The Patch

It was just a piece of land to some but it was lost now to me to us. Generations worked it going back to my Great Great Grandfather.

My grandfather was given the parcel of land by his father, rocky volcanic stone intermixed with black soil not fit for plowing only sheep.

Patrick McAlister started it all coming from Ireland in the 1830s to grab land, to grow fruit trees of apple originally that were plowed under in WW2 to grow potatoes for the war effort and grew them ever after.

Sons died in that war, some never came back, some never had to go like my Grandfather who stayed at home working the family farm with draught horse and plough until the advent of the tractor.

My Grandfather was raised by an aboriginal wet nurse, suckling at her teat, a true Australian son of this promised land.

He sang Danny Boy the great Irish refrain with an angels voice and was a man of the land that he came from. Times change as they always do, and all the Great Uncles and my Grandfather are dead now.

The land sold to a city person with a wallet so large to afford the million dollar price tag it had on it when we sold it, the bank taking a large sum. What was the land to me? It was a wedge tails eagles nest one hundred feet up a mountain ash gum tree, it was watching the eagles fly back every year to raise chicks.

It was the underground river cutting through the land to come up on the corner down below with water so pure it was sweet to the taste.

It was having soil that was yours, your land, and no one elses. It was not about money, it was beyond those concepts of mortgage and loan to me.

So when people ask me where i am from I say there, even though another man owns it, even though i am like a gypsy now on the road, i am from The Patch.