It was my mother’s, Beverley’s, birthday over the weekend. Since my exile to Britain, I’ve only celebrated one other birthday with her in 27 years, so it was “beaut” to be able to celebrate her life together, with my Aussie family. So this will be an extended blog in her honour.

My parents, Stan and Bev Potts, met and married when they were crazily young, when they worked for the same company in Sydney. Bev was the boss’s secretary and Dad would make deliveries from time to time. Bev clocked him, because Dad was drop dead gorgeous. Mum was too: but he had that olive skin and dark, curly hair thing going on. It was virtually love at first sight. They had their ups and downs in life, one big valley and then they were happy in the twilight years, very happy.

She and Dad, Stan, before he died, lived a “beaut life” in the family house on Cater Street, in Coledale, on the Illawarra peninsula, just beside the sleepy train station. From the deck you can see the swell of the sea, lit up by the sun as it comes over the horizon at dawn. At the end of the street, down the hill, is a prehistoric rocky headland and if you’re lucky, you might see whales in the “warder” (how Aussies often pronounce water), with babes, on their migration north. Or, even dolphins frolicking in the frothy sea, side by side with surfers.

Once my son, Hugo, was body boarding with his cousin, Ryan, and dolphins played with them, swimming and leaping over them. Hugo did say he was petrified when he saw a group of fins approaching, but fear turned to ecstasy as the ‘dolphin gymnastics’ played out.

My English family adored the house in Cater Street, being a home away from home. It was perfect for our regular visits. There was a verandah three quarters of the way around the perimeter. The Wilmots had a separate annex with two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen and sitting room, but we could wander along the verandah and pop in any time to see Dad and Mum. 

My children, Anna and Hugo, loved spending time with their Aussie grandparents. Grandma, Bev, is so like me to look at, she always felt familiar and close to them. She was always gentle and kind – had time to talk to them – patiently teach them card games like canasta – point out local animals –she is crazy for animals –even saving spiders when they wandered indoors – not the deadly ones. Stan, well he was a legend, taking cooking apparatus to the beach and cooking hotdogs for us all. I would chuck my body board and towels on the verandah after a day at the beach and they would be de-salted and returned to the boot of the clapped out station wagon –the beach car – ready for the next day’s adventure.

Life in Oz, on the Illawarra peninsula, is exotic and different. 80% of animals and plants, fauna and flora, in Oz, are unique to the continent. Possums pounded on the corrugated iron roof at night and rosella (red and blue birds) snuck (stole) the cat’s water. My children fed them nibbles by hand. The steep escarpment hid the heat of the sun in the west at the end of the day. When Dad died, the house got a bit much for Mum, so she moved to somewhere smaller down the road in Thirroul, just before Bulli. D H Lawrence lived in the street while he wrote his book ‘Kangaroo’.

When we caught up with Jonah, second son to my brother Shaun, he had survived his night at the shack on the beach near Scarborough on the first night of our visit. While Geoff and I were curled up in The Creek House (eco house-AirBnB) near Sharkeys beach, the wind was dancing around the inside of the shack, keeping Jonah and his mate up most of the night. Next time I saw him he was off with the same mate to find the source of the creek adjoining their house at the base of the steep, overgrown escarpment. He later told me had spiders dropping onto him as he crawled through narrow passageways. Funnel webs and red backs are deadly. Black snakes and brown snakes are not fun either. You want to avoid them. Adventure as a 17 year old, testing the limits, is his priority. It was the same for my brother, Shaun, at the same age. More on that later.

I told you in my last post about growing up in the St George region in the 60s and 70s, a zillion miles away from the life my children had in London, geographically and metaphorically.

It was unfettered and free like Jonah’s. As a kid I was feral out of school – tamed teacher’s pet in school. I ran around barefoot on the hot tarmac of the roads and on the spongy buffalo grass. The soles of my feet were rock solid and I barely registered the bindi-eyes, small thorns, in the grass as I raced around. The mirrored back-to-back rears of houses had wooden fences as boundaries. There was a continuous horizontal plank about a foot from the top, which held the vertical posts together. Rather than go right around the block to see a mate in the next street, I would clamber up barefoot, walk along the plank and drop into their backyard. Maybe stay for a swim if it was belting hot.

Going around with bare feet is part of being an Aussie kid- it doesn’t mean you’re poor and can’t afford shoes. If you live near the beach and you’re heading there, you leg it in your (cossies) swimmers, and a towel under your arm – no shoes. If you’re a grommet, a young surfer, you leg it in a wet suit and with a surfboard under your arm – no shoes. You ride your bike barefoot.

It now initially shocks me in Oz when I see shirtless and shoeless men get out of cars and wander into shops. Or bare foot women in shorts and bikini tops. Oz is very relaxed outside of the CBD.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about how Mum’s family from County Monahagn in Ireland, bravely might I add, set sail for Australia. Oz was initially a convict settlement for the Brits, but they were free farming settlers.

More swimming and catching up with the relos today.