White Horses, page 12
Serge nodded but looked right at her. It was as if he had read something in her that she herself didn’t yet know.
‘Well, welcome to The Planet. The West’s best-kept secret. Surprised?’
Drift nodded. ‘Yes. Very. What actually goes on here?’
Serge smiled. ‘Now that would take some explaining.’ He reached for a jug in the middle of the table and picked up a glass from a collection on the tray. ‘Have some iced tea? Do you like iced tea?’
‘I’m not sure whether I do or I don’t.’
‘Well life’s all about trying new things . . .’ He winked at her as he poured her a glass.
As Drift was offered platter after platter of food to choose from, she listened in on the lively conversation around her about food, family, farming. As she bit down on some fresh salad she realised it was the most delicious food she’d ever tasted.
Relaxing into a conversation with Serge, she sketched in how she and her dad had come to be on the stock-contracting circuit, even telling him about her mum going missing, possibly drowned, skirting around the edges of the truth about how it had affected her father. She mentioned seeing the little girl on the dunes, asking Serge about her.
Serge shrugged his shoulders, saying it may have been possible it was a Planet child, but unlikely. ‘Life’s mysteries reveal themselves when they are ready,’ he said. ‘Or not.’
Next Serge told her about his boyhood in Argentina, Drift leaning into his story, so engrossed that she was surprised to see Sophia back by her side. Time must’ve flown. She suddenly remembered her dad and wondered if he was OK.
Sophia cast her a warm smile. ‘C’mon. Let’s give you a quick tour before you head back to your father.’
Drift wondered why a mega-rich woman would trouble herself with a stranger like her, but she was on her feet in a flash anyway, even her dad forgotten. ‘I’d love a tour!’
Serge gathered up her empty plate. ‘Meet you in the yards in about half an hour.’ He reached out and squeezed Drift’s hand warmly. ‘Nice to meet you, Drifting girl,’ he said before swinging his long leg over the bench seat and walking towards the kitchen. The other people at the table she’d met also waved her off with smiles and warmth, as they too got up to get on with their day.
At the nest of boots she asked, ‘Is everyone always so nice here? All the time?’
‘Mostly yes. The people here know.’
‘Know what?’
‘That there’s only one way.’
‘And what way is that?’
‘Love. It’s the only truth. Not money. Not power. Not fame. Not possessions.’
‘Love,’ Drift echoed, and in a flash, the image of the little girl appeared in her mind’s eye.
‘Many people in the sleeping world . . . the world out there,’ Sophia gestured towards the front gate, ‘have forgotten they are one with Mother Earth and the Universal laws. They only teach children the law of mankind and economics. That imbalance just creates suffering. There are more forms of capital than money. There’s the Earth’s natural capital, and spiritual capital as well that feeds our souls.’
As Sophia spoke, Drift felt a tremor of unease. She glanced around.
Sophia sensed her nervousness and laid a hand on her arm. ‘I know I use some odd language from time to time, and I can see worry on your face. Are you thinking we’re some kind of religious cult?’
‘Um . . . well, yes,’ Drift said, honestly.
Sophia threw her head back, laughing. ‘A lot of people would think that! What we do here is different. It’s done with spirit and a good dose of science and philosophy about human values. Yes, we have in our time inadvertently attracted a few religious nut cases . . . but effectively this is just a working farm, and a big laboratory on how we can all live more harmoniously with the Earth and each other,’ she said. ‘The only difference is that the people who are drawn here here don’t come to work in the old sense . . . they come to create . . . to craft something that is bigger than their own limited selves. They are no longer asleep. They’ve searched us out because they have woken up. All farms could look like this if humans so choose.’
‘What actually do you mean by “asleep”?’ Drift asked.
‘Well, that’s a complex question. There’s those who are so plugged into their over-loud thoughts, fed by media, technology and old family and societal belief systems. So much so that they can’t hear their intuition and inner guidance any more. Even farmers who are close to the land every day have stopped seeing what they are really doing to it because they’ve been brainwashed by marketing and blinded by outdated science. By considering ourselves separate from the land, we are destroying not just it, but also our own selves. The people who work here have got past the noise of their egos. They know it’s a fact that we all come from the same place and we all go back to the same place. What we do to one person, or one animal, or one soil microbe, we do to ourselves,’ she said, pulling on her workboots. ‘It sounds woo-woo, but really it’s quantum physics.’
Drift stooped to gather her own boots, relishing the conversation, knowing it was along the lines of what Wilma had been saying. Over the course of her travels up and down the country, Drift had also seen how so much of the land had been bullied into producing crop after crop or wool clip after wool clip, and even with the highest inputs of fertilisers and sprays, the soil was now blowing away. Even where irrigation was plentiful, the life of the soil was diminishing and dying, the ecosystem more threadbare than the socks she wore.
‘I know exactly what you’re saying,’ she said. ‘My dad and our friend Wilma are teaching me exactly the sort of things you’re talking about. Dad says the land is “dead from the weight of human ignorance”. And Charlie, another friend, she’s like you too — you’re all on the same page. Awake.’
‘Ah, we soul sisters are everywhere. I could tell by the way you brought the cattle in and handled your horse and dogs that you can see beyond what the world tells you to see. I’m so glad you blew in here, wild girl. There are no chance meetings. You are here for a reason.’
‘What reason?’
Sophia shrugged. ‘I don’t know yet. Let’s just trust and go with the flow. C’mon.’
‘Where to first?’
‘To the temple to meet His Holiness and his fifteen virgin concubines,’ Sophia said, deadpan. Drift gave her a concerned glance. Then Sophia burst out laughing. ‘No! I’m teasing. Not really. I’ll show you our cropping trials.’
Drift was still smiling at Sophia’s joke, wishing her dad was here with this extraordinary woman, when she was momentarily distracted by a tall lean man in coveralls and mad-professor hair walking towards them.
‘Gizmo!’ Sophia called. ‘Want to show Drift your baby?’
‘Ullo! Yes, sure!’ he said in a thick accent as he gestured to a wide double corro door. He rolled it open. Inside lay the most comprehensive machinery workshop Drift had ever seen. It was more like a laboratory with its polished concrete floor and bank of computers on stainless-steel trolleys. There was also an assortment of farm machinery and the coolest of utes, bonnet up, engine exposed.
‘Drift, this is Gizmo. He heads up our mechanical engineering division. At present, they’re mostly focused on steam weed technology for a partner company, Weedtechnics.’
Drift looked to the alien spray units within.
‘Steam?’
‘Yes,’ explained Sophia. ‘Instead of using glyphosate and other herbicides and pesticides, farmers and councils are now looking to use steam and natural treatments to manage unwanted plants. We’re refining the machinery for industry. Desperately needed, seeing they’re finding those chemicals in breast milk and people’s pee.’
Drift felt herself smile from deep within her core, realising what The Planet’s work would mean for not just food production, but also for the plants and animals she saw trying to survive on roadsides and watersheds, sickened by council sprays.
‘And the ute?’ she asked, pointing to the modified Toyota on the hoist.
‘Not a ute. A Poot,’ corrected Gizmo, who was clearly well named judging from all the gadgets he had in his shed.
‘Poot?’ Drift asked.
‘You’re looking at the first farm four-wheel drive to be run on human and animal methane. Poo power — a renewable, inexhaustible resource.’
Drift looked at the vehicle in amazement. ‘Methane?’
‘We are this close to selling the concept to a major car-manufacturing company and a fuel provider,’ Gizmo said, holding his thumb and forefinger a few centimetres apart and squinting his eyes as if looking through a narrow tunnel to an expanded future.
‘Wow!’ Drift said, amazed all this was happening right here, on remote Pinrush Point.
‘But,’ Sophia said, putting an index finger up to her lips, ‘it’s shush.’
‘Why?’
Gizmo and Sophia gave each other a knowing look.
‘All this wonderful technology that Gizmo and his team are creating will be stopped by the big boys if we’re too flashy and noisy about it, so it’s quietly, quietly and gently, gently we go.’
‘But why?’
Gizmo looked at her with his piercing green eyes and counted the three main reasons on his fingers. ‘Greed, unchecked egos and fear of change.’
After a quick explanation as to how the ‘Poot’ and the bio-digester fuel system worked, Sophia then ushered Drift into another courtyard. More leafy trees circled by stones shaded the ground near greenhouses laid out in a semicircle. Beyond that in the paddocks, mixed broad acre crops overlaid with annual cereal grains thrived behind tall game-proof fencing.
‘Multi-species mixed cropping,’ Sophia said. ‘We sow annual grains with broad-leaf plants like beans and peas all at once into dormant pasture. Then we harvest the grain first, all direct drilled so we have no bare earth. We are creating a diverse root system for the soil. Simple.’
Drift was in seventh heaven to see in action the cropping concepts she’d read about. She was so used to barren single-species crops like wheat in the West that was traditionally burned after harvest. It was uplifting to see the cocktail of cropping before her.
‘And these greenhouses?’
‘This is where we produce our seed bank. We’re collating old varieties of plants that are fast disappearing around the world. Our goal is to distribute this seed freely to communities so they can feed themselves. A basic human right the corporations have tried to take from us.’
‘Wow,’ Drift said when she saw the size and stretch of the operation. ‘This is extraordinary. Why are you doing all this?’
‘Honey,’ Sophia said, ‘I’m from Texas, where we were solidly bashed by the Bible. They raised us to believe in the crucifixion, suffering and the vengeance of the Lord. Then, where I came from, if you didn’t follow that brand of God, you followed the other. The false God of money. My family were right into that God, and the status that comes with it.’
She shook her head.
‘Organised religion, modern economics, it’s all lies. Now around the world, we’re raising kids to either hate those who are different, or to worship money and celebrity more than to love and revere life and the earth itself. Society is sick because of it. I asked what my purpose was, and I heard the answer: to help heal Earth and with it her people. You’ve got me started with one of my sermons, I’m afraid. Come . . .’
She swung open the door of one of the greenhouses; inside the air was warm with moisture and life. Rows of plants in their juvenile stages reached upwards with leafy green potential. Blackboard-paint-dipped sticks marked with chalk were spiked in at the ends of the rows. Avocados, limes, lemons, olives, Japanese plums, figs, nectarines, mulberries, peaches, persimmons, apple trees, pears.
‘I realised once we all learn that Earth is truly abundant and we start to feed people with food grown with love, and we honour the feminine energies of the land, society will come back to balance.’ She stooped over a plant, lovingly touching it with her elegant fingertips. ‘These are our babies. And from here we transplant them out into our orchards or the other greenhouses. Produce is then shipped seasonally to free food hubs.’
‘But I’ve never heard of The Planet or your produce,’ Drift said.
‘I know. We don’t brand it. Much of the produce is a charitable sideline. What the farm is producing is mostly ideas and technology. Methods in how to grow pure food in urban areas, impoverished places, war zones. And also in plush, privileged cities where councils are terrified of dirt, poo and compost. We’re trialling systems that can be used in deserts, on shopping-centre rooftops, on the sides of buildings. And we’re exporting the ideas under a series of company names. Names that are hard to trace back to here.
‘Then there’s the renewable-energy component to our operation, like Gizmo’s Poot project. We’re trialling all kinds of concepts . . . some of them crazy, some of them commercial. The people you met at lunch are all going back to their communities to set up their own versions of what we’re doing here. Urban and suburban farming, or chemical-free farming on their own land with their own power source — both inner power and outer,’ she said, tapping her heart centre.
‘But how come no one knows about it?’
Sophia shrugged, and the light in her eyes dimmed for a moment. Her voice altered. ‘Quiet, underground grassroots revolutions are the most powerful; plus, I don’t want the rest of the world to know I’m here. The Planet is my sanctuary from my past. It’s a foundation place, a seedpod of ideas that we need to spread out to the world quietly, without political interference and media hoo-ha. For decades, like Gizmo said, governments and big business have been buying the good ideas and burying them, so the old systems remain. It’s time to go underground — get the ideas to such a stage of development and go public before the more rigid corporations even know what’s coming.’
Sophia walked towards a stack of wooden pallets and sat upon them, crossing her long legs and patting the seat beside her.
‘You see, girl, I’ve got some big, bad family karma to clean up. I wasn’t always this person,’ she said gesturing to herself. ‘In fact, my name was Eloise Madden. My daddy and granddaddy made a fortune out of oil and tobacco back in Texas and then elsewhere. More money than you can imagine. Our family got fat on two of the most toxic commodities — commodities created by the cruellest of labour to begin with . . . slavery.’
Drift could see in her profile the twist of pain as Sophia recalled her past.
‘No amount of money coulda dug us outta the ditch of misery our family went through livin life with all those riches. When daddy died and I inherited the lot it went to my head. At first I was gonna be like him. Push it. Grow it bigger. But then, well . . .’ Her voice faded. She drew in a breath.
‘Life taught me different. I suffered the loss of my baby girl. Childhood cancer in her blood. She died right after I found my husband cheatin on me.’ Sophia looked skywards, tears pooling in her eyes as if it had happened only yesterday.
‘When I was on my knees with misery I saw clearly. I saw I had a lot of redemption to do on behalf of my family. Robbing Earth of Her oil and splashing my power around in property developments and fast cars. Being in the cigarette industry, robbing people of their health. It’s just not what a mama should do. I felt I was paying for it.’
She shuddered. Drift instantly settled a comforting hand on her arm. Sophia patted her hand back.
‘My girl. She woulda been about your age by now. I never did have the heart to trust a man again nor have another child.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Drift said, then found herself suddenly blurting out, ‘Me, I’m never going to have kids. Or a fella for that matter.’
‘Why not?’
Drift shrugged. ‘It’s not who I am.’
‘Really?’ Sophia said, not sounding convinced. ‘Time will tell, I guess.’
They sat in silence, then Sophia swept her hand towards the pallets. ‘So,’ she said breathing inwards, ‘I’ve given my life over to this. Finding other ways with renewable energy. Finding other ways with land use and food. Finding ways of water purification. And better ways with animals if we are to ultimately eat them. And better ways with people too.’
She turned to Drift with a smile. ‘Enough of me. What about you? What are you going to give your life over to? What lights you up?’
Drift swallowed and looked down to the scuffed toes of her workboots, lifting her shoulders then dropping them. ‘I’m not really sure,’ she said. ‘I love books and art. And nature. And animals. And study. I don’t much like people — that’s an area I need to work on. I love the beach. And grasslands. Gardens too. Trees, rocks . . . I could go on and on. But I’ve no idea where all that will take me.’
‘Well, my darling. If you sit still enough in silence, you can hear your inner guide. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time on that horse of yours on the way back to camp.’
She patted Drift on her leg. ‘I can tell you’re an Earth girl. A do-er. A go-getter. It’s just you haven’t yet believed it yourself.’
Drift nodded, and words choked in her throat as she began thinking of her brilliant but suicidal father, whose only compass was remaining near the watery grave of her mother and hanging on to the potential of a life they’d never realised as a family.
‘If you do find a road, let it be for you to come back now, y’hear,’ Sophia said. ‘I can always do with a clever, fit young woman, who is clearly a master in stock handling and very, very smart.’
Drift hooked a long strand of hair behind her ear and blushed, feeling the uncertain notion rumble through her that someone like Sophia actually recognised her potential and believed she could do something in the world, something as significant as what Sophia was doing. Wilma and Charlie were always telling her that, but Drift had never really taken the concept in until seeing this place.
Sophia lithely propelled herself off the pallets, her boots thudding on the ground, and led Drift through a side corridor into another greenhouse. There were the same sticks with chalk tags listing crops: rockmelon, tomatoes, corn and capsicum, zucchini, cucumber, pumpkin and watermelon. On some shelving, pots sat beneath small watering nozzles and more tags listed beetroot, leeks, celery, broccoli, kale, lettuce, pak choy, peas, garlic and onions.
