Almanac Life: Ditchley Park

 

Ditchley Park

 

Beech Forest is a dead-end town up on the Otway Ranges ridge. Cold, lost in fog, beyond it lies a winding track into the rainforest, or another that cuts down into an enormous plantation valley – a never-ending labyrinth of pine coups, bluegums and waterfalls.

 

   The township was once the final stop of the steam-powered railway that ran up the gully lips and spurs, carrying the logs and their industry. The railway’s now gone, that way of life now gone. As are, in my time; the school, post office, police station, fuel bowsers. New Years just gone, the hollowed-out pub was the last to fall.

 

   I adored Friday knock off in the Beechy Hotel, a ripper fire for all us blackened, wet bush-working bastards, cold beers, fried nibblies. Locals, talking local, being local. Dogs coming and going, a few kids running wild. It was our heart, once a week. Where we pumped blood and air into a place of dirt and hard skies.

 

   The far wall was filled with fading photos of good times. Loggers frocking up, Louis fallen off his stool, smiling, a band playing, Gee with his yabbie haul, but mostly old news clippings. They were tattered and worn, yet in them was where Beech Forest was, to me, most alive. A few footy ones, even though the team hand long since merged with five others, shifting down off the ridge to Gellibrand. But, mostly, cricket. Green and gold caps, proud men and boys, plucked from remote dairy farms and coupes and the one remaining school, 25 kms away.

 

   I was always all football, all year round, but cricket and the pub kept us together, I believe.

 

   The oval, Ditchley Park, was a thing of gold. You turned off the ridge track, winding down to its edge, where a flat green surface lay beneath a wall of cypris trees and backed onto a view of the entire world.

 

   It felt like nowhere, in the most glorious way. Caught snow in winter, had crisp, snappy air that spread out and into the farming plains miles below. Mostly though, it carried ghosts. A small slope on the far side where for or five cars could park and watch, and before that, horse and carts. Undoubtably the Bay 13 of its time. The people; men, women, children of the land.

 

   For years, it hung on. The cricket club hung on, mostly thanks to people like Rory Harrington.

 

*****

 

   The luckiest people, anywhere in the world, are those that find a passion early, or had a passion find them. There’s no wasted energy, no frustration, no being idle. There’s a direction, work ethic, no matter what that passion is. Hunger peppered with victories.

 

   As a kid from down the Johanna valley on the coast, Rory lived and breathed local community and sport. At school, while other kids played, he’d be in the records closet, looking up old cricket scores from decades before, noting somebody’s dad got 32 that day. And that blow-through spud farmer who spent a season playing in the thirds, took 3 for 12.

 

  As a man, he marshaled that club, kept it alive through force of will, the oval alive. It was a thing to be admired.

 

   The whole community would be marshalled to get out the rollers, mow the outfield. Doug Halifax, from down Amiets Track, built a small sandstone and wood clubrooms. Tiny and superb. Enough room for eleven people to get changed in. A timekeeper’s window and a few cramped beers upstairs.

 

   Rory and others would maintain the nets, picket fencing. In winter, sheep would keep the grass down. On nights it was too wild and stormy up there, the team would meet across the ridge, in the school gym along its spine.

 

   It was the old world, it was still wonderfully alive. I hated cricket, but knew its importance all the same.

 

   Rory would work the phones, the paddocks, find the numbers. While one grade played at Ditchley, the other two would be down the hill somewhere, at other ovals that were once footy grounds, all but forgotten, maintained for cricket, keeping the country, its people and memories oiled.

 

   Cricket grounds all across the land.

 

   Rory is a fine man, a dairy farmer of few words, but make no mistake, has passion to burn.

 

   In the footy off season, I often worked in the bush on Saturdays. It was great to run into the cricket team up at the pub, laughing, drinking, creating enough noise to get other locals in, who would also laugh and drink. The feeling was gold.

 

   Eventually, work and kids took Rory Harrington out of the district. Our loss, another town’s gain. I’m sure he’s giving that town his work ethic – in the dairy shed, at his son’s football and cricket. Contributing in ways.

 

   Sometimes, it’s amazing how thin a thread is. One person can be a driving force to keep something alive. Something that gives to everyone, directly or otherwise. And from there one day turn things around. I’ve seen footy clubs survive when everybody is burnt out, on the force of will of just one or two people, later to bloom into strong seniors, reserves, three grades of juniors, six of netball. Cars everywhere, kids everywhere. Grow from being something tired into a home, their own MCG.

 

   Sometimes, the thread snaps.

 

   I don’t know if Rory left and the Otway Cricket Club folded, or the other way around, but both are gone.

 

   Five years later, the pub shut down. It had been a lifestyle for a long time, through three or four lease owners. There simply weren’t enough of us to make a profit off anymore. But if a licensee loved the pub, and the rough and tumble people of the land, and the easy pace of that small smoker’s deck, everything was fine.

 

   It bothers me greatly, driving up out of the valley plantations on a Friday dusk, tired and sore and seeing it shut. It bothers the community in me. It must be a good 40 kms away from our home, but the family would meet me there. I’d meet everybody there. My Fridays have been lost since it’s gone.

 

   The last shop to fall.

 

   But people make a land. And passion and work ethic go hand in hand. Andy Zappelli, from down one of the backtracks, and a few others, decided to not take it lying down.

 

   “The old cricket rooms are still standing, aren’t they?”

 

   I worked last Friday through rain that lasted the whole day. Wet, muddy, miserable, the ute took me through Beech Forest, past the pub, that its owner still cranks up the fire in one day a week, turns on the stoves, bleeds the lines, in hope of a buyer. Keeps it on life support. But nobody with money bites.
There he was, on his ride-on mower, shoulders hunched in the wet. Oiling the machine.

 

 

 

 

   I then turned left as the ute pushed through, down to Ditchley Park. There was that beautiful, moss-covered entrance, between cypris trees. A tunnel to those sandstone rooms, that view. Five or six utes. Gav Turner and Tim and Clivo and a handful of others, lazily sitting under the awning, on oval’s edge, around a small oil drum fire. Sharing a beers and lazy small talk and piss take. Sheltered, not one foot away from the rain, while the ghosts of old footy matches in snow, and cricket in summer’s heat, played behind them.

 

   I walked up, a wet rat, chainsaw chaps still on.

 

   “Well, you look likely!” they chuckled.
And we talked local talk and laughed heaps – knowing, easy laughs. It was glorious.

 

   “Are we going to sell raffle tickets?” I asked. Code for getting around having no alcohol license. You buy a raffle ticket and swap it for a beer. I’d seen it in townless districts in southern Tassie. Small, rundown weatherboard shacks in the middle of paddocks, come Friday, utes parked every-bloody-where! Costs covered, not a cent more.

 

   “Nah,” old Bob said. “Keep it simple. Bring your own.”

 

   Clivo offered me another of his beers. I went into the rooms that felt only 20ft wide. No power, but the bird nests hand gone, the dust and webs removed. The fridges, left over from what looked like WWII, were a bit rusted, and not on, but still kept everybody’s beer cold.

 

   As I walked back out into the fading light, the doorway and balcony framed a perfect picture of a group of aging men around a potbelly, framed in turn by a fading day. An oval, with the sheep kicked off, tidy, waiting.

 

   “You watch,” one of them was saying. “If the pub doesn’t open again, this place will be packed in summer.”

 

   To which everybody agreed enough to not even bother to reply.

 

   I looked at that moment, burning it into my ribcage. Took a photo for Rory, to show him dreams don’t die.

 

 

 

Read more from Matt Zurbo HERE

 

 

 

To return to The Footy Almanac home page click HERE

 

Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

 

Do you enjoy the Almanac concept?
And want to ensure it continues in its current form, and better? To help keep things ticking over please consider making your own contribution.

Become an Almanac (annual) member – CLICK HERE