
Boofy, George Young & Monty
“Dad, next time you go to George Young’s place, can I come with you?” Dad looked at me
with that look that said, what’s he on about now… but in the end, he was used to me and my
crazy requests, Dad had heard so many over the years and in some ways was not well
equipped for a son like me. But he tried hard to accomodate a curious non conforming child
who was quite mysterious to him. Dad had six brothers and sisters, he was used to conformity,
but didn’t understand the opposite.
‘Why do you want to see George again?’
‘I don’t know Dad, George scares me and he doesn’t scare you.’ I wasn’t really sure how to
answer that one, George did frighten me as he did most of the kids in the town. Port Fairy had
more than its fare share of great characters and that possibly accounts for my special brand of
insanity. In a town of 2500 people, 1250 were crazy characters. I have a list.
George Young: George was a victim of the wars, he had been shell shocked, I suspect that his
mental state had been deeply affected by some of what he saw. He was not harmful but also
not harmless. As kids we were terrified as lots of kids are of anything that they can’t understand,
the sight of George Young, summer and winter in his ex army great coat and fingerless gloves,
reeking of wintergreen oil and moving at a fast pace, or at least a lot faster than most locals,
with eyes flashing this way and that, accompanied by a herd of black dogs, was more than
enough to scare us all. George also muttered and made noises as he moved about his
business. He drove a small dark car around town, where he went, his dogs went too, I think
there was either three or four dogs that always accompanied him, but more at home.
My father was very fond of George, they maybe shared the injuries of war since Dad had been
too close to some bombing raids on Darwin and had developed ear problems, indeed in
years to come, Dad’s life was taken by a brain tumour that doctors said was due to his war
years. Dad’s family were one of the local butchers, there was just one other, Keatings, they
mostly supplied the Catholic population, my lot the rest. Dad was also the one who did the
killing, I spent a great deal of my time at the slaughter yard, but that’s another story.
George depended on Dad for the meat scraps to feed his pack of dogs, dad always obliged,
I think that he slipped in some meat for George too, but it was a two way street, George
supplied Dad with beautiful fresh vegetables and fruit that he grew on his tiny bit of land that
also housed his small home. The dogs shared the house with George, on the one occasion I
ever went into his house with Dad I recall the over whelming smell of wintergreen ointment and
dogs. George had a crooked kind of grimace, it couldn’t be described as a smile, but in
Georges case it was the next best thing. Life I don’t think, apart from his dogs, garden and
maybe my Dad, did not hold many thrills for George.
George was the first organic gardener I met, he worked hard on his gardens and was always
seen at the greengrocers in town collecting the vegetable and fruit scraps and mixing them
into the dark black soil, or for giving to his chooks, mixed as my dad did with bran and pollard,
George’s chooks produced the best eggs, every year he scooped the pool at the Port Fairy
Agriculture Show with his fruit vegetables and eggs. George became very popular with the
local ladies around this time as they curried favour for a few of his ultra great eggs to get that
winning edge on their cake entries. His vegetables were extraordinary. George lived in the last
street in the town, behind the hospital in a very neat house with the whole of the garden given
over to fruit and vegetables. The house was painted with tar in order to preserve it. There were
some tin sort of outbuildings that housed the over flow of dogs. The front fence was made of
wire netting, the gate a metal affair that had been covered in wood. George’s garden was
unique, it had the darkest blackest soil I have ever seen, when you looked at the vegetables he
grew, they seemed greener than green and I suspect, gave my father lots of inspiration.
‘Dad, how does George get to have the blackest soil in Port Fairy?’ I was hanging out the car
window. I knew that Dad was a great fan of George’s garden although my mother would have
thought it weird had my father decided that ‘organic’ was the way to go.
‘Lindsay, what about the cabbage moths? What about the slugs. What about the yudder
yudder yudder’ Mum would have gone on and on and with great fears that her much
anticipated summer crop of preserves would be in peril. My mother would have nagged Dad
into submission sure that he would see the wisdom of her ways. Dad did use the chook pooh
though, he and Mum spent a lot of time scraping the chook yard and putting it directly onto
the garden… that was a big mistake, chook pooh is highly acidic and needs to be
composted. That year between the two of them they destroyed the pea crop, the lettuce crop
and sent the tomatoes into a downward spiral from which they barely recovered. I suspect
George Young was asked for his opinion, unbeknown to Mum who would not have approved.
Secretly I think that George also frightened her and at least a good three quarters of the
women of the town. But George did know his garden, he would have laughed a lot at my
father and mother not knowing that chook pooh had to be composted.
As a small aside, at one point when I dragged my family off to Queensland in search of the
dream of better climate, more organic living, started a restaurant in the packing shed on the
small farm we had purchased in the Sunshine Cost hinterland and installed a whole host of
garden beds meant to supply the restaurant, I too made a fatal mistake with chook pooh. I
rang one of the large battery operators, asked how much a truck full of chook pooh was going
to cost, we agreed a price. I had forgotten it was impossible to get a truck into the vegetable
garden and so had to have it tipped onto the road side at the front of the property. I also had
not thought for the merest millisecond that the stench of the pooh as well as the ammonia was
overwhelming. In no time flat I had a delegation of neighbours complaining bitterly at the
horror of it all. We tried covering it with sheets of plastic, didn’t work as the dam stuff just
belched its way out of the covers. In the end the solution was to wet it down and allow a top
crust to form, took about two weeks and the neighbours had to be placated with cakes and
pies and sweet talk. Ah the vagaries of living organically.
The car that George had been driving for all his life, was a small black Ford Prefect, 2 door.
They started making these in 1938. George kept his immaculately, yet I have seen three or four
dogs pile out of the car as George cannoned about the town collecting his scraps and doing
his chores. I suspect George was on some sort of disability pension from the war.
‘Dad, that’s the same car that Miss Bowker has isn’t it?’
‘Yes it is, they all came from Warrnambool, the dealer sold a lot of em… go on for ever those
cars will!’
Dad looked longingly at the cars and dreamed of one day owning one of his own. It was when
I was fourteen years old that Dad got his first car, a blue Vanguard, big bulbous frog like
creation that he just loved, it had moroon leather upholstery, he drove it very proudly. On the
weekends we would all pile in for a picnic and load the boot with food or in the event that no
activity was planned, after the very traditional Sunday roast, we would fill the thermos, mum
would pack some cakes and biscuits, we would head out for the round Port Fairy drive, usually
ending up at Martins Point where we would all drink cups of milky sweet tea and have slabs of
Sultana Cake, after that Mum and Dad would snooze in the car while I annoyed the fishermen
or headed over to Griffith Island to see what was happening there. Until my eighteenth
birthday, there was not a scratch or dent on that car. But during one of my fathers driving
lessons, I managed to back it into the side of the garage and dam near bring the whole thing
down on us. Dad had the great good sense to make me back it out and drive around the
block a few times.
George’s dogs were always on leashes, they were a pack of snarling, long teethed wolves as
far as I was concerned, they scared me to death. Dad on the other hand had no fear of them
he would open the gate and head into Georges lounge room that opened straight from the
front door to deliver the meat and bones. Meanwhile I would be hanging out the side window
of car shouting for Dad to come and get me so I could also be part of the vegetable
collecting expedition.
‘Awcome on Dad, please let me go in, you never do, always leave me in the car!’ I tried it all,
bit of moral blackmail, coercion or anything else that would get me into George Young’s house
and therefore make me one of the very few people in the town to have been there.
‘You promise not to ask him questions! You know how that makes him cross’
‘Yes Dad I know. I promise.’
I was in, out of the car with the black dogs going mental at the possible encroachment onto
their territory. George had them corralled in a chicken wire enclosed area, but I was still afraid
that they would leap the wire and tear me to shreds.
‘Your fault Peter, you asked to be allowed in. Now look what you’ve done to the bloody dogs,
this will send George mad.’
True to his prediction, George’s face was half way between grimace and smile as he roared at
his hounds, in time they settled, meanwhile I had remained stock still like a statue, waiting for
Dad to come and collect me, Dad on his part was waiting while the dogs din abated to a
rumbling growl and George, red in the face and coughing from all the shouting, had regained
his breath, once again chatting amiably with him.
George grew the best potatoes, the greenest silver beet with the reddest and sweetest
tomatoes possible. Dad always came away with a large armful and we headed straight down
to Bank street to drop them off to mum.
I have just returned from the kitchen, I was so excited about George Young and his green
green vegetables, I have just popped a dish of green s in the oven with a great cheese sauce
and topped with fresh white breadcrumbs minced with bacon. That’s what memory can do… I
think the only thing that Mum would never have used was some parmesan, she would instead
have sacrificed a small slab of her very ear tingling tasty cheese. None the less… try this.
Greens in Cheese Sauce
1 whole bunch of young Silver Beet or if you wish, spinach, I prefer silver beet.
1 large Zuccini
1 large red onion
place all of this in a flat dish and I must confess that this is one of those times when I use the
microwave and cook for 11 minutes on high covered with some plastic… allow to stand as it
cools a little.
Cheese Sauce
1 tablespoon of butter (heaped)
2 heaped tablespoons of plain (all purpose) flour
a good big handful of freshly grated parmesan
a good big handful of a zesty tasty cheese
a good big handful of a mild cheddar
2 cloves of garlic finely chopped
1/2 a red chilli finely chopped
500 mil of milk.
salt and pepper to taste and a good grind of fresh nutmeg
Melt the butter and when melted, but not bubbling, mix the flour in until a goo paste is made,
place over heat to cook the paste a little and then start adding the milk…I am not even slightly
good at being patient, so it all goes in along with the cheese, garlic, chilli, salt, pepper and
nutmeg, I then stir with a whisk till it thickens.
Remove the plastic from the vegetables which will have made a little juice. If its too much,
drain some off, but otherwise leave it, it is full of flavour. Add the cheese sauce and mix a little
to disperse through, but don’t over mix.
Use your blender and chop up finely some good bread, your choice, I always add a little
butter and in this case I had a couple of pieces of very good bacon and so in they went. Top
the cheese sauce with the breadcrumbs, if you want to be very decadent, a little more
parmesan. Bake in a hot oven till bubbling and the crumbs browned.
I am going to serve this with a good steak, rump as it turns out and it had better be tasty of
else. For the vegetarians amongst us, try finely chopping a tomato with the breadcrumbs, if the
tomato is to juicy, remove the inner pulp.
George grew a selection of fruits as did almost every house in the town, not exotic, but
practical fruits that would be picked and eaten fresh or preserved or made into jam. Plum,
usually two or three of these very popular fruits, blood plum, a normal plum and in our case, a
greengage since that was mums favourite jam. One apricot, always a couple of peaches,
mostly the cling stone varieties as they grew better and of course nectarine. Lemon trees were
in every home. Apples and oranges were usually not grown, but often a pear would be. Fruit
trees are generally not huge trees, so even on small blocks, quite a few could grow. George
had surrounded his perimeters with his trees, and I recall he also had a fig tree. In his garden
beds every summer, George grew strawberries, luscious small luminously red berries that were
sweet and filled with explosive flavour. Dad also grew strawberries, but somehow his were never
quite as good as Georges and so mum was always nagging Dad to drop some meat up to
George and get some strawberries for jam. She always made two types and it was a question
of technique, not of content.
Strawberry Jam.
So many differing opinions on how to make this delicious jam. The variances are such things as
Lemon Juice/no Lemon Juice, weight for weight of sugar/less than the fruit weight in
sugar/more than the fruit weight in sugar, pectin or no pectin.
Lemon Juice will help to cut the very sweet nature of this jam and I would recommend its
inclusion, say the juice of one lemon to every 2 kilo of hulled strawberries. (Hulling a strawberry
means cutting out the stem and the white centre of the berry, this is easily done with a small
sharp knife).
Sugar – less/more/same. I have in the past been an advocate of the same, weight for weight,
but over the years, as my taste buds seem to reject excessive sweetness, I have been opting
for a little less sugar for most jams, I would suggest that to every two kilos of hulled fruit, use one
and three quarter kilos of fine grade caster sugar.
Strawberries are notoriously low in pectin and although the lemon juice will help the set, in order
for you not to have to cook too much to get a set. Testing for a set is easy, have a well chilled
saucer or plate and test small drops of the jam until it is set (means you can run your finger
through the jam and the jam will stay parted) Commercial pectin is not easily obtained, but try
http://www.bakeandbrew.com.au and you will find it. Follow the instruction on the packet.
Hull the berries and with about half the sugar, mix together and leave stand for the juices to
run, then put into a jam saucepan (or a big stainless steel pan) and slowly allow to come to
heat. It is said that to warm the balance of the sugar so that when you put that into the pot
along with the lemon juice, it will not ‘shock’ the jam. The pectin is usually added three quarters
of the way through the cooking process, so when the jam has started to show signs of setting. If
the foaming of the jam is excessive, then a knob of butter dropped onto the surface of the jam
will stop that.
Don’t stir vigorously, this will break up the fruit and the object is to retain as much of the fruit as
possible. Bottle in clean, warm jars and seal with paper seals, also available from Fowlers
Vacola.
By contrast the other very public dog in town was Boofy, the proud pet of one Mrs Snow. She,
like George lived up near the hospital in a neat home that had immaculate front flower
gardens, not many trees and shrubs as was my mothers want with a front garden, but over
plantings of flowers. I doubt very much that Mrs Snow herself had ever ventured into the garden
or indeed, ever ventured off the pathways that defined activities on the block, its even hard to
imagine Mrs Snow being anything but the complete lady and never, never touching the soil,
cooking was I am sure her province and once again, my father Lindsay was a firm friend and
either he or Morrie Condon always delivered Mrs Snows meat order.
Mrs Snow used what was then described as a Clara Bow lip line, it was sort of an exaggeration
of the lips when lips simply did not exist or for the young, a fashion statement. Things like botox
and other methods to puff up the lips were not available. Mrs Snow, along with one or to other
women all sported the luscious exaggerated lips. I was fascinated. Mrs Snows life was Boofy the
dog, he was a rather small yappy sort of pug who seemed to take offence at anything that
was not 100% to his liking and was loud about it. None of the kids in the town were in the least
bit afraid of Boofy, but terrified of Mrs Snow. Mrs Snow was all about keeping Boofy clean and
had developed the practise of wiping his small bum and penis when he performed his natural
functions, which in the case of a dog, could be often. The minute she saw him either lower his
rump or lift his leg, she would dive for the wiping device in her bag and Boofy was given the
once over. None of us could believe it, so we followed Mrs Snow until we had seen the
occurrence enough times, laughed heartily and stayed a good long distance from Mrs Snow
who would swing her bag at anyone she thought was misbehaving. She was deadly accurate
with the swinging bag, so we all kept well away, but enjoyed the experience.
She was, above all a lady, married and I think childless, Her house was immaculate, so too her
dog. I remember that Mr Snow was an on going enigma and I can only recall seeing him on
one occasion, Dad said he worked at the local milk factory. My Poppy was the only one
allowed to call her by name, they went to school together and Pop knew them both well. In
later years when Pop was installed in the old age section of the local hospital (which he hated
and was constantly escaping) Mrs Snow would cross the street to the hospital from her small,
neat house and bring pop an extra sandwich or a slice of cake.
I knew that I wanted a dog and so began a program of persistent nagging and starting to take
note of all the expectant dogs in the town. It has to be free, even when I had convinced Mum
and Dad to let me have a dog, the concept of paying for it was quite alien and impossible. I
promised everything, I would take care of it, of course I would feed it and of course I would
collect more bottles and sell them to Mr Dillon for a half penny each to help defray costs. I
promised all and everything that Mum and Dad asked, nothing was too much trouble. I was a
good nagger and in the end they gave in and said yes. I was overjoyed.
“Mum, can you get me a collar when I get the dog?” I asked and Mum gave me one of those
looks that said ‘Oh god here he goes again!! But the dog had to be real or I was going to be
unmercifully teased and taunted by those kids who had dogs that had it all. It was a bit of a
status symbol.
Port Fairy was not all that big, I could easily get around it on the Bike that Dad had repaired
and painted bright red for me the previous Xmas. I started my campaign, I knew most of the
dogs in town, either to say hello to or to avoid for fear of getting the seat of my pants ripped by
them. I wanted a dog that was not too big, not too small, just sort of in the middle. It didn’t take
me long to find out that Lorna Osmonds mother’s dog was expecting puppies. Great!! Only
three doors from my house and a house into which I was not afraid of venturing.
“Mrs Osmond!” I sort of nervously asked with a look of pure pleading on my face…”Can I have
one of the puppies when they come?” Mrs Osmond was a tease, Norma said so, she looked at
me with one of those slightly cross looks she was good at “what makes you think that Dolly is
having pups my lad?” I looked over at the reclining body of Dolly, stretched full tilt in front of the
wood stove, with a belly that was seething with life and tits that had even begun to show signs
of milk, “I just thinks she is Mrs Osmond… pleaseeee!!” I whined.
“Well if your mother says it’s ok, then yes!” I let out a whoop of joy. ‘Boy or Girl?” asked Mrs
Osmond, ‘Boy if I can please, Mum says they are easier to look after. “Done!”
Norma Osmond had a speech impediment and was confined to a wheelchair, but I
understood her easily, I had been talking with Norma all my life. She was no fool and despite
the fact that many people treated her as if she was mentally deficient, she was far brighter that
most of the people in town. I pushed Norma’s chair up and down Bank Street for a bit, kind of
doing wheelies around the pavement cracks and asking about how long Dolly had been
pregnant. “She has about a week to go!” Norma reckoned. ‘But you will not be able to have a
pup for three or four weeks” Norma said, has to be fed by Dolly to make it strong. I’d forgotten
about that. “Can’t I take it home and bring it up to your place three or four times a day?” I was
trying. “Not a chance Dolly will not let it suckle if you do that.” Norma was right, I had to be
patient.
Monty was born six days later, a ball or golden brown fur with a wet black nose. Part Corgi and
part who knows, he was destined to be a good runner, a good swimmer and faithful to the
point of pain. Monty was mine from the first moment I set eyes on him as he blindly sought his
mothers teats after she had licked him all over. Love at first sight. I even named him moments
after he emerged from his mothers womb. My Monty.