For as long as I can remember, they were friends. My father and Bill Ford both went to high school in Rushworth. This, in my own view, is a claim to fame available to far too few people. For the life of me I couldn’t tell you what classes they took or the score-line of any of the football matches they played. Those stories would surely have existed once, but have failed to survive the years. Instead, all we ever heard about was the different kinds of trouble they managed to make for themselves in their youth.
For as long as I can remember, they were friends. My father and Bill Ford both went to high school in Rushworth. This, in my own view, is a claim to fame available to far too few people. For the life of me I couldn’t tell you what classes they took or the score-line of any of the football matches they played. Those stories would surely have existed once, but have failed to survive the years. Instead, all we ever heard about was the different kinds of trouble they managed to make for themselves in their youth.
Trouble is no different to anything else in this world – it comes in all different shapes and sizes. The stories my father told about Bill involved trouble of nearly every conceivable kind and the tales were so outlandish as to defy belief. They included an occasion on which Bill determined that my father’s failure to assist with the milking was an act of ignominy too great to be ignored and reacted in the only way a reasonable human being could under the circumstances – by stuffing a live pig into my father’s sleeping bag. To this day, he sleeps with one eye open, in a state of eternal vigilance.
Whilst my father didn’t help with the milking, he was otherwise happy to assist with the farm chores. For this reason, he agreed to help Bill remove a tree stump. What Bill had against the tree stump in question was never entirely clear, but he was determined to eliminate it forever from the landscape. My father suggested digging it out. Bill said he knew where he could get his hands on gelignite. Faced with a choice between hours of physical labour and hard-core explosives, they inevitably chose the latter. However, the gelignite from the local Co-op only came in packs of six. Unused gelignite, so argued Bill, could be unstable and a risk to others. It was, they agreed, best to use it all.
It is fair to say that the resulting explosion rocked the greater Rushworth area. The stump was either vaporised or launched into orbit – it was impossible to tell which. Such was the sheer force of the blast that, several kilometres away, chickens stampeded from one end of the shed to the other, resulting in multiple casualties. The detonation was all that anyone in Rushworth spoke of for days. To the best of my knowledge, my father has not touched a gelignite since.
At some point, their lives took them in entirely different directions. Bill left school to work on the land, whereas my father left Rushworth to continue his education. This meant moving in with my great Aunt in Coburg and catching a tram down Sydney Road to University High. It’s impossible for me to imagine what a seismic shift this must have been for him. Still, they remained friends. I think that’s partly because, although he left school early, Bill had a genuine thirst for knowledge. He devoured books, especially those about World War 1. He and my father shared a passion for information about the world. It was not the only interest they shared – both adored Jaguar motor cars.
Memorably, they once competed in a car rally, with Bill persuading Pete that they should take the MG convertible. The great flaw of the car was that it was impossible to both carry luggage and close the roof. Not to be deterred, they proceeded to improvise. My father rugged up in his old Army Great Coat, put on a beanie and – because it was winter and the wind was particularly cruel and sharp – the goggles he used with the whipper-snipper. So fierce was the wind that my father had to remove his false teeth for safe keeping. Bill made certain to take a photo of my father in all his toothless glory. The resulting image – which looked like a homeless Mork – was not quickly forgotten. My attempt to have this photo added to his driver’s license and passport was swiftly put down.
I remember Bill best from the annual camping trip we’d take. These were the self described ‘men’s camps’ in which my father, brother and I would set up tent by the Goulburn River along with Bill and his sons for a couple of days. I was not very fond of camping, but I loved those trips. Bill made even ordinary things exciting. When giving us a lift, he didn’t simply turn around the roundabout once. Instead, he kept going round and around until we were shrieking like parrots in the back seat. It had never occurred to me that such a thing was possible. I can honestly say that I have never looked at a roundabout the same way since. Shortly before he passed away, Bill succeeded in convincing the nurses that he had to be discharged from Hospital because he’d been selected to play full forward for Shepparton United that Saturday. It was just like him. Bill Ford’s life was a huge – one filled with hard work, humour and family, and yet I’ll always think of him as larger than life.
In my father’s house at Tyabb, a pair of photos sit together. The pictures have two people in common. Each shows a grey Ferguson tractor, my father sitting behind the wheel and Bill standing beside it. They are each looking into the camera, smiling in a way that’s fitting for all the trouble they ever caused. More than fifty years separate the pictures, the last one having been taken only weeks ago. They are the bookends of a friendship. He will be remembered.