Heritage Springs

One of Lib's friends from work had a barbecue/party at her house in Pakenham on Saturday night. We organized chauffer Gordon to drive us down and pick us up at midnight. The address was Overland Rise, Heritage Springs, one of the new estates that have sprung up around Pakenham. I looked up my 1998 Melways to get an idea how to get there and of course being a new 'burb' it wasn't listed.
Lib had a small hand drawn map giving rough directions which showed it was somewhere near a Coles store, so after some indecision when we hit the Prince's Hwy, Robbie, who'd come for the ride, said there was a Coles in the new estate back towards Berwick. We did a tour of 'Lakeside', finding Coles, but it was on the wrong side of the road according to Lib's basic map. As we drove round and round looking for Overland Rise without success, I thought we might have well been in Memphis USA judging from the architecture. The streets and houses seemed deserted, no people to be seen. I guessed they were all inside enjoying the air conditioning. "We'll find someone we can ask working in their garden," I said optimistically, sorry I'd agreed to go in the first place.
"What gardens?" Rob said.
At last we saw a young man and his wife leaving a house with a pusher to take a walk, presumably to get baby to sleep. He said we were a long way off course, explaining there was another 'Coles' at Heritage Springs so off we went and found the other 'Coles', which wasn't difficult when we got close, there were a dozen big signs along the road partition advertising its proximity.
Still, we had nothing to help us find Overland Rise, but it had to be close. With the clarity a man not long out of a hot bath, I said, "Let's head towards that hill, it the only one and Overland Rise has to go up it."
We turned down Heritage Drive and all looked at the street names as we approached. There was Stockman's Ct., twice, it must have done a loop and came back, Coolibah Crescent, Damper Drive, and then bingo, Overland Rise.
We found the house. There was very little room in front for a garden but the back yard was a fair size. It reminded me of suburban Mt. Waverley where I grew up, a timber fence 5/6 feet high surrounding the perimeter. Above the fence on the side, just a foot away from it, stood the imposing brick wall of the next house. The evening progressed pleasantly. We explained that we became lost by going to the wrong 'Coles', and learned there were now three 'Coles' in Pakenham.
One lady, she looked younger than me, when I explained this was my first visit to the new estates, told me that she used to drive cattle through here, right where we were sitting, from their farm at Lang Lang to another paddock they owned on the other side of the small hill. "Along the roads?" I asked.
"Some of the way, but other farmers let us through their paddocks. It was all open country."
She was an interesting lady. As a child she and siblings walked 7km to school and back. When she was young she left home to travel round Australia and spent three and a half years getting from Melbourne to Darwin via Perth, working as she went in hotels, orchards, fishing trawlers, aboriginal missions, whatever she could find. She still had itchy feet when she got back so she took off driving north by herself in a '69 Fairlane, taking 3 months to get to Cape York.
Here I am two days later, reconciling the new Pakenham estates. A friend holidaying in a small Mexican fishing village sent me an email saying they were watching the sun set into the Carribean Sea. Makes me want to jump on a plane.
Yesterday I asked Lib about the lady who was off a farm and worked her way around Australia. Lib said, "I don't know her well, that's Tracey, she's a good friend of the Helen whose party it was. She's recovering from heavy chemo cancer treatment."
I would never have guessed. She seemed so strong, confidant, and unphased.

My tree of the week is Eucalyptus pulverulenta. Indigenous to the southern tablelands of NSW, the Silver Mountain Gum is an excellent foliage tree. I've had some growing here at home and at the farm for many years and used the foliage but never really managed the trees properly.
Late last September, when I was visiting a couple of old dogwood trees I pick blossom from each year on the property behind the farm, I noticed a row of 'blue gums' cut back along the drive to the house. The chap who lives in the house, John Rainor, works for Burnley Horticultural College, and when I asked if that foliage was going to waste and if so could I have some, he told me to take whatever I liked, he'd just cut them back as he's doing a thesis on Euc. pulverulenta and the best way to manage them. If they are left to there own device they quickly become straggly and deteriorate. It's best to cut them down hard every year or two in September to about two feet high therefore promoting vigorous new growth.
I was tardy and didn't do mine till early November but they've responded with healthy new growth. As I did this I collected some seed which I dried off in a paper bag and a few weeks ago tossed the seed into a seed bed and to my joy a healthy crop of babies is coming up, the most advanced are just starting to get the second pair of leaves. Nature is wonderful.
John Rainer says that the college is looking for attractive native garden plants they can promote as useful, dry tolerant, and manageable in town and city situation and the silver mountain gum is all of that.