A new book celebrates the many forms of love found in rural and remote Australia

Colourful shirts in many sizes flutter and whip like flags in the wind on the Mason property at Spicers Creek, New South Wales. All six kids are home from boarding school and they’ve brought their dirty clothes with them. “I love the school holidays,” mum Kellie Mason says, “even though my laundry increases exponentially.”

Love in a big family means no matter how many of you there are, there’s always plenty to go around. “You learn to embrace the chaos,” Kellie adds with a smile.

Up in an Armidale paddock made of a thousand shades of green and brown and under a pale sky heavy with cumulus clouds, teenager Bea Morton searches for words that will convey the connection she has with her horse, Jack. “You just feel it,”Bea says. “You and the horse are like one.”

This is a special kind of love. And it’s one of so many different shades that shape us as humans. Our adoration of animals is second only to our love for each other, and in the same realm is our devotion to our homes, and our passion for our magnificent land.

Courtney and Ray Jenkins say their shared love language is food. Spending time at home together in Toowoomba with their kids, cooking, eating and laughing is what they cherish most. When they met as housemates 10 years ago they clicked immediately, and Courtney joked “I’m never moving out!” She never did.

Her joyful reminiscing triggers my own romantic memories. I was young and lost and living in a share-house in the late ’90s, occupying a small room on the ground floor while a nice boy had the big room at the top. One night, we kissed on the doorstep, tasting lust and lingering alcohol, quietly wondering if we’d regret it in the morning. We didn’t know it then, but we’d taken the first step on a journey that continues 25 years on.

Our love began in a big city, and moved with us to the country, where we joined the ranks of those who find themselves infatuated with clean air and fertile dirt. Throughout Australia, love is a tapestry of tales of trust, loyalty, desire, difficulty and hope.

When you seek out love in the nooks and crannies of ordinary life, you find it everywhere. It’s at the bottom of a warm cup of tea, in homemade biscuits shared at smoko, and in a tired smile exchanged at the end of a long day. It’s there at the dinner table, in Dad’s big bear hug, in Mum’s homework help, and in the impossibly high pitch of a toddler’s giggle.

We see it in the blue-grey eyes of a poddy lamb that’s quietly grateful for a bottle and blanket. We hear it in the cries of our cattle, crushing us in hard times of drought and desperation.

We feel it in the sweat and tears that we bleed into our work. We smell it in the coat of our horses, nuzzled in the fur of our hard-working dogs — and we will it to last forever.

Grazier Nick Gay’s voice fills with awe as he describes a day on the family property in Hovells Creek, central New South Wales. “You can be driving around and doing jobs on the place, and all of a sudden you’re amazed by the beauty of it all and the fact that this is our home,” he says. “We’re part of it and it’s part of us.”

Our houses and homes are nests of love and, like bowerbirds, we collect precious treasures to store here safely. Love is ironed into crisp school uniforms, painted onto cracked walls, and dug into beloved veggie gardens. Looking down, we see it infused in the rich, brown soil of our land and watch it sway in crops ready for a cracking harvest. It’s up high, too, in the brilliant skies that hang above us.

Nobody said love is easy. It brings challenges borne of passion for things that matter. Love rises to face isolation, accidents, trauma and tragedy. It arms us for battle against elements and enemies. It helps us rally when the chips are down, buoyed by community spirit, and prompts us to make sacrifices so our kids can have what we did not.

Kate Green’s love for her 11-year-old son Howie is heightened in the disappearing days before he leaves for boarding school. “We have a really, really close relationship,” Kate says wistfully from her cattle property in Bingara, New South Wales. Howie senses the impending distance too. “She always gives me hugs and goes out of her way to do stuff for me,” he says, full of praise for his mum. “I know she’ll do anything for me.”

It’s true. We’ll do anything, and everything, for love. So when you’ve finished reading, tell someone you love them.

Better yet, share a kiss on a doorstep — I highly recommend it.

This is an adapted excerpt from In Love, Out Bush by Pip Williams, text by Phoebe Hartley. Published by Bush Journal, $39.95. Find it at bushjournal.com.au

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