A few days in Wallaroo

A last minute decision to get out of the house for a few days resulted in a two night get away to Wallaroo, which is about 160km north-west-ish of Adelaide. I was born there and spent a fair chunk of my childhood there. There are a thousand memories.

We stayed in a caravan park in a cabin that we splurged on a bit, but it was worth it for the ease and comfort of a late planned trip. We were right on the beach front and not being school holidays the beach was pretty empty. We arrived Sunday afternoon and left on Tuesday, so mostly avoided the weekender visitors too, and really appreciated the space.

The weather was beautiful…sunny and warm to hot with not much wind, and the kids spent heaps of time at the beach. Here’s some of the many pictures.

This enclosure next to the main jetty is the Wallaroo Pool and is where I learned to swim as a child. It used to have a net, presumably to keep sharks out (or perhaps to keep the children in?) but now only the cable remains. The first time I ever jumped off a jetty was here, and only did it so I wouldn’t get caught in a game of ‘chasey‘ (tag) and I remember screaming to my cousin “Push me!” because I was too chicken to actually take the leap. She did it.

And looking back the other way towards the silos.

Ben jumped from the little platform by himself.

The main Wallaroo jetty with grain conveyer to the left.

We stopped at the bakery for Cornish Pasties for lunch, but despite it being the busy lunch hour, they weren’t ready yet, so we had to settle for regular ones. Sheesh…drive all the way to Wallaroo for a Cornish Pasty and they don’t have any.

This is my late Nanna’s house which we discovered is for sale again. It’s a weird feeling to look at it now that someone else owns it. The fig tree that all the grandchildren played in as children is still there in the backyard (I peeked). So familiar that I wanted to wander on in, and yet it belongs to someone else. Very strange.

There is a lot of new development on the north side of town, and as we drove out that way I was trying to show the family where my Nanna grew up. I was disorientated due to the new developments and roads and couldn’t place it. Later on our way home we spotted this brand new road by chance. My grandmother’s maiden name was Hopgood, and she grew up with her 9 siblings on a farm in this area. It’s pretty cool to see that the town planners considered the local history when naming the new roads. I’m still not sure of the exact location of the original property, but perhaps it’s right here.

Back to the beach after exploring the town with heaps of space to run free.

Good night. We also visited the family shack for a quick look which is sort of like our family’s very own Bonnie Doon. More on that, as well as some snakes tomorrow.

The Books of My Childhood

Last night I was thinking about buying a gift for a friend’s young child, and I thought how I didn’t want to buy clothing or toys that might not last, but something more lasting. And I got to thinking about books and how they have such a lasting impact, planting the seeds of the earliest imaginations. I started thinking about which book every child should get to read…which made me drift back to my childhood…. and these are the books I read as a young child that I can still remember to this day.

A Fish Out of Water – Helen Palmer

This is the story of a little boy who gets a goldfish, and is warned by the pet shop man not to overfeed it. And true to human nature, the urge to test it out and see what happens is too great. Alas, the goldfish is over fed, and grows and grows, until as you can see by the picture, it out grows not only his bowl, but the bath and the entire house. Great rhyming story and illustrations that capture the imagination. It struck the fear of overfeeding gold fish into me, so I guess there was a lesson there too.

The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek – Jenny Wagner

A very sweet story of the mythological Australian Bunyip. Darkish illustrations both delighted and spooked me as a child. The bunyip emerges from the creek not knowing what he is or what he looks like. He proceeds to ask a platypus, a wallaby, an emu, and finally a man who answers by saying that bunyips simply don’t exist. Poor bunyip goes away sad lonely until another strange creature emerges from a nearby billabong.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar – Eric Carle

I defy you to show me a child who doesn’t poke their finger through the little holes in this book.

Mr Tickle – Roger Hargreaves

I particularly remember having this book read to me and the anticipation building page by page because I knew what was coming. If you weren’t careful reading this book, you might find Mr Tickle and his long arms reaching around the corner of the room you’re in right now and find yourself well and truly tickled!! I love how children ask to be tickled, then scream with laughter and beg you to stop. This book reminds me of that.

Possum Magic – Mem Fox

Another Australian classic. It has become a favourite of my children too. When I was about 10 my uncle took me to a reading of this book by the author Mem Fox, accompanied by the Australian Symphony Orchestra. She signed my book. I love the illustrations in this one, and have enjoyed other books illustrated by Julie Vivas as well.

In the Night Kitchen – Maurice Sendak

Perhaps not as well known as Where the Wild Things Are, this is still a great book. I still LOVE the illustrations! It’s about Mickey who is supposed to be going to sleep but finds himself floating into the ‘night kitchen’ where the bakers are busy baking the morning cake. He finds himself almost baked into a cake. They chant “Milk! Milk! Milk for the Morning Cake!” So Mickey flies in his dough plane right up to the Milky Way, dives into a milk bottle, swims back to the top and pours some milk down for the three fat bakers. The bakers rejoice and all is well. Thanks to Mickey there will be morning cake. Apparently this book was a bit scandalous at one stage because Mickey is naked. My 1980′s Australian primary school evidently didn’t have a problem with it.

There’s A Hippopotamus on Our Roof Eating Cake – Hazel Edwards

The hippopotamus gets to do all the things the little girl in this story wishes she could do. That is, take showers instead of baths, watch TV instead of going to bed and eating cake whenever she feels like it. I understand. I really do.

Has anyone else out there enjoyed these? What are you favourite books from childhood?

Related articles

• You Better Come Home Quickly (improbablefrontiers.wordpress.com)
• National Read a Book Day! (booksintheburbs.com)

Three Dreams

I have had three significant dreams recently. I’m not a dream analyst. I don’t believe every dream is important. In my case, most are just a carry on of what I have been reading or watching or thinking about during the day. But occasionally I dream something that has some significance in my life. I do believe in the prophetic nature of some dreams. I don’t have them very often, and that I had three in close succession made me take notice. The last two were on the same night. I was up feeding baby between them :)

I won’t go into it all here, but they left me with the following thoughts/emotions.

1) Hilarity. I laughed in the dream, and when I woke up. I couldn’t stop laughing when I told D about it. He couldn’t understand quite why I found it so funny. I’m laughing now when I think about it. Take home message: Maybe changes are coming.

2) Bitter Disappointment. I cried in the dream. Take home message: Don’t let life pass me by. Live it! Again maybe a new chapter coming soon??

3) Redemption. This one is something that hasn’t happened. It was about a relationship that is currently estranged, but in the dream was much more normal. Pleasant even, which at this stage is beyond my realistic hopes, but something to store away for another day. Take home message: Maybe, just maybe I can do something about this relationship (or lack thereof).

Book Review: Night – Elie Wiesel

Night – Elie Wiesel
A new book for my Must Read Books list. Night is a memoir of Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel, and has been called one of the most important contributions to Holocaust literature. He was just a child when war broke out in Europe. His family were first relocated to a ghetto, then finally evacuated to concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald. His Mother, Father and younger sister didn’t survive the war.

I don’t know why I feel compelled to read these stories. It’s heartbreaking and shocking and terrible. But I feel that it’s important that these stories are never forgotten. There is something important about this terrible history. We must never forget it so that we never allow it to be repeated.

“And then I explain to him how naïve we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”

Elie Wiesel – Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10th 1986

The End of a Decade

Ten years gone. And yes it went fast. It is quite easy for me to mark the 00′s because the begining of 2000 ushered in the biggest change in my life to that point. And tomorrow begins the 10′s. I wonder what the next ten years will hold. Quite an exciting thought really….especially if it gets better from here on in. haha

So, what’s happened in the last ten years?

Well on this day 10 years ago I was celebrating New Years at a party with friends in Adelaide, Australia. D and I were sharing a brief holiday together before being separated (again!) until our wedding in February 2000. The perils of a long distance relationship. Well after the midnight cheers of “Happy New Year!” we stayed up chatting and watching movies until dawn. It was the first time we both watched The Castle. Still a favourite.

And this year I’m up alone. D is in bed with a fever of 38 degrees, and kids are asleep. I’ll probably watch a dvd. Alone. Hmmm quite a different scenario ten years later now that I’m married with kiddies and heavily pregnant and it’s just too hard to party right now. And I couldn’t even manage to get a copy of The Castle.

Since that night so much has happened. I’m not going to recount ten years of stories, but here are some of the defining moments of the last decade:

• Leaving home
• Getting married
• Leaving Australia
• Settling in New Zealand
• Not being near family when my mum and cousin battled cancer
• Losing a Nanna and a Grandma
• Having three children (and almost the fourth)
• Travelling to: Malaysia, India and South Africa
• Changed and dropped and then resurrected a Nursing career (and now it’s on hold again! ahah)
• A HECK of a lot of growing up which has been so good for me. I think I might almost be a grown up now.

And do you know what? I can’t think of anything else noteworthy. Flip. Is that it? Ten years of living and there’s hardly anything to show for it. Well….three amazing kids and a fourth nearly ready to make his appearance. I guess parenting has characterised the past decade for me. And it’s a heck of a lot of work with a lot of  delayed gratification. The days have sometimes seemed very mundane. The tasks menial. The repetition of housework as always soul destroying. Raising children isn’t always exciting. Is often frustrating and always worth it.  I wouldn’t change it. I wouldn’t go back ten years and choose a different path.

Here’s to the next ten years. I still have heaps of dreams. I wonder how many will be fulfilled in the 2010′s?

Book Review: The Hiding Place – Corrie Ten Boom

The Hiding Place – Corrie Ten Boom

I recently re-read this amazing story. I read it in my teens at least twice, so this would prehaps be my third or fourth reading. I wanted to revisit it after all this time, as I have never forgotten the impact it had on me. When I read it as a teenager, it was probably my first exposure to material dealing with the devastation of Nazism in Europe and the extent of horror that occurred in concentration camps in Germany.

This is the story of a Dutch woman who with her family helped to hide Jews in their home during WWII. They were eventually arrested and sent to prison. Her father died after only 9 days, but Corrie survived two federal prisons in occupied Holland and was eventually transported in train cattle compartments to the infamous Ravensbruk extermination camp in Germany. Her sister died there along with approximately 96000 other women during the war, but amazingly Corrie survived and lived to tell their story.

This is not just a survival story but one of faith and forgivenss. Corrie and Betsie’s love for God and their faith in Him sustained them through almost hell itself, and they found ways to share love and kindness with fellow prisoners in spite of the horrific conditions they lived in. After the war Corrie set up centres to rehabilitate victims and eventually opened a centre in a former camp in Germany for the help and healing of German officers and guards themselves.

I highly recommend this book to anyone. It’s detailed but not too explicit in it’s description of cruelty to preclude it from young readers. And old book, but a good one. Highly recommended.

Armistice Day

18,050 Kiwi’s and 61,928 Aussies lost their lives in WWI. Staggering numbers but they don’t compare really to the massive losses experienced in some other nations especially when the numbers are expressed as a percentage of the population. For example The Ottoman empire (now known as Turkey) lost 13% of it’s population, a staggering 2.9 million people. (2.1 million of those were civilians.) And the Serbs suffered the loss of 16% of their population.

These numbers blow my mind and it’s scary to consider a world gone mad, and not so very long ago.  Today marks the signing of the Armistice to bring an end to the hostilities at the Western Front.

My great great Uncle, James Alfred Heading served in the AIF 45th and 47th Battalions. See here for history of the 45th Batallion and the 47th Batallion. He received a DCM (Distinguished Conduct Medal) while serving with the 47th Btn. The following is his recommendation:

“At Passchendaele Ridge (NE of Zonnebeke) on 12th October 1917. Especially good work in leading his platoon and setting a splendid example in courage and determination. All Officers of three Companies became casualties and Sgt. Heading took charge, reorganised, placed outposts out and endeavoured to connect flanks and generally displayed initiative and ability in appreciating all situations. His work was of great value to the Battalion. He carried out his duty in a praisworthy manner. “

Stretcher Bearers Passchendaele August 1917

He was also awarded a Military Medal with the 47th Btn:

“At Dernancourt 5th April 1918, when his Officer was killed he took charge of the Platoon and showed exceptional ability in the handling of same. When his flank was in danger he immediately made dispositions to meet the occasion and showed utter disregard for danger in placing  his men. When all the platoon Lewis Gunners were casualtied, he manned the gun and crawling forward to dangerous position he continued to inflict heavy casualties on the enemy until the gun was blown out. By his scouting and patrolling he gained valuable information and established complete control of “No Man’s Land”. His work during the whole operations was of an exceptionally high order.”

Australian infantry wearing Small Box Respirators (SBR). The soldiers are from the 45th Battalion, Australian 4th Division at Garter Point near Zonnebeke, Ypres sector,

My brother shared this quote with me today:

‘An Australian soldier wandered about near the German lines after the battle of Fromelles. He had been hit in the forehead and skin hung over his eyes. He was blinded and out of his mind. He would blunder around in circles, hands outstretched, then fall down. Then he would get up and stumble around again. This went on for days. The Germans eventually killed him. It is unclear whether they did this out of cussedness or kindness. This was the Great War and men did terrible things and did not always understand why they did them.’

~Les Carlyon, ‘The Great War’

War. Awful beyond words.

Lest we forget.

WWI casualties per nation

Armistice Day in New Zealand

What is Armistice Day/Rememberence Day?

We Will Remember Them

ANZAC Day 2008

Auckland War Memorial

Lest We Forget

The Adventures of Pioneer Women in NZ

The Adventures of Pioneer Women in NZ: From their letters, diaries and reminiscences

This book is a collection of letters, diary entires and extracts from other publications. It tells us about what life was like for pioneer women in NZ from about the 1840′s until around 1900. It is broken into 7 main sections covering, First Encounters, The Longest Journey, Pioneering Life, Explorations, Conflict with the Maori, Natural Disasters and Different Paths.

The most fascinating story by far for me was that of Caroline Ngoungou, a pakeha girl who was kidnapped at the age of 8 and was raised as a Maori and lived among them for the rest of her life. It was only when she was 60 years old did she learn her real name and was reunited with some surviving siblings and their children. Her parents had died shortly after her disappearance.

The other thing that struck me was the hardship and very real chance of death on their long sea voyages to New Zealand. Sarah Harris wrote a letter from Taranaki in 1841 to her Father, in which she tells of her experiences. She had two young children and gave birth to another during the voyage after a 1 hour labour. (Interestingly she had been feeling ill for days previously and had wanted Castor Oil. It was scarce apparently so she was given another strong aperient which brought on strong diarrhoea for 8 days. The surgeon believed only bringing on the labour would save her life and an hour later a little girl was born.) The letter goes on to tell despite the care of a wet nurse (Sarah was too ill to nurse) the baby died just 5 days old ‘for want of nourishment’. There is just one sentence concerning their baby’s death and she then writes on about how they are settling in the new country. I found it striking that the death was dealt with in such a matter of fact manner. Such different and hard times.

I thought that this would be a great book to revisit with older children. The personal accounts make it very readable.

Have we got it too good?

In anticipation of reading aloud various books to E4, I have been reading them myself first to see if they will be suitable for her. I am so enjoying reading these ‘childrens’ books. Some I remember from my own childhood, and some I’m reading for the first time.

I’ve recently read Matilda by Roald Dahl, Charlotte’s Web by E B White and The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I LOVED The Little House on the Prairie. I found myself reading bits of it aloud to D, and for me that’s always a good indicator of a book that I love or which has impacted me. D tolerates my cries ‘Oh, listen to this …’ and patiently waits while I read. Sometimes he quite enjoys it too, and other times he’s clearly bored. Poor thing.

What I loved about this book was the way it made me think about how we live. I so enjoyed learning a little about pioneer life (American) and it made me long for the simplicity of that life too. Strange really, those longings it brought out of me…I honestly can’t see myself ever dashing off to the outback with a horse and a wagon and an axe and gun and fending for myself like they did. Why was I so attracted to that lifestyle?

The heroine Laura’s family lived very simple lives, with few material possessions. They set off into unknown territory to make a new life for themselves. This required them to have the skills to source their own food and water, build shelter and protect themselves from dangers. The didn’t have much, and so it meant that when they had luxuries it really was a special treat.

Sometimes I think that we have so much in our lives, nothing is special anymore. We eat well, a varied diet with plenty of luxury foods. We have entertainment aplenty, easy transport, running water. We don’t have to struggle for the necessities of life. What our parents or grandparents would have considered luxuries are now considered commonplace or ‘must haves’. But are we really better off?

I often wonder why we are so busy when we have washing machines to wash our clothes, dishwashers to wash our dishes, cars to get us to places quickly, computers to communicate faster and supposedly more effectively etc. Surely all our conveniences should create more leisure time. And yet, we often don’t spend time together as a family just talking. I have heaps of ‘friends’ and people I email from time to time, and even virtual friends who I keep in ‘relationship’ by reading and writing in the most public forum…the internet. (Am I the only one who thinks there is something strangely artificial about that?) And yet few really close friends with whom I can spend a long time in easy company.

And how can you compare the delight of receiving a long hand written letter from far away, with a quickly typed electronic message on your screen? This is probably another post altogether, but don’t you miss the days of writing and receiving letters? It’s a dying art and I’m feeling inspired to keep it alive.

Anyway, I know others have written on this subject. I think I might just give it some thought and try to recapture some of the simplicity of life; the essence of truly living, and living well.