Sunday, September 19, 2010
I'm Here Again!
Letter From The Other Side from Cynthia
Dear Del,
We left the day the heavens opened. The road ran small rivers across it and the spray and splashing from the passing vehicles on the highway made for a difficult drive. There were patches of fog, sleet and fierce winds when we crossed the Great Dividing Range. After months of packing it seemed a fitting and dramatic finale to a very stressful time.
Eventually we arrived like two blots on an already soaked landscape and the downpour hardly stopped for the next two weeks.
We had been aware of potential flooding in the area and had chosen a house high enough above the river not to be worried by its level which was rapidly rising as the ground became water logged and the run-off from the mountains started to gain momentum.
Soon the river overflowed its banks and the surrounding paddocks in the valley became lakes which eventually cut the roads. Rural fences were washed away; bridges were broken by logs floating down the torrent. Landslides and fallen trees blocked some roads in the mountain areas and homes and businesses were inundated as the waters met with other rivers and slowly made their way down onto the lower plains.
After more than a decade of drought most people were philosophical about the damage and inconvenience, because they knew how much the people and animals were in need of the replenishing waters.
The water reservoirs have more of the precious liquid in them than we have seen for years and because we are only just into spring after a long and heavy snow season there should be plenty more to come in the next month or so.
People are hardly daring to hope they may have seen the last of drought for a few years. They live in the moment, savouring the greenness and the renewal of life.
Our only inconvenience was a shortage of some staple foods such as milk and bread and we were advised to boil all drinking water because the pumping station of the local water supply had been compromised……….. I knew all those extra things I stored in my pantry would be handy one day.
After about two weeks the waters had gone down sufficiently for us to be able to drive to the next town down the highway to do some shopping. Our village has quite a few shops but as it is largely a tourist resort we often have to take the twenty minute drive down the valley.
We stopped to enjoy a lunch in one of the pubs. All the time Teddy was eating his meal he kept remarking how nice it was and he must have it again when we next visited the pub.
Less than two minutes after we returned to our car I told him he wouldn’t be having that meal again because he reeked of garlic.
‘Really? I thought that was caramelised onions through it, must have been garlic if you complain that much.’ he replied rather crestfallen.
A friend of ours who lives alone on a property half way back to our village asked us to call in on our way home.
However he warned us not to attempt driving up his drive to the homestead as it was still too wet. He would come down in his ‘Ute’ when he saw us at the bottom of the hill.
We arrived at the farm gate and Teddy gave me a short respite from the garlic by getting out and opening and shutting the gate. Naturally I was driving because we were using my small car. There wouldn’t have been a problem if we had used our four wheel drive. I thought I had sufficient room to be able to turn around to face the gate to make it easier when we returned to it to go home. I misjudged and made my turn too wide with the result I sank into the gluey mud and the car became bogged to the wheel trims and any effort to move it resulted in a spray of red mud but no movement.
Mathew arrived shortly after this in his battered old ‘Ute’ and greeted us after four years absence with ‘What did you do that for you silly pair of Galah’s?’
Before I could think of a reply he turned to his two Kelpie dogs which were standing on a pile of hay bales in the tray of the ‘Ute’. ‘Shut up you noisy blighters.’ The dogs obliged and sat down, panting with glee, their long pink tongues flapping about as they awaited his next command.
‘I’ll pull you out when we get back. Hop in, I just have to go and unload this lot in the cow paddock.’
We obeyed and hopped in the front seat of the ‘Ute’, not really designed for three reasonably large people. It was very snug as garlic from Teddy, blood and bone or some sort of high powered fertilizer and probably a dollop of cow pat from Mathew’s gum boots filled the warm air of the cabin.
The dogs began barking noisily again once we were on the move and the men chatted just as loudly over my head about the weather event and probability of an impending locust plague during the early summer. They talked on about the damage to the farms, the extent of the number of trees down and the time it will take to repair everything.
I sat between them listening and smiling to myself as I tried not to inhale to much of the garlic and whatever it was which covered much of Mathew’s clothing. The discreet little spray of perfume I had used that morning would have very little chance of improving the state of the air for the next fifteen minutes.
As we bumped along splashing ever more layers of mud onto the duco of the ‘Ute’ my mind wandered to the table in our house covered with ‘welcome back’ cards and messages and the gifts for our garden which is already filled with flowering spring bulbs, camellias, rhododendrons, azaleas, dog wood trees, maples and magnolias. When we sit beneath the trees which are just coming into leaf, we can see from every angle the seemingly endless views of the mountains and hills covered in eucalypts and the highest peaks covered in snow.
Home means different things to everyone. It doesn’t have to mean where a person in born, or grew up and went to school or spent much of their life. Instead home can be the one place you find at some time during your years when your heart and soul quietly settle into a space which completes the jig saw puzzle that a certain restlessness which may have followed you like a shadow for many years has created. It can be a place of challenge and work or a place where you feel a peace and calm seeping into your very soul and gives your mind and emotions a sense of well being that nowhere else has ever been able to reproduce.
I thought of our dogs enjoying the warmth in front of the fireplace while we were away for the day and the pleasure with which they would greet us. I thought of the people we would have as new neighbours to enjoy good times with and with whom we will share the times of trouble and hardships ahead as well. I am yet to learn of their various talents, quirky ways and humour.
Yes, this is where we belong. Between the calm blissful days there will be the rain, flood, drought and fire and this is my home.
We are even further over the other side now Del, far away from the city and its glitzy pleasures, far away from the shopping malls and sleazy alleys, a long way from many of the amenities that the city provides and I couldn't be happier.
Some of the family have already visited. Our eldest grandson found the excitement of being here during the flooding just, ‘cool’ and other members have been enjoying a week skiing. So we think we shall not feel neglected by them even if at times we are the reluctant ones to make the trip and return down to the coast.
I think I shall have to sit through a football match this evening as Geelong is once again in the season’s football finals and Teddy, our son and his wife and probably our grandsons will want to see it. I’m outnumbered by too many to win an argument over the television remote. Yes, we have better reception here than we had in our previous home; Teddy has even found the radio station we like. It only took a week to find the right place for the aerial. So Chopin, Brahms and Dvorak are still with us.
The music I am listening to at the moment as I write this is the chorus of Currawongs in the garden. It is the birds evening social club and choral society yodelling their greetings as they meet before bedtime and the sun goes down.
Once again the Kookaburra's are our alarm clocks. Their batteries never run out and their time keeping is impeccable.
Your soggy but flourishing ‘flower child’ friend,
Cynthia.
Letter From The Other Side from Cynthia
Dear Del,
We left the day the heavens opened. The road ran small rivers across it and the spray and splashing from the passing vehicles on the highway made for a difficult drive. There were patches of fog, sleet and fierce winds when we crossed the Great Dividing Range. After months of packing it seemed a fitting and dramatic finale to a very stressful time.
Eventually we arrived like two blots on an already soaked landscape and the downpour hardly stopped for the next two weeks.
We had been aware of potential flooding in the area and had chosen a house high enough above the river not to be worried by its level which was rapidly rising as the ground became water logged and the run-off from the mountains started to gain momentum.
Soon the river overflowed its banks and the surrounding paddocks in the valley became lakes which eventually cut the roads. Rural fences were washed away; bridges were broken by logs floating down the torrent. Landslides and fallen trees blocked some roads in the mountain areas and homes and businesses were inundated as the waters met with other rivers and slowly made their way down onto the lower plains.
After more than a decade of drought most people were philosophical about the damage and inconvenience, because they knew how much the people and animals were in need of the replenishing waters.
The water reservoirs have more of the precious liquid in them than we have seen for years and because we are only just into spring after a long and heavy snow season there should be plenty more to come in the next month or so.
People are hardly daring to hope they may have seen the last of drought for a few years. They live in the moment, savouring the greenness and the renewal of life.
Our only inconvenience was a shortage of some staple foods such as milk and bread and we were advised to boil all drinking water because the pumping station of the local water supply had been compromised……….. I knew all those extra things I stored in my pantry would be handy one day.
After about two weeks the waters had gone down sufficiently for us to be able to drive to the next town down the highway to do some shopping. Our village has quite a few shops but as it is largely a tourist resort we often have to take the twenty minute drive down the valley.
We stopped to enjoy a lunch in one of the pubs. All the time Teddy was eating his meal he kept remarking how nice it was and he must have it again when we next visited the pub.
Less than two minutes after we returned to our car I told him he wouldn’t be having that meal again because he reeked of garlic.
‘Really? I thought that was caramelised onions through it, must have been garlic if you complain that much.’ he replied rather crestfallen.
A friend of ours who lives alone on a property half way back to our village asked us to call in on our way home.
However he warned us not to attempt driving up his drive to the homestead as it was still too wet. He would come down in his ‘Ute’ when he saw us at the bottom of the hill.
We arrived at the farm gate and Teddy gave me a short respite from the garlic by getting out and opening and shutting the gate. Naturally I was driving because we were using my small car. There wouldn’t have been a problem if we had used our four wheel drive. I thought I had sufficient room to be able to turn around to face the gate to make it easier when we returned to it to go home. I misjudged and made my turn too wide with the result I sank into the gluey mud and the car became bogged to the wheel trims and any effort to move it resulted in a spray of red mud but no movement.
Mathew arrived shortly after this in his battered old ‘Ute’ and greeted us after four years absence with ‘What did you do that for you silly pair of Galah’s?’
Before I could think of a reply he turned to his two Kelpie dogs which were standing on a pile of hay bales in the tray of the ‘Ute’. ‘Shut up you noisy blighters.’ The dogs obliged and sat down, panting with glee, their long pink tongues flapping about as they awaited his next command.
‘I’ll pull you out when we get back. Hop in, I just have to go and unload this lot in the cow paddock.’
We obeyed and hopped in the front seat of the ‘Ute’, not really designed for three reasonably large people. It was very snug as garlic from Teddy, blood and bone or some sort of high powered fertilizer and probably a dollop of cow pat from Mathew’s gum boots filled the warm air of the cabin.
The dogs began barking noisily again once we were on the move and the men chatted just as loudly over my head about the weather event and probability of an impending locust plague during the early summer. They talked on about the damage to the farms, the extent of the number of trees down and the time it will take to repair everything.
I sat between them listening and smiling to myself as I tried not to inhale to much of the garlic and whatever it was which covered much of Mathew’s clothing. The discreet little spray of perfume I had used that morning would have very little chance of improving the state of the air for the next fifteen minutes.
As we bumped along splashing ever more layers of mud onto the duco of the ‘Ute’ my mind wandered to the table in our house covered with ‘welcome back’ cards and messages and the gifts for our garden which is already filled with flowering spring bulbs, camellias, rhododendrons, azaleas, dog wood trees, maples and magnolias. When we sit beneath the trees which are just coming into leaf, we can see from every angle the seemingly endless views of the mountains and hills covered in eucalypts and the highest peaks covered in snow.
Home means different things to everyone. It doesn’t have to mean where a person in born, or grew up and went to school or spent much of their life. Instead home can be the one place you find at some time during your years when your heart and soul quietly settle into a space which completes the jig saw puzzle that a certain restlessness which may have followed you like a shadow for many years has created. It can be a place of challenge and work or a place where you feel a peace and calm seeping into your very soul and gives your mind and emotions a sense of well being that nowhere else has ever been able to reproduce.
I thought of our dogs enjoying the warmth in front of the fireplace while we were away for the day and the pleasure with which they would greet us. I thought of the people we would have as new neighbours to enjoy good times with and with whom we will share the times of trouble and hardships ahead as well. I am yet to learn of their various talents, quirky ways and humour.
Yes, this is where we belong. Between the calm blissful days there will be the rain, flood, drought and fire and this is my home.
We are even further over the other side now Del, far away from the city and its glitzy pleasures, far away from the shopping malls and sleazy alleys, a long way from many of the amenities that the city provides and I couldn't be happier.
Some of the family have already visited. Our eldest grandson found the excitement of being here during the flooding just, ‘cool’ and other members have been enjoying a week skiing. So we think we shall not feel neglected by them even if at times we are the reluctant ones to make the trip and return down to the coast.
I think I shall have to sit through a football match this evening as Geelong is once again in the season’s football finals and Teddy, our son and his wife and probably our grandsons will want to see it. I’m outnumbered by too many to win an argument over the television remote. Yes, we have better reception here than we had in our previous home; Teddy has even found the radio station we like. It only took a week to find the right place for the aerial. So Chopin, Brahms and Dvorak are still with us.
The music I am listening to at the moment as I write this is the chorus of Currawongs in the garden. It is the birds evening social club and choral society yodelling their greetings as they meet before bedtime and the sun goes down.
Once again the Kookaburra's are our alarm clocks. Their batteries never run out and their time keeping is impeccable.
Your soggy but flourishing ‘flower child’ friend,
Cynthia.
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