The hidden Gems

Americans call them barns, but here in Australia they’re better known as sheds. There are countless types of sheds; tool sheds, garden sheds, pool sheds, men’s sheds and farm sheds to name but a few. But nothing in Paul’s life had prepared him for the beauty of the shed hidden down the back, not to be confused with out the back or the outback, of the hobby farm that Paul and his new bride Wendy had just become the proud owner’s of.

It’s a modest place fourty-four undulating acres that has been resting, since the elderly couple who had just sold, had been beyond working the land for quite some time, and the grass was lush and thick. There are a few acres that are still virgin bush, a creek running through a dam, just waiting for livestock to once again graze. The copious amount of fruit trees also promised mouth watering good times ahead. All in all Paul felt like a king surveying his kingdom, as his queen snuggled into his neck, her arms intertwined in the crook of his left elbow. The first night in their new home and they felt content.

After a week of sorting and unpacking, trying to find stuff, then finding it after it wasn’t required. Paul and Wendy decided to take a walk in the fresh country air, and just enjoy their new habitat. Of course they had walked around the property a lot, and this was just the latest excuse to do so, but they both just enjoyed being close to nature, close to God. Today, however, the couple ventured down behind the dam into the dense virgin bush land behind. Wendy, catching a glimpse of the sun‘s reflection from within the dense brush, stopped mid stride and mid sentence. The conversation abruptly halting from those important life issues that young couples have to a discussion about the shiny thing in the bush, and how Paul should brave the thick tea tree bush, go retrieve the now important shiny thing, so it could fuel hours of discussion about how it came to be there and how it caught Wendy’s eye at that very moment, perhaps one day in the far off future of grand children, become a defining moment in family history. How unknowingly correct they are.

Sir Paul rose to the challenge of rescuing the shiny thing, a decision he quickly regretted as the course, sharp spikes of the melaleuca tree penetrated harshly into the bare skin of his legs, left exposed by the shorts that in time and generations would be considered far too short. The associated itching following with only a brief delay. All of which Wendy found to be one of the more humorous events in recent history.

Five agonising lifetime’s later, actually minutes but Paul’s whining about his efforts needing to be suitably reward, and the sudden intense need to immerse in water to quell the fire, now spreading to his unexposed skin, made the ordeal seem longer. Paul suddenly falling silent, Wendy could see him so there was no concern, followed by urgency for Wendy to see the shiny thing for herself. Wendy finally succumbing to Paul’s pleading, lunged into the thick bush, luckily she had both long clothes and Paul’s blazed trail to keep her relatively safe from the offending thorny plant.

A short fifty metre walk into the scrub, and the ground sloped away family steeply, at the bottom of the contour of this landscape in a nice grassed clearing was an old timber plank shed with a corrugated iron roof, largely rusted and partially collapsed. The old shed had been left to its own devices for a long time and was in need of some tender loving care, according to Paul, and it would be a good source of fire wood when winter arrived, according to Wendy. Paul had fallen in love with keeping it and bringing it back to life, Wendy seeing the certain death looming from within the old structure, which had probably been built by a farmer and most likely was not a registered structure at the local town planning office. It was a brief but fierce debate, in the end Wendy stood defeated, Paul striding triumphant to the door of the shed and testing to see if it might work.

The lever latch lifted ok, Paul mistaking the movement in the half barrel hinges as functional, in fact the hinges were rusted solid, the pins in the hinges giving out more or less simultaneously, leaving the door falling in and causing a cloud of dust into the air. The only visible features, light shining in the far corner where the roof was collapsed and the light rays through the dust from the various windows, one of which was the original shiny thing.

Paul could not wait to get back to the shed the next day, having to concede that he had been unprepared the previous day to enter the shed safely. Paul started by carving a trail to avoid the painful needles, his skin still itched. Paul and Wendy standing on the threshold of the shed, now without a dust cloud, inside in the gloomy shadows of daylight seeping in from various gaps and windows, proved it was quite a large shed, there were drop sheets over lots of unknown items, the couple agreed it was a veritable treasure trove of rusted dreams, to be explored, Paul lead the way, taking the first tentative step inside, stepping over the fallen door, and lifting it out of the way to allow Wendy to join him. The floor board did not creak as much as they squished and bent under foot. The hunt for treasures began.

Paul had quadruple checked that shed was on their property, and that there had been no mention of it in the negotiations or contract of sale. The previous owners were on a holiday cruise and could not be contacted. The young couple proceeded to explore the shed, carefully picking all pathways to avoid a potential collapse. They had entered into a workshop area, tools, and an assortment of items lay strewn over bench tops, cupboard doors in various stages of disintegration hung open or partially open, hinting at dust covered wares. Wendy drew Paul’s attention to a large double door also hanging slightly ajar, the strange thing was there was no light filtering into the shed through those doors.

Paul gingerly crossed the rotted out floor, carefully placing his feet, where none had touched in recent history. Halting at the entry, an heir of inner sanctum thick in the atmosphere. Paul stood in the door way, at first slack jawed and eyes wide. Paul’s expression rapidly evolved from dumbfounded to surprise and then on to joy and sheer excitement, his body language just as erratic, Paul has hoping from one foot to the other like a kid in the proverbial candy store, motioning for Wendy to make her way over to him. Wendy’s expression soon resembled Paul’s.

The young couple’s amazement was directed at the drop sheet silhouette of a car, the only visible part, the tires, lay flat against the ground. The white star alloy wheels peeking out from under the drop sheet, like a cheeky toddlers grin. Paul could not wait and pushed forward, lifting the drop sheet at the front of the car. The unmistakable front cowling and headlight configuration of a 1978 Ford falcon. Paul carefully pulled the drop sheet from the rest of the car, not just a Ford falcon, but a coupe, and with the signature blue racing stripes of the cobra, an icon of a car. Could this be one of the unaccounted for original XC cobras? Paul didn’t dare to hope.

Paul would attend to the shed, almost everyday, in some way, rebuilding the structure or cleaning up the tools and other pieces that were found there in. The old falcon however he would only work on when Wendy graced the shed with her presence. They regularly spent an hour cleaning some part of the car, discussing Paul’s romantic notion of the old falcon being their cruiser, and where they were going to drive it when it was up and running. Finally that day arrived, Paul tried to get fanfare but the event was a much more modest affair, and more intimate.Paul connected the battery terminal, and handed Wendy the keys. Wendy inserted the key into the ignition barrel and twisted one click at a time, the dash board light lit up. Then there was the engine roaring back to life once more. It had been dormant for forty years, and now it was purring like a kitten. The story behind the car had been one of sorrow and loss, the old couple’s son had suddenly fallen ill and never recovered, the shed and the car had never been touched since until the day the light caught Wendy’s eye.