1. Fillbaskets
- circa 1956

['Northumberland Fillbasket' raspberries were one of two local native-born Wandin and well-known varieties which my great-great-great grandfather and pioneer, Edward Hunter, bred and grew in his wholesale nursery, till they multiplied across the Yarra districts; -the other sort were called 'Hunter's Perfection.' Hunter took up land there in 1866 and settled at Wandin Yallock from Heidelberg in the early 1870s.]

Before our biggened dam was bayed into the bottom flat
with excavations made by my mother's brother's dozers,
there used to be a patch of raspberries, in close to the creek,
[it is all flooded now, the memory is sprinkler-dripping leaves],

generation-tall bushes which grew in rows close-spaced as a careful pedigree
which the horse and tiller could fit, to exactly cultivate;
and in my first toddle of waking, going years of hot summer in
familiar bounty, prized at picking time, into shade for the cool,

I went among ends, invents of ingenious rows, being in, not doubting,
a scion basking in a born inheritance of life and nurture
as if all creation had been improved and named for me
-life which had been decided, bred and nurtured until then

-from Scottish border shires to the fertile Yarra Billanook-

where my own cornucopia basket could fill, warp and weft
like muses strands, for even these very raspberries were
a bloodline inheritance, first cultivated by my own ancestor;
-plant-breeder, and rootstock of faith in the parish,


-pioneer immigrant going native to Wandin Yallock red-lands
who planted and bred for his future native sons;
-Methodist elder, first Shire man, public Christian:
Ted Hunter, -in Australian nativity, my grandsire times three.

Fillbasket! Like an outlasting providence;
this was one nameable strand linking back,
a milieu of cultive nativity outside my blood:

I heard the adults say the ancient name
like a familiar litany of life in practice:

"We're picking the Fillbaskets."

" We got a good pick off the Fillbaskets."

" The Fillbaskets are still bearing well!"

like songs woven in the air
voicing this place as my place;

as if raspberry plants were an attendant angel host
giving the present of circumstances
in joyful nativity.


* * *
7 Dec 1996 © Wayne David Knoll

First Published in ‘Studio: a Journal of Christians Writing Albury NSW 1997