Sooner or later we had to move. Not being real farmers we could hardly be expected to dig out dams, maintain fences, keep weeds at bay or kill foxes into a hopefully ripe old age. Feeding my beloved leghorns we will miss, so those square wombat nuggets near the letterbox on top of the stone holding the gate open while I drive through. A mystery of wombat habits which will have to remain.
The house in total chaos. What decision to make on trying to squeeze into a much smaller town-house within walking distance of station, shops and hospital? Boxes of photo albums, last letters of my mum having surfaced from somewhere. What to do with toy trains and tin cars? Tons of books which here on the farm could be put on lots of shelves. The previous owners had shelves to house hundreds of books. Our new abode has only kitchen and wardrobe shelves, but nothing for books or toys. Why on earth, do houses have two and half bathrooms but never bookshelves. Do we hide books under the bed?
The last of the alpacas were shoved into the trailer and gone to other paddocks. ‘ Snoopy,’ our whethered old boy given next door together with a young ‘entire’ male called Tristan who has been put to a mob of eager and open females. He looked totally bewildered when taken out of the trailer being greeted by those alpaca girls. He used to practise on humps of tussocks. Hopefully he will learn to mate with the females.
The lovely H is using her phenomenal memory in packing boxes and those stripey refugee bags that might have to stay packed till we move into our permanent address leased till next October. The 22 ton log splitter and other equipment sold to friends and at a farm auction some weeks ago. We have lived here for 14 years almost to the date ( 6th of June 1996). Before the farm, 20 years in Balmain. We have left the farm in a good state with planting of many hundreds of trees. The laneway to the front gate is lined with a couple of hundred Lombardy poplars which are still in leaf. Many Argyle gums have died due to drought but they have been more than replaced by connifers which seem to need less water and have deeper root systems.
A feeling of nostalgia and something ‘final’ is creeping in this move which wasn’t there last time. Still, we sooth ourselves with being closer to grandkids, cinema, library and lots of cafes. Also, hospitals with a mouth-watering display of wheelchairs and commodes near the entrance. It is probably still a couple of decades away, even so… We are taking our bikes and I still dream of getting a Ducati.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
All the best you lovely people. Monster clean out – what to keep, what to chuck? I’ve been in same house for 32 years and had a big clean out in November 09 and Jan 10 to make room for one daughter moving back home for further study and work. She left with a few things and came back with loads and loads. Pantry shelves are still groaning and there is a huge range of cooking pans, slow cookers, sharp knives, crockery. I gave the heave-ho to old might come in handy stuff – felt good.
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Having grown up with ‘Beezers’, Triumphs and Nortons, Ducati’s were always something very exotic to me… as was their price tag!
😉
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Helvi and Gerard,
Just went to visit friends who’ve moved to Robertson so they can have horses, chooks, ducks, and cows. Hopefully they’re where you were 20 years ago. We drove through Bowral and I said to Mrs M that Gez and Helvi just moved here, and if we were organised we could say ‘hello’. Unfortunately, I’m perpetually disorganised, so here’s your virtual ‘hello’.
I can agree with you on regarding bookshelves. Modern houses include more and more places to open one’s bowels, and wash one’s hands, but, where to store all of the books one buys and wants to re-read?
I can see the attraction with living near a hospital but, as I’ve been trying to point out with Geoffrey’s escapades, they are dangerous bloody places. Much more dangerous than a Ducati!
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Big M.
We look forward to visits from you and Mrs M or any piglets.
With all the packing we found six tubes of Wassabi. I think they must have been on special and we decided to stock up. The lack of bookshelves is annoying. Perhaps with all those toilets inside modern homes, people read on the throne and use the pages once they have been read.
I’ll keep in mind the danger of hospitals, still, the one in Bowral has an outdoor cafe with yummy croissants.
It is just a theory.
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Wasabi and novel based toilet paper???
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Gez, you are lamenting the non-existing shelves for toys in the ‘temporay’ dwelling; are you planning to have more babies or what.
I plan to keep most things in their boxes until the final move; in the mean time I’ll live a simple monastic life and forget about the posessions…might even leave them in their boxes forever.
Oh, the good old days!
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Turning the pages Gerard.
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Julian:
More like chapters.
H. is flat out packing endless boxes, she is a genius in remaining calm, focussed and collected, while I spend hours looking for a hammer or an elastic band.
I did cook some salmon tonight though, used up some wassabi.
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Not the ones we planted. I am not aware that Australia has native conifers. There are some native pines, one discovered not long ago in a hidden Blue Mountains Valley which was named; the Wollomi Pine tree.
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If the difference between a pine and a conifer is needles and the cone-like seed structure, then at least some of our native pines are conifers.
The Hoop Pine and the Bunyah Pine, as well as the Norfolk Pine and a handful of others are all very long standing natives of this country having, like the Wollemi Pine, evolved long before flowering plants.
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From the Commonwealth Government website:
The main groups (genera) that are native to Australia are :
¥ cypress pines (Callitris species)
¥ plum pines (Podocarpus species)
¥ kauri pines (Agathis species)
¥ Tasmanian cedars (Athrotaxis species)
¥ Celery-topped Pine (Phyllocladus species)
¥ Huon Pine (Lagarostrobos franklinii)
¥ Bunya and Hoop Pines (Araucaria species).
So, as usual, Warrigal is correct (assuming the gummint knows what its talking about)!
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As a kid in the Gong I think the favourite down there was the Norfolk pine, beautiful tree.
When you drive along the Victorian coast at places like Warnembool etc you see some lovely pine wind breaks.
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In the Monty Python dead parrot sketch, they pined for the fiords
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Slartibartfast built the fiords in Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
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It was the ‘Norwegien Blue’ that pined for the fiords. Unfortunately he’d f^%$ing snuffed it.
I was reminded last week of the Norfolk Island Pines at Manly, which were being slowly killed by the detergents in the sewage outfall. Robert Drewe mentioned this in ‘The Bodysurfers’. It was fixed, not by further processing to removed said detergents, but by extending the outfall so that the detergents (plus poo and heavy metals, etc) were dispersed further out to sea.
Pines do seem to be beautifully adapted to various parts of this vast red huge brown land of ours!
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So there is some correlation between the dead parrot of Monty Python and the Norfolk pines of Manly. It could be said that they have both ceased to be.
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Are the conifers native Gerard? When Tutu and I visited the Flinders ranges some years back we saw some conifers that we were told were native although Tutu reckons they aren’t.
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