I
John Johnston and John Smith
My Dear, make yourself comfortable because I want to tell you the story of the two Johns, but before I begin I must tell you that I have the most dreadful memory and cannot remember how this tale ends. You could talk my ear off with all the details and stories in the world and they will roll off my back like water on a ducks! I am very aware of this fatal flaw and when I was first told this tale I had the teller, Benjamin Greenlane do you know of him? No matter, when he first told me this tale I had him write it out on pieces of looseleaf paper, but alas! My dearest mother used the last of these pages to start a fire one cold night so the end forever escapes me, but if you must know just go down to the Crown Hotel Pub in Buninyong and ask any local to recount the tale for they will know.
John Johnston's house is just a 10 minute drive from the small town of Buninyong, and what a town it is! If you were to visit you would be welcomed by old buildings with new modern signs and well maintained facades. Many cafés line the streets waiting for passing travellers or weary farmers to come and what a wonderful town it is! I could simply talk forever and in great lengths about such a place!
John Johnston comes into Buninyong once a week to get necessary supplies he cannot get himself on his own land, and what a piece of land it is! There are paddocks and large trees as well as a stable meant for horses that has since become a home for the two donkeys, Coco and Felix. There are so many flowers surrounding the house and in the gardens that in spring bloom into a beautiful collage of colour, oh how the bees love it so! The flower gardens are maintained by John Johnston's maid and farm-hand Hanna1. Oh and I have yet to tell you of all the fine crops he has! It is harder to tell what John Johnston doesn't have than what he does! Both sides of the long drive leading up to the house, fenced by flowering bushes, contain a myriad of fruits and vegetables which he sells to locals when they come to visit or at the monthly Saturday Market. He has plums, pears, cherries and some of the crispiest, juiciest apples I have ever eaten, just to name a few! What a wonderful sight to see! It is also rumoured that two peacocks like to come a visit the property on occasion, John Johnston has an impressive giant flower vase full of peacock feathers to prove that particular tale as well, sometimes if one listens closely it can hear a distant call or see a flash of blue-green darting about the property.
Every evening John Johnston will go and sit outside on one of the verandas to his home and admire the view, he often orders Hanna to bring him a pitcher of homemade apple juice, which is always in high stock, and a glass. He will sit and drink and watch the sun set over his fine land, and what a fine piece of land it is! After he will write in a little note book where he sat and if he ate 'he ate such and such with it' or he had company that 'so and so joined him'.
Oh but enough of John Johnston! I have yet to tell you about his neighbour John Smith! John Smith is a fine man with a property just as fine as John Johnston's, but instead of having a fine garden he has a host of chickens and some lovely white ducks who sometimes make a habit of walking near or onto the dirt road between these two properties. What fabulous birds they are indeed! They live such tremendous lives that their meat is one of the most pleasurable things I have ever eaten! John Smith often sells some of these fine birds every other month at the Saturday Market. They are so wonderful even the most blundering cooks would struggle to ruin the magnificent creatures! The birds are often purchased by the locals with the butcher having a different arrangement with John Smith so he may sell those fine cuts of meat in his store. They often get sold out within the week of locals knowing that the butcher has John Smith chickens and ducks in stock. Oh but enough about those fabulous birds! But oh I could talk all day about them!
Every Sunday at noon instead of going to church John Smith an John Johnston would make a habit of going to the others house and eating a meal of fresh fruit and a cold roast chicken with large helpings of bread and butter and wash it all down with freshly baked pastries. They would sit outside in the sun or if the weather was rotten they would sit inside near a fireplace and enjoy their meals talking about anything and everything that came to mind, from the weather to how each others properties were doing, you could find no finer friends than John Johnston and John Smith.