My alarm sounded at 5.30am. Lib set it using my mobile phone. Gradually we are learning to use these devices. Devices plural as we each have one, the same Pendos given to me by my Telco a few months ago to draw us into their web.
It was 6.35 when I pulled in at the farm, 20 minutes late after the said time I'd pick Jod to take him to William Angliss hospital for his appt with the knife to repair his hernia. He was tense and said he hadn't slept much. As we went up Monbulk Rd he said, "Well this might be the last time I travel up this road." He was convinced he would die under anesthetic.
I dropped him off at the admissions at 6.58 and went to park the van before walking back to see that he was successfully admitted. He was having a last fag outside and told me yes they had said it was on he was in and he just went out for a last fag.
I went back to the van and with the help of the cab light and the Melways and my glasses, to only just be able to read the map and small print, I devised a route to Rosie's house in Rowville. It was 7.20 when I arrived and exchanged Meredith's Ignis for the van and headed back to FTG to take M's car to the Suzuki dealer to have a manufacture's defect problem fixed on a recall, something to do with potential fire hazard in the ignition switch. Why me? I had bought the car through the business twelve years ago and it is registered in my name. The date I could first get the car booked in coincided with Jod's op and Meredith's weekly babysitting of her grand daughter Grace for her daughter Rosie who works part time for a vet as a nurse. Meredith's husband Roger had a seminar to go to that day so I was trying to tie it all up.
The Ignis was booked in for 8.30 and I had nearly an hour up my sleeve so I headed to Maccas on the Burwood Highway for a bite and coffee and to use the dunny. Who should I bump into as I went in but Roger who was on his way to the seminar in Hawthorn. He too was after coffee.
I was ten minutes early at the service centre and with three hours to spare before the car would be ready I walked east up the highway towards the shopping centre. I picked up cans for Jod as I went. Some had been well flattened by vehicles, those that hadn't I crushed with my heel.They were all of the usual brands of beveridge cans I find discarded - Coke, Pepsi, Mother, UDL, Jim Bean etc. I picked up some other litter such as squeeze sauce packs and paper wrap, but didn't deviate of my walking pathway. If I was focused on litter alone and picked up bottles and everything I could find I would have soon needed many bags and a ute.
But it was a pleasant walk despite the constant roar of thousands of passing trucks cars and buses. I looked at the trees along the road, quite a collection of eucalypts including iron barks, yellow box, long leaf box and some I was not sure of, and oaks and elms and various understory. Their was surprising birdlife of cockatoos, corellas, lorikeets, wattle birds, mynas, and a small wren type.
I sat in the mall for a while playing with my mobile phone and making some calls. I'd planned ahead to have some phone numbers so I could do some business I'd been struggling to find time for. I had a roast beef roll and more coffee in a caff. It was nice to have a few hours at slow pace.
Leaving the mall I saw a nice dog on a lead just outside the big sliding doors. It came straight up to me very friendly so I patted it and talked to the lady on the other end of the lead. She told me it was a whippet kelpie cross named Maggie nearly one year old. We talked dogs and shortly a little boy came out of the big sliding doors carrying bread rolls. It was the lady's son Spencer who went in to get the rolls while his mum waited outside with Maggie. We walked off down the highway together and talked as we went. She told me her name was Tina and her husband, a robotics engineer, came from Emerald. She turned off into the housing estate that is now where Ferntree Gully tech used to be and we wished each other well. She has another son at school. It was a delightful interlude that sometimes comes when you least expect.
The Ignis was ready when I got back the dealer at 11.30 and I drove back to Rosie's and swapped vehicles again. I did some shopping at Chemist warehouse and Aldi drove back to Emerald where I fueled up and did the green grocer bit and went to the farm. I picked 10 bunches of variegated pitto that had been ordered then for the last couple of hours I cut and painted blackberries in our dogwood row.
Strangely, a day I dreaded turned out to be pleasant. We rang the hospital. Jod's op was all good, he's fine and Roger is going to pick him up tomorrow. I'm home for a much desired day at home pruning and tidying while Lib and Gord are driving to Yea for the Gembrook footy.
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Looking Back at Life
I had a thought on my morning walk today. In fact I had many thoughts and saw things of great beauty which I will record but first let me tell the significant thought that came front and centre to me like a bolt of lightning.
My passion for life has not diminished with the passing of years.
Yesterday Rickyralph visited me again. He rang first to say he would come to return three books I had lent him. I said that Lib and Gord would be at the local footy but I would be home and we could have a yarn and a cuppa. He loved the books I had lent him which were 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' by Richard Flanagan, 'Life is So Good' by George Dawson and Richard Glaubman (George Dawson was an American negro who at age 98 decided he would learn to read and write), and 'My Brother Jack' by George Johnston.
I'm grateful for many things in this life but one of them is that my parents sent me to Malvern Grammar in 1964 after I had completed primary school at Mt. Waverley State school, for if this did not happen I would probably not have met Rickyralph. We talked at length yesterday about books- we have similar tastes in literature- and other things, agreeing that we are very different people holding a different view of life to what we were/had as teenagers or young adults. But we have mellowed similarly, from thinking the same then to both now having similar views.
As he left he walked down our drive with short little steps so he didn't slip, his gait and greying hair on the back of his balding head made him look like an old man. I called out to him, "You look like an old man."
"I am an old man," he called back. "Hey, go and have a look in the mirror when you go inside."
We laughed and he drove away.
I was happy this morning that the expected blizzard that the weather bureau and media had been warning us about was not reality. I don't know why they do this, and scare good decent folk with their dire predictions which often are a total furphy.
I took a brolly and needed it as light rain fell on the way back. Yes it was cold and a tad inclement but there was certainly no blizzard and still there is not. The thermometer on my deck said it was 5C at 9.30am when I got back, which remained so until 1pm when it dropped to 4C which has held till now. Yes, it is cold, but there's no wind, no hail no snow and definitely no blizzard. Nothing you would not expect on a mid July day.
Now to beauty of this wintry morn on my walk. I saw Louise going to church. I saw a large stag deer's head sticking out from the back of a ute in Inness Rd. It must have been shot yesterday or last night. Even in death it was magnificent. I saw an oak tree standing stark and bold, it's twigs and swollen buds tinged pink against the dark background of a massive pine tree. There's a wondrous beauty in deciduous trees in winter.
I just rechecked the thermometer. It's still 4C. I'd better go fill the firewood barrow at the front door for the evening ahead. I lit the fire this morning and will have to keep the wood up.
A closing thought as I look back.
I have no personal bitterness or resentments about my life.
My passion for life has not diminished with the passing of years.
Yesterday Rickyralph visited me again. He rang first to say he would come to return three books I had lent him. I said that Lib and Gord would be at the local footy but I would be home and we could have a yarn and a cuppa. He loved the books I had lent him which were 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' by Richard Flanagan, 'Life is So Good' by George Dawson and Richard Glaubman (George Dawson was an American negro who at age 98 decided he would learn to read and write), and 'My Brother Jack' by George Johnston.
I'm grateful for many things in this life but one of them is that my parents sent me to Malvern Grammar in 1964 after I had completed primary school at Mt. Waverley State school, for if this did not happen I would probably not have met Rickyralph. We talked at length yesterday about books- we have similar tastes in literature- and other things, agreeing that we are very different people holding a different view of life to what we were/had as teenagers or young adults. But we have mellowed similarly, from thinking the same then to both now having similar views.
As he left he walked down our drive with short little steps so he didn't slip, his gait and greying hair on the back of his balding head made him look like an old man. I called out to him, "You look like an old man."
"I am an old man," he called back. "Hey, go and have a look in the mirror when you go inside."
We laughed and he drove away.
I was happy this morning that the expected blizzard that the weather bureau and media had been warning us about was not reality. I don't know why they do this, and scare good decent folk with their dire predictions which often are a total furphy.
I took a brolly and needed it as light rain fell on the way back. Yes it was cold and a tad inclement but there was certainly no blizzard and still there is not. The thermometer on my deck said it was 5C at 9.30am when I got back, which remained so until 1pm when it dropped to 4C which has held till now. Yes, it is cold, but there's no wind, no hail no snow and definitely no blizzard. Nothing you would not expect on a mid July day.
Now to beauty of this wintry morn on my walk. I saw Louise going to church. I saw a large stag deer's head sticking out from the back of a ute in Inness Rd. It must have been shot yesterday or last night. Even in death it was magnificent. I saw an oak tree standing stark and bold, it's twigs and swollen buds tinged pink against the dark background of a massive pine tree. There's a wondrous beauty in deciduous trees in winter.
I just rechecked the thermometer. It's still 4C. I'd better go fill the firewood barrow at the front door for the evening ahead. I lit the fire this morning and will have to keep the wood up.
A closing thought as I look back.
I have no personal bitterness or resentments about my life.
Wednesday, July 08, 2015
A Busy Few Days
On Saturday I donned my journo hat and attended a luncheon at the Gembrook Cockatoo Football Club which was a reunion of the 1965 Gembrook Premiership team. Cockatoo was incorporated ito the name in recent times. I was invited by the lady who is the unofficial historian with a view to me writing an article on the event for my Signpost Gembrook column. Gord was playing in the reserves but I didn't get to see his game much as I was talking to the old timers and listening to the speeches by Federal MP Jason Wood and the captain and vice captain of the team and taking notes. Towards the end the old fellows got together and let rip with the club song.
As this function finished and prior to the start of the senior match the players of both Gembrook and Emerald, the reserves who had just played and seniors still fresh and clean, lined up in guard of honour as close friends and relatives of the three teenagers killed in a car accident last week formed a circle and a minutes silence was observed. The lost three had close connection to both clubs. It was very moving, on what was a cold wintry day, when I got home mid afternoon to light the fire it was 4C on our deck.
On Sunday 5 July on what was the 100th anniversary of Doug Twaits' birth I met his widow Lynne at Camelot where Doug and Lynne lived during their married life of about 20 years. I had not been back there since Doug died in 2002. The property of 12 acres is a large garden of mainly exotic species of trees that Doug planted in the 1950's when he lived there with his first wife. The picture below is of Lynne after she had just tied a feather in a tree above where Doug's ashes were spread. The feather is a symbol of old warriors in Nth American Indian spirituality which Lynne was into in a big way, and in which Doug, who had never been spiritual or religious, became strongly interested in his later years.
The next photo is looking down from the house into the gully. At the top of the dam a spring rises from mother earth. In the early days of there was a eucalyptus oil still on this site. The deciduous trees either side of the dam were planted by Doug and are mainly pinoaks on one side and beech on the other as you go down. There are also many conifers and two large sequoias, as well as camellias and rhodies and all manner of shrubbery. It's a magnificent place of tranquility and sanctuary for wildlife hidden away right in the heart of Emerald, and in Lynne's words it is a sacred place. She and her friends held ritual ceremonies there. I rang the owner last week and got permission for Lynne and I to visit. He bought the property from Doug just before Doug died in the car accident, only a matter of days afterwards.
I had busy day picking on Monday and today I had a monthly museum meeting at 4pm followed by the Biennial General Meeting. I had reports to write up for that as outgoing president and I'm bushed now and shouldn't be doing this but something drove me to record the above before I can now retire to blissful rest.
As this function finished and prior to the start of the senior match the players of both Gembrook and Emerald, the reserves who had just played and seniors still fresh and clean, lined up in guard of honour as close friends and relatives of the three teenagers killed in a car accident last week formed a circle and a minutes silence was observed. The lost three had close connection to both clubs. It was very moving, on what was a cold wintry day, when I got home mid afternoon to light the fire it was 4C on our deck.
On Sunday 5 July on what was the 100th anniversary of Doug Twaits' birth I met his widow Lynne at Camelot where Doug and Lynne lived during their married life of about 20 years. I had not been back there since Doug died in 2002. The property of 12 acres is a large garden of mainly exotic species of trees that Doug planted in the 1950's when he lived there with his first wife. The picture below is of Lynne after she had just tied a feather in a tree above where Doug's ashes were spread. The feather is a symbol of old warriors in Nth American Indian spirituality which Lynne was into in a big way, and in which Doug, who had never been spiritual or religious, became strongly interested in his later years.
The next photo is looking down from the house into the gully. At the top of the dam a spring rises from mother earth. In the early days of there was a eucalyptus oil still on this site. The deciduous trees either side of the dam were planted by Doug and are mainly pinoaks on one side and beech on the other as you go down. There are also many conifers and two large sequoias, as well as camellias and rhodies and all manner of shrubbery. It's a magnificent place of tranquility and sanctuary for wildlife hidden away right in the heart of Emerald, and in Lynne's words it is a sacred place. She and her friends held ritual ceremonies there. I rang the owner last week and got permission for Lynne and I to visit. He bought the property from Doug just before Doug died in the car accident, only a matter of days afterwards.
I had busy day picking on Monday and today I had a monthly museum meeting at 4pm followed by the Biennial General Meeting. I had reports to write up for that as outgoing president and I'm bushed now and shouldn't be doing this but something drove me to record the above before I can now retire to blissful rest.
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