Almanac Life – finding stuff at Nanna’s: A framed newspaper article hanging on the wall

 

We’ve been working through the rooms at Nanna’s over the past few weeks.  She kept those things which were meaningful, although some stuff got through her filter. The story of her life is being revealed even further, or probably, more to the point, we have been reminded of so many things,

On the study wall hung a framed copy of a newspaper article which I had written back in 1999. It was a response to Barry Humphries’ documentary series: Flashbacks.

 

 

 

 

Dellimore kindly sent me the original of the illustration, a lovely tradition of newspapers, which I framed and gave to Mum and Dad with the handwritten inscription: “Thanks for letting me mow”.

 

 

 

 

 

First published in The Australian one summer about 25 years ago

Ahead of every Victa, a path to enlightenment

 

 

IT’S still the wet season in Queensland. It rains for a couple of days and then the fierce summer sun comes out and the place becomes a tropical hothouse. You can almost see the Brazilian jasmine tendrils curling their way around; you can watch the steam from the garden, the soil demanding you acknowledge its fertility; you can feel the poinciana umbrella growing in circumference, gathering all beneath into its shady care.

Our tree now overhangs the garden bench, where you can sit in the coolness of its thick foliage and think about what you’d like to say to Barry Humphries if he accepted your invitation to dinner.

Such favourable conditions mean grass. Plenty of it. And grass means that very Australian activity : mowing. Mowing and mowers have an important place in the national culture, but there are those who argue otherwise. These thinkers believe the mower is a symbol of the hollowness of Australian life. For them, the suburban backyard is a site of mindless conformity where shallow residents cling to the wrong dreams.

Allan Ashbolt expressed this attitude when, in 1966, he contributed to Meanjin’s ‘Godzone’ series:

“Behold the man – the Australian man of today – on Sunday morning in the suburbs, when the high-decibel drone of the motor-mower is calling the faithful to worship. A block of land, a brick veneer, and the motor-mower beside him in the wilderness – what more does he want to sustain him?… The motor-mower has become to him an assertion of democratic rights, an expression of power, an object of reverence. As he pulls the magic cord to start it up, its mesmeric monotony… joins with the noise of other motor-mowers to swell into a mechanised pagan chorus.”

And so there’s a long list of those who denigrate suburban life. Over the past few weeks, as the blue couch has thickened and the carpet grass spread, Humphries has been pointing out the inadequacies of Australian culture in his funny, but cruel, Flashbacks series. He presents carefully selected evidence for satirical effect and it’s hard not to cringe and squirm and guffaw at some of his examples. The suburbs cop both barrels.

His approach is not supposed to be fair, and it isn’t. However, the other side of the backyard needs to be considered.

Australian culture does not need to be seen as bereft of substance. Barbecues can be communal gatherings: feasts of good food, good wine and good conversation.

Backyards can be refuges: retreats where tired citizens relax, hose in hand, among the plants and trees. Hills hoists, with nappies flapping in the breeze, can be fertility totems.

Cars on blocks can be reminders that the mechanised age ultimately offers no salvation.

Humphries struggles to find much good in Australian life and I suspect I know why. In fact, I’m sure: he didn’t mow enough as a child. And that’s why Flashbacks was how it was.

Mowing is a meaningful activity.

It helps to overcome the alienation that can be characteristic of modern urban life. Mowing is man at harvest. The blades of grass fall before the mower like wheat before the combine. Of course, the clippings don’t make it to the dinner table, but they are tossed on the compost heap or spread on garden beds where they add nutrients to the earth.

Mowing symbolises the good times and the bad. There are the tough parts where you are pushing in and around shrubs and garden beds, disturbing wasps’ nests and exploding dried-out dog turds like a magician’s puff. The smell lingers and you try to suck the poison from the back of your hand and you think life will never get better. But then, suddenly, you’re sailing up and down the yard, with the freedom and joy you always hoped for.

Mowing is about seeking order in the face of imminent chaos. It is an act a control, but not of dominance. The grass is free to grow, but it is cropped in the interests of all concerned. As you walk behind the mower, there is something reassuring about watching the unmown patch get smaller and smaller until the job is done and the sward lies invitingly before you.

The mower is left with a sense of completion, and of achievement, and there is every reason to mark the occasion with a ritual cup: a bottle of beer shared among all those who’ve helped.

I have had to mow weekly over the past month and, I assure you, that petrol and grass smell is pure perfume. Ashbolt got it wrong: mowing is not about power, it’s about symbiosis.

And as for Humphries, he could do with a trip to Brisbane. When the rain stops, he should be given a second-hand Victa and a bus fare to the Gabba. The job could be done in a day — and I reckon it’d do him the world of good to see that green ring around his feet. He might learn that even in backyard Australia, you can see that life can be good.

 

Watch snippets of Barry Humhries’ Flashbacks HERE

 

Read more from John Harms HERE

 

 

 

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