Grouping our history together.

After a couple of days in Melbourne for work I headed home so that I could attend the local community history group with Rohan and Dave on Wednesday night. We’d  received a handwritten flyer in our mailbox telling us about the group and this was followed up by a phone from one of our neighbours. With my interest in local history, there was no way I was missing this meeting!  As we drove to the hall, I muttered 'shit. I don't have a plate'. Surely in the style of all country events, we (ie. women) will be meant to take a plate for supper. Looks like I'll be taking an inadvertent stand against country gender roles tonight. So without a plate I walk in with only my work business cards to offer. They seem excited about those though, with someone exclaiming 'oh you're an expert' when they see I'm a dr. This is the grand misconception. Really, the more 'educated' I become the more I realise that the knowledge I have would fill about one grain of sand in the universe of all that is known and unknown. Still my lack of a plate doesn't seem too obvious as there is food galore on the table, although who knows? Maybe they’re talking about me and my lack of a plate in hushed tones somewhere.

There's something about the laconic Australian humour that I love. I think it's the self-deprecating (not to be confused with self-defecating) element, the willingness to take the mickey out of yourself, and then of others. At its extreme it can be misogynistic, jingoistic, homophobic and racist, but in a kinder, gentler form it enables the breaking down of barriers rather than the creation of them. It's this kind of humour that is on display when the group is talking about its catering adventures to raise money. This is no taco truck parked on the streets of Fitzroy we're talking about here, but a country style BBQ. You might think they'd grab snags anywhere for catering but they buy them at a local butcher whose meat is so well regarded it would make a latte sipping, beard wearing inner city hipster weep with delight upon hearing of the meat’s provenance. If the history group's catering was in Melbourne they'd have the butchers name scrawled on a chalkboard, people would be sitting eating on artfully arranged milk crates, hay bales or pallets and drinking milk 'fresh from the source' out of repurposed jam jars. Damn you Melbourne, you superficial hipster minx.

The group talks about the places they have already gone to seek funding and wanting to contribute I volunteer to make contact with another organisation when they ask for someone to do it. If this is my community I may as well throw myself right in. People talk of moving into country towns as a long period of always being the newcomer. While we might be regarded as the newcomers, our willingness to turn up to the history night means that we feel welcomed and drawn into the community. People seem thrilled when we say how much we are loving life on the farm, and our neighbours offer tips and helpful advice. Perhaps our willingness to admit that we know nothing also helps! As we went around talking to people I was reminded of the way history flows into the present in the way people talk about the local area. No-one lives in a specific house or road number, they live on the ‘old …..(insert family name from generations ago) farm’ or like us, they live ‘down the lane’. There is a shared past among people where they can make these connections and they know which farm this is in reference too and which lane it is. 

The meeting is a rambly, ramshackle affair, interspersed with laughter and finished with cups of tea and Rohan and Dave munching on the treats from the table. There are times it reminds me of the little community meetings in the Vicar of Dibley and in each of the people there I’m sure there lies a novel! It seems everyone round here lives to a ripe old age, with some having parents who are still alive at the age of 102! It must be all this fresh air and clean water. I bet they’ve never eaten kale and don’t follow the paleo diet either. Take that hipsters. (Look I’m really not anti-hipster, I’ve just got a bee in my bonnet about it having had coffee in Melbourne while sitting on a pile of phone books in a place that looked like it was straight out of a Portlandia skit). The next night we get a phone call to let us know that one of the first funding applications has come through – the avenue of honour is going to be well underway with that cash!

So now, having made some connections we are beginning to feel like we have a place in which we will be drawn into the web of country life. You know what? It’s a lovely feeling – like coming home.