Trip 45, post #9 – You can pick your friends

Linton is 34 km from Ballarat and 150 km from the big smoke of Melbourne and was established in 1839 by Mary and Joseph Linton from Scotland as a sheep pastoral run. Gold was discovered in 1855 and the population quickly swelled to maximum ever at 1,969 in 1861. However, a decline in the gold price, gold finds and the two World Wars took a toll on the town and the population quickly decreased to circa 500 by the early 1900’s.

Linton, population 600, the year is 1982 and a young Andy and Jan Budge, esteemed parents of Tony (11) and Maxine (9), decide to make a major lifestyle change and move to the country to build a house and then establish and run a small hobby farm.

6 km West of Linton (away from Ballarat) lies the Flagstaff Ridge, the last significant ridge of hills before moving into the relatively flat and featureless farmland of the Western Plains of Victoria.

No mains electricity, no mains water or gas supply, no sewage or telephone lines, and of course no mobile or public Internet as they weren’t available yet, my parents purchased 10 ½ acres of semi-cleared land on a steep hill with views to the horizon out to the West.

Using an old International tractor, wheelbarrows, lots of hand tools and the odd power tool powered by a portable generator, my parents dug out a couple of dams at the bottom of the block, saving the clay in large heaps. Then, using the tractor and feet in gumboots, they mixed straw and water with the clay to handmake a couple thousand (we can’t remember exactly how many) mudbricks. Each external brick was 45cm long x 30cm wide x 15cm high and weighed over 10kg each. The internal bricks are half this size. Monitoring the drying process and hand-turning each brick until they were ready, the bricks were then manhandled back up to the top of the block and laid on the newly poured slab. All started well until my pet kid goats, Huey, Duey and Louie, decided to clamber atop the newly laid bricks, thinking these were the best climb rocks ever. Dad very nearly prepared the goats for dinner on the spot.

Attending the local Linton Primary School for the last term of grade 5 and then the full year of grade 6, student numbers were so low that classes were typically made up of mixed ages & grades. My new best mate Negz (Tony Negri) and I quickly became inseparable, growing up racing go-karts, shooting rabbits and camping in the paddock. We attended the annual Blue Light Discos’ where we followed the 80’s fashion trends, one year wearing black t-shirts with our nicknames stencilled on the back (we were bulk), another year wearing pastel pink and lemon jumpers (we looked mintox). The chicks must have dug us and thought we were ace.

Moving into high school in grade 7, it was a 45-minute bus trip from the top of Flagstaff Ridge Road, along the Glenelg Highway, into Ballarat. At least once a winter, the road would get so icy that the school bus couldn’t make it up the hill (ridge) to our bus stop. We’d be standing there in the frost and freezing cold, hearing the bus labour, and then suddenly we’d hear it pull up with squeaky brakes, do a 3-point turn on the highway and head home. This left me and Max with a 2 km walk back home in the brass monkey conditions. But you know you are attending a country school back in the day when the school and bus company allowed me to carry Dad’s shotgun, disassembled with no ammo, on the school bus to school so I could use it in the Physical Ed run Clay Target Shooting class we did in year 10.

Whilst growing up, I unknowingly became an amateur ornithologist and could name most of the birds in the area by sight or sound. This included me spotting and reporting to some Melbourne Birdwatcher Groups my sighting of a flock of what I determined to be Diamond Firetail Finches which hadn’t been seen in the region and were hence thought extinct locally, for over 50 years. The big smoke official birdos soon verified my identification which kicked off random groups of people turning up and walking around the paddocks to get their own sightings. Max, on the other hand, became proficient in naming most of the local wildflowers.

At 15 and as I was finishing year 10, I was fortunate enough to be offered a Telstra Apprenticeship and I decided to leave school and home for the opportunity at 16, moving down to Melbourne to attend my training, before moving to Perth to finish my apprenticeship in Perth when I was 18.

Looking back now, it was a fantastic place, time and way to grow up. The closest thing we had to a computer or mobile phone was our Atari Pong TV console. Instead, we chopped firewood, explored and learnt to love the bush, drove an old beat-up VW Beetle (paddock-basher) around the paddocks, and looked after the various animals we kept over the years which included Chooks, Ducks, Geese, Sheep, Goats, Dogs, a Cat, a Horse, Turtles and a various birds and cockatoos in our bird aviary.

At the time I never appreciated the physical, mental or financial stress my parents would have been coping with. But, as kids, we always had clean clothes – well as clean as Mum could keep them as I got dirty pretty quickly – and wholesome food to eat. We certainly weren’t rich in coin, but we were millionaires in experience, love, nurture and nature.

Today I am so extremely grateful for these experiences, which have manifested in my love of camping and exploring our country, and have given me and my sister a “Can do” and “Hands-on” attitude. We may not be an expert, but using the noggin’ and applying some common sense, both myself and my sister have taken on many projects that many people would normally outsource to a professional.