CROISANTS

CROISSANTS

My teenage years were increasingly dominated by my knees. First one then the other dislocated and left me plastered, bandaged and on crutches for 6 weeks at a time with all the inconveniences and embarrassments that this entailed.

Both times the dislocations were dynamic. Once I swung a sack up onto a pile. I didn’t swing it high enough and as it swept back it caught the inside edge of my kneecap and – ’pop’ – out it went.  Horribly painful.

Next time was from an illegal slide tackle on the soccer field. I had three bruises on the inside of my thigh from his studs. I was carried off to an ambulance but he didn’t walk away too happy either by the end of the game, or so I was told later.

But the third time was the worst.

In a fit of exuberance, wanting to do something different, I took a contract with the Gisborne Water Board to plant willow poles in erosion areas. This turned out to be in high hill country. It was too big for one bloke and the water board liked teams of two so I hired a friends’ brother, Henk, to help.

Henk was Dutch, proper Dutch, just out from Holland on a working holiday. He was a pastry cook really but loved the idea of getting into some real work in New Zealand.

We were hauled into the block by Simon, the water board supervisor. He took us to meet the farmer then on up the farm track to meet Jack, who’d been getting the poles out to the block and all the gear to the hut. Simon dropped us, made the introductions and scooted off in his land cruiser.

Jack had a little Suzuki 500 4wd and we all piled in with his 2 dogs, big black and white hunt-aways. One insisted on sitting on Henk who was too nonplussed to do anything about it.

The Suzuki slithered about in the mud but Jack kept it moving. He reckoned a land cruiser would bog in this stuff but the Suzuki was so light it would almost float.

The poles had been flown in by helicopter and Jack showed us where the drops were on a relief map on the wall of the hut. Red crosses marked the drop points and the major tracks and some of the fence lines were drawn in pencil. The hut was marked and the farmers house, a couple of kms away, all downhill.

We brewed tea as we checked the supplies we’d brought then Jack headed back down the hill through the mud, promising to be back at the end of the week to check how we were going. We could hear the Suzuki all the way down the hill but then, quite suddenly it was very quiet. Completely silent.

Just a little breeze around the huts rafters and our voices, eerily loud. Henk and I looked at each other and shrugged. We hardly knew each other. I’d needed a hand and he’d needed a job so … here we were. His brother Frans was a mate and had tee’d it all up between us. Henks English wasn’t so good but much better than my Dutch and we managed.

We sorted the gear out and had a look round.

The Water Board supplied the gear. We had a slasher each, a 5 foot steel crowbar, a pole rammer – like 18 inches of 3 inch steel tube, closed at one end and with a handle down each side from the open end. You used it by putting the open end over the top of a straight 6 foot tall willow pole and banging it up and down to pound the end of the pole into the hole you’d dug with the crowbar. You used the slasher to sharpen the end of the pole that was going into the ground.

Willows are one of those plants that grow just by being stuck in the ground if the conditions are right. The right conditions meant water. They’d grow roots if you just left them in puddle. They were fantastic at soaking up water from wet slopes where the topsoil was washing off the hills after the native bush cover was cleared. The hills were covered in grass now, for sheep, who’d added to the erosion with their sharp hooves.

We lit the stove and made some dinner and turned in early.

 

The days soon had a routine. We’d get up and eat, head out towards one of the pole drops, carrying all our gear and a bit of lunch. We’d grab half a dozen poles each then set off looking for places where slips were already showing and find where the water was running. It wasn’t hard to find places. The small valleys all seemed to have soft bottoms with deep soil that had run off the hills above. We’d crowbar a hole, pound in a pole or three then head back for some more.

It was tricky going sometimes and with half a dozen poles over your shoulder it could be heavy work. Henk struggled from day one. After about an hour for his soft pastry cook hands were covered in blisters. He didn’t say anything but when he took his gloves off at lunchtime his skin came away with them.

There was nothing for it, we called it a day and headed back to the hut. He wasn’t pleased with the meths I put on a pad and had him wash his hands with. It stung, but it would also harden the skin up. I had to give it to him though, he didn’t moan about his hands once.

The next day we organised it so he made trips from the pole drop carrying poles and I put them in. After a couple of days his hands were good enough to cover in band-aids, wrap in a clean sock with holes cut in the end and gently use the tools. I showed him how to hold the rammer and bar so that your hands didn’t slide on themselves at the impact point. This stops the shearing forces on your skin.

He got better at it and still didn’t complain. That night, using the camp oven he made croissants. I’ve never tasted finer. Covered in strawberry jam and butter they were magnificent in the cold clear air with a hint of woodsmoke and a mug of sweet tea. Life was pretty good.

We passed our first inspection with Jack who said we were going well. He’d brought more supplies and when we told him about the croissants, he didn’t believe us. Henk said he’d make some more for when Jack came the next week.

But it ever happened.

Instead, I got my first ride in a helicopter.

We were walking down a steep hill from a pole drop, well loaded up. We’d taken to carrying as many poles as we could to minimise the up and down travel to the pole drops.

Going down this hillside I put a foot down and felt it begin to slip. Not just the foot but both feet and a small patch of the hillside. I slid, slowly turning as the ground moved.

My right foot sank deeper and stuck, In the meantime the rest of me kept going and turning. My right knee gave a ‘sclunch’ sound and my knee cap dislocated.

I was still holding the poles and all the gear and tossed it so I wouldn’t land on the slasher. Henk told me later that my yell echoed 8 times around the hills.

I fell back and landed in a heap. The slip stopped moving and quiet returned. Henk didn’t know what had happened. We had thick woollen trousers on with waterproofs over the top so he couldn’t see anything wrong. I tried to explain and to work out what to do.

Eventually I got him to help me into a better position. He agreed to go down to the farmer and get some help. I though Jack might come with the Suzuki. I wasn’t thinking very straight.

Henk left me his coat, our lunch and both thermoses of tea then headed off down the hill. I was on my own, stuck in a quiet wet valley at the top of the Mungatuk ranges. Just me and the pain.

I must have had some degree of shock as I can remember getting very cold and not tracking time very well. I drank all the tea from both thermoses and ate all the lunch.

I listened to what was happening around me. There was always the wind, occasionally a sheep bleat or a faint dog bark. And suddenly I heard a helicopter. I thought they were dropping more poles around the hill. The noise came and went a bit but then got much louder.

I looked back up over shoulder and saw a chopper setting down about 50 metres away.

I was gobsmacked. What were they doing here?

A man climbed out of the chopper and ran towards me.

“How much blood have you lost” he yelled.

This confused me further, if that was possible.

“Umm none” I called back.

“What do you mean none!” he said indignantly

Somehow I felt that I’d failed a test. “I’ve dislocated my kneecap” I said quietly.

“Hummphh!” was all he managed.

I understood later that this was a very busy Emergency Department Doctor from Gisborne Hospital who had cancelled his clinics to jump into a helicopter and rescue a bloke in the hills who had cut his leg off, or nearly. He wasn’t pleased to find me with a mere dislocated kneecap.

I was really delighted to see him though, grumpy or not.

It seemed Henk had run all the way down to the famers house and found him at home. In trying to relate what had happened he had made repeated slashing motions to his knee. The cocky knew we had sharp slashers and thought I must have sliced myself open somehow which constituted an emergency.

He rang 111 and it just got bigger from there.

On the hillside the doctor had a feel of my knee through my trousers. Satisfied it was stable enough he wrapped a full leg inflatable splint around my leg and started getting the pilot and the paramedic organised to load me up. I tried to convince him to put the kneecap back there and then but he wouldn’t do it. He would barely talk to me, the insufficiently wounded patient, let alone listen.

They lifted me up. The paramedic had my shoulders and the pilot my left leg while the doctor carried my right. As we got to the chopper the Doctor was so busy telling everybody what to do that he banged my heel hard down onto the choppers deck, forcing my knee straight and … my kneecap sklunched back into place.

My entire body relaxed. It’s the only good thing about dislocations, When they go back in all the tension and pain goes away -immediately, and your entire being lets go of the horror. It was blissful.

“What’s happened?” the doctor shouted at me.

“It went back in. When you banged my leg into the chopper. It went back in.” I tried to explain with a smile.

“I didn’t bang your leg into anything, it just reduced spontaneously.” He said looking at the other guys.

I didn’t care.

“So he doesn’t even have a dislocation to show for it.” The Doctor muttered with what sounded like disgust.

We flew into the carpark at Gisborne Hospital.

It had been cleared to allow the chopper to land. Anybody and everybody that could had come down to watch the bloke who’d cut his leg off brought in. Apparently there was talk of chainsaws and emergency surgery in the hills and all sorts, or so Simon had been told before the chopper went out.

I don’t think it went quite the way the doctor had envisaged it. Two hospital orderlies lifted me on the stretcher out of the chopper. I sat up, not wanting to be further bother and said I could walk if it was easier.

The doctor stumped off without a word, never to be seen again.

I was taken to outpatients and checked out. They strapped my leg up and gave me some crutches and aspirins and told me I could get a taxi from out the front.

Somehow the whole place seemed annoyed at me for not having provided much more dramatic entertainment. Henk and Simon turned up as I was getting ready to go and loaded me into the land cruiser.

Henk was the hero of the day for me. He’d done everything he could and then some.

Simon said that he didn’t think it was a good idea for me to go back up into the hills with knees like mine and when he saw the state of Henks hands he vetoed him as well. He kept Henk on though, till the end of the season, working in the tally room, and occasionally baking for the troops.

Later that week I climbed into my old J4 van, which fortunately had sliding front doors. I meant that I could stick my right leg out the door and as long as I used one crutch on the accelerator pedal I could manage the clutch and brake with my left foot.

I can’t say I was very sorry to leave Gisborne behind.

But it was definitely time to get my knees sorted out.

Less than a year later I was in Physio School.