Letter From The Other Side; from Cynthia.

Dear Del,

We have ceased being sensible.

As I said in my last letter we were heading off on holiday.

We spent two weeks in the North East amongst our beloved hills and have decided to move back despite the problems the distances bring and the vagaries of the supply of some amenities that suburban people take for granted.

As we drove around the long slow hill and looked down at the valley where our two favourite towns are settled our hearts leapt at the view of the mountains and the gold, amber and dark plum colours of the autumn foliage amid the greenness of the paddocks. Our minds were made up.

Because the villages in the valley are so small there were not many houses for sale which could suit us. Some were in dangerous wooded areas, others on steep sloping sites which would have been impossible to walk around with ease and many were far above our price range. Eventually, on our last day of searching we found what is to be our new home hidden behind a coloured curtain of crab apples, alders and crepe myrtles.

There is a river nearby which is fed by the mountain rains and snow. Parks, cycling and walking tracks criss-cross the town in all directions.

We met up with old friends and enjoyed their unpretentious company.

Many of them have Italian heritage and so we ate home cured olives and olive oil, sun dried tomatoes and capsicums. Some folk had been making this year’s supply of salami and hams and others continue to make their own wines. There are probably a few stills for grappa production around as well.

These hills have become the home to many people from all over the world whose forbears rushed for the gold buried in their depths or easily panned from out of the rivers.

Others came with the great flush of immigrants after WW2 to help build the dams and hydro electric turbines which supply so much power for the state.

It is the place where bushrangers terrified wealthy travellers and robbed them of their hard won money as they travelled in the crowded stage coaches while making their precarious trips along the narrow mountainous roads between Melbourne and Sydney.

Many of the pioneers lie buried in unmarked graves, others at least had the dignity of a cemetery burial. The number of children and young people who died from illness or as the result of accidents gives testimony to the hardships the early settlers endured.

Some of the towns also have Chinese cemeteries. The Chinese people trekked vast distances overland to make their way to the area and became suppliers of vegetables and very often rich merchants.

When one stands in the forest and listens to a whip bird echoing his call through the bush it is hard to feel alone. The spirit of the original aboriginals is still so strong here it would not surprise me to hear a Didgeridoo.

The cattlemen of the high country have always been an iconic breed of people. Sinewy, expert horsemen riding strong sure footed steeds, many of which are the progeny of the horses the soldiers took with them to the Boer War and WW1 and died far away in foreign lands.

Certainly there are fine restaurants, deer farms as well as cattle and goat farms, vineyards, olive groves, chestnut groves, apples and cherry orchards.

The tourists rush to the hills in their shiny clean cars to enjoy the short winter snow season. Some of them oblivious to anything other than having a good time and many of them only aware of the wildlife when they run into one of them along the road.

In spring the cyclists arrive around the same time as the blow flies and cause much muttering behind the steering wheels of cars as drivers become annoyed by them straying our of the cycles lanes. It takes a little while each year to become accustomed to the sight of Lycra clad men and women clip clopping down the footpaths in front of the shops in that peculiar bowlegged walk cyclists have when wearing cleats.

The whole place has an air of unhurried life amid enormous space.

Teddy is delighted he will be able to find open areas where he can once again test his water rockets without having some busy body ringing the authorities complaining about a terrorist threat in their midst.

We heard about a friend of ours who was badly injured in a car accident and has been in rehabilitation for eighteen months. She owned a small second-hand bookshop which despite her long absence is still being cared for by her friends and neighbours because that is what you do in this part of the world.

The towns have unfamiliar names for strangers to pronounce, there is Mudgegonga, Barwidgee, Yarrawonga, Yackandandah, Nug Nug, Wangaratta and so on. All of them have larger than life characters, hermits, eccentrics and also the just plain dangerous types who are best left alone because it is easy to disappear in the forest.

One wag written about in the Yackandandah tourist guide was…. ‘Bill Newton was known as the “Yackandandah Kid” He had a finger in every pie….drove a taxi, owned a shoe shop and a funeral parlour, all at the same time. He was especially known for accidentally locking his customers in his shop at night’

There are stories everywhere about the personalities which have helped forge the special character of this vast and still largely untamed area.

As we were driving back home our selling agent rang to tell us he had sold our house. We stopped by the side of the road for a little while feeling stunned. Two weeks had resulted in our lives making a complete U turn.

Our present house is full of boxes and packaging and our garden has been pruned within an inch of its life. It will have a family living in it next.

It is a comfortable home but for us it is not in the right place.

I will need to travel the one hundred and twenty miles to the specialist which will be a bit of a nuisance at times for us and our nearest bank is forty miles away but I don’t care. The thought of breathing the air filled with the smell of the vast eucalypt forests and enormous pine plantations again is wonderful.

We won’t try and be brave and fight any summer fires which are sure to threaten us again. This time we shall hitch up our caravan and travel to the nearest place of safety. We will try and be sensible in some ways even if our decision has dismayed some of our more careful and conservative friends and family.

Teddy says he never did get around to paragliding while we were there before and this time he intends to. I have requested he do it first then come home and tell be afterward.

He is scraping cream paint off an area in the bathroom at present and each time I see him he looks as if he has an acute case of dandruff.

The family all expressed their support and echoed my sister’s words in various ways by asking what took us so long to decide suburbia was not our glass of Shiraz.

Back to the boxes, bubble wrap and paper now Del. Each day as I pack I see more of ourselves withdrawing from this place and August will come quickly.

I will keep you up to date with our exploits,

Your lighter hearted ‘flower child’ friend,

Cynthia.