When I was a kid, like 12 or 14 I guess, I lived on this huge Pastoral / Agricultural College in the middle of Queensland, Australia.
My father was an instructor and farmer and we, like all the faculty and their families, lived in one of the staff houses, on the campus which was over 1000 acres. It was like a small town and we never ran out of things to do or kids to play with, really a blessed childhood looking back. None us ever knew that there was any other way to live I suppose. There was a swimming pool, basketball and tennis courts, olympic size trampoline and a gym and a billion farm life related things to do, dams, a river, cattle, horses you name it a thousand acres is a pretty big backyard. We even grew a stand of christmas trees to chop ever year.
Anyway, when I was there I became good friends with this one boy in particular he was just a little older and like so many boys who are just a little old that you he was just a little cooler, at least I thought he was. His little sister was a cutie too, anyhow that's an entire other story! So my mate 'Bones' we all called him, and I used to do everything together. Bones was not my very best friend, that honor was and will always be reserved for Craig, who lost his battle with asthma just a few short years after this time may he rest in peace. Asthma will fuck you up, do NOT mess with it.
Craig live in town which was a thirty minute bicycle ride along the highway, so Bones was the day to day knock around mate. Bones was into all sorts of interesting things like archery and fishing. He was known as Bones because he used to hunt, skin and tan pretty much anything we fished or trapped or bow hunted and there was always various random animal parts drying or cooking or just around the place.
We'd use the bows to hunt vermin around the chook pens, there was thousands of birds to stock the college and faculty kitchens with meat and eggs, and for students to learn about their husbandry. We'd pack our bikes up with gear and ride down to the river for a full day or sometimes camp out overnight. The river was full of interesting things including Eels, which we prized for there long and interesting skins, although they didn't taste as good as the spangled perch which were small and bony but so very sweet. That flesh to this day is the best tasting freshwater fish I've ever had!
I remember one day we deiced it would be a fun thing to shoot and arrow straight up in the air and dodge it as it returned to earth, how we survived I'll never know. The rule among all us kids was, If someone got hurt enough to cry SCATTER, if someone got hurt so bad they didn't cry then go for help, but most of us were fairly good at first aid. Avoiding adult intervention is the name of the game and sometimes we ranged a long way from help.
The trigger for this ramble down memory lane is that just this week my Dad, who is a Men's Shed regular, came home and told me that Bones' Father had just moved to town! Which blew my mind just on it's own BUT, and this is a real kicker, Mr. bones Snr is the owner of a fully functional 1/10 scale ships cannon. He also might be interested in my Steampunk and medieval festivals and events. HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE????!!!!????
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