On this morning two years ago, my mum walked into my bedroom and gave me the news that my dad had been fired from his job, and we had two weeks to find somewhere else to live.
We'd been working at How Now Dairy for nearly one year, and doing our absolute best. I gave everything to this place. Late nights, hard work, in some horrid weather, and in what was quite frankly an awful work environment at times. Though technically only my dad was employed there, we all pitched in on the farm - we were expected to, and the boss gave us our own responsibilities (unpaid, of course), so when my dad got fired, in effect we all were. And to make it all so much worse, the house we were living in was part of the job as well. So not only were we left jobless, but we were also homeless. Working there was a challenge for many reasons, and I'm not supposed to go into details about those reasons, but despite how hard it was, I'm still so gutted by how it ended.
To be promised everything, and end up with nothing. We scrambled to find somewhere to go, but two weeks is hardly enough time to come to terms with bad news, let alone figure out what to do about it and make something happen. There was not enough time. My dad frantically applied for jobs and my mum was in contact with someone who had a rental house nearby but in the end, nobody would help us. And so after fourteen days, one year to the exact day that we drove up this driveway to begin the job, we drove out again, with nowhere to go but to camp on our empty property two hours away. All nine of us and five dogs and five rats and a cat and our three cattle, one of whom was heavily pregnant.
It was not supposed to end up this way. Our cow's beautiful calf was stillborn about three weeks after we left How Now. We were living in tents all through the winter. We sat on that land for a full year, getting turned down for jobs and denied houses. What was the worst was getting led on - people pretending they wanted to help and then snatching it all away, acting like it was our own fault and we were "choosing" to be homeless. As if we had any say in what was done to us.
And then, at the end of it, after a year, we gave up. We couldn't keep going like that, struggling day to day and begging for help that we now realized would never come. So we sold everything. Everything but our dogs and the cat, and moved back to New Zealand with the tiniest hope that we could find something better. Thirteen years in Australia and this is how it ended. Betrayed and abandoned and being forced to leave my whole life behind. It was heartbreaking.
I think about what I had to leave behind almost every day. My pet steer Logan, who I rescued from a dairy farm as an unwanted five-day-old calf, and had hoped to spend so much more time with him. I taught him to accept a rider and I had so many plans of what we could do next. I'll do none of it now. There was my pet rat Pixie and her sisters, all playful and adorable, each with their own little quirks and habits. I had friends, I had a life, and it's all gone now. It took me 13 years to build all that for myself, only to have it taken away in an instant by people's selfishness. It will take a long, long time to build anything like it again, and it's hard to find the strength to even try, knowing how fragile it all is.
We came back here to find something better, and I suppose, in some ways, we have. We live in a house again. My dad got a job. With all community COVID eradicated over here, I can safely go to dog club and I can compete in agility. But in other ways, it still sucks. Our landlord won't let us have pet rats. I still haven't been able to get myself a job, and that means I can't afford to raise another calf. These were the things that were keeping me focused on the future as I said goodbye to everything I loved back there.
I am grateful, but at the same time, I am grieving.
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