THE DECLARATION OF BANNING FLATS

 

In a bid to save their farm the Farley family declare war on the Bank of Restless Pleasure.

 

The Farley family, Ma, Pa and Wa, and their sixteen sons, Aaron all the way through to Zachariah, declared war on the Bank of Restless Pleasure during the long days of hope. Pa had broke his leg and shambled on an ankle but the ruthless manager, Rudolf Rogers, rang and gave them all a deadline full of payments.

 

"But he cannot tend unto the bovines!" Ma pleaded, getting slightly Biblical and sobbing into a hand-me-down kerchief.

 

"The Bank has extended every balance-column by a mile," said Rudolf Rogers unrelenting, moustacheod and dressed like the hostile witness in a mortgage raid.

 

Ma had the ankle packed in hot wattlegum and sheep manure, as her Ma did back in Corn Wall, but Rogers suggested amputation and would "ne'er be moved", he said, despite the Farley's rare unity of purpose.

 

Their fifth son, Da, broke the news to Pa as Ma and Wa watched on. The old man, robust except for being totally crippled, wept like an onion.

 

Greg, the eighth son in a row, stepped in and swore with indignation that Rudolf Flippin' Rogers would never be a bloodsucker of the stones. "The Farley's limp together!" he spake and hugged his Dad with real affection. They were a tight-knit clan. Pa's Pa had rowed out from England in a dinghy to work the zinc mines of Woogly Peak but settled in the better meadows south where Mooney's Billabong made a slight departure and often overflowed across the fertile plain. Nearby Restless Pleasure was a town of tents and tin hotels where gold dust sank quickly in the creeks. It nestled in the Banning Flats as the hills lie down and the ancient Farley clan had made their home employing nothing but their hands. Their first homestead sank in the quicksand while being restumped after the floods of '42. The second, high as a hillock of clay dredgings, with a nice view from the side verandah, was the real-estate at stake. The Bank collected gold dust and, on the sly, traded white crystals of sleepy opium with the short Chinese who were a numerous sight wherever money siphoned from the diggings. Rudolf Rogers was an honest man - except for the white crystals and some dodgy stocks in a telegraph to Alice in the redlands - but his soul was as tight as a dozen rubber bands, and lurked beyond any easy persuasion. "What am I?" he'd say, indignant and unsympathetic. "A New England Transcendentalist? Just blubber! Pa Farley's limped before!"

 

"But this time," said Miss Perkins of the phone-plugs - his secretary - "They've got the limp in sympathy, until the wattlegum and hot manure does the trick."

 

"Poppy-cock!" said the Rogers. 'It's all the same to me! They should cut it off and sell it as kelpie fodder!"

 

He accused her of going mushy in the marrow and reaffirmed that banking is a nasty game.

 

"If we go easy on these mortagees," he did say, "We would never enjoy the life of which we so thoroughly deserve."

 

At this the evil manager opened his draw, sucked on his big cigar, produced a pad of pounds, counted out an even twenty, and told Miss Perky to blow it all on hats.

 

It was this brash and blatent act that ignited all the Farleys in eruptions. Ra, the Farley sun-god of a boy, blonde and stocking, and lucky number seven, spotted Perky with her phone-plugs and followed her to hat stores and saw the gay abandon with her pad of twenty pounds. "Hats galore!" he said, railing at the gross injustice, "and yet the sun beats down upon our heads!" True enough: that very afternoon a drought set in and killed bovines by the mouthful and Ra could hardly stand up for the whopping sunbursts. None of them had decent hats to protect them from the sun. He scuttled out and broke it to his father who was devastated. Ma tended the new wounds. Wa, in a fit of hopping ragers, took Da and Ra and vowed a vengeance on them all. "Death to the Bank of Restless Pleasure!" he cried. He stood abreast the Banning Flats, and gathering the blood-line all about him, said he'd fight like a Farley and die like a Farley and range about the bushes like a beam of moonlight if Rudolf Rogers didn't take his hat off!

 

Then, up limped Pa, attracting all the flies. "You must defend the Farley pastures," he told them, "and take your arms against this tyranny of head-gear!"

 

The boys fetched the rifles and limped to the trailings yard for a fortified view of the rolling lands. Greg, the expert on improvished explosive devices, grabbed the TNT hiding out among the bales of curries cocksfoot.

 

"Don't shoot until you feel the moleskin of akubras," Pa told them, and then went back to stick his ankle in the muck.

 

Ma - never one to argue - went up to the cupboard and polished off her Griffin Bulk-Action Bankbuster, chromey shotgun of her youth. She had once shot a pan-handler in the nose for making rude suggestions and had years before defended the homestead valley from mining engineers and railway surveyors. She could hit a gnat's anus at a thousand paces and had a trigger finger disinclined to wait. She organised the ammunition and told her sons to be ever manly. They discussed strategy over dinner and went to bed prepared to take the town and bring down the Bank of Restless Pleasure.

 

At sunrise the next day they rose and moved together. "War!" cried Wa, taking the upper hand. Like galloping battalions the entire Farley hot-heads bore upon the streets and as soon as they felt moleskin they attacked. In one felling swoop they gathered up the gold dust, smashed the cottage windows, buckled all the tin, terrorized the ladies and left the town for dead, riding off in clouds of molten orange dust.

 

Back at the ranch Pa said it was too easy and decorated every son with medals from what he dubbed the Twenty-Minute War. Farleys had fought at bold Galipoli and on the Krackeneasy Trail, soldiers of distinction, and this fateful day was no exception. They rose upon their fiery steeds, mangled the telegraph and bravely slaughtered everyone in sight. It was the Farley rule to take no prisoners - unless they were exceptionally good looking - and to spare no living thing in any bold assault. The town was unprepared. They came like a whirlwind and left like a willy-nilly loaded up with gold and the white crystals of justice.

 

The reconaissance, however, revealed a less than perfect picture, for where had Rudolf Rogers and Miss Perko gone to, if they survived at all? Ma, Wa, Da, and Ra searched among the rubble with help from the Red Cross and a team of volunteers.

 

"It is said they were down within the bunker," said a Teller at the time, "and suicided so that wanton conquerors couldn't have the rank delight."

 

Rumours of deals with clever Chinamen went about the ruins, but not a corpse was found.

 

By the time the Shire Council sent in a peace-keeping force all trace of fixed premium rates and roll-over term deposits had vanished from the town. Wa was made the transitional mayor and marked a minutes' silence for the men who went to battle. "It is the stuff of Farley legend," he said, pronouncing eloquent, "and of bonds twixt men and soil!"

 

Pa was less prosaic. "Bugger 'em," he says, "They got it where it hurts, and I only regret I was off my feet at the time and didn't die in the dust instead!" He was a surly sort of inland oyster, his skin crumpled with too many harvests and a livid yellow from Ma's notorious cooking. He had once sold a Mini Minor to an American tourist which made him the talk of the district.

 

Ma - who'd taken over forty victims with her polished trusty - sang Bonny Locks of Somewhere to bring the clan together - heads behatted from the sun - under the hidden matriarchy of her over-arching ways. This produced  a rousing turn to rich applause. They sang and danced and guzzled Paddlesteamer Special Extra Stout in the golden glow of victory and stood assured that Banning Flats would not succumb to crude foreclosure anymore.

 

The fifteenth son, Des, however, wasn't quite as sure. What if the sordid manager and his telephonic mistress had thwarted their designs, being tipped off by informers just before the dawn?  Had he looked within the bunker? What if they escaped within a staff car and slipped off to Brazil? What if they had faked their own demise? Visions of a master-race of crooked cloned accountants feeding on the farm and coming for collection beset his worried brow. Pa would be up and they all could stop limping any day, but unprepared Rude Rogers and the Perkins could return to beset upon the gold-dust, the long arms of the law among their few belongings. "It worries me," said Des, who Ma had always labelled "highly strung" which apparently is a syndrome with a fifteenth son.

 

Then, one day, a team of strangers, black and eerie, stole into the hindlands and came up to this Des and played upon his fears. "I hear tell," said the stranger, "that you can't keep a good banker down."

 

"Maybe so, " said Des, "but we thinks we got 'im this time!"

 

"And I hear tell, " said another stranger, "that the markets are jittery in Japan..."

 

One of them had in his possession a receipt from Bixly's Millinairy Store for an expensive ladies' bonnet just as Miss Perky liked to wear.

 

Des gulped. It was clear that the black and eeries knew more than they knew. One of them proceeded to display a fantastic knowledge of how they calculate the gold reserve.

 

"This is a rogue muncipality," he claimed. "How long do you think you can defy the laws of supply and demand?"

 

"And I hear tell, " said Des, defiant, "that Banning Flats has been declared, and it's the Farley boys that rule the golden specks deep among these hills!!"

 

The meeting was inconclusive. Des had forebodings and knew the job had not been done. What had happened in the bunker that day? Popular romance says that Rogers and Miss Perko swapped their marriage vows, consummating years of unspoken attraction. Or perhaps the rumors of strange eugenics were true? There was evidence someone in the office had booked a flight to Argentina on that very day.  The dark strangers picked their teeth, spat into the dust, turned and sauntered through the sundown with mystery and menace...

 

Perennial ryegrass fever partook the land throughout the long days that followed. Pa, fully recovered, was then stricken with a blow and got wheezy on the weather. On Sundays he couldn't go near the gravy. His liver was playing up in a cheesy manner and the eldest sons had to do his chores. Wafts of silky pollen fell upon the homestead and crawled up all their noses causing Pa to sneeze until he lost his bowel control.

 

It was during one such bout that Da came running in yelling, "Pa! Pa! Grab the hatchet Pa! Flippin' Rogers is in town!"

 

Pa sat up. "Quick," he said to his other sons, "Go dig up the handgranade!"

 

"He says he's here to claim our Ponderosa!" Da continued, a face like a firetruck in a hurry.

 

Pa hitched on his gun-belt and reminded them of long traditions. "If I don't return," he said, "Join the roan bull - the skinny one - to all the cows within the eastern paddock, and have them set before the snow thaws."

 

"You're an old man," said Wa. "And your ankle's mended crooked. Let me go out instead!"

 

Pa disagreed. "I'm only sixty-four," he said, "and I can still handle whatever is becoming!" and Ma was soon there to confirm it.

 

Suddenly a megaphone addressed them. "We know you're in there Farley! Come out with the gold-dust and your gun around your mended ankles!"

 

"Where's the title deeds!!?" Pa yelled back through the shuttered window.

 

It was Miss Perky, disguised in a stetson, armed with a sub-machine, and in no mood for tea and scones. Rudolf Rogers was standing with a cohort of foreign investors, discussing strategy and gearing. The first shots rang out.

 

"Deliverance!" cried Pa, rallying.

 

"Compound interest!" retorted the Rogers.

 

Ma said she was proud.

 

At which the air support arrived and incendiary whistles filled the unsuspecting yard. There was a deafening boom and shortly thereupon Greg came crashing through the door, his miller shirt on fire, to report they'd naphalmed the house cow "Old Betsy".

 

"What about the Geneva convention?" yelled Pa indignant.

 

"This is LOCAL government!" Rogers replied.

 

Bill, son number fourteen, the Farley expert on the rules of engagement, confirmed the ruling. "Short of crimes against humanity," he said, "They have a free hand."

 

At which point three paratroopers weilding tear-gas and night vision goggles smashed through the cat-flap only to be stopped by Ma's brassy unrelenting. Amazingly, she managed to whip up some pikelets during a lull in the assault.

 

"A bold claim of justice!" yelled the Pa.

 

"Back rates!" yelled the Perky.

 

"Hilly green oppression!" Pa responded, furious.

 

"Keeping a laborador without a permit!" was the megaphonic reply.

 

Diving for cover Wa snuggled next to his dad, his rifle poking out.

 

"I don't think they know about the billiard room extension Pa," he said, offering some encouragement.

 

Pa opened with a volley of shots in plain frustration. He was aiming for their hats.

 

"We'll knock that bowler off your sad caput Flippin' Rogers. You wait and see!"

 

But in fact they were surrounded.

 

When the television trucks arrived they could all watch themselves on TV, the heroic true life story of a star-crossed clan who made a desperate last stand against an overbearing Establishment in the dusty might of days.

 

"I love stories like this," said Ma, noticing. "It's like Hooded Robin and Billy the Kidnapper all over again."

 

Ra rose.

 

"What indignities does it take?" he wanted to know.

 

By this time the cable News was reporting that the clan had an unknown number of children held hostage in the farmhouse - Channel 14 described it as "the compound" - and were subjecting them to bizarre religious indoctrination around Pa the charismatic Messiah who was a reincarnation of several spiritual luminaries.

 

Pa himself was non-plussed by this propaganda.

 

"Has anyone here got children held hostage and is subjecting them to bizarre religious indoctrination around me as a charismatic Messiah and reincarnation of several spiritual luminaries?" he wanted to know, flexing his authority.

 

Channel Six had crossed with a newsflash. It was believed, it said, that there could be at least a dozen!

 

The Farley's all were silent.

 

"No Pa," said Aaron, deciding to speak. "Not for ages, Pa, I swear."

 

"Yeah Pa," said all the others. "Months."

 

That was good enough for Pa. He stuck up his head, fired a volley and cried, "Liars!" out the window.

 

"Branch Davidians!" came the reply.

 

It was a nasty slur.

 

"Ma?" said Pa, still puzzled, "Aren't we Presbyterian?"

 

"I think so, " she said. "I know we're not Roman Catholic."

 

Pa thought it over for a minute, then stuck up his head again.

 

"Papists!" he yelled.

 

It was at this juncture that the Attorney General signed the papers authorizing the fire bombs. Some of the kiddies might be incinerated, she agreed, but she cannot allow the Law to be so flaunted. Ma and Pa would be held responsible. She recommended the nation resort to prayer.

 

The kitchen, however, had to be first softened up with conventional weaponry before the shock and awe. The strategists had determined that Ma was keeping all the men endowed with pikelets, Cheesy Rix Crackers and low-fat margarine. It was decided to cut the supply lines. A burly bunkerbuster, fresh from the belly of a B52, sliced great holes in the bar fridge and penetrated to the cellar where Pa kept his homebrew. A lethal blow.

 

"Curse them," said Pa. "They're using smart bombs."

 

Outside, bulldozers made barricades from the furrowed tomato rows.

 

"Foreclosure!" cried the megaphone.

 

Pa held up his ankle. "I've got the X-rays to prove it!" he cried.

 

"We should have searched for DNA," said Des, belatedly. "And filled the bunker with cement."

 

"There must have been a secret tunnel," said Wa, agreeing.

 

"We'll fight until we're down to boomerangs and chop-sticks," said Pa, unrepentant, and a model to his boys.

 

But Ra took a sniper's hit as he hurried to the outhouse, and Greg and Bill and Wa and Da - and Zechariah - fell into a previous heap, carnage when the tank butts pushed through the laundry wall. The maps on Channel 19 called it the "south wing".

 

There was silence. There was silence for an hour. Then, in the dark, Ma - her apron scorched - staggered out, defeated and in surrender. Pa had talked her into it. It was the Farley thing to do. "It's a family tradition," said Pa. "We try not to let our womenfolk die in aggravated sieges, if it can be avoided," he explained. "My mother never died in a siege," he said, "and neither did her mother." His father's mother did but that was a surprise attack. "Someone will have to change the salt licks," he reminded her, "or else the bovines lack in cobalt and get the funny wobbles." Ma had no response. She had seen the soil tests. She walked out into the gloom, hands up, humming Gloustershire on Derby How My Heart Beats For Thee to render her impervious with courage.

 

But it is the final act in this saga that is the most famous. The events of the dawn outrank all the bravery of the Twenty Minute War put together. The hills still ring with legend, as if an historic happenstance descended and the town of Restless Pleasure held its breath for the annals of folkish lore. Hobbling, burdened with grief, Pa Farley - who began this story as a sick man - stuck his head up through the blast-hole in the bar fridge and wore it out as armour into battle. At some time around 6AM, as the constabulary rested, and Flippin' Rogers was in his tent enrapt with Missy Perkins playing stocks and bonds, the front door burst open and out staggered Pa his guns ablazen. The National Guard - who were there - were rattled. But when they regained some composure they opened fire, someone vainly urging them to "Aim at the icetrays! Aim at the icetrays!"

 

Pa was hit in the freezer door. He stopped. Then stepped forward again. It should have killed him. It would have disabled a man wearing a smaller bar fridge. For a moment he looked surreal. The observing army momentarily trembled. Another bullet bounced, hit him with a thud but only slowed him down. "My god," said Rogers, agasp at the sight, "He looks like the robot from Plan Nine From Outer Space!" He hated science fiction.

 

Pa was on a mission. He pumped his guns, step by step, into certain death.

 

"Section 54 B of the Planning Code!" he screamed like a madman, shooting haphazardly, until a stupid bruiser with a number two, lucky on the day, dropped him with a special pellet made to take out whitegoods.

 

The rebellion was over. The remaining sons surrendered in a hurry.

 

Rudolf Rogers, the Bank of Restless Pleasure and the Special Session of the County Planning And Access Tribunal had won. The Declaration of Banning Flats, a legendary charter of the rights of the common man, was soon annulled and the big urban dairy conglomerates moved into the valley. Cynics had always said it was about milk and that hats were only an excuse for the violence. But Miss Perky nevertheless wore hers with snob aplomb just to advertise there is, finally, no justice in the world. And to rub it in Rudolf Flippin' Rogers invested in a theme park devoted to the Farley's last stand and made a fortune bringing busloads up to see it.

 

But you cannot keep a good Farley in the ground for long. Ma had soon remarried - to her cousin Jake - and born nine new sons - Andrew through to Zeek - reared in the Farley way. "We can never surrender the claim," they said, "But we can call a temporary ceasefire." Which they did, and settled on a run near Bixly Downs, and until a time returns when they can resume the struggle over greed and evil bankers and their secretaries in outrageous hats they sit upon the verandah singing rounds of My Cornish Darling and go on tending to the bovines in the ancient way. 

 

- O. Spaniel Murray