I'm home and it's magic.

I can't believe how beautiful it is here. It isn't that I didn't realise before but now, being back here after never expecting to be, this place has a whole new beauty for me.

In many ways I am feeling the enormous weight of failure. Just under four years ago, we followed our dreams and convinced the bank to lend us enough money to buy our acreage retreat. It was lovely out there and I had a fantastic time with my ducklings, my chooks, my veggie garden, my huge playground of trees and waterfall, native birds and planting loads of trees. Financially though things were not so great. Maybe we were dreaming the whole time, that we could somehow increase our loan and still cope with the repayments? Perhaps if it hadn't rained so much, and that and the GFC hadn't affected tourism so much, or perhaps if I was smarter, or better, cleverer, or worked harder?

Three months ago we made the decision that we would rent out our little country cottage, move back here, tidy the house up and repair it where necessary and then put it up for sale. It was a wise plan. I say 'was' because now that I am here I simply never want to leave, ever!

From where I am sitting right now at our dining room table, the ocean is glimmering almost lilac as it stretches out before me I feel almost as if I could skim right over it all the way to Chile. The trees around the house have grown a lot and the view is different than it used to be, but I feel blessed being hugged by this greenery. It's beauty simply takes my breath away. The neighbours are closer, but not so close that I feel too discomforted. Aside from the creep down the hill, the people next door make me feel part of a community, my community.

I hadn't thought I would be lucky enough to live here again but I thought I was okay about that. I was sure I was okay about that, but now it seems that perhaps I never owned this house, the truth is that it owns me. The lines of this house are so deeply ingrained into my soul that I feel almost as if they are a part of me. It was about twenty-four years ago now, that I first drew this house on the piece of graph paper. I didn't know then the power of that small pencil, that it could somehow bring this beautiful spot into existence.  A magic pencil perhaps?

Today is a big one....

It's funny how often I post in my head on this blog and yet nothing ever makes it to the screen, the words just swim away, lost forever in the ocean of my mind.

I wonder if anyone reads this anymore? It doesn't really matter, when it all comes down to it, my blog is for me, a little diary of my random thoughts and nowadays an occasional log on the momentous occasions in my life.

Today is a big one....

Today my baby boy graduates from high school! My beautiful, sensitive, intelligent, kind hearted super son is finishing high school and leaving home.

He could barely talk when we sent him to school for year one, we thought he might have some form of dislexia or deafness. He couldn't keep up with the other kids and he barely said a word. We sent him to a speech therapist and we worried about him constantly. When we tore him out of school halfway through grade 2 and dragged him around the world to live in Scotland, due to the different starting times for the school year, he had to go straight into year 3 over there. His teacher turned out to be a saint and set about making sure our struggling son made it through every day and it is thanks to her that his speech improved, his brain woke up and he became interested and engaged in the world around him. She is also responsible for the hint of a scottish accent that even after 10 years back in Australia still has people constantly asking him where he is from.

In just over a month he will be back in Scotland and I should make the effort to find out if that teacher is still working because it'd be nice if he could visit his old school again. Not only is my "little boy" finishing school and getting ready to move to the city for university in February but he is also flying alone to Europe for 5 weeks! I am gobsmacked really. He has friends in Munich who he is staying with for the bulk of the time, but is also flying to Edinburgh to see some old friends there and Ireland as well to see some relatives, all at 17! I am proud of his bravery but given that he has barely been away from home before for more than a week at a time I am rather overwhelmed by the enormity of this trip. For christsakes he was homesick during his week in the snow in September! How will he survive without me?.... Clearly it's me who's going to be the one not surviving!

Last night after the awards ceremony at his school where he got dux of geography(hope that means he won't get lost overseas) we went to the Noodle bar for some eats. One of the school brothers approached us there and made a point of telling us how much he liked and respected our son. I wonder if he knew that he was gay? I have really appreciated the kind and understanding environment that his catholic school has given him, the support they have shown as he has remained determined to be himself. One thing about my boy, NOTHING sways him from staying true to himself. I adore him for that.

So this is a big day. Will I cry at some point? Thinking of my gorgeous little boy as I trussed him up for his first day of school in January 1996. Will I get a little teary tonight as he dons his bow tie and pointy shoes and hits the dance floor at the grad ball? My baby, all grown up...

Next year he wants to study architecture at University in Brisbane. I am not sure if he will get in, it's a really popular course so the standards have to be very high. If he misses out he will probably do a BA - Geography. The thing is I think he is more suited to the geography course, I think he is too young to make such a big decision anyway but he is determined so i will let him be and let him find his own way. That's the best thing I can do for him, I think.

Meanwhile Wonder Daughter called me last night on top of the world. She just had one of her 1st year designs paraded in the Grad year fashion parade and after the show was over was approached by a Melbourne retailer wanting to stock her "range" She doesn't have one yet but she will. She has always had such fantastic responses to her work. She has chopped and changed in so many areas of her life so much over the last 3 years but the one thing that has remained contant for her is her passion for designing. It's times like these I think she will actually make a name for herself.

I shouldn't be sitting here writing anymore. Today the new kitchen is going in, or starting to go in at least. The house has been in shambles for weeks as we paint and hammer and scrub. It's due to go on the market next weekend....We are selling our home....I think?

Will we go ahead and sell? Will Super Son get into the course he wants at Uni? Will he be all right overseas for 5 weeks without me? Will I cope without him? Will Wonder Daughter and her lovely Mick Jagger lookalike boyfriend stay as happy as they have been? Will S's parents finally stop torturing him and will he start smiling again? Will I stop stuffing around renovating everything I can get my hands on and get a real job?

These and other questions in 2009...roll on new year...

Happy New Years Resolution!

That's it! My new year's resolution is to be happy! I wish this for anyone who still reads this blog too. Please, be happy and have a fantastic 2008! I have figured out a few things that I need to do to achieve this so I guess these are my new years resolutions: 1. Sit at the computer less. (You may have noticed that I have been doing this already. I now have a handwritten journal that S got me for Christmas. In there I am writing things occasionally and if I ever write anything even marginally reasonable I shall attempt to post it online. I also can draw in my journal which is rather difficult to do on a blog so I am really enjoying that. Actually, so far it is mainly just drawings and very little writing, but I love to draw and it makes me happy, so there you go. One resolution is already working) 2. Get a job. (I have finally come to accept that I am not motivated enough to make a good living running my own business and working by myself all the time. This failure has infact been one of the main reasons I have been feeling so discontent in recent times. Working alone is also dreadfully lonely and although I have my doubts as to whether I am even capable of getting a real job, I really have to give it a go. Please wish me luck and courage. I really need some courage.) 3. Stop giving in to everyone else's demands. (I have started learning to stand up for myself. In the past I have always been such a pacifist that I tend to just do whatever people ask of me even when I don't agree with it, simply to avoid any form of confrontation. I have come to realise that I cannot do that anymore. It simply isn't healthy and it costs too much as well, sometimes in both time and money.) 4. Walk on the beach more, eat smaller meals at night and drink less. (i.e: get fit) 5. Be a better friend. (I am not so good at being a friend. I don't have many, only a few who are extremely important. I don't really think people want to hear from me anyway so I tend to keep to myself. I'd like to have more confidence.) 6. Extend my vege garden. (Ok, that's enough sitting at the keyboard. I am off to dig in the garden....) PS. It would have been M's 48th birthday today, instead, it is about 1 month short of the 5th anniverary of his suicide. I don't dwell on thoughts of him as much anymore but he still lives on in my head and in this blog, for which after all, he was the inspiration.

April 1973 - AM

Like in any home almost anywhere in the world the kitchen was the life of the house. In the centre of the narrow room, under the windows, was the ‘Everhot’ slow combustion stove. I can still hear the creak of the firebox door, and my memory can feel the emanating heat, in summer, in winter, early in the morning and late at night, the constant unwavering soul of our home.

Until I was about thirteen I was awoken every morning to the sound of my father chopping kindling to stoke up the fire. I didn’t have a bedroom; instead I slept in the ‘sleepout’, which was basically an enclosed verandah. It had a door that opened onto stairs leading into the side garden. Out there the lemon tree, the orange tree, the peach trees and the plum crowded against the louvered southern wall. The door was weathered though and rather than strain it against the torn green linoleum to force it to a shuddering close each night, it was just left open. As I woke each morning to the sharp splintering sounds of my father’s axe work the open door afforded me a view of the woodheap and the child’s timber and chain swing alongside it. Of the wattle trees and the ironbark silhouetted against the white early dawn of the western sky. I would lie there as my eyes gained focus gazing at those dancing leaves. I saw them filled with creatures and faces. Laughing dancing girls and stern pipe smoking grandfathers. Yapping excited fox terriers and proud contented cats. In centre, facing me, cross-legged I saw an aboriginal man, holding his didgeridoo and staring hard into my face as he made his silent tribute to the beginning of the day.

All this as I listened to the firebox-ready wood crash and tumble into the woodbox by the back door, then the squeak of the firebox door and the scrape of the stoking tool as my father searched for still-warm embers amongst the ash and then laid out a few torn sheets of newspaper with the splintery tinder over it. In moments I would hear the roar and crackle of flames followed by the decisive slam of the firebox door as my father deemed his task as complete, a job well done.

It was wise to wait for a moment until the kettle was boiled before throwing on the warmest clothes I could find. Scrabbling through my ‘lowboy’ for any ill-fitting hand-me-downs from my three siblings and five cousins, the legacy of being the youngest in the generation. It is well that I was not concerned with fashion then, as I must have looked quite lost and unkempt. I rarely wore shoes, so I would run to the warmth of the kitchen before my hardened little feet had time to feel the cold.

Up above the high cupboard was where the ‘Milo’ was kept and I was allowed two teaspoons of the malt chocolate mix in hot water, one sugar and milk if we had any. If not, I would top it with tablespoons of lumpy powdered milk that became a treat in itself, sweet chewy globs of milky goodness. I would have to hide to eat that though, sneak out to the cold front verandah where my mother could not snap at me for being wasteful and greedy. “When I was a child.” Her voice would drone on endlessly.

We lived in the same house that my mother had grown up in. She reminded us every single day how lucky we were to live in such comfort, in a house with running water and painted walls. With fresh bread delivered twice weekly instead of damper made on weevil infested flour, with an actual kerosene refrigerator instead of the air-cooled ‘meatsafe’. According to my mother, everything was better when she was a child. Living on corned beef and unsweetened cocoa, believing that cheese was a treat as wonderful as chocolate and teeth could only be cleaned properly with charcoal was some form of utopia that she seemed to be forever guilty of depriving her children of. Meanwhile I spent my every waking moment straining to hear the sound of a vehicle or an aeroplane, dreaming of what it would be like to have a neighbour that lived closer than 10 miles away or a shop that was closer than sixty miles away. Civilisation called to me like some shining beacon in the far distance, on those cold mornings around the stove in that tiny kitchen my utopia was a land of homogenised milk in a bottle instead of manure laced in a bucket; of electric lights and doors that closed; and most of all of other people. It seemed that even then, my mother’s idea and my idea of the way life should be was somewhat different.

After I had swallowed down the last sweet chocolaty drops of my morning Milo and my mother and father were leaning, smoking cigarettes over the stove and sipping their hot tea I would carefully pour a cup for my Grandmother. She had a favourite cup and saucer and she drank her tea white with none. My feet would feel their way across the wide worn cypress pine floorboards through the dining room across the gold linoleum in the sunroom and to her door.

“Good morning Sunshine” she would say as she unhooked her sliding door and let me in. I loved the mornings in my Grandmother’s room. The “His Master’s Voice” radio and her dressing table top drawer filled with exotic earrings and untouchable pills. My cousin took one once. I always imagine it was one of the little red ones. They bundled her into the car and rushed her to the hospital. An hour and a half of stressful dirt road driving all the way to town. I assume they pumped her stomach when they got her there because she lived to climb the rafters in the shed another day and swallow some strychnine so that the whole panicky process could be repeated. Another survival to add to the family story archive, told and retold until nobody can remember exactly how the original story transpired.

As she drank her tea my Grandmother would tell me stories. Answer my questions about her childhood in Scotland and traveling to Australia by ship to grow up in Brisbane. She would allow me to gaze at my reflection in her magnifying mirror so I could imagine what I might look like when I was all grown up. So there I would be, perched on my grandmother’s bed, with my mismatched hand-me-down clothes, my chocolate ringed mouth, excruciatingly painful screw on drop earrings reflected in that mirror into the future while I thought about Scotland, castle, cities and ships. A world away from the morning bellow of the cattle in the yards, waiting to be fed and milked and drafted in a ritual that comforted and infuriated me all at once.

Grandma would shoo me away while she got dressed for her day and I would race across to the yards with the others. Most mornings I rummaged through the old shoe box by the back stairs, hoping against hope that my feet may have grown enough during the night that one of the pairs of dusty old riding boots might fit me. My mother would snap at me in her panicked voice to check for red-back spiders before I put my feet into danger. So I would use my hand to check as she insisted. That logic still baffles me? I never found a red-back and those boots never did fit, so I would stay barefoot, running across the sharp spiky dry grass as fast as I could so it wouldn’t have the chance to hurt my feet.

The yards were warm with animal respiration and busy as we worked, mixing grains, filling troughs with water and feed drums with hay. Mucking out the bull stalls, milking, letting calves in and out and. It was all hands on deck and conversation was king as we performed our tasks by habit. An hour or so of teamwork every morning and evening without fail. Back at the house Grandma would have a cooked breakfast ready on the table when we returned. We always came into the house through the kitchen, leaving boots outside or scraping the manure from our feet. The kitchen would be warm and filled with the smells of cooking as we crowded through to the bathroom to wash our hands and feet then quickly dress in slightly better clothes for school.

I never remember having to rush yet even after that leisurely two-course breakfast every morning where we delved into the cornflakes for the hidden toy and argued over how many omelettes we each had eaten, we seemed to have time to burn. We helped Grandma clear the table and wash up. Four kids fighting over who was wiping and who was putting away and my brother gleefully flicking me on the bottom with the wet teatowel. The drive to school was eleven miles. We always drove seven but my parents took it in turns with another family to drive the last five. So we met at the “Black Gate”, a gate thus named after it began its life soaked in Linseed oil but had long since grayed in the weather and the sun. We played hopscotch in the sand there as we waited for the other family and then for our parents to stop talking about the weather and the government and the price of fuel.


Then it was time for another day of school.... I hope you have enjoyed waking up with me on some unremarkable day in 1973?

Home on the land....my mother would be proud.

This trip has been exactly what I needed. Out here I am so completely at home, all the bits of me seem to fall into place and I feel truly happy. There are of course so many memories, happy and sad. I can feel my father in the un-renovated rooms, down by the shed where he fiddled with machinery or by the empty creek where we used to sit together and fish. My grandmother is in the air, in the crisp sheets that we carried in from the line together or in the garden where she traced the teddy bear rhyme around my palm. Four generations of my family have now called this home, have let their feet become caked with mud while catching huge lobster sized yabbies from the dams or let the harsh dry scrub scratch their arms as they trekked up the the aboriginal cave in the hills. I had been told the hand paintings were gone, but it wasn't true. They are still there and I felt like singing with joy when I found them. It was enormous fun to show them to my Japanese guest, sharing something often makes it better I think. Super Son has enjoyed it too, I can tell, as slowly the tension of keeping his 'cool' face on eased and he has relaxed. He ran over the rainbow coloured rocks, the sheets of dry gum bark cracking crisply under his converse. He's going to need a new pair after this trip. I feel like I haven't seen him so animated in months.

I also found an aboriginal axe on the first morning here. I have been looking for one all of my life, I had just shown Ink the grooves in the sandstone down by the water hole and tried to explain to him that these grooves were made as the stone axes they used were sharpened, as we walked back towards the house over the ridge where I played so much as a child and felt such peace as a teenager an axe just lay on the ground in my path. Perhaps a cow had kicked it out of the soil, anyway it almost feels as if I was meant to find it, as if the land finally accepts me as it's offspring. Ha, that sounds stupid but thats just how it is.

Today is our last full day out here. I hope to catch some more yabbies, maybe climb the highest mountain so we can see one hundred miles around us (almost), perhaps we will go and collect nuts from the huge Queensland nut tree in the 'park', right now I am taking the binoculars and checking the water tanks for my brother. He is happily on the coast with his family so perhaps for the first time in over twenty years, this place really does feel like my home. I feel lucky.

On the phone my daughter tells me that she is moving to Sydney very soon. She is going down in a few weeks to try and find a job, I feel a little sad but resigned that maybe this is something she feels she has to do. Maybe I will come to Sydney for a visit soon? I can't think of any greater contrast than this place and Sydney.

Barefooted Brats

It started the night before my ninth birthday. Dean and I found the chrome plated cylindrical contraption in the sideboard drawer, all spinning notched disks and fluted brass rods. It had a hinged lid along one side and a scalloped end wheel, which when you turned it would set the fluted rods all spinning. "Here", Dad said, "You lick the cigarette paper and place it in the slot, then lay a measure of tobacco along the length, not too close to the ends or it ends up in my mouth, then you close the lid and turn the end."
So we sat on the floor at his feet, Dean and I and rolled him cigarettes with varying degrees of success, we laughed at our attempts and became loud enough that we were sent the the spare room where we were always allowed to sleep when we had friends to stay. I know it would have been Dean's idea, but there we were hidden by the wall with my father's pouch of drum tobacco and Dean, being the natural ratbag that he was; it was inevitable really.
"Let's roll some for ourselves." he said "We can take them to school and see what it is like to smoke."
I agreed, I always agreed with everything that Dean said, he was bigger than me. He was being nice to me. I would do anything for Dean to be nice to me.
At school the next day we whispered to the others at little lunch and Dean led us all to the chicken coop behind the hit-up board at the far end of the tennis court. We climbed through the wire netting gate into the little pen and found old feed tins and water containers to turn over and plant ourselves on, small relief from the dusty dried out chicken poop, still smelly even a year after all the chooks were gone. Kent demanded the best seat and set himself up as watch peeking between the boards to be sure the teacher was not coming. So we lit the small bent half squashed "rollie" passing it around we puffed clouds of smoke out from our faces.
"That's not really how you do it" Dean told us" You have to suck it right in."
We just looked at him dumbly and kept puffing. Ann held hers elegantly, legs crossed at the ankles. Evelyn swaggered provocatively at eleven years old, swore and spat the bitter tar from her pink perfect lips. I knew I looked stupid doing everything I did, so there seemed little point in trying to be anything other than an untidy little tomboy. At least I was good at that. Little Beth stood defiantly, threatening to tittle-tale to her parents, he carrot red hair stark against the shocked white of her freckled skin. She wouldn't dare, would she?
It became a ritual after that, every day we brought stolen cigarettes to school. We graduated to climbing the tree behind the coop, a better look-out we thought. As if the teacher couldn't see us out the small square window, those little puffs of smoke wafting from between the branches of the whistling pine athol trees.
I remember that time with a feeling of elation, six small children on top of the world. Untouchable.
I can still feel the dread as we watched from our perches that day when he finally stood up from his desk and walked that long 100 metres towards us. I wonder that he left it so long when in honesty he must have known that whole week. Perhaps he simply hoped that we would stop by ourselves. I think a school with six pupils was more than this first year teacher, posted to the back of beyond and an empty classroom of barefooted brats, had ever bargained on. Six defiant, strong minded rebels were harder to control than a normal class of twenty-five.
Watching his slow steady steps towards us that day, we knew that we were caught. I saw Beth's pale white cheeks flush red with fear and defiance, so, she had told on us.
His decided discipline was that we should tell our parents or he would tell them for us. It was the worst punishment of my life.
In time I forgot the punishemnt but I remembered that feeling of elation. The thrill of being naughty and more than any nicotine addiction. That memory took hold of me like a drug. The thirst for that elation has never really left me.
After all, we never inhaled. (Originally posted 27.8.04)

Posting and Reposting...Kitchens and Memories...Deleting the wrong files....

Last week I decided that I needed to clean out my laptop, delete files, programs etc. I did the full back-up first, of course, but did not realise that the toshiba "my safe" folder I kept all my writings in wasn't going to back up correctly. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I have managed to lose most of my writings. Pretty stupid hey? I have been able to find some though and stumbled across this post, below, written for what would have been my father's 78th birthday a few years back. It is rather similar to the previous post but I thought I would share it again anyway.


Seventy-eight

In the evenings it seems now that it was always just Dad and me. We would sit up late and play cards in a wonderfully comfortable quiet. When I longed for home during long freezing winters at boarding school, I longed the most for those evenings with my father. There was something in me that he understood, a thing that set us apart from the others.

He taught me to play euchre so that wherever in the world I have travelled he is with me. I feel my hands holding the cards the way his did and I rest my finger on my chin to consider my chances, as he did.

He liked a whisky late at night over those cards. He never drank more than a tiny glass or two, so I could never think of my father as an alcoholic, as my mother claimed he was. He was more a binge drinker when the cattle sales were on in town and when you consider his binges were often many months apart, for the most part he was a calm, patient and hard working man.

Every morning he woke me as he chopped the wood for the fire. I would wait until I heard the thump and rumble of the wood, and tinkle of the tinder landing in the woodbox. I would wait for the splash and crackle and roar as he lit the kerosine splattered firewood. I would listen for the sounds of his sock covered feet shuffle to the taps and fill the kettle, the scrape and grating squeak as he removed the fire cover and set the water over the new hot flames to boil. These memories of sound are like gold to me. The kettle would not take long and I would hear him feed the fire with chunks of increasing size, the final hollow pressured thump as he became satisfied with the health of the fire and rammed the firedoor shut. I would wait for this, then stumble out to the kitchen, warm now and welcoming.

We would lean inside the oven door together and let our cold hands sit on the white enamel insulated (asbestos probably) stovetop covers. His first hand rolled drum cigarette would be sending spirals of blue smoke into his eyes, and he would gaze quietly over the back paddock. I wonder now what he was thinking about. I suppose we must have spent this time talking and it seems wrong that the sounds of that room are so acute in my memory but his words seem to have drifted away and dissipated into the black soot on that vj lined ceiling.

Dad would have been seventy-eight last week. I knew even then, I think, that he would not last that long. He often joked about his smoking, that we would see the smoke rising from his grave but I looked last time and there wasn't any. I imagine him laughing and reminding me that he did give up in the end but not until two weeks before he died. It annoys me now that the doctors didn't let him live his last few weeks with that small joy. Instead they pumped him full of nicotine to stave the cravings and his weakness for just one more cigarette placed too much stress on his poor heart.

His dear heart.