TheBanyanTree: On finding a long-lost path

[Pam Lawley]

LOVE it!!!!!!!!!

On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 5:47 PM, Robin Tennant-Wood
<rtennantwood at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
>