Under The Harvest Moon. Gary Blinco

      ‘Yes,’ Lennie said quickly, ‘they’re good workers, Dad.’

      ‘That may well be,’ Nigel said hotly, ‘and I can stand the Dutch, even if they are arrogant bastards, but at least they were on our side in the war. But the Eyeties kept changing sides, and there are three friggin’ Germans in the team I saw today. One of ‘em was in the German army, for Christ’s sake boy. Why do we hire these damn new Australians anyway?’

      ‘The last war has been over for a dozen years, Dad, and the first one for almost forty,’ Lennie said gently. ‘Besides, the people and the soldiers were not to blame. We have to put it behind us. The Government is bringing these people out here to help the country grow. It’s up to us to give them a go.’

      ‘It’s alright for people who didn’t have to fight the buggers in the war,’ Nigel spat. ‘It’s easy to forget when there is nothing bad to remember, but I’ll not forget. I had to mix it with the Krauts in the first war, and they behaved even worse in the last show. I managed to keep your older brothers out of the last war because they were primary producers, and you were too young to serve anyway.’

      He paused in the middle of the courtyard to shake his stick in Lennie’s face. ‘Now I let you have a pretty free rein, lad,’ he growled, ‘but no more Germans and Italians! I’ll tolerate the rest.’

      Lennie nodded his agreement; he had recruited all the labour he needed to see them through the harvest anyway. There was little point in stirring the old man up over the issue. He could get pretty passionate about the subject. Lennie often envied his father these bouts of passion. He could find little in the world to engender any really deep emotions in himself. He wanted to preserve as much of the bush as he could, and he had strong feelings for Veronica Byrne, but he could never see himself obsessed with any single issue. But he had never faced the trials and life-threatening situations that his father had endured and maybe that changes you in ways you can never imagine.