TheBanyanTree: On finding a long-lost path

[Robin Tennant-Wood]

About a thousand years ago, I guess I was 17 at the time, I read an article
in a magazine about a bunch of young people who were living communally on a
farm in the Bega Valley. At the time I was living in subtropical Brisbane
and I don’t think I even knew where the Bega Valley was except that it was
somewhere way, way south where there was mist and rain and cold weather.



The photos in the article showed the group sitting on the back steps of
their wooden farmhouse against a backdrop of blue-green mountains
enshrouded in fog. The grass was deep and green and black and white dairy
cows grazed somewhere in the background. Another photo showed a small
orchard of apples and stone fruit, with a wooden post-and-rail fence
surrounding it to keep the wallabies and cows out.



Where I lived, mangoes and pawpaws and bananas grew in people’s backyards
and at night the flying foxes shrieked and bickered over the fruit.
Bougainvillea and poinciana splashed crimson and violet against the
backdrop of the d’Aguilar Range and the brown sluggish river, and unruly
rainbow lorikeets got drunk on the fermented flowers of the ubiquitous
umbrella trees that grew throughout the city with their voracious root
systems that buckled roads, knocked over fences and destroyed underground
sewerage pipes. Rain came in torrential downpours and then stopped, leaving
steam rising from the roads. To me, at 17, the quietness and soft colours
of a valley somewhere in the south of the country where each season was
distinct looked like the most idyllic place to live.



I was a romantic at 17. Aren’t we all? I was just about to start art
college and wanted to be an artist or writer, or both. That image of a
farmhouse in a valley with mist-crowned mountains, soft colours and gentle
rain engraved itself on my consciousness as the place I would live.
Someday.



At around the age of 18 I realised that being an artist or writer (or both)
was going to involve a considerable amount of starving in a garret.
Romantic I may have been, but I also inherited a formidable streak of
pragmatism from my parents and starving in a garret did not match their
ideals of a work ethic. So I went to teachers’ college and shelved, for a
while, my idea of writing.



Last April I went overseas for a week as part of a university research
project. When I got back there was an email from the owner of the house we
had been renting in Canberra for 10 years. He had just accepted a job
overseas, he wrote, and would need to sell the house. I emailed back: would
it be possible for him to delay selling until Roger and I got the house
we’re building out of town to the point where we could move in? Yes, he
agreed; but when Roger and I talked about it we decided that maybe, after a
decade in town, it was time to move anyway. We began to cast around for a
suitable place to live. Suitable, in our case, was somewhere with a bit of
land, close to our own property so we could proceed with our building and
also close enough to Canberra for me to continue working at the university,
and where we could take our animals: one dog, four cats and seven chickens.



Sometimes you just know you’re on the right path in life because obstacles
disappear and the path starts to look like a highway. Within weeks we had
been offered a house near Araluen, about a 90 minute drive from Canberra
and less than an hour’s drive from Innisfree, our own property. A friend in
Canberra offered me a room for a couple of nights a week and my Head of
Department approved my request to work on campus three days a week and work
from home the rest of the time.



 A week later we drove out to the Araluen Valley to have a look at the
house we would be renting for the next year or so. Nestled at the top end
of the valley with mountains rising on three sides and a creek running past
the end of the property, the two-acre block with a large rammed-earth and
stone construction house was perfect. The house itself is surrounded by
trees, mostly deciduous, so in winter the earth walls of the house absorb
what warmth there is in the sun and in summer it is in shade. The yard has
a large vegetable plot and an orchard of apple, pear and stone fruit trees.



As I write this, seated at the table in my temporary study, the valley is
enshrouded in mist hanging low over the blue-green mountains and the leaves
of the trees outside the window are already turning yellow and orange,
bright against the softer palette of the background. An unusually early
autumn, but it’s been an odd summer.



To the south from here is the Bega Valley, and just over the hills to the
west is the Deua Valley, where our own property, Innisfree is steadily
approaching the point where we will be able to move in later this year. We
have mist-crowned blue-green mountains there, too, and a small orchard with
a fence to keep the wallabies out (although it doesn’t) and a creek.



Funny how the path we set for ourselves at 17 sometimes really is the right
one.



cheers


Robin