The Shire

Sunday 2nd December

After we dropped Steve and Scott back at their flat, we continued south along the Princes Highway and across Tom Ugly's bridge into The Shire to see Pippa and David, who you might remember we met on holiday in Noosa.

The Shire's real name is Sutherlandshire and it's an area of parkland and waterways and firmly white middle-class values backing onto the Georges River and the waters of Port Hacking. The streets are full of older houses on large blocks of land with the sorts of backyards that grew cricketing legends. Pippa and David's house turns out to be exactly the same; not only a huge backyard but one with jacaranda trees and a visting kookaburra who enjoys his share of everything and anything from the gas barbeque parked against the garden wall.

We'd been meaning to get together with Pippa and David for weeks but someone's child was always ill (usually theirs) or else Darren was always on call during the weekend while David was at home. We finally made an arrangement to visit today but it later transpired it was their son's birthday so the long-planned visit turned out to be much more expensive than we'd anticipated because, although Pippa protested we shouldn't, it would have been rude to have pitched up without a nice birthday present for Ewan.

"My family will be there" Pippa's text message had read. "Don't be scared, not all of them".

Pippa comes from a large Italian family who grew up in The Shire. David comes from Glasgow; they met in a bar in Sydney while David was having a year out from University. He enjoyed his year so much that he came back to marry Pippa rather than finish his degree, leaving behind an enormous trail of student debts he's been running away from ever since.

"He's in the right place then" says Darren, "He's a wanted man, a felon. What better place than Sydney for a crim?"

Now I'd heard all about Pippa's family while were away in Noosa; the two gay brothers, one of them a florist, and the gay sister who'd stolen her brother's thunder by announcing she was a lesbian twelve hours before he told his parents he was gay, for which he's never forgiven her.

So with three out of seven of the siblings being gay, Pippa and David find themselves referred to as the breeders, like anyone else in the family who's decided to have children. This leaves the gay siblings anxious they're being written out of their fathers (substantial) estate, which their futures are sort of reliant upon. It's an interesting family set-up so I was intrigued at the prospect of meeting some of them.

"Nice to see you" said Pippa as she met us at the door. "And God, I've just had David's mother on the phone from Glasgow complaining I haven't sent photos of the children since the beginning of November". And with this she launched into a full on whining Glasgow accent, the sort Lorraine Kelly might use after emptying the GMTV Christmas drinks cabinet, hey youse, dinnie firget we niver see those wee children, we've never seen the baby y'know.

David rolled his eyes. "They're always drunk. Why do you think I left Glasgow?".

"Anyway, come in" she continued. "Meet the family".

The family were seated around the dining table tucking into a bowl of crisps and you could almost feel that sort of family tension in the air. Pippa introduced me to two of her sisters and one of her brothers before guiding me by the elbow into the kitchen.

"So Kate's the lesbian one" she said, "And the fat one's Kelly. My word she's fat, wait till she turns around and you'll see she's got an arse shelf, for god's sake".

Just then Pippa's sister-in-law came in.

"And this is Emily, my brother's wife. She's another breeder, aren't you Emily? Along with my brother up in Mount Isa; he's got a house full as well"

Emily pulled a face. "Mount Isa. Bloody filthy place to live, you blow your nose and the handkerchief's black afterwards, I think they're crazy"

"So you've how many children?" I asked

"I've three" she replied. "I'd like another but well, Michael's been, you know". She made a scissors gesture with her hand.

Then Pippa got called away to chop halloumi cheese and Emily continued to tell me about her fertility woes until I felt I'd known her very personally all my life.

Eventually I managed to escape and found David and the rest of the blokes hovering around the barbeque, stubbies in hand. It was now impossible to look at Michael without thinking of the scissors gesture.

"Ah" I said to him, "barbequed halloumi cheese. Pippa got us started on that up in Noosa"

"Yeah well, we're proper wogs. All the wogs eat halloumi cheese"

I winced. "Oh god, I still find that word really hard"

"What, wog?"

"Yeah. That was really offensive when I was a kid, like as in golliwog"

"Ah well" he replied "it used to be offensive here too but then we started calling ourselves wogs and now it's okay"

"I'm proud to be a wog" shouted Kelly from her position closest to the bowl of crisps. She still hadn't actually stood up so it was hard to decide whether Pippa was exaggeraing about the arse shelf.

"And there's nothing wrong with calling someone a wog now; it just means someone from Europe, though not a lebo. A lebo is a Lebanese. The Lebanese are all hoons; duff-duff boys"

"Duff duff boys?" I asked. Pippa came out of the back door with a huge salad, hawking around the barbeque waiting to top it with the halloumi cheese.

"Yeah" she said. "Duff duff as in the duff duff of the stereo in their suped-up cars. You'll see them tonight when you drive back through Brighton-le-Sands; lebo kids, hoons the lot of them".

Just then one of the kids came screeching to a halt at her feet. "Auntie Pippa, Ewan's bouncing too hard on the trampoline".

"Don't dob Oscar" she replied. "Dobbers wear nappies". Bloody great girl she muttered after he'd walked away. Such a souk, just like his mother.

When David had finished cooking the lamb we sat around the garden table for dinner. The reisdent kookaburra came to sit in the tree and eventually laughed his way to a piece of the meat himself, which he held in his beak and slammed furiously against the branch before he ate it.

"A bit tough that lamb" said Pippa. "And tasteless. Even the kookie's having trouble with it".

"So tell me about aborigines" I said. Everyone stopped to look at me, wondering what I was going to ask. "I mean, it's offensive to call them an abo, right?"

"Well, no" said Michael. "They call themselves abos. But usually they call themselves blackfella"

"Yeah", said Emily. "I was working with an aborigine girl and when I said "what's your ethnicity?", she said "I'm blackfella, what about you?""

"And what did you answer?" I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm whitefella? I thought that was the answer she was looking for".

It was a priviledge to be part of this family for the evening, I thought. If we'd had friends and neighbours like this in the city then our year would have been different, but you don't meet people like this living in the eastern suburbs because they can't afford to buy property there.

It was dark by eight o'clock. The family went home and we went to sit at the kitchen table.

"Thank god that's over" said David, opening a bottle of wine. "Now we can open the good stuff".