City v Country

I grew up in the country. I spent afternoons after school in the orchard. My first job was driving the ute from tree to tree as we picked the pears in the small orchard (the one at home was small enough so we didn't bother employing pickers, the main orchard was 2 miles down the road). I was eight. I crashed the ute into a tree because I was driving so slowly and such a short distance that the instructions didn't place much emphasis on the brake. I was shown the accelerator, told how to slowly let off the clutch then told to put my foot on the clutch and take it off the accelerator when I wanted to stop. I'm sure I was told where the brake was, but my memory is of taking my foot off the accelerator and wondering why the car kept rolling slowly into the tree.



The car crashing is just one of many memories I'm sure I wouldn't have if I grew up in the city. This is my dilemma. I really want the kids to grow up in the country. So does Will. But I have to wonder if the childhood I had can be got for my kids. Is it still possible to drive around with a few kids, a dog and a whole heap of yabby nets in the back of the ute? Or get pulled down the road on your roller skates by the dog (a road where the the speed limit is 100 k/hr and that's considered a minimum). Or ride your bike 6 miles home when you're in Primary School? I think not.



However I think new laws and changing social norms are not the real things stopping my babies having the childhood I had. It is the lack of two things: my grandfather and a farm.



Without a farm you couldn't learn to drive at 8. You couldn't make 'drag tracks' for the 4-wheeler motorbikes. You would have nowhere to pull people around on skateboards without wheels behind those motorbikes. You couldn't drive a tractor. You couldn't earn your pocket money putting pheromone sticks on trees or counting Codling Moths. There would be no Italian farmhand to share his salami sandwiches with you. You would have no idea how hard, or how fun it is to wrestle a sheep to the ground. Or how cool it is to see a lamb be born. Or how stinky insides of sheep become when they're left in the sun.



Without a man like my grandfather you would be unlikely to find yourself waist deep in a drained dam catching big fish by hand. Or careering round a bend in the back of the ute at some speed that's waaay too fast. Or going to pick Prickly Pears from the local Cactus Pear trees. Or being called Lucky, Happy or Shithead rather than your name.



So, is it worth uprooting our family to move to the country? Leaving behind the friends we are slowly gathering because they too have kids? Starting that process of making a network of 'family friends' all over again? Without a farm (I will not become a farmer) and without Brucie what does the country have to offer?



I guess you don't have to own a farm to eat fruit straight from the tree. You can still go yabbying in the local channel. If you are country enough you can probably learn to drive at 12 or 14 on the back roads. There's still lots of trees. Lots of places to ride your bike. You still have to have friends over for the whole night 'cause it's too far for them to just stay an hour. Yeah, I guess it will be worth it. Besides, making friends is easier in the country right, cause everyone is friendly!