Riding boots
There was a tumble of shoes at the front of the main homestead at Burwah, our family farm. Not rubber-soled shoes that could bring in prickles and burrs from the paddock, but leather-soled boots riding boots. Boots to fit everyone in the family neatly in a heap in the front entranceway of our old Queenslander.
“Shoes off,” Dad ordered every time he opened the front door.
The state of the farm could be ascertained by what you found in that entranceway. Muddy boots when rain was plentiful, dust and dust and dust during the years of drought. A stark reflection of the state of the farm at any given moment.
A visit from our city family would be telegraphed by colourful, rubber-soled shoes, unhelpful for farm work or horse riding. The stock agents would come in their glistening new, polished RM William’s (sometimes you would wonder if they had ever seen the inside of a shearing shed). If the entrance hall was littered with boots covered in manure, messily abandoned in a pile, it was likely we were in shearing season.
In the racks above the shoes, there was always a 410 shotgun, with ammunition stacked on the side shelf in the case of a snake in the house yard or near the homestead. On those days we had unwanted visitors, I can remember my mother expertly loading the 410, only to hit the snake so many times it was unrecognisable as any of God’s creatures.
Eventually, the unmistakable mark of two young girls born and brought up in the house came to the fore, and the boots were pushed aside to make way for ballet bags, swimming gear and school shoes. An assembly of new additions crowded the front entrance, but the constant was always the boots.
For decades the entranceway welcomed shoes from the shooters, shearers, stock and field agents, neighbours. Eventually, the polished business shoes of the bankers would be left there, too.
When my parents filed for bankruptcy, we packed the car, left the farm and everything on it save one of our work dogs and anything deemed to be of no value by the bank. We were walking away from a life that had delivered some fortune and but many more times heartbreak.
We never discussed the years on the farm or what had been left behind. At just 14, my focus was on what comes next. I had no desire to reflect on what we had lost. The farm was behind us, but two decades later, as I was buying my own first home, my father brought me a gift.
It was my first pair of riding boots, dipped in copper. The creases in the leather, stretched side elastic and barely readable RM William’s tags permanently immortalised.
I had long forgotten these tiny little boots, but they had been a permanent feature at the front door on the farm. At one point, I remember, they were used as little flowerpots, where my mother grew seasonal flowers from bulbs to brighten the front entrance.
Today they are a focal piece at the entrance of the home I share with my husband and our children. Since we left the farm, Dad had sent them to South Africa to be copper plated. A characteristically thoughtful thing for my father to do. What he didn’t say, he showed us through his actions.
Since he gave me these little boots, they have become a reminder of our strength as a family. Our collective resilience has been tested through distance, divorce, and illness. The resilience first cultivated through drought, fire, and floods is now reinforced as we take on cancer and COVID enforced distance.
