F is for FAMILY. 14 William Street, Port Fairy (Belfast), Victoria. Historical Fiction based on fact.

 

My photo of the Wells family cottage in Port Fairy,

 taken 2014

The little wooden sign painted with a shaky hand (using the

olive paint left from the outside loo) advertised the goods and prices to the passers-by.

He'd always gardened, as had his father before him. The 'green thumb' had been handed on, and he was the lucky one of the five children. Was it a help? Definitely, it meant he'd been able to start work quickly once they found a cottage in their new hometown, named after Belfast in Ireland.

Ellen managed to get paid housework at the big house in the main street and that kept the 'wolf from the door' for the first year, although in these parts it was more likely to be foxes. The darn things continued to nose at the hen house, and he'd had to re-wire the run three times.
Fences were a vital part of life in this area. He checked them carefully each morning for the tell-tale signs of rabbits burrowing under or for holes pushed through the wire. If he was to keep providing vegetables, white meat, and eggs to the seven of them he'd have to get a gun. He'd smelt the aroma of rabbit and kangaroo stew around the town, and he licked his lips as he thought of this change on their dinner table.  

            Apart from selling gooseberries at Christmastime, he sold the canes and bare-rooted cuttings later and potted plants about Easter. He kept a generous sized plot for family use, and it wouldn't be long now till fruiting. He imagined the smell of luscious gooseberry pies. That was one thing his wife was good at, cooking. She could turn her hand to make a tasty feast from whatever he brought home. Like that big Snapper, or Bream as they called it back home, the one he'd got down at the wharf. Some herbs from the patch and lemons from the tree, and they were set up just like royalty.

 

The rose blooms kept him busy for three seasons spring, summer, and the last of them in autumn, but mainly around Christmas. He found it a strange time here -- so hot and dry, causing him to sweat heavily and took a bit of getting used to. The season was upside down to their snowy winters at year's end. 

 

He rubbed his calloused hand over his bearded chin and sighed. A picture filled his mind of the time in Kent when he'd just met Ellenor, how they courted and married in 1838, nearly twenty years ago. He never dreamt at that young age they would venture across the seas with their loaded trunks and four children. Despair hit Ellen hard at that time, not only leaving her family but with her three bairns buried in English soil. 

 

They hadn't known she was 'with child' again when they boarded the ship, nor that the babe would die the first year they settled in this new country. Still, he thought, there's another one on the way again now. Thank God, it's a much healthier place for a family here.