The Farm Beyond Barbed Wire

G’day everyone,

I have tried for weeks to finish the previous chapter on hopes and dreams. I know what I believe, what I have felt, but cannot yet put it into words. So I’ll move on and write what comes to me more easily.

Since leaving the city for farming, I’ve mostly shared the outer journey — the visible changes, the easy stories fit for newsletters and social media. Only fragments of the inner journey have slipped through. The truth is, the outer journey is only the tip of the iceberg piercing the ocean’s skin. Beneath lies the real odyssey: a wilderness, a labyrinth, where world-swallowing fear and boundless love wait side by side.

It begins like this: a boy grows up without asking much. Life is a stream of small pleasures, never looking back, following appetite and impulse. One day he looks up and finds himself a man in his mid-twenties, finally in a position that lets him breathe. He’s rubbing shoulders with someone who teaches him to journal. He reads books for the first time and, like Alice, falls down a rabbit hole. When he surfaces, the world he returns to has shifted. He no longer belongs to it. He peers down on his conversations as though they belonged to someone else, a play performed below his balcony. For the first time, he catches sight of himself and voices that timeless question.

With new eyes, he rides his bike to work as the sun cracks open on the ocean’s horizon, whole streets pour out—cars leaving houses, forming a grand convoy of trudging masses heading toward the city for another day of modern bondage. At dusk, he shadows the red-lit path of the returning convoy; passing the houses, he sees lights come on and silhouettes appear. Screens fire up. Uber Eats arriving. Television in the background while steadily scrolling. The dread of dawn is fast approaching.

The weekend finally loosens the chains of the week. But we awaken once more to a bondage of our own making. Pools must be cleaned, cars left sparkling, lawns like putting greens gaining nods of approval from over the fence. Dinner parties follow their script with talk of sport between men, as the women gossip and talk of their children's achievements. Renovations and toys are proudly unveiled—the self, carefully concealed. Stone benchtops are admired before dinner is served. These people are nice, the meal is delicious—yet having young kids becomes a great escape passage.

Monday morning arrives with the smell of hot coffee as the ritual settles in — “How’s the new boat?” “Did you buy that bike you were looking at?” “Great.” “How did your team do?” “I worked most of the weekend.” “I can’t believe those protestors aren’t being locked up; that’s the third time they’ve made me late to work.” Endless chatter, little heard. Words exchanged like currency, never intimacy. A decade working together and their children remain strangers to me—I do not know their names.

I was aching inside, my world tilting, idols collapsing. Whether sitting at a park bench, airport lounge, or cafe, I was alone in a cinema watching flickering faces pass by me, scripted lines being repeated. Time slipped past in a haze—neither dream nor nightmare. Numb. Unsettled. Far away. I longed for something blunt, something obvious to jolt me. Why this uncertainty after achieving so much? You fool. You ungrateful fool. Look around you!

A murky flood of questions burned through the nights and into the mornings. Why so confused, what are these emotions? I wish there was a simple solution. I travelled back in time to unpick the past, hoping it may help me move forwards.

I’d grown up on a farm until around 11. Mum and Dad were broke, so they gave it up, and against Dad’s will, he now had to chase money. He worked away a lot after that. Four years went by fast. I was a ratbag at school, no one knew how much I was wagging. Mum met with the principal and whatever he said had us leaving abruptly. Dad put me to work; I was turning 15 soon. The harder I worked, the more recognition I gained. These men liked me and showed me their ways. The rest is a blur. I left it all behind me at the school’s gate. No time for friends, birthdays, or other idle fancies. I was a man now, and I’d prove a successful one!

I learned the ropes fast and even quicker the ladders. I'd sold my soul; work was all that mattered. I worked away a lot, and when I was home Emily said I was still distant. When I first met Emily, I was a boy disguised as a man—vain, arrogant, drunk on my own certainty. That she had the strength and patience to walk beside me through those years is beyond reason. Old photographs of us together in that time are often unbearable; the guilt in me rises like a tide until it breaks me into weeping. Our first child arrived when we were still children ourselves. I worked from dark in the mornings until the late darkness of the evening; dinner was often left in the oven. I was blind to what Emily was enduring—until one evening I came home to find her at the door, sobbing, Ava in her arms: ‘Take her, just take her, I can’t do this.’ In that instant something shifted in me. Instinct rose; for the first time I saw clearly what mattered. My wife was drowning, my child needed me, and everything else—meetings, deadlines, obligations—fell away. The importance of work I once refused to miss despite who had died or who was being celebrated was exiled immediately. That night I lay with Ava on the couch, awake to every murmur, every breath, so her exhausted mother could rest. I wish I could say I stayed that attentive from then on. But the truth is, unless Emily cried for help, she was too often left alone. I can't remember the month we got married; only until now do I remember the dates of all my kids' birthdays. Work got all of me, and my family got what was left.

To be continued…….

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