It is impossible to live on a ten hectare block along a country road without having contact with more than the absolutely immediate neighbours . Merely passing along the road was often enough to have someone who was working on their property look up , wave , watch as you passed , and then get back to their task .

And the converse was true , of course . My orchard was only a metre or two downslope from the road , and while I was there , as I was so often , I would see neighbours passing , and at times they would stop their cars to chat , or to simply enquire if there was something we needed in town.

One one occasion , returning from town in the old Corona I had inherited from my father , I heard a tremendous bang . Fortunately I had learnt ( unlike some of the permanent dwellers further out along the road ) to take it very easily on the dangerous curves , so the fact that a rear tyre had blown out did not put me in any danger .

Nevertheless , it was a bad spot to have a tyre burst , as it was on a slope with a blind curve ahead giving no view of my plight to oncoming vehicles . At the same time , the edge of the road was not the easiest spot on which to set a jack to change the wheel.

The noise that the bursting tyre made had echoed for a long distance , and within moments , there were three men coming from different sides of the road to offer help . They had thought I had run into a tree or something equally disastrous and told me they were quite relieved that there was no injured body to cope with .

Almost before I knew it one had produced a baulk of timber to prevent the car from rolling when it was jacked up , and another took the jack from me and with great expertise had the wheel off and the spare on in its place . I was not at all loath to allow this as I was dressed in town clothes , while they were in workmen's clothing , and the job in the dust was not conducive to sartorial elegance . They would accept nothing for the help , though in the circumstance I am sure that if I had had a cold beer in the boot they would have accepted that with pleasure.

The least friendly of the neighbours within a two kilometre radius was very chary about allowing people onto his property , as I discovered when I was trying to find the owner of the injured horse that had strayed onto my block. He informed me in no uncertain terms , despite the legitimacy of my appearing on his property , that visitors were not welcome . I later found that he no doubt had good reason for reclusivity -- I read in the local paper of his arrest for the second time , and his subsequent gaoling , for the growing of marihuana .

He was not the only grower in the district . In fact , out in the forestry areas , it was quite an industry among the alternative life style dwellers . One property owner within a close distance of us was , I gather , permanently stoned . So much so , in fact , that he fell from his tractor/mower , doing severe damage to a leg and losing a very important piece of anatomy . I did not know him well , but I hope that his condition desensitised him to any pain.

Often I would see a middle aged couple exercising , she jogging along and he riding slowly beside her on a bike . They w ere both very pleasant people and often rested for a while to chat . He was a retired journalist with the perhaps appropriate name of Shakespeare. If there was a property I might have been willing to trade for my own block , they owned it. It was on a higher spur that looked out over the valley , and had the most magnificent views along it in two directions. They too were a very hospitable couple , though they were a trifle too far away for frequent visiting .

One other pair , next to Bob's block , were establishing a rose farm.

On the side of the road opposite them was the block that , like mine , had been a part of the larger block from which mine was cut . There was another equivalent sized block between us , and I rarely went in their direction . They too had lots of citrus , selling it through a fruiterer in town.

The most interesting thing about them was that they owned peacocks , whose raucous cries could be annoying at times as they echoed through the still evening air .

There was great excitement when one of the birds found its way onto our property . The attempt to recapture it was for a long time frustrated by its flying into the top of a gum tree. I personally had never thought of peacocks as being other than earthbound , but I shall always remember the sight of it , tail feathers streaming behind it , making a magnificent streak of colour through the afternoon sunlight. It was finally coaxed down , and recaptured .

Finally , my neighbours who were closest to our house were a lovely pair , deserving of a part of this narrative entirely to themselves .