..the family when I was a little boy. I think camping’s the present-day manifestation of men’s need to talk to Nature – and perhaps for Nature to talk back. It’s safer in this case to have Nature represent God and I think that most blokes would be comfortable with the communing with Nature metaphor. ‘Going to have a chat with God’ might elicit the odd raised eye-brow, especially when combined with ‘and shoot a few rabbits’..
Anyway, I can do without camping these days. My favourite thing about camping as a very young chap were the cups of tea made with condensed milk (and sugar, of course) served in a chipped enamelled tin cup, which sounds utterly repulsive now. I also enjoyed the lunches of salads and tinned tongue, which again sounds far less attractive to me now than it used to.
But what I loved most was fooling around in the Leader river, which guarded the road into the Mendip Hills homestead that the Rutherfords called home, and which was where we used to camp. Bro’ Dick and I would bravely wade in the stream, which was quite shallow at that point as it was a ford in the absence of a bridge, and try to catch cockabullies*. The water had a particular smell as it rushed over the smooth river stones that I only smelled again when we stopped off at a stream on the way back from the Thredbo Blues Festival back in 2004.**
I should add that Richard and I were devotees of Cuddlepot and Snugglepie and we imagined that by sticking gum leaves on our backs we would be able to fly - and round about dusk that seems eminently possible to a very young chap in the fading light. Who needs God when you have a vivid imagination?
But, hold on, I hear you say. This is the South Island of New Zealand and you’re talking of Cuddlepot and Snugglepie and gum leaves stuck on your backs. What’s the story? I have only limited information, but I believe the Rutherfords arrived in New Zealand after a sojourn in South Australia and they brought some Aussie keepsakes with them. Consequently, there was a long line of gum trees along the road leading to the homestead and some more exotic eucalypts right next to the garage as I recall.
So it’s possible, now that I reflect on it, that my emigrating to Melbourne back in 1966 was, in a way, a return to my family’s home country.
I was thinking about home and country last night when I attended the Victoria Police Academy Carols at the Glen Waverley Police Academy. (It’s a long story). There’s an awful lot about this kind of ritual which is unconvincing, starting off with the fairly insipid involvement of the several hundred-strong audience and then just whole Christmas thing, most obviously, that it’s celebrated at the wrong time of the year here in the southern hemisphere. The timing of the celebration of the birth of Jesus has been adapted by the Church, some would say somewhat prosaically, to coincide with the pagan festivals of renewal that occur on the winter solstice. Well, alright, but why do we then persist in pretending that it’s winter in the middle of summer? Why haven’t we similarly adapted the timing of this festival to the realities of living in this wide brown land at the other end of the earth? I know some thoughtful people do celebrate Christmas in June or July, but it’s the sort of thing that should’ve been considered by the founding fathers at the time of colonisation. It begs the question; if something that basic hasn’t been sorted by now, what hope has the republic movement got?

*Freshwater Cockabullies, stocky type of fish, each with a rounded tail, two dorsal fins, and a blunt head. They usually remain on or close to the river bed and swim in short, swift bursts. They are members of the cockabully family, Eleotridae, which occupy marine and fresh water in the tropical and subtropical to temperate regions of the Pacific and South East Asia. However, in New Zealand the family is represented by species primarily found in fresh water.
http://waterwondref.blogs-de-voyage.fr/

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