Wee Jasper, June 7, 1932
Today I have a terrible toothache. It is centred in a tooth which has just a tiny loose filling, but the pain has spread to whole left side of my head, and the skin is so sensitive I can scarcely bear to touch it. I take an aspirin every now and then and it helps a little, but I feel terribly irritable.
I didn't take the picture of the eagle after all. Tom had tied it in such a bad way and it looked so miserable I didn’t want a picture of it. Also a little fox he had caught in one his traps looked so pitiful I couldn't take that either. Animals in a trap are a sad sight to see. Rabbits in a trap sit quite still like little soft fluffy balls. Their fear and suffering is not immediately obvious. The fox twists and turns and struggles, and if you leave it in the trap long enough it will bite its foot off. I haven't received more than the two eagles as yet, so I guess I won't be seeing as much down as I had thought. I don't imagine we'll be here much more than three weeks.
Wee Jasper, June 14, 1932
When I think back on this last week I find it hard to remember what exactly has happened. All I seem to remember is my toothache, which has only just gone away. I still have a funny feeling in my mouth, but at least the pain is gone and my head feels clear. I will not go to the dentist in Yass. I can suffer plenty without his assistance. And as we will be going to Sydney in a couple of weeks I can stand it till then. It was cold and rainy all week and Sverre was home a lot and read aloud to me from the Scarlet Pimpernel, which we've had for a long time. It's all ‘his tall and noble figure’ and ‘The face of the Count turned white as ashes, only the nose retained it's colour’, but we read it to the end.
We have made ourselves cosy places by the fireplace. I have lined a trunk with feather cushions and I sit in it like in a warm nest with a newspaper shield to keep the heat from my face. Sverre likes to sit close to the fire so he doesn't have to make such complicated arrangements for himself. The whole fireplace is about 2 ½ metres wide. The stove takes up about half the room and the rest is open fire, so there is plenty of room for both of us and Jip too. For the last few days the big house cat has joined our company. She recently got one foot caught in a trap and sat in it all night. Afterwards she was very sick, and now she is very spoiled and lazy after all the attention and goodies that were lavished on her.
Tom Archer has gone to Yass for four days and I am looking after his dogs. Before he left he hung forty rabbits on a line and I am feeding them to the dogs. Each of them eats two rabbits at a time, innards and all. All that is left after their meal is the paws. We only give Jip meat and boned, and always cooked, but then Jip has much better manners than Tom's dogs.
I am so looking forward to going back to Sydney. Mrs Chaffer wrote inviting me to stay with her in case Sverre goes back to Wee Jasper. That pleases me very much, since it would give me time to look for suitable lodgings, and Sverre will probably only stay a day or two in Sydney, and then go back to do some more work for Barber for a few weeks. Of course, if Bob Westerlund has work for him he'll come straight back. I will keep in touch with Bob.
Sverre already has a passenger to bring back from Sydney, so the trip will pay for itself. Our Baby hasn't cost us much yet. Mrs Chaffer also wrote that Walter and Dot have had a baby boy called Geoffrey. And Pearl and Norman are also expecting again in September. It's hair raising. When I first met the Chaffers there was only one child, Elaine. How there's Valerie, Barrie, Gwennyth and Geoffrey as well. It's getting to be a big family. I imagine all they can talk about now is what their babies eat and how best to sew on buttons. Not very interesting for outsiders! Pity.
Wee Jasper, 21 June, 1932
We have just had a horrid, rainy week, the wind howling, and the rain drumming on the tin roof. The houses here are not built for such weather. It was terribly draughty and we had to keep our coats on indoors, and woolly caps on our heads as well. Our blood has become thin, and we feel the cold so. People have no idea of building houses here, especially in the country, where there are no architects. The house in which we live is horrible ugly and impractical. There is no window in the kitchen. You have to leave the door open if you want to see the daylight. I will make a raw sketch of it .
And this is where Barbers lived until thirteen years ago. Now they have a new house. I have not been in it, but it does not look very comfortable. And the Barbers themselves are, like an awful lot of people here, very uneducated. Not that they haven't been to school, but their manners all seem to be dictated by rules and in any situation where they don't have a rule to follow, they are very unsure of themselves and do the wrong thing. There seems in fact, to be a definite number of rules that one has to keep, and apart from them you can do what you like. For example, if you burp after a meal, you say “Excuse me", and have behaved perfectly like a gentleman. But if you leave out the “Excuse me", then you have bad manners. Even if you burp soundlessly, so that no one can hear you, you still say "Excuse me", and put you hand to your lips.
Sverre has not been able to work because of the weather, so our stay here has lengthened by a week. Today the weather is clear again, and it has stopped blowing, so work is progressing again. My toothache hasn't returned. Maybe I just had a cold in in my head.
Last Sunday, in spite of the weather, we went a couple of miles to get butter from a small farmer Carey. He sells freshly churned butter for 1/6 a pound. We use between 2 ½ and 3 pounds a week. From there we went across the cave country and a little into the bush. Wherever Sverre sees a crack in a cliff he wants to crawl in and investigate. The slightest split in the rock or a black hole attracts him like magic. He climbs all over the place, and then suddenly, from I don't know where, I hear him call ‘You must see this! ‘ Then I climb up top and as often as not, am disappointed to find just an ordinary hole in the rock like the entrance to a cave. I don't like to crawl in. We went through thick scrub, high weeds and grass bushes and found, close to a creek, the camp of four Macedonians who work for Barber. They are scrubbers. When anyone wants to convert the bush into sheep pasture, what they do is ringbark the trees - i.e. they cut away the bark around the foot of the trees. The trees dry up and die. This, of course takes a long time.
Meanwhile, new shoots grow out from the roots, and at regular intervals these have to be chopped off. That is called scrubbing. It is paid at so and so much an acre. That is what Sverre might do if all else fails. The four men had attractive, clean tents. They served us coffee and bread and butter. The they had baked bread themselves, in an iron pot over the fire. Only one of the men speaks English. Their language is a little like Russian and Polish. The man who speaks English is called Tanus Coster. He said they catch a lot of kangaroos and he promised me a couple of skins. I am very pleased. He gave me a lovely wallaby skin on the spot. It is nailed to the wall in our bedroom to stretch and dry. It is smaller and darker than a kangaroo skin, very thick and soft and warm. I also have two lovely fox tails from animals the dogs had torn to pieces.
Wee Jasper, June 28, 1932
It is not raining as viciously and continuously as it did last winter. The rain comes more in showers, but the sky is covered in clouds and a cold wind blows all the time. Sverre has not been able to work much. Only yesterday the sun reappeared and the weather was calm and frosty. However grey, heavy clouds are again piling up in the sky. But in these two days, Sverre and Jack managed to finish the roof and part of the wall that faces the wind, so now they will be able to keep working even if it rains. While Sverre was at home so much, we put our tent up in the kitchen, with the opening towards the fire. The tent measures 220 cm in height in the middle and 120 cm. at the sides. It is 220 cm wide and 3 metres long. There is quite a lot of room in it. It is furnished with three tables, one chair, one bench and a chest you can sit on.
(Edit: refer to a sketch for following) 1. is a large table. On it stands a chest with a curtain in front, which serves as a cupboard. We also keep things on the table that we regularly use in neat order, such as the book we are reading, my sewing things, the lamp, cook books, newspapers, bandages and ointments (since I often cut my fingers). Also three bunches of flowers (violets, roses and chrysanthemums) 4. is a chair on which no one ever sits. We just use it to put things on. 5. is the bench. Sverre sits there when he eats. Then he has the bread on the bench beside him where he cuts it. 2. is the dining table and the chest on which I am sitting right now. 3. is a table which serves as our crockery cupboard. All our plates, cups and saucepans stand on it (is the water bucket. is the kitchen door which can now stand open all the time so it is light in the tent, and nice and warm and no draughts.
Sverre and I argue about who got the good idea to put up the tent. Anyway it has made life much sweeter. My tooth ache has quite disappeared and I feel altogether much better. Today I did the washing and am glad that the weather has kept dry. Everything is now dry on the line.
My big problem in life is that I never know what to make for dessert. If Sverre sees me sitting with a long-face, he always asks ‘Is the dessert bothering you?" and then pleasantly suggests we have rice pudding or one of the other regular dishes. I then feel as if a load has fallen from my shoulders. I had just been thinking of rice pudding myself, but then I remembered we had it just the day before yesterday. Alas, I have no culinary imagination!
NEXT: July 1932