Summary of fences: not just an open-and-shut gate
Rod McFarlane has met plenty of gates in his time, from your open-and-shut models to the stopgap buggers involving stakes and loops. "In trips north-west," said Rod via email, "I was often designated gate-man, climbing out of the vehicle to deal with each gate we passed through."
Swing gates are a breeze. You unhook the chain. Swing the gate open. Then shut the bloody thing behind you. Compare that to the DIY creations of Pokataroo and Burren Junction, triggered by my recent quick clue:
A Back O'Beyond gate.Credit:Isabella Pittaway via ABC Rural.
"Makeshift access point built of barbed wire and fence stake (4-1’-6,4)". The answer was news to Rod – BACK-O’-BEYOND GATE. The Macquarie ranks the item with other haywire devices, including the Mallee and Bogan gates. Kiwis know similar creations as Taranaki gates, while a Methodist gate is "any gate that proves difficult to open, as only a Methodist can open it without swearing".
Boosting my bush vocab, Rod went on. "In central-western NSW – places like Forbes and Condobolin – as well as Walgett and Cryon Siding in the north-west, the item is usually referred to as cocky’s gate, or a hordern gate."
The first was familiar, the second a mystery. Rod speculated that Sydney’s Anthony Hordern & Sons may be the etymology, the store a major hardware outlet of its time, but that case remains open. That said, Rod’s ute-hopping memoirs steeled me to find John Pickard’s Illustrated Glossary of Australian Rural Fence Terms, a NSW government publication of 2009.
There I discovered a dropper isn’t just for eyestrain, but "a vertical component in a post-and-wire fence that’s not embedded in the ground". While Kurt Cobain wasn’t the only grunge kid in town, since grunge is also "a gate made by leaving a narrow gap partially blocked with a post, thus allowing a person to pass, but not stock".
Australia is zigzagged by lift gates (a gizmo operated by a jib boom), spear-point gates and Cass tilts (a drop panel within electric fences). Meantime a cocky’s gate is no relation to a cockatoo fence – a barrier built of logs and branches, also dubbed a deadwood or brush fence, depending on your postcode.
By fluke, a second email alluded to the back of beyond, but no gate this time. Alison Norton felt stymied by the cryptic clue that plunks a random letter in its midst. Veteran journo Mungo MacCallum is a recidivist in this regard, his clues for The Saturday Paper fond of stuff like: "T – pretty bloody awful (5-4)".
What’s the deal, asked Alison. The answer is THIRD-RATE, I explained, where T represents RATE’s third letter, just as rock bottom is K. In the same vein, H (the middle of nowhere) can be D (the back of beyond). The genre is known as a semi-rebus, a typographical riddle similar to the ambush I set for Brighette Ryan last week, in further crossword correspondence.
Ryan wrote: "My Dad is a huge fan of yours. And I’m wondering if you could help me out? I’d love to tell him and Mum that they’re going to become grandparents for the first time by using a cryptic clue."
TEARY BERTHING was the first idea to spring from Brighette's name, but the anagram was off-kilter. So I improvised a rebus: 1000 + 100 + g’day + 50 + 500, the whole equation placed over ST to form a fraction. "Dad’s the cryptic expert," updated Brighette, "but Mum was the one to work out GRAND first, then Dad did the rest: GRAND+C+HI+L+D-on-the-WAY." Eureka – and congratulations. One of life’s mysteries solved, open-and-shut.