Page 6 of Birds of a Feather

Where my parents’ house was eclectic, my house was ordered. Their walls were bestrewn with ‘statement’ art in various shapes, sizes and colours (some my mother’s, and others by artists they admired), while my taste in art was minimalist to non-existent. Their rooms were cluttered with odd bits of furniture from the side of the road; my two-bedroom apartment was sparsely furnished. The fabrics that covered my parents’ cushions, bedspreads and windows were a helter-skelter of patterns and colours. In contrast, I had chosen upholstery in neutral, calming tones and with subtle textures.

I’d shared a bedroom with Jarrah until I was about twelve, where I’d lived among her chaos and had a front-row seat to the spectrum of emotions she’d catapulted through daily.

The final straw came when a putrid smell materialised in our room and progressively worsened over several days. Jarrah poked around superficially to find the source of the pungent aroma, but failed to uncover it. After several days, when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I delved into her piles of clothes. I found a partially decayed baby possum, which I assumed had been brought in by one of the neighbourhood cats Jarrah had befriended and encouraged to come into our house.

I picked up the possum in one of her T-shirts, stormed into the lounge room and, in between sobs and dry retches, announced to my parents I was leaving home to live on my own. I thrust the putrid possum at Mum, who then agreed to cordon off a section of the enclosed sleep-out veranda at the back of the house. I was delighted. Finally, I had my own room, away from Jarrah, her drama and her dead possums.

This was my sacred space until I answered an ad for a ‘clean and neat housemate to live with two responsible and studious engineering students’ in my first year of university. The shared house was within walking distance of campus, and I lived there for three years. My housemates – Tamara and Jess – lived up to their advertised promise, and we enjoyed a harmonious home life based on mutual consideration and cleaning schedules.

After I graduated and got a job at the council, I moved into a tiny bedsit. I lived there for five years while I saved for a deposit for my unit. Despite my ample salary, this involved a lot of scrimping and sacrifice; while my peers were enjoying brunches of smashed avo and overseas working holidays, I was living to a stringent budget. Admittedly, being fiscally conservative was made easier because my calendar wasn’t exactly overrun with social engagements. Having endured a lifetime of my parents’ parties, I was never keen to spend time or money on drunken nights and the inevitable hungover mornings.

In an attempt to pay off my unit as soon as possible, I had continued to maintain a tight financial plan. I budgeted for a monthly catch-up with my friends from university, who knew better than to include me in their schedule of buying rounds. And, occasionally, my colleagues from the council went for a Friday-night drink, but I made my exit after one or two beers, or when the twenty-somethings from waste management started talking about getting everyone to do tequila shots – whichever came first.

I could usually absorb other costs incurred due to socialising (such as dinners for friends’ birthdays, or wedding and engagement presents) in the $30 I allowed each week for ‘miscellaneous incidentals’. And while it had been eons since I’d dated, splitting the bill ensured I wasn’t left shouldering the cost of someone else’s meal if they’d opted to stray from the evening specials. Jarrah – whose money trickled through her fingers – accused me of being stingy. But I couldn’t have cared less, because when I was in my unit, which I could afford because I was stingy, I felt at home in my own life.

Chapter 5

Beth

The Monday after lunch with my family I had a rostered day off, which meant I was able to accompany Gran on a field trip to survey orchids in a nature reserve next to Woodside Ridge – the farm where she grew up. I enjoyed tagging along as a volunteer on these visits. It was an opportunity to get out in the bush, without the responsibility of leading the project. I enjoyed having something planned for my time off; I hated squandering it. And any day I got to spend with Gran was a good one.

Gran had been involved in a project to re-establish a population of the species Caleana fallax, or warty swan orchid as it’s commonly known, for several years. Each plant grows to about 30 centimetres tall and develops two to three smooth dark-purple flowers in spring. Two fleshy, tear-shaped petals grow out from the stem and curve to meet each other at their tips to create a swan-body-like shape. They are covered in a soft fuzz, made up by thousands of tiny hair-like fibres, while a central petal bends 90 degrees at its tip to create what looks like a head at the end of a long, elegant neck. The result: a swan-shaped flower; hence the name.

Gran had been involved in a survey of the species about twenty years ago, when they found there was only a handful of plants left in existence. So, as an insurance policy against something terrible (such as a fire) wiping them all out, Gran and a group of volunteers collected seed to store for safekeeping at the state herbarium and in the Kew Gardens Millennium Seed Bank in Sussex – a kind of global Noah’s ark for plants.

And it was lucky they did.

Two years ago, a fire had torn through the reserve, burnt through three of the four remaining populations of warty swan orchids and caused the native wasp, their pollinator, to disappear.

Fortunately, Gran and her team were able to cultivate some plants from the surviving population and grow new ones from the seed they had stored. But, still, the wasps were nowhere to be found.

Knowing that Mother Nature needed a helping hand, Gran visited the plants several times a week. She tenderly collected pollen grains on a tiny paintbrush from one plant and then delicately brushed them onto another. I think she enjoyed the work as much as she enjoyed being able to describe herself as a botanical sex therapist. Whatever her title, one thing was for certain: without her, the entire species would have become extinct.

‘I never get tired of coming out here,’ Gran said as we slowed to a stop at the edge of the nature reserve under a giant marri covered in blossoms that were teeming with bees. My car had vibrated violently when we turned off the sealed road and onto the track that ran parallel to the nature reserve, so I was glad to give it a break.

‘Did you ever think you might end up taking over the farm?’ I asked.

‘Not really,’ she replied, looking towards the timber ‘Woodside Ridge’ sign that her father had erected when he was still working the land. ‘My parents were determined that we would be educated and that my brother, Henry, sister, Daisy, and I all explored a life beyond these fences.

‘In fact,’ she continued, ‘we were the first family of three with more than one girl to all graduate from the university. They even published a story about us in the university magazine. Mummy kept that clipping in a frame on the mantelpiece until she died.’

‘They must have been proud,’ I said. While they told me they were proud, I don’t think my parents ever thought much about me being university educated.

‘They were. But, unfortunately, it spelled the end for the farm that had been in our family for four generations.’

A cow in a nearby paddock mooed loudly, as if confirming her account.

‘And it was a risk. Daisy and I didn’t know what our careers would look like, especially after we got married,’ she added. ‘Nowadays it’s assumed that you girls will have long and productive careers, even if you choose to have a family too. But it wasn’t until the mid-60s that married women could work in the public service. I remember two girls I went to boarding school with – Mary Thomas and Edith What’s-Her-Name – got married in secret, so they didn’t have to quit their jobs. But that just bought them time; they had no choice but to quit when they got pregnant.’

Gran scanned the horizon and breathed deeply.

‘Even though I left this place, it always feels like home,’ she said, as much to me as to the landscape.

A trail of dust appeared on the horizon, and the farm dogs in a distant paddock were whipped into a barking frenzy. Emily Lim and Jack Walker, who had arrived from the state’s herbarium to oversee the survey, waved from inside the car as they slowed to a stop.

Emily was a botanist in her forties who was capable, diligent, thorough and organised, with little interest in small talk. Gran insisted that Emily reminded her of me, which I took as a compliment.

Jack – a proud Noongar man – more than made up for Emily’s reservedness. He spoke at a million miles an hour and radiated warmth.

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