A Rad Moon

As it happened it was Lib's and my 37th wedding anniversary, and it was also a red moon, and for other reason to do with blue moon and eclipse coinciding, a special lunar event.

I did not see much of it, when I went out to check yes the moon was full and large and partially eclipsed but no red colour. Half an hour later it was much the same.

The event made me think of a day last year when I went to my friend Henny's place to pick fuschia and abutilon flowers. I went through her gate and carport and as I went across to her back door Henny greeted me. She was wide eyed and and in obvious high spirits, a beaming smile beneath her jet black curly hair as she said, "I'm so happy."

"That's good Henny, it's a great day for it. Why today are you so happy?"

"It was a rad moon last night."

I didn't understand what she said, thinking she had said it was a rat moon. Henny migrated from Holland in her young days . She has a thick Dutch accent.

"A rat moon?" What happened?"

"A Rad moon," she said. "It was so bright last night I couldn't sleep. I love a full moon. I went for a walk in the garden and made a decision. I went back to the house and got Serge's ashes and spread them in the garden. It made feel wonderful. Our favourite colour was red. I was always going to spread Serge's ashes in a beautiful quiet place but I never found the right place, then last night I realized it was here, in our own backyard. Serge loved the garden, and now he's there."

By this time I had realized that a rad moon was in fact a red moon. I never met Serge, my friendship with Henny began after he had died of cancer some years ago. He was Henny's second husband and she had a deep love for him and talks of him frequently and of how happy they were together. I felt priviledged to hear of Henny's great satisfaction at finally spreading Serge's ashes. The joy of it was infectious.

I did a Signpost article on Henny a few years ago, if I can locate I'll cut and paste it.

My Garden is My Little Paradise

Hendrika Priemus loves working in her garden where she nurtures plants and the soil and is rewarded with food, flower and contentment. After thirty years Henny renovates as need has it and seasons roll by.

She says, “I’m always thinking and planning ahead. There’s nothing better than to go bed at night and run through in my mind the good things I did in the garden, and the next things to do. I grew up on a farm in Holland, and lived on farms after I married. Gardening is my life; my garden is my little paradise.”

Henny’s childhood was on the islands of Zeeland, off the Netherlands coast, with 4 sisters and three brothers. All her dad’s family were orchardists, the fruit going to the main town of Zeiriksee by small steam train. Later Henny went to boarding school on the mainland. On one occasion, on the way home on the ferry at the end of term, she observed something which stayed with her all through her life.

“There was a group of children on the ferry in the care of a teacher, who after a while brought out a container of hot soup. As he filled bowls and gave them out there was one impatient little boy with red hair who kept calling out ‘Me, Me, Me.’ The teacher gave the other children their soup first and made the noisy boy wait till last, then said to him, ‘That is a lesson to you to wait your turn.’ I think of that when I feel impatient. Also it is important to share. You are lucky if you can give. People who can’t give miss out.”

While at boarding school Henny met her first husband, a young man from a big family who worked on a farm in another part of Holland. She was 17 when they married and had two children, a boy and a girl. Her husband was a hard worker and became a farm manager. He was restless and ambitious and believed Australia was a land of opportunity to make riches. Henny was happy in Holland but she agreed to migrate to Australia as a family.

“We went to the migrant camp at Bonegilla in the mid 1960’s. We spoke no English, had no jobs, and had sold almost everything for the passage out. We went to a large sheep station about 50 kilometres from Jerilderie. The house we moved into was filthy and needed hosing out. My daughter was nine and my son four years old. It was like a small village with about 10 workers living there. My husband was a labourer and a good worker, but he got the hard boring work like going out and cutting burrs all day in the heat. His dream crashed. It was a long trip for the school bus and we shopped only every two weeks, it was so far to go. Later we moved onto a smaller farm closer to Jerilderie and were able to shop more often.”

“I grew to love the countryside. It was beautiful, and it was exciting to watch the men with the sheep dogs coming down the road, the dogs darting about rounding up the sheep, the whistling and calling, the noise, the dust. We had kangaroos grazing and lounging around behind the house. We were there 8 years and it was great for the children who thrived and did well at school. I came to love Australia.”

Sadly Henny’s marriage did not endure. She moved to Melbourne with her children, who finished schooling and successfully attended university, while Henny paid rent designing and dressmaking and working in boutiques and antique shops. She had a weekend job in a gallery in Olinda where she stayed overnight. “I called it my holiday job so much did I like it.”

In 1981 she met Serge, her second husband. In 1983 she heard from a jeweller in Olinda that his cousin bought a property in Gembrook. “Where’s Gembrook?” she said.  Soon after she and Serge drove to Gembrook in their VW campervan on a wet July day, stopping in JAC Russell Park. Henny said to Serge, “This is my town.”

As they started home in a storm, Henny saw a ‘For Sale’ sign on the ground in front of a dilapidated bungalow and said, “This is my new address.”

Henny has lived there for more than thirty years. She and Serge did up the bungalow and extended. Serge commuted to Melbourne while Henny worked locally at anything she could find including packing potatoes and cooking for business people. Serge died in 2011 and Henny says her time with Serge was the happiest of her life. “He was a complete gentleman.”

Henny’s daughter Dianne Cevaal is an artist who in 2011 produced a book titled ‘Sentinelles: Watching the World.’ The last paragraph says, “They watch sentinelle over the world, alerting us to things we need to pay heed to, and to messages from which we might learn. They are about the earth because without a healthy earth, life cannot exist. Each creature is precious, each plant is precious, and we need to look after each other.”

The words could apply to Henny and her garden.