With the lockdown imposed throughout the shire by the state government, Hamish was not permitted to take train or car to the big smoke. Relieved to have video conferencing at nine o’clock was far more civilised, rather than drive at a hundred miles an hour along the highway in six lanes of traffic. His accounting position with a building materials company could be effected just as well at home with fewer interruptions. Later he would hop onto his ride-on mower up and down the narrow grass embankment of his property next to the lane. Then over the paddocks adjacent to the stables and riding the manure into the soft chocolate-coloured earth as mulch, while Maisie would shovel out the stable’s night soil and pile it up outside, manure and sawdust laced with horse piss, then transfer some of it to their fence-line, much to the pleasure of sneaky, plump brown, wary-eyed rabbits that at dawn and dusk would scurry up to the barn in search of hay and frantically scrabble into the soil for roots to gnaw. Or into the squelchy black silt accruing in the pebbly gutter of rainwater, even duck through a hole in the back of the barn, where the ground began to slope down towards the copse of cypress trees.
Maisie had always loved horses, worked with them, now too stout to mount them and ride gracefully as she used to in regional gymkhanas. Girded up in wet-weather gear and gumboots, she had urged Hamish to take up an agistment business: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll organise, you’ll keep us alive on your salary. Weekends we can both work the horses and build the business.’
Which he was willing to do, given he was now working from home and boasted flexitime.
Close to birthing season, time was nerve-wracking for Maisie: hectic but exciting, heart-rending on occasions. At such times she kept constant vigil on which mare would drop the first foal. Nellie, the youngest and smallest of her seven horses, was two years junior but it hurt still that Empress, a very caring mother and her own favourite horse, had lost both foals in the previous two seasons. Maizie gambled on the younger mare but led both companions back to the snug warmth of the stable bales rather than rug them up in their bluish grey coats in the slush and mud of the paddock. Instead, she would use the small grassy enclosure outside the lounge window and string up a lantern for her all-night vigil.
Maisie strove to keep awake in the subdued light of the lounge, fully dressed in heavy weather gear and alert through the long, long night, listening for any sounds and hearing only the metallic creaking and knocking of the corrugated shed in the driving wind and the last passenger train rushing back from the City, then a goods train rumbling ever louder around ten o’clock, accentuated by frightening reverberations echoing across the otherwise sleepy Valley. But this birthing procedure she wouldn’t interfere with, unless critical. Till she sensed in the shining arc of light outdoors, Nellie circling, making slow, awkward movements to lie down.
Nelly, the smallest of the inseminated mares, the youngest too, therefore chivvied along by the others, now had her lengthy tail plaited by her mistress. Though nudged and necked by the more obviously pregnant Empress, she too would venture into the narrow gap between the fence-line and the parallel stand of cypress trees. Nelly had observed one of the bigger fillies scratching her back on a bent bough of cypress, turned around, then backed into the low-slung but still bushy enough cypress trunk and eased her spine back and forth, back and forth, scratching her white hide.
What tickled Josie most was to watch Nelly backing into the stand of cypress trees, foliage in a feathery flutter in the fitful cold winds and rubbing her rump and back against the flapping branches. Or she’d roll on the ground, legs in the air, whereas Empress, older, plumper, stood in the same stance barely moving, eyes closing, more inclined to pull down a branch with her teeth and snaffle the leaves, or stand with one hind hoof raised as if arthritic.
Time had stood still through the darkness, yet Nelly knew instinctively what to do, licking the black gunk off the young thing’s prone body. Maisie was immediately aware of the gooey, stringy, crimson after-birth hanging down, almost to the ground. Nelly’s hind legs were streaked with blood and watery pink splotches. Looked yukky to the untrained eye, but Maisie allowed the mum to spruce up a bit before ministering the injection to close up the uterus so the after-birth would heal. Fortunately, she had plaited Holly’s long, straw-coloured tail in tight twists of a mauve ribbon so it didn’t interfere with the delivery. Three days later, spindly legs so wobbly, so lanky, the young colt was careering around the enclosure anxiously watched by Nelly, who could only move gingerly towards her new-born streak of excitement due to the muddy patches on the neighbouring paddock.
Those braided tails of different colours reminded Josie of her own childhood days a decade ago at the local Shetland Pony Club, where she notched up several victories over three furlongs. The red and yellow rosettes were still pinned on her bedroom wall, the crash helmet in some dusty corner of the old shed. She had loved the competitive atmosphere, especially cantering away from the boys in the final furlong. Desperate to beat her, some of the lads were too gung-ho with their heels. Nowadays, though, some of those same riding schools were being called out for poor working conditions and overworking their horses. Claims about riding school cruelty saddened, angered, disenchanted her. She vowed she’d one day get a job with the RSPCA.
While Hamish played second fiddle to Maisie with the horses, he was developing a reputation on-line for his colour photography, in particular his sharp close-ups of birds, many of which were taken among the eucalypts of their own establishment, Osprey Stables: a pair of crimson and cobalt blue Crimson Rosellas foraging for seed and Josie’s favourite regularly perching close to her bedroom window, a serious-faced kookaburra that stayed sternly on the one branch for ten minutes before suddenly bursting out with a wild, haunting racket of ascending laughter, the cheeky wagtails down by the horses’ hooves snapping up insects thrown up by the horses. He didn’t have to wander far to take a photo of a duck’s nest lodged high up on a bald, tarnished white gum tree stripped of bark that had three boughs sawn off in such a way as to leave flat ledges on which the birds would land.
Among most satisfying but lucky shots was that of a large male King Parrot: scarlet head and underbelly, green wings and a blue tail, that chanced to be flying toward the kitchen window ledge where Hamish, fortuitously camera in hand, scored a beaut close-up. And the reverberative, manic laughter of the two regulars, kookaburras as solemn as wise old grumps, sitting on fence posts and singing, no, squawking in unison ever upwards towards the heavens. And that persistent little bugger, smallest member of the wren family that had no tail, tapping its beak on the dining room window and spooking their fox terrier within.
Whereas Josie loved the constant surround of birdsong, she was inconsolable for
hours whenever one of her favourites, the bold but cheeky white-breasted wagtail,
flew head first against her bedroom window and lay there with blood on its
beak, eyes still staring open but very dead, neck broken; splash happy the sparrows and white-breasted wagtails bopping about on the membrane of the imposing circular water tank lifted as the volume of falling rain mounted. Road-kill she also found too dreadful to mention, whether it be that red fox whose intestines were splayed across the narrow road one evening, twisted grin and bared teeth its final grimace in the gutter or the cuddly hairy-nosed wombat snugly curled up in long grass roadside, as if asleep or the low-flying maggies crushed on a winding hillside road.
‘Why doesn’t Dad use the bathroom instead of pissing on the grapefruit tree?’
‘Josie, wash your tongue out with soap!’
‘But that’s disgusting.’
‘How else are you going to get your protein, if you don’t eat your meat?’
‘Oh, Mum, you’re always on about protein? That’s so boring. You know I don’t
really need building up. What’s more, I’m a committed vegetarian.’ The teenager
sighed. ‘Say, Mum, tell me about our ancestors again. Oh, come on, please!’’
‘O for goodness sakes!’ Maisie laughed, eyes looking up at the ceiling. ‘This for the umpteenth time. Well, let’s see . . . My old gran told us our ancestors hailed from Inverness, Highlanders who came out by boat from Scotland some time in the 1850’s. On account of the prospects being better out here in the bush, as they calls these green rural areas under-developed. Back home a terrible potato famine had taken hold. You see, we Scots useter depend on our crop of taters to keep us from starvation’s door. But we was blessed that in this strange new world, it just so happened they were crying out for labourers to fill so many vacancies. Our folks were starving because landlords had raised their rent, forcing out hundreds an hundreds of poor tenants, just so as those greedy masters could turn their land over to sheep, for it was the wool trade what was providing rich pickings in them times.
Eventually, our folk put down roots here, what was called the Great Valley of Victoria. Hardly any of them could’ve known much about farming, but went searching for a life free from dreadful hardship n injustices back home.’
‘But that’s so mean. Why couldn’t the rich offer to help the starving poor?’
‘Och ae, the terrible unjustnesses of it all.’ Maisie shook her head in disbelief.
‘Stinks to high heaven, that does. Any rate, when those poor blighters walked
hereabouts from Melbourne, what was often called Smellbourne in them days, with
all their worldly possessions and stopped in their tracks by this vast wilderness they
must’ve been half-wits. Gippsland was so covered thick with trees you’d never set
eyes on before, that you couldn’t barely move. Giants with funny names like
eucalypts, so huge and soaring skywards they blacked out the light of day . . . swamp
gums, messmates, blackwoods . . . Worse still, old Gran said, this entire valley was
over-run with dingoes, packs of wild dogs that could tear you from limb to
limb. They’d hunted out all the wild life, which left the settlers precious little to eat
but berries growing wild. They must’ve gone rooting around in the scrub for nuts or
seeds, possibly mushrooms. Any rate, first up the settlers had to kill the
residents, which I mean ter say was them blasted dingoes. Which they did with guns.’
‘Too right,’ nodded Hamish, walking in from the stable from which the mating wagtails were pinching straw in their beaks to firm up their nest in the gutter.
‘Hi, darl! Next come the trappers on the lookout for wallaby skins. Them fellers got themselves a quick fortune, so bought up some land. Any wallabies that survived the slaughter moved on. Gradually, adventurers passing through, what they called selectors, also bought up a few acres, then began big-time the serious operation of clearing it themselves with family or a gang of mates.’
‘Yeah, indeed, this were all timber country, heavily forested,’ Hamish broke in. ‘Like
a fortress. How those splitters carved
through so many deep-rooted trees of massive girth … weight … height, I’ll never
know, poor buggers. Course it was teamwork, what done it. Blokes needed a cross-
cut saw, a pair ov’ em each side o’ the trunk, sometimes six or eight fellers all up.
Our people could na settle here till they’d shot every last dingo dead.’
‘Aw, Pa, how could they be so cruel?’
‘Josie, imagine yer ma had just born you a sister. Do you think that bairn would be safe in the bush with all them dingo scavengers on the prowl? They was ferocious killers. Would have gobbled you up, soon as look at yer,’ he chuckled.
‘Och, Hamish, don’t talk ter the lassie like that. You’ll scare her half to death.’
‘But it was their natural habitat, Pa. For hundreds and hundreds of years.’
‘That’s as maybe. But where do you s’pose the possums and wallabies, koalas and bandicoots was hanging out? They was all wiped out in this area by them bloody dingoes. Any rate, there was plenty more bird life. Under the canopy like, what with the maggies, kookaburras laughing their heads off like lunatics, lyre birds imitating the warbling of other birds. Oh and the whipbird I use ter hear when I was your age, cracking its sharp whip call that went echoing on the wind through the forest. Would you believe, back then there was platypus a-plenty in the wetlands and spiny echidnas and lizards with blue tongues that could get under your feet on the forest floor?’
‘But the valley’s as vast as the sky. So much space opening out in several shades: greens and blues, sometimes reds and purples. Snow-capped mountains way over there, rolling green hills on our side. You can see across to both sides of the Valley – when it’s not foggy or a burning-off day or heavily overcast with rain clouds.’
‘Not then you couldn’t. Look around, luv. Impossible to credit these beaut green hills was once the legacy of ancient growth timber and oh so slowly transformed into rich farmland. Nowadays dairy farms extend as far as the eye can see, dotted about on them hillsides, thanks to the grit and muscle of our forbears. Worked their backsides off knocking up simple huts of slabs and bark using axes and saws, surviving on flour, tea and sugar. ‘Just remember too, the gut-churnin voyage out here weren’t no picnic in the heather, what with all the sickness n death, vermin, polluted water for drinkin n washin in. Jeez! Battlers, they wuz called. And rightly so.’
Time was, about a dozen years before, when Hamish was none too comfortable with his six year-old daughter; a bit of a softie, he reckoned. Often he found himself telling the story of Josie and the ‘Cappertillas’, where the curious youngster had stumbled upon a clump of caterpillars.
One August afternoon, Josie espied on their Yellow Box gum tree a strange black lump in the fork of a branch just above head high. She prised the branches of red flowers apart to make a closer examination. Of what might have been a lump of black tar, except for slight twitches of tiny, thin projections, presumably tails, yellow, which meant the little round reddish-brown bobble at the other end was the head. She thought she could make out the teeniest dots for eyes. And the silvery varnish on the black body swayed in the wind with the other – what? Fifty of the little critters – ‘Capertillars’! All bunched in a greyish black blob, bodies black with a silver zip down their spine, laced round one another in the fork of a branch of their own Yellow Box gum, literally sticking together. And as the brisk wind gusted and the fork swayed, so the caterpillars darted minuscule yellow tails – for balance or warning?
Agh, yuk! Sickened at first, Josie couldn’t snatch her eyes from this weirdo scene. Why clinging on day after day in bucking winds? Eating what, for goodness sake? Yet fascinated, she peered up through the window of leafy branches, transfixed. All of a frown, she noted these worm-like creatures now bound around one another at all angles, some lying almost cross-wise; writhing a tad as if agitated, seemed black in body but with a greyish sheen when sighted in a ray of sunshine and a white spot and silvery thin hairs.
Course, she pleaded to bring the little critters indoors. ‘Don’t touch!’ screeched Maisie, rubbing hands on pinnie to dry as she stared across the lawn to the fence-line ‘Nasties! Very poisonous.’
‘Oh, but Mum . . !
‘Just get away from there quick smart before they spit at you!’
‘They’re not doing any harm, Mum. Just bunching up in a slimy heap.’
‘Josie, get away!’ bellowed Hamish, suddenly emerging from the roughly knocked-up corrugated shed that shook and rattled in the wind. ‘You heard what your mother said! Don’t touch!’ So searing his voice, the girl’s face crunched into tears. In a softer, matter-of-fact voice, as he approached: ‘They not be poisonous, but these larvae can cause problems. Give you an itchy skin. Whatever you do, don’t rub your eyes! I’ll go heat up some boilin water n soap n scald em ter death.’
‘Oh, Dad, you can’t do that. That’s so cruel and horrible!’
‘Can’t have em build a nest in the bark nor gnawing down in them roots. They’re killing the tree, as it is. Every blasted branch is stripped bare.’
Josie whimpering, pleading almost: ‘But they’re not harming us.’
‘Not yet. But these capertillars, as you calls em, are larvae of them sawflies.’
‘So?’
‘Can’t you see, lass? They’ve already stripped this beautiful tree of its bark. Even the beaut red flowers are dull and droopy. Those slimy critters o’ yourn have shaved pale these branches for food. Either they’re now gone underground or they’re still eating their way through the trunk to the roots. When the sawflies leave you a rash on the arm, then you’ll know it, my girl. Between you n me, yer Mum’s agistment n breeding business will go down the gurgler if those hairs you seed on the caterpillars get up the nostrils of her beloved thoroughbreds.’
‘Why so?’
‘We’ll lose everythink: the horses would die, we could na longer afford to run the farm, we’d lose the reputation of both our horses and our business.’
No matter how many times she’d surveyed the hills on this side of the valley, Josie never tired of that vista, tranquil, still as a canvas, somehow perfect in its harmonious pattern of generously rounded hills and stands of eucalypts, even the shades of green were different, peaceful now but for the vociferous sweep of birdsong but often moody, fast-changing, wispy mists floating through the ravines of interlocking hills. Even now the leaves on the evergreen cypresses had developed a yellowish tinge. Sometimes the brazen arc of a rainbow would embrace the whole valley, would disappear suddenly, then mysteriously shine through a few minutes later, arcing over the vast valley floor with an implant of warmth. How fascinating it was, wondered Josie, when the further side of the valley with its impenetrable forest, ski slopes, abandoned mineshafts silhouetted on the horizon, jagging into the pallid blue sky.
Scaredy Cat she was when those thickset guardian gums loomed up black in the darkness, yet now close up she saw these ancient time-servers as ribbed deep red like veins neath their cracked, withering bark and the base of the trunk like an elephantine foot skewed, twisting away from what was, hopefully, a secure, deep-rooted buttress. So suddenly would the gusts of wind blow up, Josie instinctively bit her lip at the twin giants astride the opening of their driveway that acted as a gateway to her domain, yet vulnerable to sudden surges of windy blasts. Ancient they looked, black bark tearing away in ribs or peeling off in strips or harbouring tatty spider webs in knot holes like closed eyes where the dreaded black Huntsman might lurk.
Up close, the base of these wizened old trees that Dad called messmates and Josie stringybarks – that sounded a likelier name for a tree - with four or five thick boughs stretching way high up. At ground level Josie could tuck her fingers under the bark and easily prise away the scab. Windy nights would always toss long, slender branches and thin twigs onto the lawns, hedges and flower beds.
To the west, across the narrow road banked by long grass cut every three months by council tractor to lessen the danger of fire hazard, rose a slight incline, where a herd of some eighty Friesians were grazing along the ridge, which offered another plane, another perspective. To be broken now and again by some mad bikie hothead, usually Jed Crabtree, burning by at full throttle, front wheel saluting Josie with front wheel raised at forty-five degrees off the bitumen surface, grit edging the runnels of mud, wild grasses, weeds and water. Speed limit 80 k, but on these scarcely used narrow minor roads, country drivers ripped along, sometimes leaving road-kill of a crushed magpie or grey-furred rabbit or hairy-nosed wombat on the grass verge where the pesky rabbits scrabbled away nights. Josie would never forget the tortured rictus of a red fox grinning up at her, dead to the world, its innards spewing out on the tarmac.
Up close, Josie could claw a bracket of bark without any resistance but a cracking sound of dead matter. Look up slightly and she could trace the deep dark grooves in the crusty bark which gave it a reddish, heat-blackened look, imagining that one day a violent squall would bring smashing down one of these old fellers onto the family’s pale green tiled roof. Josie shuddered, hardly dared think of it, not even comforted when old Bert, a nonagenarian who’d left Italy in 1945 at the end of the war, dismissed such an idea. ‘She’ll be right for many more years yet. Them roots run deep, very deep.’ Still the ancient stalwart stood firm amid its litter of flimsy twigs and firmer, straighter sticks to use as supports for the climbing broad beans and raspberry canes or long, kinky branches with buds ready to burst forth in flower. An open wound that sometimes oozed blobs of red gum. Further down the lane another haunt for the wild ducks was a huge stump of dead wood with a sawn-off head and three-pronged boughs sawn off at the hip. Bared of its outer casing, the stout grey stump with a hollowed heart and three upward limbs acting as safe landing offered a frequent stop-over and look-out for ducks and chattering classes of other avians.
Early dawnings in warmer weather she’d wake up and promptly open the blinds to savour the calming comfort of lush green grasses of their lawns and nature strip and the dull green of gum leaves furled down against the wind. Then in December the old stringybark would take on a more youthful look with an array of white flowers.
Jed Taggart, who was five years older, lived on the newish estate the other side of the village. Neat but very small regulation-type houses, cramped close together, though some brightened up with neatly tended but small gardens. More noticeable were gardens often neglected with clapped-out cars rusting, even the old cranky school bus grounded on the muddy driveway, once elegant plants now straggly or strangling, browned-off.
‘You’d best steer clear of the likes of him, my girl,’ advised Hamish. ‘He’ll be a shady character up to no good.’ Suddenly saw Jed’s old man in his mind’s eye. A conman who always had some beef about the neighbours. It was known locally the man kept a rifle in his laundry. ‘How does he earn his bread by the way?’
‘Oh, this and that,’ Josie shrugged. ‘You know.’
Willing to defend Jed, Josie couldn’t easily read the oddball, his swagger, his bragadaccio, as Bert would say, brashness, brassiness? How did he pay his way?
‘No, lassie, I don’t. But I do know there’s a whisper round the village that he’s the culprit breaking into folks’ cars on weekends, burns em out on the highway, then ditches em on the side of the road n cadges a lift back home with a mate on stand-by with mobile phone. Hasn’t he got anything better to do with all that spare time?’
‘Any feller who speaks up about cruelty to animals can’t be all bad,’ she was bold enough to reply, pouting with indignation.
‘That’s as maybe. But what does he do to keep the bailiff from the door? Even his long-suffering mother washes her hands of ‘im.’
‘Oh, Dad, that’s not fair!’ Though willing to defend Jed, she couldn’t easily answer her father’s question. How did he pay his way? Odd jobs on his uncle’s farm, driving the old man’s tractor, though he didn’t have a licence; acting with Traffic Control as a lollipop man resurfacing the highway up north. Risked breaking the speed limit on Friday nights to beat it back home for the weekend.
‘There’s a rumour that he’s stirring the possums at the goat farm.’
‘Someone has to. It’s disgusting, disgraceful, unethical. Male kids being bludgeoned to death with a metal pole. How callous is that? Just because they don’t’t milk. You can’t blame the younger generation from mounting a crusade to protect them!’
‘I haven’t heard nothin about bludgeonin goats.’
‘Dad, I don’t think you understand. My generation are much more aware of cruelty and exploitation of animals in captivity. We have a network of supporters who feel compelled to call out farmers guilty of maltreatment wherever.’
Almost a whisper: ‘Jeez!’ So that’s what’s bin distractin youse.’ He walked to the nearest chair and sat down awkwardly as if in a daze. More heatedly: ‘But youse never said nothing!’ Again whispery: ‘So unlike my own daughter.’
‘I’m truly sorry, Dad, but it’s a cruel world out there.’
After several seconds: ‘I can’t believe the local goat farm are exploitin their animals. Such a thrivin venue for family groups . . . school visits . . . tiny tots.’ Josie sighed, shrugged in exasperation. ‘Besides, Josie, you’re forgettin somethin.’
‘What?’
‘Haven’t you noticed the price of goat’s meat today? All the We serve goat ads? There’s plenty of dough to be made from thieving goats n floggin em off at exorbitant prices. Is this Jed feller floggin goats on the sly? Answer me, Josie.’
It was after midnight when the marauders broke in; shadowy shapes, none of them
appeared locals, some even from Melbourne an hour’s drive away down the highway.
Walked straight up the driveway to the sheds and barns, where they clicked on their torches at the sudden skitter and rustle of a mob of bleating, panicky goats.
Jed was stooping down, appearing to search for some marker on their undersides,
when he heard footsteps crunching louder, then all of a sudden the beam from an arc
lamp lit up the sheds: ‘Hey, what the bloody hell’s going on here? Who the hell
are you lot, busting in and scaring my animals to death? This is private property.
Now beat it before I call the police!’
Jed was curious, or at least playing it cool or aiming for some effect. ‘I don’t see no
male goats ‘ere, mate. What’s the story?’
‘None of your concern, chum. We run a clean business here, not a bloody health
farm. Now clear off this land before I call the police!’
Gradually, the young night-time manager’s eyes began to focus more clearly: the
number of intruders seemed to increase as
shadows materialised in the glaring light. Perhaps seventy. Wearing black gear. With mottoes he could just make out:
EAT a PLANT, SAVE a PLANT;
WINGS ARE FOR FLYING, NOT FRYING.
‘O oh, Vegan gear.’
‘But I’m making it my business, see? We heard all baby male goats were shot
through the ‘ead with a bolt gun or bludgeoned ter death with a metal pole. Some of
me mates swear they’ve ‘eard about agonisin convulsions of baby goats hardly a few
weeks old dyin in their own blood.’
‘That’s a downright lie!’ retorted the manager, trying to hold back his mounting fury.
‘Then you heard wrong!’
But when he realised a handful of these protesters were pointing their video cameras
at him, he knew he had to calm down, muttering to his three co-workers on the
evening shift to keep their hands behind them; otherwise these activists could claim
the video footage might suggest the activists had been physically pushed away, which
could be construed as assault.
‘This is dairy country. We supply milk and cheese. What’s more, all my workers and
that includes myself, love our three thousand she-goats and we take great care of
them. Our goats actually enjoy getting attached to the rotary milker and having
a good feed at the same time. We keep them in those open barns yonder. By the way,
my name is Howard,’ turning away. ‘I don’t eat meat either, mate. Come, see for
yourself our happy free-ranging goats.’
‘Yeah, that’s what we’re here for,’ scowled Jed, who spat on the ground as if he didn’t
believe a word of it. Nor would he acknowledge Howard’s claim of animal welfare,
as his troupe wound slowly down Capra Farm’s rutted driveway.
‘I reckon we stuck it up ‘im all right, the uppity sod. Though it’s just occurred to me someone’s tipped im off. What d’jer reckon, Jose? Hey, get wiv it, babe. You’ve been misery guts tonight.’
As they walked down the hill together into the dark, Josie couldn’t see Jed’s face in
shadow, but as he turned towards her, she read his sneer and bristling anger.
A hail of harassment by vegan activists acted as a scourge on the goat farm lasting some four tiresome months: abusive phone calls and death threats; three goats and one lamb stolen and driven away in a car boot; Angelica kidnapped but reclaimed in
another car boot; a third was found in an activist’s home with a nappy covering its
rear end to stop the discharge spoiling the carpets; the Capra Café was closed down;
several staff lost their jobs; those on the evening milking round were constantly
startled and heckled by jeering trespassers under cover of darkness: ‘We know where
you live!’ they yelled; the business, the whole operation, was targeted. Activists
continued to spread rumours about young male kids being bludgeoned to death.
Of course, the café closed down. A small body of retainers was kept on for the
milking roster. Jed was reported as claiming, ‘I don’t care a brass razoo if you stick
me in jug. I’ll be happy as Larry inside than animals banged up in captivity.’
Michael Small, December 12, 2020
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