith in Australia after Uluru, estimated at 45.5 million years old. He sits with the sigh of the weary but not yet worn.
"You don't know," he begins, "that we're making our own hay, a mix of native grasses and fodder crops grown without pesticides or synthetic fertilisers. We also do farm tours. People shadow us through the day, muck in, help feed cattle - and they pay for it! You don't know because you haven't asked, because you don't call often and you only come home a couple times a year though Armidale's just a few hours' drive away."
CELIA ambles the driveway's length; it's dusk. Celia smiles as, although the winds have dropped, passing rain peppers her shoulders, her anorak hanging back there on the porch. But Celia's happy.
She'd not soon forget Dad's genuine admiration when she'd talked of virtual fencing with the eGrazor system's neckbands using wireless technology to track herds and pasture-intake. He'd enthusiastically asked more about virtual paddock-to-plate experiences attracting customers who want to buy beef with absolute awareness of the process. Sure, he'd baulked at her applying human psychological theories to explore emotional states of livestock. He'd scoffed when she mentioned syntropic agroforestry. However, there was genuine pride when he said she was brilliant; there was, quite clearly, a respect.
Celia considers the Wanaruah name for this area - Murrumdoorandi - 'meeting place at five fingers'; she's relieved there's been a meeting of the minds. She thinks about indigenous concepts of time, the everywhen, where pasts, presents and futures interconnect. She smells again those strawberry aromas of red stringybark eucalypts at the gateway of this farm where she grew up.
Smells like now.
