I Dreamed I Was Working On The Farm

I dreamed I was working on a farm or, at least, I was doing deliveries to farms. I was driving the old yellow Toyota HiLux ute - our old ute from Bolago long since departed this earth.

I drove out to a farm to deliver something. I drove past the man digging right next to the road, who was building a mud brick extension on his house. I drove through the most magical grotto – except grottos are all about water – or was it a labyrinth? It was the most gorgeous area where the road swept around in an arc as it went through.

I got to the place where I had to make a delivery. It was isolated and I was on my own, and I felt the chill of being isolated and alone.

Then some how it was apparent that the next place I had to go had move addresses and I wasn’t sure if I was familiar enough with the back roads to know how to get to the new address.

Then I looked around and sitting on a tree stump in a group of tree stumps was Clarke Gable, or Errol Flynn, a matinee idol type in a white double breasted suit with large shoulder pads, smoking a cigarette, the smoke from which was floating up in the air in curls. 

I had a dog, not Bruno, not a bulldog, but, I think, a brown Kelpie, and the mysterious stranger, who said nothing, he just smoked his cigarette, had a dog too, a black dog, that was not friendly to my dog when my dog approached, and it bared its teeth. I called my dog away.

The next thing I was setting off to the man who’d changed addresses. As I drove out the drive way, I reached for the gear stick of the old yellow HiLux ute and it had fallen off onto the floor in the passenger footwell. The engine revved loudly in, presumably, first gear, so I grabbed the gear stick back up and pushed it into the hole in the floor of the ute where it should have been and I managed to change gears.

Then I was out on the highway still wondering how I was going to find the way to this new address, when there was a huge herd of animals being herded along the highway and I had to negotiate the herd changing gears with my dodgy gear stick. The sun was bright in the sky, and it was shining in my eyes and the sky was gorgeous colours, the dust from the herd was dancing in the bright rays of the sun, as the cowboys in chaps and Stetsons herding them pushed them off the highway so I could get past.

I got past the herd of animals being herded. I drove through the grotto, or the labyrinth, back the other way. I drove back past the man digging right by the side of the road who was building a mud brick extension on his house. I got to an intersection where I had to make a decision about which way to turn to meet the guy who had changed addresses.

I woke up, and the country road was still in my vision, momentarily, but it faded away quickly. I looked at the clock, it was 8.45am. I'd slept in, well, not in, but I had slept late.