My Dad grew up in the 1930's and '40's. Most of his childhood was spent on a farm called Misery. Don't let the name fool you, Dad had a happy upbringing. Harsh, but happy. He has fond memories of the place, and some very amusing anecdotes. My favourite stories as a child always began with, "Down on Misery..." They were stories about the jobs he had to do, and the antics and pranks he got up to. Like the time he tied his little sister onto the back of a poddy calf and set the dog after it. And how he'd jump out of a tree onto the back of an unsuspecting steer. "I got some lively bloody rides, I'll tell ya," says Dad. He piqued my imagination with stories of playing cowboys and Indians like in the Cowboy Charlie comics his mother used to read them. And how he and his brothers and sisters had a cave on Crown Mountain that they called their hideout. He told me of the hard work of ploughing and the bite of cold in winter. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to go with Dad back to Rylstone. It had been decades since he'd last been to Misery. Even though boundaries had changed, and roads and tracks washed away by progress and time, he found his way back out to Misery, like the map is permanently etched in his mind. He got out to open the gates for me and I could see him as a child opening the gates to let the horse and sulky through for his dad. He traced his way back through the years, back to the house he grew up in. It was still standing...just. A testament to the skill of the hardworking hands that built it a century or more ago. I watched, entranced, as Dad walked through the old house showing me where things used to be, and out into the yard behind where they got their water from the creek. I saw the Crown Mountain looming stark against the blue sky and pictured Dad as a black haired young boy racing his pony across the paddock and up towards the mountain. And I was there with him, down on Misery.
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