Country Home Sweet Home
The big moments in one’s life are etched forever inside. These are the first moments of a good partnership, the birth of children and the buying of a home. At all these tremendous moments our thoughts run a whole gamut of emotions - excitement, happiness, doubt and fear. During the weeks before settlement time, I constantly felt all these emotions. The house was uninhabited and the owners allowed us to visit, whenever we liked. The rooms were cold and very much in need of love and a coat of paint, the kitchen was dreary and the bedrooms were dark.
Outside the land was wet and the apple trees were bare of fruit and the land area [137 acres] was huge and way out of our realm of experience. The bush loomed in my mind as an enormous fire hazard and the broken fences surrounding the paddocks seemed an enormous chore for us Townies. Silently, I wondered what on earth were we doing? Kees remained constantly strong and two lovely moments carried me through to sign up day.
One day we drove down in the mid afternoon. We had not been for two weeks but we had a visitor with us who wanted to have a peep at our folly. It was late Winter but the sun was still shining and the view was charming. We stopped the car and I hopped out to unlock the large farm gate. I looked to the “Home Orchard” and the large chestnut tree in the corner of the orchard, the only ornamental in the area and I saw in my mind’s eye that this would become our main garden. My heart quickened as I observed that underneath the chestnut, dozens of species daffodils were pushing bravely through the long grass. White, butter yellow with small flowers, these blooms cried out to me “Look, if we can do it, so can you.” The horn tooting broke into my reverie and as we showed our friend the house, the warm feeling stayed with me and my eyes opened to the potential of those rooms with high ceilings and good proportions.
Our visitor fell in love with the two-storey, pre turn of the Century ramshackle barn. This wooden edifice was crammed full of everything you could imagine and, as I walked through the mud in the “Home Orchard”, delighting in the antics of the dozens of blue wrens, chirping happily as they dug for worms, I began to dream my dreams. I could hear the men calling to one another - “Here are ancient pitchforks”! “Here are old doors”! “Look at these tools” ! The second reassuring experienced came just before we took the final step. Early Spring was with us and from one viewing of the house to this visit, the blossom had suddenly burst forth on the two thousand apple trees and the bush gleamed with yellow from the pale golden balls of the wattle trees. Kees and I took a long walk over the property. It was still an enormous area, in my eyes, but we found a natural spring with Acacia trees surrounding the pool and black cockatoos flew screeching over our heads, a bandicoot scurried out of our path and the stillness was filled with the songs of many different birds.
The isolation of the property was no longer frightening to me. We would be sharing it with each other, our family and many friends of the bush! We returned to the house, lit the wood stove in the kitchen, gathered pine cones dropped from the enormous Pine trees and set fire to them in all the bedroom fireplaces. We ate a picnic high tea, sitting out in the unenclosed sun room and smiled, wordlessly at each other. I have a chapter on my Home Page that tells you the ups and downs we went through when we were converting the verandah sunroom You might enjoy it!
