Between making caricatures of lecturers among our notes, Bruce and I developed a friendship that I thought was forged over weeks of redox reactions and dropped test tubes.
But then he got me onto his farm in Holbrook, NSW, and the first step onto my path to rural infamy began.
One of four boys working the umpteenth-generation broadacre property with their mother, Bruce threw me into the deep end not long after my parent’s departure, my mother’s final dirge still ringing.
“Don’t you do anything unsafe now, you hear?” pointed finger and all.
Within minutes I found myself clinging backwards to the bull bar of a ute alongside Bruce so I could watch the peril come screaming at me while one of his brothers showed me from behind the wheel the first of several near-death experiences.
It was a hoot because it was safe — the shock was only a reflection of my city-boy naivety after an education dominated by stove-pipe pants and acne.
I stayed for two weeks and earned not only a new name (they still call me ‘Ted Orsen’ thanks to my city-paced voice in a first phone call with Bruce’s mother), but also a very rich experience at the coalface of seemingly everything from greasing the nipples on a header (don’t google it) to jump-starting a grader and slaughtering a sheep.
The trust placed in me came with numerous pitfalls and endless hilarity for them. I was quite the novelty.
Day two and I learned to ride a motorbike.
“Look Ted, clutch here, gears on the left foot, the dogs will always join you and try to keep up.”
On cue, two kelpies leapt up onto the rear pad constructed for just that and a third one onto my lap.
As Bruce headed off on his own bike, he turned back and nonchalantly yelled: “And Ted, the rear brakes don’t work”.
Wait, what?
Befuddled, I bunny-hopped this thing across a flower bed (s**t) and found that my posse of dogs were very smart indeed: they all jumped off.
But the trip went without a hitch, with the dogs padding alongside until they realised that I wasn’t going above second gear.
They leapt back up.
The beam on my face hid my slightly damp pants when I arrived at a windmill water pump with three very bored dogs, to find Bruce and eldest brother Stuart re-machining the thread on a long pipe.
Their versatility impressed upon me my lack of industriousness.
They hand-machined pipe thread for heaven’s sake, and when I had a go I cut clean through the internal rust, crushed the pipe and Stuart swore.
They had to re-do it and while my mouth kept going dry at my carelessness, they ensured that 500 sheep would have water.
When one of the motorbikes got a flat next day, the brothers lost a lot of time laughing at my suggestion we pop to the nearest bike shop. Idiot.
When I asked if a gate really needed closing, the clenched smile said a thousand words.
They even filled an aboveground pool with coffee-coloured dam water and said nothing at my up-turned nose at how inviting the pool wasn’t but instead threw a bag of alum in.
By morning, there was crystal clear water on a soft carpet of mud which was easily vacuumed out. Stuart even snorkelled down to patch a leak with glue.
Day three ended with a gritty appreciation for beer.
Having feigned all my life that the beverage didn’t taste like camel pee, I finally understood its purpose.
Looking into the sunset, filthy, shirt torn, spot of blood, with golden stubble reaching the horizon, I sat on a table with Stuart who passed me a long-neck to wash down a day of counter-destruction.
“Something wrong with your mouth, Ted?”
“Yeah. I think my teeth are starting to get cut.”
Andy Wilson writes for Country News. He is a pre-peer review science editor in a range of fields and has a PhD in ecology from the University of Queensland.
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