Almanac Memoir: A Whole Sheep or a Half-Sheep (Cut and Packed)

 

 

 

 

For more than a decade, until fairly recently, I was regularly employed at the University of Ballarat, called Federation University Australia from 2014. It was one of the most enjoyable periods of my working life for various reasons, most of them outside the actual teaching and film-writing work for which I was paid, though that had its worthwhile moments too.

 

One of the best aspects of the job was the travel to and from home in Gherang, at the foot of the Otways, to the Mt Helen Campus of Federation Uni, near the township of Buninyong, where my tertiary work was located. The main part of my trip was on the V-Line bus which I caught in Geelong, and which concluded its trip in Ballarat’s main thoroughfare, Sturt Street. (From there, a local bus would get me to the Mt Helen campus.) Typically, I’d go to Ballarat near the beginning of the week and stay for a few days, get my weekly work done, and return home on the bus before the weekend.

 

The bus trip from Geelong to Ballarat took about an hour and half, and I’d come up with various ways to while away the time. I got to know certain bus drivers well, as the months and years went on – one in particular, coincidentally named Kevin, and I’d park myself in the closest seat to him at the beginning of the trip and we’d talk about all sorts of stuff, often concerning the historical points of significance along the way. He was a bit of a local history buff, as well as raconteur.

 

Basically, the bus followed the original train line from Geelong to Ballarat – no longer in use as a passenger route – and it stopped at or near most of the old stations, such as Bannockburn, Lethbridge, Meredith, Elaine and Lal Lal, so it was an interesting trip. The majority of the stations still had their original nineteenth-century Victorian Railway bluestone buildings intact, as well as the original platforms. (A few of the smallest stations, such as Elaine and Navigators, originally had weatherboard buildings, which had long since disappeared.)

 

With the bus drivers, I’d talk about pretty much anything else that would take our fancy, too, whether it be such things as the roadside garden ornaments shop and cafe as you approached Meredith from the Geelong direction, where you could, according to the signage, get anything from a concrete garden gnome, to a pizza, to half-a-dozen dim sims and a can of coke. With one of the bus drivers especially, who I’ll call Don, I’d speculate about the menu at Kenny’s Ornaments and Cafe. To make Don laugh, I’d pretend I was ordering from Kenny’s menu: “I’ll have a large Caterer’s Blend coffee thanks – from that forty-four gallon drum of it that you have in the corner!” Or I might say, “I’ll have six overcooked black-and-white label dim sims, thanks – you know, the cheapest ones you can get from the supermarket shelves – make sure they’ve been cooling down in that old bain-marie for a few hours and are hard as rocks. I don’t want hot, edible ones!” Of course, we may have been very wrong about the quality of Kenny’s food – neither Don or I had ever eaten there, but the humour we shared about it whiled away some time.

 

A little further in the Ballarat direction, the incredibly slow progress of the double-story iron-framed house being built near the railway line running through the tiny township of Elaine was the subject of numerous conversations between me and particular bus drivers – over the years I went past it, the house seemed to grow a mere couple of girders and cross-beams a month; after three years, it didn’t really look that much different from when I first saw it. It was like a fascinating, slowly-evolving, unfinished sculpture.

 

For some reason, I had a fantasy scenario in my head that had stuck there since I first took the bus to work in Ballarat. It all had to do with the roadside blackboards that were visible as you approached Elaine from either side of the township. They had white chalk lettering with ‘HALF-SHEEP, CUT AND PACKED – $90’ and ‘WHOLE SHEEP, CUT AND PACKED – $170’ on them; at times, there were more boards advertising other meat deals, but these ones about the sheep stuck in my mind. I fantasised about the best way I could buy a whole or half-sheep, cut and packed, on the way back to Geelong and whack it in an ice-filled esky in the hold of the bus. (I think my basic inspiration was Barry Humphries’ famous progressive breakfast that he arranged while a school kid in Melbourne. He travelled to school by train, and to the amusement of fellow passengers had organised a bunch of his mates to give him an aspect of breakfast at successive stops. At the first station, someone would give him his tea cup. At the next, he would be poured the tea. At the third one, he’d be given a plate; at the fourth, toast; fifth, butter; sixth, jam etc. By the time he arrived at his last stop, he had finished a complete breakfast.)

 

Time was going to be a main issue in connection with me picking up the sheep products, as sometimes the bus only stopped at Elaine for the briefest possible period, depending upon how close it was running to the official V-Line timetable. Another important one was working out the best way of having a very large esky containing plenty of ice waiting in the hold of the bus, or pre-placed at the business that advertised the cut and packed sheep, so that they could pack it and have the esky ready for me at the bus stop, accompanied by a local, or one of their staff. There were perhaps a few different ways of organising the matter, the more I thought about it, but of course I’d have to work out something. (Wrongly, I imagined the butchered sheep were in large freezers in the farm supplies and hardware place next to Elaine’s small general store. However, I discovered, years later, that they were in the butcher and produce shop about a kilometre away, not easily visible from the highway, near the railway crossing and not far from the Railway Hotel.) I’d also have to have the bus driver on duty on side, in case he’d need to stop the bus for a little longer than officially allowed.

 

 

I really thought I’d do it some time.

 

I really figured I’d make it back to Gherang with my whole or half-sheep ready to be put in the home freezer. We’d be consuming quality lamb for months.

 

But –

 

It never happened. I never did it.

 

This disappoints me (a little, anyway) to this day.

 

Why didn’t I achieve my quest?

 

It was possible. It wouldn’t have been that difficult, really. Just one day with a bit of focus and effort. It would have been worth it, if only for the novelty aspect of doing it.

 

When I think about it further, maybe it was because, by the end of the working week, the time I’d be doing the deed, I was always pretty knackered. Ultimately, I suppose I just couldn’t be bothered.

 

That said, I maintain that it was a good idea.

 

Perhaps I should make another bus trip to Ballarat and back, just to prove to myself that it can readily be done!

 

 

 

For more from Kevin, click HERE.

 

Read more stories from Almanac Music  HERE

 

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