Chapter 21 - The Tractor Cometh

This is a cement mixer, I know, not a tractor, but it is the only photo I have that shows the area behind the garage that needs clearing in case of fire.

One Saturday morning, over tea and toast, Smash informed me that he’d found “The One”. I didn’t feel threatened, but I did wonder which “One” he was talking about. A man of many passions, he might have been referring to a broken down Land Rover, or a new surveillance system, a smoker BBQ, earth moving equipment or any number of other enrichments to his life.

On this occasion, the object of his attention was a tractor – a Kubota MX5100, to be exact.

Smash, turning his laptop in my direction: ‘What do you think?’

‘Nice colour.’

Smash, pretending this is important so he can keep the conversation going: ‘Yeah, it’s really good isn’t it.’

‘How much?’

‘It comes with a slasher and forklift. I’m thinking I’m going to buy it.’

‘Thinking, or going to?’

‘Four in one bucket – exactly what we need to push back that bush behind the shed.’

‘Does it have a seatbelt?’

‘50 HP.’

‘Is that good?’

‘The business can buy it. It’ll be The Event Tractor.’

We continued chatting in this way, until it became apparent that he wasn’t just talking, he really was going to buy it. Almost immediately, I started to worry.

Anxious by nature, 27 years of marriage to Smash has not made me any less so. I’m not blaming him – I think his cavalier attitude towards rules and regulations is good for me in some ways, and balances out my risk averse nature, although I do sometimes wonder about the chicken and egg situation re the anxiety. I repeated my question about the seat belt.

Smash looked at me kindly. ‘Tractors don’t have seat belts, Love.’

‘Well they should.’

‘They’ve got ROPS,’ Smash said, pointing to the roof over the driver’s seat. ‘Roll Over Protection System.’

Images of the tractor rolling over and over and over down a hill flashed through my mind; I kept them to myself. Smash was excited, and happy. The Covid-19 pandemic had sucked a lot of joy out of his life, exhausted him. It was a relief to hear some energy in his voice.

So, on our next trip down to Nundub, we detoured into Boonah to meet the Kubota. While Smash went for a test drive, I walked the dogs around the sales yard, checking out all the other tractors. I stopped at one, told Goose and Schultzy to sit and stay, then got up into the driver’s seat. It was smaller than the one Smash was test driving, very comfortable. I grabbed hold of the steering wheel and imagined driving all over the block, mowing grass, pushing rocks around, knocking stuff over. I could definitely see the appeal. I could also see that Schultzy had run off and was now barking at Smash to get out of his tractor, so I got out of mine, told Goose she was a good girl, then went to join the boys.

By the time I reached them, Smash and Schultzy were standing beside the tractor looking excited. He (Smash) had the flushed, wide-eyed look he gets when he is about to spend a lot of money in one go. Schultzy lifted his leg on the big tractor tyre and the salesman made a joke about how we had to buy it now. Oh, how we laughed – all the way to the sales office. It was a done deal; the tractor would be delivered in two days’ time.

Christmas! That’s what it felt like on delivery day – or Christmas Eve. Smash fidgeted and bustled, kept cocking his head and asking, ‘Did you hear something?’ every time a car went over the grid near the entrance to our property. Schultzy, perhaps sensing Smash’s excitement, stuck close to his heels, barking every now and then in support. The delivery time came and went. An hour passed, then another. Smash wore a trail to the edge of the pad where you can just see a bit of the road. After lunch, he decided go up the hill to ring the sales guy and see what had happened. He took the 2–way radio with him, calling me every few minutes: ‘Any sign? Over.’

‘No. Over.’

‘They said it should be here by now. Over.’

‘It’s not. Over.’

When he came back down the hill he repeated what the salesman had told him, and looked at me suspiciously, as if I might be hiding a ten-wheeler semi-trailer and a bright orange tractor behind my back.

Then, finally around mid-afternoon, it arrived on a big semi-trailer with space for two tractors. The Kubota sat alone at the back, tethered by chains.

The delivery guy, Terry was a chatty fellow, and very quickly it became obvious why he was running so late. I guess it’s a lonely life, driving trucks. He said yes to a cup of coffee and told us all about the last two jobs he’d had, the routes he’d taken to get there, the road closures, an alternate route he should’ve taken, the weather, some idiot on the Boonah Fassifern Road who’d thought it would be clever to overtake near the bloody Kalbar Connection – the whole time, not moving a single inch closer to the tractor.

Agonising.

Smash was blinking, trying to keep his eyes on Terry when all he wanted to do was turn and gaze adoringly at his beautiful new Kubota (that was still sitting on the back of the trailer half an hour after Terry’s arrival).

‘Well! I’ll leave you to it!’ I said, when Terry drew breath, hoping he would take the hint.

‘Right,’ Smash said, rubbing his hands together.

Terry sighed and tossed the remains of his coffee on the ground, then asked Smash: ‘Ever driven a tractor before?’

Smash and Terry chatting while the tractor waits.

I left them to it and went up to the shed to wash up, watching from the kitchen window. Smash was doing a lot of rapid nodding, his signature ‘impatiently listening’ look. He doesn’t take instruction well and prefers to work things out for himself. Once the tractor was firmly on Nundub soil, there was no stopping him from climbing up into the seat. I went down to witness the first drive, joined Terry at the semi-trailer who was still talking, apparently to himself. ‘That’s it, that’s it, steady, takes practice, he’ll get the hang of it.’

While watching Smash got the hang of things, Terry gave me a tutorial on Tractor Operating Signals: arm and hand movements that the person on the ground (me) could give to the tractor driver (Smash) to help with picking up stuff, because the driver can’t actually see what is in front of the bucket once they are close enough to pick it up. I thought these signals were great, helpful and time saving. Smash thought they were annoying, and stubbornly refused to look at me while attempting to dislodge and pick up a large rock.

‘He’ll get it,’ Terry said.

‘Mm,’ I said, doubting this.

Terry didn’t seem in a rush to leave, so while Smash practiced his unguided rock moving skills, Terry and I discussed tractor maintenance and safety measures.

‘Verrry, very easy to roll them,’ he said, in an encouraging way, as if this was something we would be wanting to do. Then he worked through his collection of tractor rolling anecdotes, some which resulted in the driver actually dying – or as Terry put it ‘Ending up on the wrong side of the grass’. ‘Not many people walk away from a tractor roll,’ Terry said, smacking his lips. I rubbed the back of my neck and moved the conversation away from fatal tractor accidents and back to his special subject.

‘So, where are you off to next, Terry?

I can’t remember exactly what he said, but I do remember there was some indecision about the route he should take, where he might stop for tea and what he might have – a monologue I contributed nothing to because I was busy stressing about tractor accidents.

After half an hour, when it became clear Smash wasn’t going to stop driving his new tractor any time soon, Terry conceded it was time to go. We’d become quite close by then; I wished him a safe trip and said I hoped the planned schnitzel lived up to his expectations. Terry leaned out the window and left me with one last safety reminder: ‘Remember: never go across a hill. Always up and down’ then he turned his semi-trailer in a large circle and headed off down the drive, past Smash, who was now slashing the field, and by the sound of things, hitting the odd rock. I went inside to write, flinching every time I heard the slasher blades hit something hard.

Smash came back an hour or so later, drove the tractor right up to the shed and parked outside the sliding door.

‘It’s blocking the view,’ I said.

He looked confused. What else could I possibly want to look at.

I mentioned Terry’s final words, the ones about not driving across a hill, only up or down, then immediately felt like a killjoy. Didn’t matter, he wasn’t listening anyway – he’d gone out to wipe bits of grass off the engine casing with one of my favourite tea towels.

It wasn’t until the following morning, when Smash got up at 6.30AM, and stayed up, that I understood the deep level of devotion he felt for his tractor. Smash never gets up early, not unless he has to, and if he does have to, for say, a flight or something, he is completely silent, stony faced, robotic, as if sleep walking. Now, here he was, skipping around the kitchen bench, asking if I wanted tea, chatting about the weather (good for slashing), and getting a whole lot of songs lined up on his phone that he could listen to through ear buds whilst slashing.

‘That bottom paddock is going to be tricky. Lots of rocks and logs.’

I didn’t even know we had a bottom paddock.

‘I’m going to get big speakers attached to the ROPS – like they do in India.’

Goodo.

‘Soon as I’ve done the field, I’ll tackle the last of that concrete mess up by the dam.’

‘Okey dokey’.

‘Then the dam wall.’

This got my attention. ‘Make sure you go up and down, not across.’

‘It’s not steep at all.’

‘You have to go up and down! Terry said.’

Smash made a ‘pfft’ noise.

I know Smash doesn’t like being told what to do, especially by me, it makes him want to do the opposite thing, so I should’ve just pretended I didn’t care. But the thing was, I did care. A lot. From the moment he’d said he wanted a tractor I’d had a bad feeling about it, (and I don’t think is unreasonable, given his reputation), which was why I lost my temper later in the day when I saw him over on the dam wall, driving across, not up and down. Not only that, he had Schultzy on his lap. ‘Go ahead and kill yourself,’ I yelled at him, ‘but if you kill Schultzy, I’ll never speak to you again.’

Smash resisted the urge to point out that he would be dead, so it wouldn’t matter if I spoke to him or not. I think he got my point and understood how upset it made me. He promised not to do it again, in a way that made it obvious he was just doing it to be nice, not because he thought it was sensible. He also installed one of Henry’s old Learner Driver plates on the back of his seat, which was funny, apparently.

Over the next few days, Smash spent pretty much every daylight hour on his tractor. I have honestly never seen him so contented, so fulfilled. I asked him to explain to me why he loved it so much and he said, ‘I don’t know. It just makes me happy.’ Rocks were still a challenge, as was following my signals, but by the end of that trip he was feeling confident enough to tackle the firebreak behind the garage were the Leptospermum grew. It was a steeper hill than the dam wall, but he assured me he would be careful, and I almost believed him.

Smash’s preferred parking spot for the tractor - right outside the front door.