“You run from the river, when it long ran over you…”

I once wrote the following in an article for a Smallfarmers magazine. It was entitled “The Passions and Emotions of Smallfarming: Place, Experience and Meaning”:

I was brought up on a large sheep farm in Southland. It was called “The Mains”, a Scottish term for the farm headquarters. My country childhood involved expeditions to every part – sheds, stables, pasture, river, pond, old railway line, shelter belts, pine tree plantations. I could be cowboy, farmer, hunter, explorer. I spent a lot of time fishing for trout in the river, building tree huts, hunting for rats and rabbits with Lassie, my fox terrier, riding horses, swimming in the river in summer, sledding down the snowy hillslopes in winter, often getting away from everything and enjoying being alone in my favourite grove of old gnarled pine trees or nestled down amongst the high grass not yet cut for hay. In autumn I gathered pine cones to sell to the “townies” to supplement my pocket money…I later bought Waikoha Smallfarm in the Waikato largely out of nostalgia for that long ago childhood – I had lived in cities for the previous three decades. There are many layers to the emotional meaning of my smallfarm, but one of the most basic involves a harkening back to my younger days… A smallfarm as a whole is emotionally-loaded to its owners. A smallfarm provides emotional comfort, independence and security. It enables a rural lifestyle characterised by peace and quiet, space, privacy, freedom and self-expression.

These photos (below) are of the Waikaka River running through “The Mains”, the farm I grew up on. I visited there on a stone-collection trip in April 2016. Gold mining dredges were active there in the late 19th century and again just recently – it is an area of inland alluvial gravel-beds. 

“Beside You” by Dave Dobbyn

Here’s to your garden, here’s to your kids
I heard you were in the neighbourhood
I’ve been a long time on the skids
And baby I’m beside you – you run from the river
When it long ran over you

This is for you standing up to a bone-chilling wind
This is for the failures you collected from my sin
And this is for your lonesome tears I never dried
This is for you hanging in in the hope that it never dies
And baby I’m beside you – you run from the river
When it long ran over you

This is for you waiting up though the call never came
For the milk of human kindnesses you collected from our dream
And this is for your lonesome tears I never dried
This is for you hanging in in the hope that it never died
And baby I’m beside you – you run from the river
When it long ran over you

And now I’m running here beside you
And now I’m running here beside you

This is for the traveller on a blinding desert road
Good fortune smile upon you and may love be your only load
And this is for the only one who could quell my burning rage
To anyone whose been a broken man and anyone seen better days

Baby I’m beside you
And now I’m running here beside you
And now I’m running here beside you

Author: tumblestoneblog

Retired Academic, male, living in the New Zealand countryside near Whanganui with his wife as well as Jasper the dog, Fluffy the cat, Dancer and Penny, the horses, and a shed half-full of stones. Email john.tumblestone@gmail.com. View all posts by tumblestoneblog