I have a soft spot for this castle. I photographed a wedding here many years ago and I would love to photograph another one here. It is one of those places that is full of surprises and difficult to exhaust, there are always parts left undiscovered, which is a good reason to go back I guess!
Part of the initiation into country life in Young, NSW is a visit to nearby Grenfell for the Henry Lawson festival. The highlight for me (two highlights) was (1) Grenfell’s fabulous art deco architecture and (2) the traditional Maori dancers, in particular the Haka, which, I mean, WHO does not love the Haka!? The festival had a NZ slant to it this year as, apparently, the esteemed Henry had spent some time there in the 1890s.
I can not believe it is that time of year again, where we don our velvet rags, our tasseled tops and, upon entering the gates of Epic in Canberra, become engulfed in the other world of folk.
This year I fell in love with Morris Dancing (I never thought I’d every say that).
Found Jordie Lane.
And added certain folkie clothing staples to my wardrobe.
I think I’ve been to every Folk festival 7 years running now. Yikes.
I am part of a great group of buddies, the male half of which get an annual itching to go hiking for a few days. The itch occurs around January of each year and all at once a hike is planned, Henry dehydrates his famous spaghetti bolognaise and the women and children are left to figure out what to do. Alas, hiking for a bunch of ladies with tiny tots does not really figure into any equation and while we talk about ‘one day’ doing our own little hike, that probably won’t happen for a few more years at least. In the past the guys have hiked in and around the ACTs own Namadgi National Park and the Snowy Mountains, this time they decided to do a hike from the top of Clyde Mountain down to the Coast and so this was a perfect opening for mums and children to do their own little camping trip.
However.
It was the Australia Day long weekend and I think it is perhaps the busiest day for camping on the South Coast for the whole year, so good luck booking a place. We had to take our chances with one of the ‘first in best served’ campsites. I settled on one we have been to before. I arrived on Friday night in the middle of a steady drizzle, found a great secluded campsite (quite hidden, so it was one of the few remaining campsites left) and set up two tents on my own with wet kids to deal with. It was a bit of a saga, but nothing you can’t laugh about, KerenM had her baby to feed, KerenN got lost (actually we all got lost) and went all the way to Ulladulla and Julie arrived at about 9pm but in the end we all were fed with kids in bed by 10pm. Fiona and Jen arrived the next day and with kids we made 13. Girls, if you’ve never gone camping without the guys don’t let it phase you, it’s actually very easy, especially when you are all together helping eachother, which we were. Together we celebrated ‘Little Hannah’s’ birthday with a treasure hunt and cake before all the kids sort of caved to tiredness and had some meltdowns! We discovered ‘Mermaid Cove’ and even found an Octopus and a few fish together. We went to the beach often, the mums taking turns to have a dip, and the kids hardly able to be torn from either the sand or the water.
I was very impressed that we managed to pull it together and have a relaxing camping holiday without any men to chop our firewood and pitch our tents, though of course we were all pretty happy when they dragged themselves out of the bush a few days later to the comfort of our very pretty campsite. It was a great last hurrah to the Summer holidays and I’m so glad we all made the effort to get down to the beach together.
This is how dirty children can get when camping…not all of them do, I’m sure.
Just for fun, here are the boys pre and post hike. It changed their lives.
Pre:
Post:
Sophia’s launch into school means we enjoyed her last day of infancy (for lack of a better term – though I guess this is as correct as any). I thought it was important to do something special to mark this day and so we went along to Weston Park in Canberra. I am so glad this park remains, thriving well into the 21st century. It is a very solid park and has remained uniquely popular over many decades. I remember there used to be an old ‘mouse house’, a large cubby house with tunnels and nooks and windows in all sorts of places. I remember crawling through these along with hoards of other children, I was very sad to learn it had been torn down, but the decision to keep this water park was welcomed. I have a photo of me at my first birthday sitting in the central ‘bird bath’ and I took a photo of Gunther on his first birthday also in the bird bath. On this visit I noticed half of the bird bath had fallen (or been torn) off, the only significant damage done in all these years.
The wading pool has also been rejuvenated with a new path and sculptures and a slight redesign. When we were there we were the only ones (as ACT schools had gone back that day, we had one more day to go in NSW) and so explored the new features happily.
I only had my phone on me at the time (as it’s often welcome to have a break from lugging my big camera around), so phone pics are all I have today.
Our Summer holidays camping, in which my hair bleached many shades lighter, we bonded with wildlife, relaxed in our new/old tent, read books, fried in the sun, adopted our summer skins,tried fishing, collected a couple of mussels, explored rock pools, ate only the foods we liked, welcomed cousins/family, went blueberry picking on a sweltering summer’s day in which my bag strap melted onto my top, drove down dusty roads, discovered elfin rain forest from the Gondwanan era & just enjoyed being a family all together and also, importantly, on our own, just us.
On my last visit to Canberra I took a day out to drive to Mittagong to visit my Grandma. She lives in a very spick and span house on the outskirts of the town. The great boon of the day was driving with my sister the two hours to get there, it was so nice to just be able to chat with her for a couple of hours.
It was also awesome to pop into the Sturt Gallery where my friend, Haeli, has a residency where she is sculpting some giant beasties. I love her artwork. This woman! Somehow she manages to undertake huge artworks whilst having the most chilled out of babies as her constant companion. I am in awe. That was a skill I was never quite able to muster, being perhaps more highly strung…? I don’t know. It is hard to examine oneself. All I know is that this mum does it well and all I can do is admire it from afar.
For a very long time I’ve been wanting to make the easy and stunning drive down to Tidbinbilla in Australia’s Capital Territory. Not just Tidbinbilla, but the entire surrounding landscape is one of my favourites. Nearby Corin Forest is the stomping ground of the new-ish festival of Corinbank, and when it is not hosting said festival it is a popular family picnicking spot with a cafe, flying fox, toboggan ride and water slide with kangaroos and the odd bit of wildlife moseying about.
Namadgi is a hop, skip and a jump away as well. The harsh beauty of Namadgi guts me every time and I can barely speak when I see it. It is a striking contrast to the groomed and tame city of Canberra. All I can do is absorb. There is a haunting loneliness to Namadgi. The ancestors of the original Australians seem to hang here, at least I feel it and it’s not very scientific or logical, is it, but who can really judge?
As my dad says in all his wisdom: ‘we know nothing.’
Anyway. Tidbinbilla: Finally we jumped into the car and had an all too short visit to this great ‘animal park’ as we were calling it. After a bit of traipsing around we were rewarded with many an animal sighting. After the Emus and Kangaroos at the park, the elegant Brolgas were our first find, stalking about on their long, crane like legs – in fact they are Cranes, Australia’s only one. After reading Olga the Brolga by Rod Clement I am a fan of this bird. Next up were many birds: Magpie Geese, Australian White Ibis, Water Hens, two very large Pelicans who were sunning themselves on rocks in the middle of the lake, a Red-Belly Black Snake, many lizards and a water dragon and most exciting were two – two! sightings of the shy and very elusive Platypus (whose name has no confirmed plural), the very first real live platypus I have every seen.
It could be cruel to do this, show you somewhere so beautiful and not disclose the location.
There is a reason though, and it is because so many beautiful and pristine spots have been ruined by tourism. There are many places which encourage tourism, places which are set up for it and where the road leads right to the door.
This place is off the beaten track, actually it is over a rather undulating, rough-as-guts track and then quite a walk from the car kind of track. The kind of track that requires scrambling over boulders and hitching up ones skirts.
But the setting is tranquil and the air is clean and the sounds are bush sounds and that’s as it should remain.
I bet, if you went searching you could find places like this in your own back yard. Some places should belong to the locals. Living locally means knowing your own place inside out.
This place is local to me now and here it is.
We needed this day, to break from the bus which is often a frustrating project, and to soak in the sun like lizards and to enjoy life together as a family. It was beautiful in many ways and we plan to go back.
And here’s a bonus shot of …the sky… In our old ages we plan to become a bird-watcher and astronomer respectively, when we have bussed around Australia we will sail around the world and Henry will have the night shift so that he can watch the stars and I will have the day shift so that I can watch the birds…if there are any.
Hm, anyway.
In Yarralumla there is an old brickworks. This brickworks enjoyed its heyday somewhere between 1913 and 1976. Today it is closed for business, though the recycled timber merchant, Thors Hammer, operates out of the ramshackle old building.
When I was a wee lass most of the houses around Yarralumla were that trademark red of the bricks from ye olde brickworks down the way. As I grew into my teens they began to drop like flies and they are still dropping. My Nonna’s place is one of the last. She is the embodiment of the neighbourhood that once was; industrious Europeans living in their 3 bedroom houses with their 3 -4 kids, growing bountiful kitchen gardens and enveloping their blocks with friendly hedges.
There once used to be no T.V. Do you remember this time? It was not so long ago. My Nonna was reliving those days in my company recently. Apparently the whole street (or a good portion) would exit their homes and gather at one of these tiny houses for evenings of frivolous fellowship and good strong coffee (those good Europeans brought their coffee and their wine drinking to our sunburnt land), apparently the art of talking about the weather was refined back then and nothing dull about it, I guess it would be if you couldn’t just google it. Maybe they used to take bets.
I hope, hope, hope at least a few of these iconic houses last into future centuries. If they cannot carry their culture with them – that culture of neighbourhood conviviality and togetherness – then they can serve as a relic of Canberra’s heritage.
My Nonna’s house is past its prime. My Nonno was the gardener and had avenues of grapevines wherever he could fit them. Two impossibly, tall and inconveniently placed Sequoias stood in the front yard and many more fruit trees were growing and thriving and producing bountifully. I remember it being a little bit more of a jungle, though everything had its place, this could well be that I was much smaller back in the day. He kept three beehives, several hens, several more free ranging pigeons (of which nothing was done to or about, they were simply transitory guests, fed and housed) and had a large food producing garden and several more berry bushes.
It really was a suburban oasis.
With time comes age and the shed is drooping, the cubby house is boarded shut (and I daren’t enter), the chimneys represent fireplaces, but these are no longer in use.
But it still stands and there is still beauty all around, an unsculpted, natural beauty which I think those tiny over-landscaped gardens often lack.
There is one thing (among other things) that remain and that is those warblers, the Australian magpie. I vividly remember waking up in my mum’s former bedroom on a sleepover one day to the sound of that beautiful native cockerel crow, I thought it was an exquisite way to wake up. My Nonna is forever feeding the birds and they still come in their dozens and they still warble outside the windows waiting to be fed.
The garden, it still grows.
(The Cellar, where my Nonna made his own wine.)
And the house, it still stands. But some of these rickety structure are slowly returning to the soil with the grace of old age and still with the handprint of their maker all over them.
The former vege garden, returned to grass.
Monolithic, modern structures dwarf their predecessor, having crushed its neighbours.
Tulitha King 