Their father is Bernie Langtry, but he is known by everyone as Trinna, though no-one can tell you why, the same as no-one can remember why two of his brothers in-law are called Porridge and Squeaker.  Trinna started farming just after the war, when trucks and tractors  were taking over from horse-drawn headers and wheat haulers.  In those days the wheat had to be bagged by hand and sewn up before it was delivered to the silo.  That is why farmers still talk about yield in "bags to the acre".
 

With the new headers, a farmer does not need to break his back.  The cabins are air-conditioned and they empty the grain automatically into trucks alongside.  Tririna could learn to drive the new one but there's not much point.  "Give me an hour in it and I'd be all right," he says, "but stripping wheat is a young bloke's work, and I'm getting on."  In fact he is only 57, and it is more for his son's training that he doesn't drive the new header.  Buster (his real name is Mark but only his mother calls him that) will take over the family property Currawong, when the time comes.  It is part of the life-cycle of Marrar, the small community in which they live.

Marrar is as homogenous a community as you could probably find in Australia.  Almost everyone who lives there is involved in the same endeavour - farming - and there aren't too many "new" families since the time my mother was growing up there 60 years ago.  Names like Pattison, Hodge, McKelvie, Gaynor, Murphy, Wooden and Turner are sprinkled all over the map of the area, marriages as often. as not are between locals.

At least one son usually succeeds his father on the land, or sometimes a daughter.  Many of the farmers of Trinna's generation are now handing over a lot of the work and responsibility to their sons (not always a smooth process), just as their fathers and grandfathers did before them.  The sons have been learning how to be farmers all their lives and the process does not stop, not only because farming techniques are changing all the time, but they have also been absorbing something more: a social code with standards of conduct and a way of thinking that, intentional or not, is aimed at keeping the tribe of Marrar together.  It would he difficult to be part of Marrar and not, accept the code, though not as difficult as it used to be.  "Marrar used to be a terribly bigoted place when I was a kid but a lot of that has gone," says Trinna.

The social fabric of Marrar is stretching in lots of directions because of economic changes, but it does not seem to be tearing.
When my mother grow up there in the 1920s, her mother used fuel stove, made here own bread, butter, cheese, jams, grew her own vegetables and fruit, made her own clothes and those of her children (there were, six) and rarely ventured to the main street of Marrar, let alone further afield.  Marrar families now use micro-wave ovens, they buy much of their food in supermarkets, their children go to the same schools as the "town kids" and their homes have mains water and electricity.  "The standard of living is good now in Marrar and nobody wants to go back,"  says Tom, Pattison, a local shire councillor and Marrar's unofficial mayor.

But, just like 50 years ago, a bushfire brings all the farmers running, even if their farms are not immediately endangered.  If a farmer died before harvest, or is ill, his neighbours still team up to strip for him.  A lot has changed and nothing has changed, if you see what I mean.

It is a place where few people go without reason, since it is not on the main road to anywhere else.  Wagga is 35 km to the south and there are no big towns any closer. The railway, which is mainly therefor the wheat, runs west to Coolamon and beyond and east to Junee, where it joins the main Sydney-Melbourne line.  Marrar looks very quiet at any time of year.  At midday on the main thoroughfare you don't. see much activity, maybe one or two cars parked outside one or two shops, a dog scratching outside the pub, a kid sitting squinting in the sunlight, waiting for his dad.  But, in fact Marrar is now drawing to the end of its busiest time of the year, completing the cycle of the harvest.  Like the rest of the State, it will probably turn out
to be the biggest harvest Marrar has ever seen.

They usually like to finish harvest by Christmas day but they are late this year because of unseasonal rains at the end of December and because they have so much crop.  The crop was expected to be a bumper, perhaps the best ever.  In fact, it is a good crop for most, but a bumper for only some.  Mother nature can he blamed for most of the reduced outcome, but the fact that farmers had to cart their wheat to more distant silos lately because the rail trucks had not arrived to empty the brimming Marrar silo was a cause of some anger.  Trucks were parked outside the huge wheat silo, the tallest building in Marrar, for two weeks until the silo reopened on Thursday.  Some farmers blame the SRA and the Grain Handling Authority, but others say they have done the best they could with such a big harvest, which all came in at once.

After two years of drought the good crop is more than welcome, especially as sheep are not worth much this year.  The wheat, oats and barley cheques will allow long overdue bills to be paid and mortgages to be soothed, and it will boost commerce in nearby Wagga, in everything from cars and tractors to kitchen blenders.  More indirectly, it has renewed confidence in the land, when some were wondering if it was not time to give it all up.

In the main street today you can see very clearly how things have changed.  Nick Winter would turn in his grave if he could see the old billiards room which operated at the back of the barber shop.  Winter is one of Marrar's favourite sons – he won the hop step and jump at the 1924 Paris Olympics.  It is said that he once lay down on the railway lines at Marrar and let a goods train pass over him in exchange for seven marbles.  According to Trinna, you had to see his agility with the billiard cue to believe it.  One of his tricks was to make the ball run up his cue and into his pocket.  The billiards room in which he displayed this prowess now has holes in the roof, the back wall is almost gone and the chimneys are falling apart.

Its decay is indicative of the path of progress in hundreds of similar towns across NSW.  Though York Street was the economic centre of Marrar in the 1930s, it is now peripheral.  According to Bryan Murphy, who has worked in the street since 1935, there used to be a Post Office, boot-maker, two general stores which stocked almost everything, a butcher, Bank of NSW, the pub, three stock and station agents, a blacksmiths, a garage, two cafes and green grocers, and a wool and skin buyer.  Now there is a pub (as central an institution to Marrar as the Opera House is to Sydney), petrol station, garage, grocery and general store, Murphy's hardware, a Post Office and one cafe.  Even the policeman left during the last war.

As better transport came in, commerce went out.  Farmers who once went to Wagga about four times a year now go two and three times a week.  The expensive modern machinery and parts they need are not stocked in Marrar.  Hand in hand with increased mobility came expectations of a higher standard of living and a drop in the population of the district.  In 1954 Marrar town had about 331 people; now Bryan Murphy thinks it would be no more than 200.

In Marrar's predominantly orthodox Catholic community, there were many families (such as my mother’s) with six kids or more.  Now the families are smaller (farmers don't need as many hands these days) and they live further apart.  Farm mechanisation has cut down on labour needs (for example, trucks replaced horses, so there was no longer any need for the chaff-cutting teams which employed six or seven people at a time) but has increased the amount of capital required to break into farming.

The minimum viable acreage in Marrar now is said to be between 1000 and 1200 acres (405 to 486 ha), twice what it was 40 years ago. Land prices  have gone up to a hefty $550, an acre in the last decade, which means few can afford to buy in cold.
Tom Pattison: "When we left school, if you were prepared to work and save you could get a start yourself, but you could give your son $300,000 and he could not get a start in Marrar today."

Better transport has altered life in a number of more subtle ways too.  My mother was sent to boarding school in Wagga at the age of five because it was then impossible to travel the 35km each day.  Now the children from all over the region are bused into Wagga and home again each day, which has meant that the Marrar public school, another cornerstone of the community, has dropped drastically in enrolments.  Though it is less likely that all of a farmer's sons will have the chance to stay on the land, they now have a better chance of a job in Wagga, and better access to higher education.  Terry and Gary Langtry are both butchers and two of Trinna's daughters, Jenny and Anne-Marie, work in Wagga.  Marrar kids now sometimes go to University, though few of their parents did.  "I reckon there were many good brains went to waste before good transport," says Tom Pattison.

Marrar is mixed country, good for sheep and good for wheat.  When one is :bad, you hope the other is good.  When both are bad, it is not only the sheep that bleat.  The district was originally three large stations, which were progressively broken up into small holdings of about 640 acres (259 ha), or blocks of one square mile, and sold off to share farmers and others.  My grandfather, a sharefarmer and stock and station agent, bought several blocks in the 1930s and 1940s which now form the nucleus of two farms, Currawong and Trafalgar, operated by two of his sons, Trinna and Frank.  Though the properties are separate, they are now run in co-operation, an attempt to share the huge costs of modern plant.  The two farms make up about 4000 acres (1620 ha) and the work is shared between Trinna and Buster, Frank and one of his sons, Barry.

The gamble can be seen in the different fortunes of each property this year.  Frank and Barry expect to average about 17 bags to the acre of wheat this year, a very satisfactory yield.  Bernie expects to go closer to 12 bags, which would have been a bumper 20 years ago, before the development of higher yielding wheat varieties.  "I had a better crop in 1981," he says.  You've never got a bumper crop until it is in the silo.  There’s so many things can go wrong."

Late in the year a new disease appeared called stripe rust, which caught everyone by surprise.  Farmers could not get the chemicals they needed very quickly, and they were not sure how best to use them when they arrived.  Most did spray, but the effectiveness of the spray varied.  Barry Langtry estimates that about 100 acres (40.5 ha) of Trafaigar's wheat was affected by the rust, with the loss of between two and three bags of grain per acre.  Trinna is not sure how much it cost him but the rust attacked certain varieties more than others.  Unfortunately, they were the ones he had planted a lot of.

More damaging for some farmers was the extra rain.  Rain reduces the weight of the grain and sometimes causes it to sprout on the stalk -this is called shot and sprung wheat, and it is only good for stock feed.  The Australian Wheat Board pays $150 a tonne for most wheat this year, but that is reduced,to about $105 a tonne for Marrar growers after charges.  For shot and sprung wheat they take out extra dockages, usually $20 a tonne.

Barry Langtry: "The shot and sprung wheat probably cost the average farmer around here up to $20,000.  Say a farmer has about 500 acres (202 ha) of wheat planted.  In a good year like this that amounts to about 700 tonnes of grain.  If he had only stripped half of it when the rain hit, he might have 350 tonnes of shot and sprung wheat.  Trinna was more fortunate than that.  When the rains lift he had only about 80 acres (32.4 ha) of wheat to strip, which was all soon shot and sprung.  Not that he was complaining.  "This is the most wheat I have ever put in and it's still the most I have ever produced."

The fabric of Marrar's society does not seem to be breaking down under stress from outside influences.  If you asked the locals whether they worry about urban drift, they would probably ask, "What?"  If anything, according to all I spoke to, the social stability is stronger, which may be a protective reaction against the demands of the wider world.  Marrar has a lot of old decaying houses in its few streets, but it also has a few new ones - occupied by older people who have left, their farms to allow their children to take over,. but who don't -want to leave Marrar and a few young couples who grow up there and don't want to live in Wagga, though they may work there.

There are a number of symbols of unity and independence, which keep reasserting themselves.  One is Australian Rules football, which is a second religion.  Few people are available on a Saturday afternoon in winter. (A new chum would probably be accepted despite his atheism but if he didn't go to the football he would never make close friends in Marrar.)  Another is the Marrar War Memorial Hall an immensely important focus for organised social activity like balls and kitchen teas and fund-raising nights, built without any help from outside.

The latest symbol of Marrar’s unity and independence is that to raise money to buy an air-conditioning unit for the school they staged a production of Dimboola, the raucous story of a country wedding which attracted 500 people over five nights and was a huge success.  They were thinking about taking the show on the road but the harvest intervened.  "The significant point about Dimboola is that they decided to do it without even asking the authorities for the money for the air-conditioning plant," said Bob Millis a young artist who has moved to Marrar to live and work.  Marrar must really have changed if it has a resident artist.