Sometimes I drink beer at breakfast, even though it makes me crazy and useless. I don’t do it every day, but when I do it makes everything just a little less raw. Another time, I would be cutting and splitting wood for the fire, but now I can’t be bothered. One cold night I pick up bundles of sticks and leaves from the garden, and stuff them in my slow-combustion fire. It burns hot and brightly, making the room kinder and homier for a while. Soon it is ash, and the heat is gone, and I go back to lugging around a doona. I vow I will cut a heap of wood the next day, but I never do.

I think about my father, and how he always had tonnes of firewood cut, usually by one of the men. He was organised, and had a plan for every challenge that turned up. Our haysheds were always full in preparation for the next dry time. The cool room overflowed with meat, drink, and provisions. Machinery was always serviced and maintained; weeds were sprayed and slashed, and fences were in perfect order. If an employee was sick or had to leave us, Dad had someone ready to start the minute there was a vacancy. The workshop was stocked with spare tyres, pipe fittings, small motors, pumps, belts, grease, timber, and so on.

Even then, five years of drought took its toll. We didn’t grow any crops, and you couldn’t store that much feed for animals. We had to sell too many animals at low prices, and later, when it rained and we needed to buy back in, the prices were through the roof. Good old demand and supply. Suddenly we were no longer wealthy farmers. We were farmers with a debt, producing way below our capacity. We never really recovered, because even when things were good we couldn’t capitalise on them, and when things were bad we suffered more. My father always said that the golden rule in farming is: When things are good you have to make a lot of money to cover you for the many times when things will be bad. We couldn’t follow his rule. But his nature didn’t allow for anyone’s sympathy, and he would not give anyone the pleasure of knowing that Five Trees wasn’t the well-managed place it had always been.

It didn’t break him or us, but it certainly made a dent. He still went to the races in the city, and spent money like he had plenty of it. Looking back, I suppose it was pride, even though I couldn’t see it then — if he hadn’t appeared at the races, everyone would have known we were doing it tough.