Hated Weed

[Roger Pye]

"Weeds? I've seen 'em all, mate, paddocks full of 'em - serrated tussock, gorse, fireweed, needle grass, blackberry. I've been farming here, man and boy, for fifty years! Aye, fifty years, nigh on. Weeds are a blight on pastures and a permanent drag on the old hip pocket. But this - well, I never saw anything like this before and that's a fact!"

The farmer (George) gestured at the narrow swathe of african lovegrass which curved softly from west to east across the undulating terrain.

"I remember when this paddock held - and fed - a hundred thousand sheep and cattle. In the old days, that was, the old droving days. We gathered them up here in the spring for the move to the High Country and brought them back in the autumn to be drafted into flocks and herds. Wouldn't feed a hundred now, never mind; maybe a dozen sheep, that's all. What do you make of it?"

His companion (Charles), a man of similar age, assumed correctly that the farmer meant the lovegrass. "Forget it's a weed, look at the whole thing again, imagine it being dark instead of light, tell me whether it reminds you of anything."

George pursed his lips. "Well, I don't know . . . Hang on, a streambed, maybe," he said slowly. "Yes, that's it, a creek - but I don't see how, or why! Do you?"

Charles nodded. "The lovegrass is indicating a particular soil condition. Also a flow of contaminated water, I think, following an underground fault. I'm not a farmer, I'm a dowser. That is, I pick up on the energies that things put out - soil, plants, water, even people." He pulled a steel plumb bob on a cord from a pouch on his belt. "Watch, I'll show you. This is a pendulum; it focuses the energies."

Holding the pendulum over the centre of the strip of lovegrass, he said (for George's benefit) "Show me the vitality of this section." The plumb bob began to spin slowly in a clockwise direction. "I'm facing north, I want to know how far in that direction the vitality changes," The plumb bob stopped spinning. "Is it more than one meter?" The pendulum began to swing forward and back. "Yes. More than two meters? Yes. More than three meters?" The pendulum spun anti-clockwise until it reached a side-to-side swing. "No." Charles walked north; just past the three-meter point, the bob commenced a clockwise swing much stronger and faster than before.

George had watched and listened disbelievingly. "You're doing it yourself!" he charged.

Charles grinned; he was used to sceptics. "Have I ever seen you before?" he asked.

"No, I came along a bit ago to ask about the lovegrass, I knew you were working here."

"Take this clipboard a moment, will you? Okay, just write on the top sheet what you had for breakfast this morning." Picking up a stick from the ground, Charles tied the pendulum to the middle of it. "Hold your other hand out," he instructed the farmer and dangled the bob over it.

"This person is a farmer," he said, apropos of nothing. "Did this person have breakfast this morning?" The pendulum swung forward and back. "Yes. Did he have oats?" It swung side-to-side. "No. Bran? No. Wheat? Yes. Did he have milk with the wheat? Yes. Did he have hot food other than toast? No. Did he have toast? Yes. Did he have a drink? Yes. Was it orange juice? No. Tomato juice? Yes. Did he have a hot drink as well? Yes. Coffee? No. Tea? Yes."

The dowser said to the farmer "Read out what you wrote down."

"Tomato juice, weetabix with milk and sugar, toast and tea. That's incredible! I thought dowsers could only detect water."

"There are different sorts. I detect energy, both water and food are energy. Coming back to the lovegrass, we've had the soil analysed within the plant growth and outside of it. In the strip it's high in aluminium, low in calcium. Elsewhere calcium is high though not ideal and aluminium is almost zero. Indications are that the water flow is bringing in aluminium which is locking calcium up in the soil and creating perfect conditions for the lovegrass to grow. Or perhaps the lovegrass is growing to extract the aluminium and exude it into the atmosphere."

The farmer regarded him quizzically but chose to leave the matter alone. "Do you have a treatment?"

"A recommendation; dolomite applied to the strip at a specific rate per hectare and watered in to raise the calcium level. Really though we'd like to confirm that there is an underground water flow but hiring a drilling rig is beyond our means. Be a good advertisement for someone, though."

roger