Every Boy Needs A Dad

Perhaps one can only watch this space for so long.
Now, My Dad
My Dad was special, probably more so for me as,
1. My mum died when I was just 6 years of age and his role in my life became more important that ever.
2. The isolation of life on a mallee farm brought those around you into a sharper focus and into a position of greater dependency on one another.
3. He was just great.
Here is a rare photo of Lu Lu Burgess, the house keeper, my Dad in his Sunday best, and my sister Lorna




My Dad had big hands, as a child I loved to climb on his knee and examine his large work scarred hands before looking once again at his familiar tin of log Cabin Tobacco




I still remember the old familiar sound as he rattled round with the stove in the kitchen, getting the fire going while I lay in bed on a frosty morning thinking that I would get up when the fire was well alight.
Our stove was not as flash as the one in the picture nor did it have tiles around it


He used to cook soup with everything in it and said that after a couple of days it would become stew. I think that the "cooking gene" in our family must have come from my wife's side, however I thought what he cooked was pretty good, then again he was good at so many things was a superb shooter, a great driver, a fixer of thing par excellence, and a wonderful presence in a crisis.
The funny thing was that my older brothers and sister couldn't really see it. I still smart about their sniggers and and smart little comments out of his hearing.
Of course I now know what I only suspected at that time, that their frontal lobes had not at that time fully developed.
Just one story at this time will speak volumes.
I was standing on a dam bank with my brother Murray, and my Dad. Dad was holding a rifle in his hand, and in the distance, far across a mallee paddock the dust was being kicked up by some of our dogs pursuing a very fleet of foot hare, the hare was about 3 chain in the lead. It was time for a lesson. Dad explained to us that to shoot this hare one would need to elevate the rifle to point about one chain above the hare, and considering the slight breeze, the speed of the hare, and the distance to cover one would have to lead the hare with the rifle by about 2 chain. (The exact distances have faded from my memory). The lesson having been given, my Dad lay down on the dam bank to demonstrate, he took careful aim allowing for all the earlier calculations and fired. It seemed to be a matter of seconds had passed, when, behold, the hare bowled over and over on the ground in the distance and laid very still. My chest swelled with pride, Murray was wide eyed, and my dad a little surprised.
I was not at all surprised, my mind went back to a marauding goanna that was stealing our chooks eggs, had not my dad shot him through the heart as he ran at high speed in a cloud of dust over the bare mallee earth.
That's my Dad, and there's more!