The heat. I remember that heat. Dry, thick, still. The kind that smacks you in the face as you open the front door, makes your brain cloud over, interrupts your thoughts and reverberates through your skull. I can describe it this way now only because I am grown. As a child I didn't feel the heaviness of it, I only knew it felt different to home. Everything felt different to home.
There were many defining variables of comparison between my suburban household and my grandparents rural plot. It was quiet, but that's not to say it was silent. It was devoid of the constant humming of vehicles, excluding the odd semi-trailer blowing through the towns main road that lay at the foot of their half acre allotment. Trucks aside, you could hear life all around. Insects, bird song and the north westerly wind that in summer blew through the overgrown dry grasses in the neighbouring paddock. If I stayed silent and still, I could watch the rabbits my Grandpa so detested hopping in and out of the scrub from the front verandah. These sights and sounds of the natural world were a balm for a city kids overstimulated mind. Here time slowed down, my senses awoke and I longed to be outdoors.
This was and still is drought country. The landscape turned brown for months on end. I remember the cool of the slate tile floors under foot and the taste of dry ginger ale in the shade of the fernery. Other times we would visit and it would feel like a jungle of lush greenery, hydrangeas would bloom and the maggies would warble in delight. Grandpa letting us tinker in his shed or helping to cut and stack wood. Grandma always up for a card game at the dining table. I remember the chooks and the veggie patch but as a child I had little interest in these parts of the garden. I was drawn to the wild places, the uncultivated, the neglected. The huge storm water ditch that bordered the highway which felt like a river, not merely a trickle. The rusted post and wire fencing that I would lean against, staring out over dancing tussocks, singing made up melancholic songs long forgotten. Here I grounded and felt a deep sense of belonging. My connection to country was formed here. It was the only spot I could be alone with the natural world, away from adults and agendas. It was a place of deep rest and solitude. A place, on reflection, every child needs.
My grandparents moved to the small country town of Rushworth not long after I was born and lived there for 16 years. We visited multiple times a year and would stay for days at a time. This was our second home and I loved the rituals we had each time we visited. Grandpa's meat sauce with spaghetti was a non-negotiable dinner the first night of our arrival. You couldn't travel in my grandparents Datsun without an extra strong peppermint to suck on (only writing this now I realise what an ingenious tactic it was for a peaceful drive). At some point during our stay the smell of Grandmas sponge cake baking in her wood burning stove would waft through the screen door and call us in for morning or afternoon tea. Our hysterical laughter at Grandpa's obligatory naps in front of the television.
Whilst both my grandparents were retired they worked every day in their home and in their community, and we grandkids would often tag along and help out with meals on wheels deliveries, support care work and their historical society events. They lived a simple, happy, contented rural life. Unbeknownst to me, theirs was the type of life I would long for the further into adulthood I progressed. When my grandparents left Rushworth in their eighties so to my connection to country was lost.
As a teenage girl growing up during the height of neo-liberalism, I was told I should want and have it all, that my potential was not to be squandered and success as a woman meant climbing ladders, not keeping house. But the mainstream rhetoric never appealed to me. Despite my parents hopes that I would cash in my ENTER score for a Law degree, I met them half way and completed my Bachelors in Performing Arts. While that proved to be a giant waste of three years of my life and a debt I still hold to this day, I have to admit I now read books aloud to my children as if I were angling for an Oscar nomination. You're welcome my two small, adoring fans. Audiobook narrating aspirations aside, onwards I trod down the path of least resistance and mostly concrete. I spent my formative years working all kinds of jobs in cities, both home and abroad, searching and longing for a life of substance, connection and purpose. I had forgotten what it was to live a simple, happy, contented life. It was overshadowed by the expectations of full-time-and-then-some employment, expensive overseas sojourns to escape the inescapable pressures of work, fine dining, toxic drinking culture, a wardrobe full of Gorman dresses, rinse and repeat.
Then one day I simply admitted to myself that none of this stuff was making me happy. I had reached the high point of my career and it was utterly disappointing. It all became very clear, very quickly that I had lost touch with myself, who I was and what I truly valued. I was unhappy with my life. All those promises of success and potential were falsehoods. I had been duped. I knew that I had to get out of the city, out of the rat race and out into nature. I needed trees, so many more trees in my daily line of sight, I needed rolling hills of grapevines and endless stretches of sand and shoreline. I had to slow down, heal, put old habits to bed and find my way back to country. To my connection with the earths energy beneath my feet as a constant. I needed my own Rushworth. I needed to know my kids would have a place like this always.
Today, we live on approximately half the land my grandparents owned but otherwise life looks much like theirs once did. We are deeply rooted here, held in wonderment and awe of the seasonal transformations our garden cycles through. We have chosen a more forgiving climate, free of the threats of drought and bushfire (for now) and our garden is an oasis of edibles with a little bit of wild still intact. Instead of rabbits, I often spy native bush rats tunnelling along our back fence line, we have an astounding array of birds that visit us daily and the sound of humming bees fills the air as they meticulously pollinate our fruit trees and flowers.
Living here feels like a homecoming and I think of my grandparents often now, many years after they have passed. What would Grandma and Grandpa make of this place, our home and garden? Would they be proud of their granddaughter for embracing a simple life, one deeply connected to home and community? I appreciate and understand that generations ago simple living was a necessity and not the privilege it now is. However we came to be here, them in Rushworth and my family on the Mornington Peninsula, I feel as if I am living in alignment with my ancestors. That my connection to the past and to my childhood has been found.
I was always meant to be living like this, baking cakes, preserving harvests, batch cooking lentil bolognese and handing out the homemade lemonade. We are home educating our children in natures classroom where it is woven into our everyday lives as we run bare foot through our backyard, stick our hands in the soil to plant seeds and tend to our chooks. Our kids are still small and this garden will grow with them. I hope it is as much a refuge from the world for them as it is for me. That together we will revel in its beauty and in solitude enjoy its splendours for years, maybe even generations, to come.
Lovely writing. "I was always meant to be living like this" struck me, such a wonderful feeling when things feel like they are fallen into place