Old Blokes

When you trundle around the suburbs, particularly the inner suburbs, a common sight are old men creeping along in Zimmer frames or on those little electric tricycle doohickemmies. Most of them look fairly content with life and are at ease with the fact that they are slowly crumbling to pieces. On the rare occasions that somebody who is not - a) a family member fulfilling their filial duties, or b) a counter jumper serving them in a store - actually stops to speak to them, they will talk for hours as they are all starved for meaningful human contact.

In the bush, it is different. To the best of my knowledge, there are only three blokes seventy or older who live within thirty k's of me. One of them is my boss's Dad, who has about eight or nine grandchildren and is supposedly retired. Which means that these days he only works forty or fifty hours a week and gets more done in that time than most thirty year olds are capable of. He is an old grazier - sheep, mostly, changing the emphasis to cattle in the last twenty years or so. He never stops asking me questions about cotton - "Why do you do this?", "Why is it better that way?" etc., etc. He has no experience farming whatsoever, doesn't want to go farming, but loves to know how things work. Sharp as a tack, hard as nails and always good-humoured, he is a good man to have around.

There is another old fella I see in the pub most weeks who is in his late seventies. He is the head stockman on a large property nearby. He still spends a full day in the saddle, breaking his own horses, of course. I've never seen him without a smile on his face, old bugger still charms the laydeez, too. In fact, he's one of the most charismatic men I've ever met.

The third bloke is an old aboriginal stockman who has the largest hands I've ever seen. In his eighties, he retired last year and moved into town. Every now and then, he wanders over to the pub and takes up a spot and has a couple of quiet beers. I've never seen him initiate a conversation, but he is happy to talk to anybody who wants to talk to him - which is most of us. He has some fascinating stories to tell and if I were as dedicated as Adrian, I would take a few notes and write some of them here. He also has a very good-looking grand-daughter who stayed with him for a while to help him settle in. She's gone now. Pity.

None of these fellers has ever had a bad word to say about anybody, except camp-drafters, who are almost universally disliked. All these blokes are still active and involved in the community, the community, in turn are involved with these blokes, recognising that they and others like them, pioneered this district. None of these blokes are lonely, in fact none of them are ever alone unless they want to be.

So, my message to old buggers is - get out and do something, sitting around feeling sorry for yourself becomes a self-fulfilling philosophy.