fragments of my spirit...

Liffey...

 Amazing how life can return for a little game of haunting...
I used to live for about 2 years in Liffey, Tasmania with my husband at the time...
The 40 Gulf Road property was 50 acres...including natural forest...
and included a lake with a special resident, Merlin the platypus...
The property had a weird old 2 storey house, a tea room and a 3 storey gallery
with extensive gardens, dry walling and an amazing collection of rhododendrons...
(Our Liffey gardener, Chris Spencer, is now in Victoria...
He manages a music programme on Tuesday mornings...
11:00am - 98.3FM based in Colac + 88.7FM Along the Coast (Ocean Road)...
The show is folk and blues based...
He knows my music teacher friend Ree Liddell (found her name on his friend list)...
plays her group's music on the radio... (small world)...
Chris lives at Kawarren in Victoria...)
The views of Dry's Bluff in the Western Tiers were amazing... (above photo)...
At times, it would change colour, just like Uluru...spectacular to see...
The property was sadly lost through tragic circumstances...
Today, I was wandering real estate spaces and searched for Tasmanian properties...
(As I do from time to time, as I miss Tasmania)
and there it was... My old property...Granted a new lease on life...


Recent owners built this house by the lake...


This used to be a gallery when we bought it,
(notice the beautiful gardens in the first photo, still as I remember them in the late 1990's)
but the real estate advertisement claims it was originally a conference centre...
'Amongst this botanical setting are three unique buildings,
one was formerly used as a tea room (now an art studio),
another three storey building was originally set up for a convention centre
(now a workshop) and another homestead (now a garage and workshop).'



One of 4 Liffey cabins (we called them chalets) high up in the forest area...
In my time here, we built these cabins...
The road established to them was a costly exercise...
It involved navigating a surprise underground spring...
These cabins are ideal for the artist within to find some sanctuary...


These were once tea rooms...We named this public area Liffey Tea Gardens...
(Shari, our beautiful collie, loved to guide guests from the nearby carpark to the tea rooms...
and our peacocks, Lancelot and Zanzibar, loved lining up outside the tea rooms for left over scones)...
Senator Bob Brown visited here and a regular visitor was Alison Cox of Spring Banks, Longford...
(On Wednesday 13th December, 1911,
'The Mercury' published an interesting list of large properties in Tasmania...
Spring Banks, 1,400 acres, Longford, W. G. Keane, u.v., £8,860; c.v, £13,400
u.v= unimproved value + c.v. = capital value)
Alison was a beautiful identity
who claimed a heritage connection with the Coxes of Clarendon, Evandale...
(She believed that my Cox ancestry on my mother's side could be connected with hers...
Alison even bought one of the scarves I knitted to sell in the tea rooms...
I displayed the scarves on an old tree branch by one of the tall windows...
I also sold Rafael Saldana's paintings on postcards...
Rafael and Maria lived on a neighbouring property in Gulf Road)...
Alison loved the Liffey area...

The Liffey 
 When the world is too much with me,
Daily work a dreary load,
Then I have the perfect answer,
Then I take the Liffey Road.

 Soon the mountain looms beside me,
Soon the river’s running clear,
Small farms dot the bright green pasture,
Placid stock are grazing near.

 Birds are singing so much sweeter,
Trees have scents both sweet and rare,
Only birdsong breaks the silence,
In that heavenly mountain air.

 Further on the foxgloves flourish,
Green light filters through tall trees,
Spongey moss and long-dead tree trunks,
Form a path one climbs with ease.

 Woodchip lorries, keep your distance,
Crashing, smashing, far and wide,
Take your noise and fumes and plunder,
Not this lovely mountainside.
 - Alison Cox.

Alison is now forever in The Liffey, sleeping close by Bob Brown's old home...


 

The Gate...

Portsea Christmas 2011

It is almost 6 months since you stepped through The Gate...
And still your secrets haunt me...
I feel my guilt...
I should have explored further...

I should have helped you to feel at ease...
to share the lonely heartaches of your other lives...
endless boarding schools from a very young age...
being bullied at Scarborough...
leaving St Helens for New Zealand at the age of 18...
by choice
(as you told me...inspired by a man who had been there...)
or really
the 'push' of parents...
a father who you said once told you that you were
'not planned'
'not wanted'
and yet...
Your sister tells me that your father cried when you sailed away????...
and then
being trapped and feeling second rate
in a religiously tight marriage in New Zealand
(that was a recent shock ...to even know it existed)
feeling the need to lie about your incessant gambling addictions
(the extent, the repercussions only visible and felt recently too)
cleaning trains by night just to get by
after the slash and burn of all you owned...

I never knew...
I never knew...

all I see now is
your desperate struggle for identity
for acceptance
for love

I believe I understand you now more than ever...
I hope you sense that...
I hope you feel my love...
More than ever...



Twitter:
Sometimes it feels good to unravel and make sense of tangled feelings...even if it hurts...

birthday reflection...

David Thomas Adams....my first husband...
He would have been 77 today...
From my daughter Danica...
Happy 77th birthday dad. I am so glad that we are with your sister and family in Adelaide for her 80th birthday party, as this is where you would have been if you were still with us. 
Time passes but the memories never fade.


(David and sister Margaret)

Not sure what memories Danica may have...
The good memories were rather limply represented on the marriage time scale...
Perhaps Danica created some memories later when, with her own little family of boys,
she ensured he came to family birthdays and Christmas...
In her growing up years, he was only with us till she was 12-13...just beginning high school...
(he left a note on the kitchen table to say he was leaving...
as I found out later, for a woman at his office...)
And even till then, he was always busy...claiming late nights at work
(more likely womanising)
or watching TV's spill of cricket or football at weekends...
Rarely did we go out for drives or entertainment as a family...
But I believed I loved him totally in those days
and encouraged the children to love and understand him too...
I guess I didn't want to know more for what it really was...

I was broken-hearted for some years...yes...
Lost...
But I am not bitter...
In cold truth, the experience strengthened my resilience...
There was indeed a lot to strengthen in me...I admit...
I was a blind one with stars in my eyes and rainbows in my soul...
That status severely needed a blast of new skies and new weather patterns...
So, for introducing me to independence,
I am grateful to him...

innocence...

'To Kill a Mockingbird' - Harper Lee (1960)
I am currently sharing this novel with my Year 10 English class
in an independent school, Melbourne Victoria...

Students are marvelling how an 'old' novel seems to still find a very active pulse today...
Interesting, seeing that the novel is filtered with American traditions and the students are Australian...
Boundaries are not obstacles, but rather the tempting opportunity to explore some unknown byways...
I am glad of that...

My personal connection with this novel spans many years...
It was one of the first texts I shared with an English class in Sydney, New South Wales in 1988...
(and several subsequent years...)
It was a government high school at Picton, a little south of Sydney close by Razorback  hills...
(These hills were between the Blue Mountain region west of Sydney and the Southern Highlands...)
If it sounds like an outer Sydney community, it was...
The students were a unique mix of city and country, aliens and 'in crowd'...
academics and tradies...
with a liberal dose of coal miner offspring (from nearby Tahmoor and Bargo... )

This year, the student clientele in Melbourne represents a similar demographic...
outer Melbourne mixed identities in what was the fruit and veggie bowl of old Melbourne...
replacing the coal miners of Sydney are the dwindling numbers of farmers...
Melbourne, like too many cities, has an insatiable habit of gorging on fertile land
in the urgent quest
for more housing estates...
more profit...
more ignorant sabotage of our natural treasures...


For me personally, this novel seems to haunt me...
a thread in my life...
It first surfaced when my first husband, a 'sometimes' gambler, cheated on me...many times...
and left me with 2 young children to raise...
That was the beginning of my teaching career...
It lingered through the 1990's till I moved to Liffey, Tasmania
with another more addicted gambler, my 2nd husband...
a brilliant weaver of magical stories...
a nasty drinker...
and now
after the recent passing of my 3rd partner in life...
(a man of many secrets I wish I didn't now know...
and a seriously hooked, addicted gambler)
it appears again...

is it time for me
to surface from my innocence shroud
(that I didn't realise was there)
to dissolve the mockingbird identity
and instead of just seeking and believing in the good in others
try to beware of a possible dark side
their murdering knife of power and ego and addiction

time to gamble on some spiritual resilience

and walk alone?

saunter...

'saunter'...such an intriguing origin of the word...

seeing this image today prompted me to begin exploring my own life...
my past life to present and into the future...

where have I been...
where am I...
where am I going...

so many have encouraged me to record the incredible
warps and wefts of my life...

the task seemed overwhelming...
and...
who indeed would be interested?
so much sounds like the extreme 'truth' of a B grade movie...

it couldn't possibly be real...

but now...perhaps the time has come...
to at least try to begin...

instead of blogging the order of my life...
(as if there really is any order)
I have decided to post the thoughts as they surface...
tags will assist to find some sense in the clutter...
dates
people
places

until now
I felt that I had been shunted through life...

perhaps
with the increasing wisdom of age and reflection
in truth...
more than I realised...
I have steered the course...

you be the judge if need be...

since the pain of losing my partner this year
I have held a mantra close...
Keep walking...
my wiser, patient self tells me...

and I keep walking

in fact
I saunter...

and take the time
to marvel on...
and treasure...
the wee flowers
and rainbows...
the precious dawn lights
and sunsets
along the way...

So here's my unique
walk on the wild side..
my 'holy land'



Let the saga begin...