A house is only a home, when it is filled with people

‘Do you want to visit your old family home?’ my husband asked, as we drove past the turnoff, on the remote, dusty road.

‘No, I said. ‘I’ve done that before.  What good would it do, to revisit the decay?  Leave it to my memory.’

Twenty years earlier, an old neighbour had taken me that way. 

‘Be warned’ he said.  The last owner stored grain inside, and the cattle have tramped through it.’

Cow pats lay drying on the aged, grey hardwood of the wrap around verandah.  The homestead was already old before I was born.  The rust on the corrugated roof, and the powdering pastel, green paint was just a bit more. The holes, though, were much bigger. The rain would now fall through and dripping would replace any thrumming.

It was the size that got me.  I had remembered the verandahs as wide; wide enough for two cars to pass each other. At three, I had a red metal wagon, and my sister, a replica bug of bright red.   We pedaled hard on those wooden boards, keeping back from the outer track and the dangers of the edge with no handrail. The French doors rocking on their hinges were smaller than I remembered.  Dad and I used to stand together under their frame on a dry summer’s night, watching the storms roll across the paddock and the lightning fill up the sky.

The tank stand that sheltered our children’s afternoon play, now leaned eastward.  I wondered how the tank on the top ever kept enough water to provide for our family.  Any rainfall today would pour through the crumbling sieve that remained sprawled on short, tired stumps below.  Back then, our only water was from this tank or a nearby bore.  Very little was spared for the garden, so the yard did not offer lawn for us children to play on at all.  Instead, there was plenty of dirt to dig holes in, and the clay underneath the tank stand formed the best mud pies. I recalled making bricks for a grandiose cubby house I planned at five. 

I dared not go inside for fear of falling through a rotten board or encountering one of those snakes my mum would chase with her rifle.  I would rather remember our family home filled with people, rather than mouse droppings, cow dung, and the webbing of now dead spiders. By staying outside, I could smell mum’s baking, hear my brother’s laughter, and pretend I was waiting for my dad to come in from harvesting.  And that old rope spinning in the rafters that would unravel with the tiniest of tugs? Well, I pretended that it was still attached to the wooden swing, that was the joy in my sibling’s laughter.    

The yard looked much the same as I remembered.  More dirt than green, and more prickles than grass. The wisteria was still there, draped over the sagging, training wire on the verandah; a touch of lilac on a sepia backdrop.   Every now and then, a breeze picked up a bundle of chaff that would tumble over the yard, like the ghosts of my childhood memories.     

The drum halves, used to pot Mum’s red and orange geraniums, were twisted like the front stairs they accompanied. These rusting relics were from a time before recycling became trendy. No one else came after us to fill them with flowers, and this old Queensland lady was too far gone now to ever belong to another family. 

I could not bring myself to walk out back.  I suspected the cast-iron, clawfoot bathtub had long been prised out of the lean-to. With the water dried up and the taps rusted shut, I daresay the green frogs who shared this wet room, had long hopped away.   I did not need to see the old thunderbox to know that families of red back spiders had taken up residence.

Instead, I remembered our Teddy, the black and white Collie dog snoozing in the sun. I saw cats and kittens, guinea pigs and chickens.  Kangaroos and emus.  And wheat in the paddock beyond.  I heard harvesters and diesel generators. I smelled kerosene, the wood fire burning and the lingering scent of first rains on the dust of the freshly plowed paddocks.

‘Let’s go’, I said, coming back to the present.

I left as I came, down a graded track, winding over the creek and through a gate.  As I said to my husband, I would rather remember this old lady as a home, than a derelict house and a hump of corrugated iron and timber.  I agree, that a house is only a home, when it is filled with people.

To paraphrase a proverb: timber and iron makes a house, but the laughter of children makes a home.