When we had our aged-care assessments recently, it was suggested we look at the 'passage-ways' in the house to make sure that we had enough room to walk around comfortably. As we get older, we were told, we'll be more clumsy and likely to bump into things. The trouble is, all our furniture is for a bigger house, most of it bought when we had the large place in Deloraine. If we were starting again, we'd go back to double beds, and a small round table and so on. But we have too much invested in queen-sized infrastructure, doonas, linen etc.
One thing we can work on is the table. It's 6 foot long with 6 heavy chairs and the last time anyone sat at it was at my eightieth birthday all those months ago. It has to go! Nera advertised it for us on Buy, Swap and Sell and we had an immediate reaction. The first buyer didn't turn up but another is coming tomorrow afternoon. With the proceeds, we'll get a nice, little round job with a couple of chairs and then look at reorganising the room. I hope to be able to move my desk which is currently right underneath the air conditioner. Happy days!
Today's story goes back to 2020. It's called .....
SOMEBODY THAT I USED TO KNOW
His name was Billy Winter. I met him one summer weekend in 1974, shared no more than a few words with him, and never saw him again after that weekend but I have never forgotten him, and I often wonder how it was that his life followed the path that it had.
With a group of friends, I had walked in to a remote area on the Shoalhaven River called Louise Reach where we planned a few days of camping. At the last minute, one of our party had pulled out but the rest of us were looking forward to a break from our busy lives in the city and the chance to see a different aspect of the Australian bush. The member of our group who had suggested the walk had visited this spot a few months before and told us we were in for a surprise.
We suspected we were being set up to be surprised by the beauty of the surroundings but none of us anticipated that we would find someone living in this out-of-the-way place. There was the smell of wood smoke in the air as we came down the track but we knew that this part of the river was popular with canoeists, and we expected we would not be alone. But the person who met us as we came to the river flat was not a canoeist. He was a short, nuggety man, skin burned brown by the sun, and wearing shabby clothes. My first thought was this man is not young but he’s not finished with life yet. Many men in their 70s adopt an aura of helplessness: a sense of ‘I’m getting on a buit so any help you can offer will be appreciated’. Not so with Billy Winter. This was a man at peace with himself and confident in his environment.
Yes, we confirmed, he was living there, in a house he had built for himself out of timber collected from the river bank and covered with heavy plastic he had carried in. he caught fish and eels in the river, gathered blackberries in season and grew some vegetables. Once a fortnight, he walked out to Marulan, the nearest town, to get his pension and buy some supplies. He had made friends with some members of the local canoe club who kept an eye on him and brought in anything he needed; he had a standing request that anyone who came to visit should bring a gift of cheese.
On the first morning, as we relaxed over a cup of tea, we heard a shout from the river. In my imagination, there is a mist on the water and we can barely see a small boat coming towards us. It’s Billy, and the final member of our party who had managed to get away to join us. Billy had offered to bring him over the river to out campsite in his home-made boat. The Ancient Britons might have called it a coracle, made of woven willow stems in a basket shape and covered with plastic, it gave Billy access to both sides of the river and a wider range for his foraging.
Over the next few days, we hardly saw him as he got about his business but we pieced together something of a life story. He was German and had lived and worked most of his life in New Guinea, working in construction – roads and the like. His wife had died soon after his retirement and Billy decided to come to the NSW Southern Highlands to be closer to his family. We gather that he became tired of their constant requests for money and didn’t much like the wives his sons had married, so he made the decision to divide his remaining money among his relatives and move to this spot on the river to live as a hermit. He had been there for a couple of years and looked forward to many more.
I took another group of friends back to Louise Reach the following year with a selection of cheeses in my backpack but Billy was no longer there. There had been a flood a few months previously, Billy’s house had been washed away and he had been evacuated. His health had deteriorated and he was now living in a nursing home in Goulburn. I don’t know how he got on in that environment but I hope his family treated him with the respect he deserved and I hope they found time to visit him in his final days.
No comments:
Post a Comment