Bottle ‘o Rum

“Fairfield” was every boy’s dream. “Fairfield” was my grandparents’ dairy farm at Bald Hills, Queensland, Australia.

Although only 20 km by railway from Brisbane, in the late 1940s early 1950s, Bald Hills was an isolated settlement surrounded by small family run dairy farms.

I called my grandparents Gramma and Daddad. I was just as close to them as I was my parents and I followed Daddad everywhere. The good thing about “Fairfield” was that there were cows, dorgs, cats, chooks (chickens) horses. My favourite dog was Rex and he would always be with me. In addition to the animals, there were a lot of out buildings.

When I was a kid, I had complete freedom at “Fairfield”. All I had to do is report in at lunch time (which was never a problem) and at bath time (which was a problem) or I would go in voluntarily if I was hungry.

“Fairfield” was established in May 1858 by my great-great grandfather William and from that day onwards, my family never threw anything away, so, for a kid there was heaps of junk and interesting things to look at and poke through. I was never bored.

Of all the outbuildings, the barn was one of my favourites. I was not allowed into the barn before an old bush carpenter Alf, rebuilt it in the late 40s. Mum said it would fall down on me. I would get into trouble if I got caught in there.

But after Alf rebuilt it, not a problem and I would spend hours just looking through the trunks, tool boxes and packing cases. There was bags of feed and sometimes a lot of mice which my ‘ol mate Rex would catch once I disturbed them.

Daddad had a work bench in there covered with all sorts of things. He would rebuild his bee hives on the bench. If I had a bit of a project going at the time, I would borrow things and forget to return them. Daddad would then give me the chase up!

One day I was poking through all this stuff and I found a bottle of rum!

I knew all about rum because my dad had read “Treasure Island” to me and all the sailors drank rum.

But then I thought it a little strange, how come there was a bottle of rum in the barn? My grandfather was a Methodist Lay Preacher and he scorned on booze.

Mum and Dad never drank either but they had a bottle of cooking sherry in the cupboard. Well they said it was cooking sherry.

Anyway, I took the top off this bottle of rum and gave it a sniff. Struth! How come people drink rum when it smells like that?

The problem was, the cockroaches had grazed pretty heavily on the label and I could not understand all what was written except the word RUM.

What I did not know, it was a bottle of “Bay Rum”, an after shave lotion!