Going back

We have spent a few days staying with my Dad in the country.

My Dad's health has not been great over the last year and we realised that it had been almost 2 years since we last visited his home. While he lives in a different town now and a different house, it was like I was revisiting my childhood. Most of the furniture is the furniture from my childhood home, the plates, the glasses, the cultery. The things I wasn't allowed to touch as a child, my children were not allowed to touch on this visit. Peeking in the wall unit I found the same things that I found there when I was my daughters age. Special things, that belonged to my Poppy, the good napkin rings and even a few of my long forgotten, handmade crafts. The same photos of my grandparents were in the same photo frames. To my Dad and Nora, this is truly their home, decorated in Nora's own style. But as I walked around, my childhood was everywhere. It was really nice.



On our way home we drove through the town where I grew up, and past the house my Dad owned for over 30 years. I only had one childhood home. The house was sold about 10 years ago when Dad moved from the area for work. It has been sold twice since. The current owner had cut most of the trees down - three giant jacaranda's and the front hedge. He had knocked down the garage and you could see into the back yard, more trees were gone and it looked so small. My cubbie house under the tank stand was still there and so was the may bush under my bedroom window. To this day, my heart skips a beat whenever I see a may bush. An ugly old fashioned airconditioning unit hung out of our old dining room window. The remainder of the window was boarded up with plywood. We drove on. This was no longer our house, it was just a place.

When I was a child, the homes in our street were well kept, always freshly painted and neat. Trees were trimmed and the yards mown low. Pretty flower beds decorated the lawns of the retired. Our neighbourhood was very respectable, in that old fashioned respectable way: members of the council  business owners, headmasters, bank managers. It is no longer that way. All of those older people with blooming gardens and wall butterflies on their houses are long gone. Those neat little homes have the paint chipping from the weatherboards and screen doors off the hinges. Many of the lawns were over grown and gardens non existent. The whole street seemed beaten, neglected.

There is no industry in this town anymore. It has followed the path of so many other country towns. I have family who live and work here, I am not saying bad things about it. It's just different. The thriving community that I grew up in is gone. It was sad.

I drove past my Nana's old farmhouse too. I do this every time I visit the area, but I'm not sure I will again. The place looked so different, I couldn't work out why? It was my husband who pointed out that the trees were gone. When my Nana bought the farm in the 1950's she planted four silky oak trees in each corner of the house yard. When I was child they were huge. Now they were gone. I have a thing for trees. I was a bit devastated.

Change is inevitable. Because of my love of nostaglia and all things from the past, sometimes I find this hard.

Have you been tripping down memory lane this holidays?

These photos were taken the last time we visited my childhood home, just before Dad moved out. The photo of me on the steps is very out of focus- sorry (this was the days before digital) The 'little me' photo in the sidebar of my blog was taken in the same spot when I was about 2 or 3 years old.

City Slickers

We have returned from a great weekend in Brisbane. Packed full of visits to some of our favourite old haunts:



• The Three Monkeys for coffee and chocolate mouse cake just as day turned into night.
• Vietnamese for dinner, Yum Cha for lunch
• An afternoon lost at Newfarm Park, disappearing into the trees and wandering through the roses bushes. A yummy picnic of cheeses, pate and breads.
• The Woolloongabba Antique Centre for morning tea and much swooning over quirky old finds.
• We loved the ballet. So beautiful in every way. The boys went to the Science Museum
• A visit to Samios (like an old friend) for supplies
• We even drove past our old house, our first house.



In a city that has changed so much in the six years since we left, it was nice to rediscover some of our favourite places.





I will point out that a five and six year old are not that interested in trips down memory lane.



I realised later that they are creating there own memories. They were not that interested in hearing how many hours I have lingered over coffee at the Three Monkeys cafe over the years. I have been going there since I was 16 years old. They will remember it for themselves; for turkish delight and chocolate mouse cake and the place with the garden courtyard out the back.



Everyday, memories are being made by these little people, to be stored somewhere in their sub-conscious for later, when they are 14, 26 or 37.

It is so important not to forget that.

Vintage Barbie

When I was a little girl, my great Aunt and Uncle lived across the road from us. Sometimes, they would look after me.

I loved being allowed to play in their tiny spare bedroom at the back of the house. In the bottom of an old musty cupboard was a pile of boxes, and in one of them were Dad's cousin's old barbie dolls. With the barbie's owners, grown up and long gone, I brought them back to life during my playtime. I loved their hair and their gidget-style daywear. I adored their cocktail evening dresses. Some had painted faces and surly glances, while others had freckles and innocent smiles.

There was no Ken doll (I don't think) and no cheerleader outfits. But this picture brought back those memories. It's a pity that those dolls are long gone now...but not forgotten.

I found this bookmarked on my computer. I'm loving going through and rediscovering things I have bookmarked ages ago.

Vintage dreams

Have you seen these beautiful cards in the Lark Christmas Catalogue. Oh, my! They remind me so much of the picture that hung on my bedroom wall as a child. In a similar style to these cards, the painting was of five little girl ballerina's. They were getting ready for a concert, tying up there ballet shoes, laughing and practicing their moves. I had a favourite, and naturally I wanted to be her.



So here is my sad story....

This picture was still in my childhood home, long after I had left. When the house was sold about eight years ago, I took it to keep for my daughter, if I had one. It moved houses with us at least five times. Then when I was eight and a half months pregnant with Miss Moo Moo (I did not know she was a girl) I took the picture to the charity shop.

Pregnancy hormones can make you do crazy things. I sat in a chair on the front lawn of our old house as the moving men just kept coming and coming and coming with stuff we had stored in the garage for the year that we had lived in this house. I sat there for about five hours and wondered, what is all of this stuff!?!

At the time, it seemed like the right time to declutter. Boxes of saved jars and bric brac where jammed into the back of the car, along with my ballet girls picture and the dolls bed my father had made for me when I was a child (it needed to be restored). Off to the op shop I went.



Now my daughter is the same age I was, when I remember tucking my Wendy doll into the dolls bed next to mine. I then looked up at the ballet girls as I crawled into my own bed, smiling as I drifted off to sleep, dreams filled with twirling.



At least we still have the Wendy doll, who is more than happy to be tucked into bed on her pillow mattress on the floor.