K Is For Kernot
Photograph copyright: DAVID McMAHONIn January 1991 we spent a week in a little Victorian country town called Kernot. It's a blink-and-you-miss-it hamlet in Gippsland, about a ninety minute drive from Melbourne.
Set in lush dairy farming country, it is characterised by green rolling hills and rugged Outback farmers who work the properties established by their ancestors. With friends of ours, we decided that the prospect of hiring a farmhouse for the week was a great prospect - and indeed it was.
Our gracious hosts, Robert and Susan McQueston, made us comfortable and showed us around the rambling property. We unloaded the cars and our respective toddlers and an infant and settled into our bush retreat.
Before Robert and Susan left, they told me I might like to walk down to the main farmhouse after dinner to pick up a jug of cold fresh milk for the children. Sounded like a good idea to me.
It was midsummer, even though the nights were still chilly and the days so long that darkness only enveloped the quiet countryside after nine o'clock.
It was midsummer, even though the nights were still chilly and the days so long that darkness only enveloped the quiet countryside after nine o'clock.
It was pitch black when I decided it was time to wander across and collect the milk. Robert had told me it would be easiest to use the path that ran down the hill to the right of our farmhouse. I didn't ask him why.
But now I figured the simplest way would be to cut through the paddock towards their cottage further down the hill.
Of course, I didn't need any navigational aids. The cottage was maybe 100 metres away, on a north-north-west bearing. I could see it clearly because it was the only light source in the entire sweep of the silent Australian night.
No worries at all. Knocked on the door. Said G'day. Took the full jog of freezing cold milk. Then I realised, as soon as I stepped out into the dark again, that finding my way uphill towards a small glow from one window of our farmhouse would be a lot harder than finding my way downhill.
And of course I had to carry the jug in both hands to ensure nothing spilled over. I navigated my way back in a manner that would have brought a smile to the face of the world's most rugged explorers.
The next morning my wife came to me and asked me to inspect my new white Nike runners (trainers if you live in the US). They were spotless. Then she asked to see the soles of the shoes. They too were spotless.
This was a bit like the Spanish Inquisition. So I asked my wife what was happening. With a smile, she led me to the paddock.
It was littered generously with horse dung. Like a fully-solved crossword puzzle, there were deposits in every ``square''. Not just one patch, not just twenty patches. There would have been maybe three hundred patches, of varying degrees of freshness.
But walking across the paddock in the dark, first downhill and then uphill, I had not stepped in one of them. Not one.
