Thanks to his very wise decision to cash in on a boom in pig prices he finally had the wherewithal to replace the dusty, mice prone pad he inherited from his father.

How many long hours on the tractor doing ever decreasing squares had he wondered just what house he would build if he ever had the chance?

Wheat prices always seemed to be the same, so to were lamb prices even though he reared the best in the district.

He pottered about with a few pigs on the ground, a mixed farm was exactly that when I was a lad, you needed as many income streams as possible to feed raise hungry kids and keep the diesel in the overhead tank.

Then the price of baconers went through the roof.

If we invest what we have in this, we will have enough for that, he reasoned. And my mum was certainly on board.

No weatherboard on stumps for them.

So a piggery was built and despite the obvious stink my mother pitched in.

For a time the sows had names, but after the house was built and mum returned to domestic duties, they just became the numbers on their ear tags.

The price of the Barastoc pellets in the bins eventually eroded the profits but for a time it was a gold mine.

My folks later invested in a pair of ostriches thinking the same was possible, but it was just a not so fancy pyramid selling scheme, and pretty much everyone did their dough.

One disgusted investor, they were all locals, even used his “investment” as yabbie bait, so he could “get some value” out of it.

But the pig shed proved its worth, and in quick time there was enough for a house.

My father was raised in the aftershock of the Great Depression, no bank loans for him.

Brick on a concrete slab. Weatherproof, and best of all, mice proof.

But it had tiles on the roof.

In the Victorian Mallee it doesn’t rain much.

And when it does it has to rain during the growing season, between April and September mostly.

We were all trained to listen for the rain, it was necessary for our survival.

I remember mum coming into us one morning and gesturing outside to the pouring rain.

“Here that kids, it’s raining money.”

That was the problem though, hard to hear on tiles when you are used to corrugated iron, we had to develop super-sensory hearing.

Rookie mistake Dad.