Yesterday the blue bells were magnificent. There is a walk from the Harrow pub in Steep to a woodland, where they carpet the ground under beech trees, adorned with fresh leaves.

Dinner in Clapham was a walk down memory lane, as it was a stone’s throw from where Anna went to school. Mrs Croquet, our host, had a big croquet match at Hurlingham the next day, so it was an early night. It is lovely to see the lawns in front of the club house alive with croquet in the summer.  In winter they use the cricket pitch out of the way.

The skiing season is well and truly over now.  Skis are stored away and now it is time for fun in the sun.

My skiing days have been over for a few years, due to an injury, but after we were married, we skied from time to time.

However, I had not skied in Australia apart from a very brief weekend in Thredbo. That was it.

The winter after we were married, Geoff and I were asked by the Scottish contingent, Ghislaine and Peter, Pippa and Michael and Emma, plus Jean (English) to join them in Verbier. I thought to myself, “Don’t worry, surely one weekend in Oz is enough to get me by.”

The Scots asked when we arrived whether I could ski. I said yes and the next morning after hiring our kit we headed to the Medran, where you are ferried up to the heights in cable cars. When in fact, I should have been heading to the beginners’ slopes. But, oh no, there was no way I was going to be separated from my new husband. 

So up we went, higher and higher. Then we caught chair lifts up even higher. My Bridget Jones’ moment was upon me. I skied off the chair and instead of turning left with Geoff I carried on straight ahead and fell head first into a snow mound. The problem after that was that I couldn’t stand up without falling over again. The party were incredibly patient and instead of marching me off the slopes to beginners’ school, they taught me to ski. By the end of the week I could do red runs.

Today, I have a tennis event in aid of another very good charity – nipping depression in the bud at an early age. And we have a dinner at Flamenco’s to look forward to. 

Wonderful sunny spring weather yesterday and again today.

I rarely go to charity lunches, but all my Book Club friends were going and it was a very good cause – Maggie’s Centres – where anyone affected by cancer can drop in. Vicky Greenley is on the Committee and I wanted to support her.

It was at the Bluebird café on the Kings Road in Chelsea. It was a glam venue with a lot of glam people. I knew that I had to paint and decorate with a little more care than usual. They say that women dress for other women! Of course not all women do, but there was evidence of visits to the hairdressers for blow dries and pedi/manicures. 

Me with Jenny and Clarinda 

Rory Bremner, the political satirist, was the speaker and ran the auction. He is a local. When I lived around the corner in Limerston Street, I would often see him with his laundry tucked under his arm on the way to the dry cleaner or working on his laptop in cafes.

When Geoff was CEO of Centaur Media, I would be invited to award events for their main publications. The Lawyer magazine always put on fun events at great venues and sometimes I would see my old colleagues from Clyde & Co, if they were up for an award. The publisher always seated me next to the presenter if they wanted to have a meal. Sometimes they just stayed in their dressing room during dinner. Rory was one of the presenters who happily ate dinner with the guests and I was next to him. His wife is a sculptor. He told me she had an exhibition at the Natural History Museum. I had not done my homework and said that I must buy tickets to it. I later found out that entrance was free and they were not inside with the dinosaurs, but placed in the forecourt garden. I remember a large hippo.

I also sat next to Piers Morgan before he got really big. He told me that he was not fond of Cherie Blair and Elizabeth Hurley. When he went to Downing Street on Daily Mirror business, Tony Blair would be in his jeans and strumming his guitar. Say no more. William Hague, the former foreign secretary, was fascinating, He was also a good laugh. Casino Royale had just come out (2006) and he joked that they microchipped British spies, just like Daniel Craig playing James Bond. Michael McIntyre was hilarious. It was before he was as famous. You could see he would make it to the top. Jonathan Ross stayed back stage.  He had a lot of charisma. Jenny Agutter of the The Railway Children sat next to Geoff. He was smitten.

Today I am going to hit the garden and then take the dog to see if we can find some blue bells. The woods will be carpeted with them. Domino loves our frolics in the country side. And then up to London for dinner in Clapham. 

Back in London. Just missed unseasonably cold weather – snow and sleet in the South – unheard of at this time of year. You go back in time when you arrive in London, losing 12 hours in British winter and 9 hours in British summer.

Aussie and British children in the Davis/Potts garden

Yesterday was spent flying. Another day in a tin can. But how miraculous that tin can is!

As we drove into London late last night, I was struck anew by the environmental differences between Oz and Britain: architecture – of housing, education and retail (in Britain packed densely together in urban localities due to greater population); vegetation – in terms of flowers, trees and shrubs in town and country; animals – domestic and wild. The food I stock up on today at the supermarket will be subtly or grossly different to Aussie grub. Australia has its own biscuits, ice creams and sweets, which we call lollies:

Lollies: Minties, Fantales (the wrapper has a bio of a star), Caramello Bears (koala), Freda Frogs, Cherry Ripes (cherry and coconut wrapped in dark choc)

Arnotts Biscuits (logo is parrot eating a biscuit): Mint slices (you take the minty dark choc layer off first with your teeth before you eat the less interesting biscuit), Tim Tams (cream between two choc biscuits) and Vita Wheats (you sandwich two together with loads of vegemite, like marmite and squeeze so that it comes through the small holes like worms).

Ice creams: Streets Paddle Pops and Golden Gaytimes (toffee vanilla ice cream covered in honeycomb and choc – Wilmot’s fav) – Weiss Fruit Bars.

Aussie sweets

Oz has lotsa space, so most houses are surrounded by a bit of land and a garage. Terraced houses are unusual, unless in downtown capital cities – a remnant of early British settlement. The mid 20^thcentury red bungalow in Australia has given way to the cubic, clean lined or shaker abode in the third millennium. You generally only find these in affluent seaside destinations like St Mawes, Rock (Cornwell) and Salcombe (Devon) in Britain.

The Aussie bush framing Coledale station

80% of flora and fauna is Oz is unknown in other parts or the world. Wattle (yellow), bottle brush (yellow and red), waratah (red) and eucalyptus trees do not abound in the British woodland. Bluebells, wild garlic and nettles – beech, oak and silver birch – do. Delicate red breasted robins, wrens, thrushes, chaffinches and blue tits in Britain. Bit noisy, gritty sulphur crested cockatoos; willie wagtails shaking their tails; operatic kookaburras or colourful rosella/lorikeets in Oz. Insidious slugs and snails in Britain. Big reptilian frilled neck lizards in Oz. Silent grasshoppers in Britain. Deafening, noisy cicadas in Oz. Oz is blousy and big. Britain, understated and reserved. 

Eucalyptus trees

Norfolk pines at the beach

Bottle brush

Sophia my niece holding eucalyptus pods

Cicadas: The loudest insect in the world. We collected them and traded them at school. We’d transport them in shoe boxes. Green Grocer (the most common), Yellow Monday, Floury Baker, Cherry Nose and Black Prince.

Today I will unpack and go for a walk to help acclimatise. And then right back into the swing of things. I have a ladies lunch at Bluebird on Kings Road, Chelsea, in aid of Maggies – funding centres for cancer patients.

It is always sad to leave my Aussie family in Australia. I usually hold it together until I pass through immigration and there is no going back. I am now at Changi Airport, Singapore, at lunchtime and about to catch the next plane to Heathrow, London. I will lose 9 hours so arrive on the same day, not tomorrow.

At Sydney airport yesterday, Geoff and I settled down for a coffee by the picture windows (and our last friand –delicious almond cakes sold in Aussie cafes) to watch the majestic movement of aircraft to or away from their designated terminal bays. In the air they are powerful beasts taking docile/immobile/subservient human passengers elsewhere in the world. On the ground, they become docile/immobile/subservient and it is the humans’ turn to pull them along in vehicles and load them, fuel them, check them. Into view, from around the corner, came our gigantic A380 Airbus being towed into place. It is the largest double decker passenger aircraft in the world, seats 850 passengers and weighs a whopping 1.2 million pounds.

It is a curious fact that whilst on board – unless you are a neurotic flyer – you manage to switch off to the fact that you are thousands of miles above the earth, moving at great speed and in a freezing temperature.

Rarely do you dwell on the fact that you are whizzing through the heavens like an angel – through clouds that great artists like Michelangelo would have given his back teeth to see at close range. Instead, most of the time, you pull down the shutters and watch movies, or kip. The moving map tells you that you are going over places that you have never heard of, will never visit, all those ‘stans after India – Tajikistan/Uzbekistan/Turkmenistan – before crossing the romantic inland sea, the Caspian into the familiar territory of Europe.

Marina Bay Sands in Sinapore

Last night we checked into the Fullerton Hotel (the old, grand Post Office), right on Marina Bay, overlooking the most impressive development of a water space, in terms of breadth of vision and alacrity of build. The Marina Bay Sands is a 2,561 roomed hotel in three tall towers with a skypark perched on top like a floating boat. It also houses a casino, theatres, luxury shopping and restaurants. On the foreshore is the lotus like Arts/Science Museum. On the other side is the Merlion statue, with a lion’s head and a body of a fish, spewing out water from its mouth into the bay. It is the symbol of this young nation of a bit more than 50 years.

Looking at the Fullerton hotel

Geoff likes to eat the local dish, Nasi Goreng, on the terrace, rather than inside in the air conditioning and to watch the colourful movement at Clarke Quay. The hotel has a wonderful infinity pool looking over restored colonial buildings. I had a swim and decompressed. A little slice of paradise.

Paradise was shortlived. We were awoken at 2am by loud music. By 4am I worked out that it was from the room next door. We called the front desk and they sent the duty manager. The guest next door had checked out late the night before and had left the radio blaring. They gave us a complimentary limousine ride to the airport to make up for the disruption.

As we were leaving a cavalcade of motorbikes with flashing blue lights passed us. The driver told us it was the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, from the People’s Action Party. His father was the first PM from independence in 1959 to 1990. There are other political parties, but they never get voted in.

The chauffeur finally answered the question Geoff always asks the local taxi drivers. Where is Brizay Park – where he lived in 1955-1958? He told him that it was an affluent area with freehold bungalows about 9kms from downtown. Single abodes are rare in the CBD. The mystery solved.

Next stop London.

It was stormy weather on Friday on the Illawarra Peninsula. Big swell was smashing and spraying against the rocky headlands – like a dramatic opera. The sea – like a skilled sculptor– with its repeat pitching and retreat – forwards and backwards – has crafted intricate patterns into the stone over thousands of years. Geoff and I went for a walk along Sharkeys, Little Austi and Big Austi beaches, picking our way carefully around each headland so that we wouldn’t be swept away with the swell. Fishermen had been warned not to fish too close to the edge of the rock shelves that bookend the beaches. 

We are off to the airport very soon to make our way back to London. So strange that you can be Down Under one day and the next, in a completely different environment, on the other side of the world. Not the 140 days it took my great grandfather to sail with his wife and three small daughters from Ireland to Melbourne in the mid 1850s.

The sea is the engraver

One of my favourite books is Alain De Botton’s The Art of Travel: it analyses why we are drawn to travel, as opposed to suggestions on where to go. And why train, plane and sea travel allow us to transcend the sameness of domesticity and work – tethering us like docile animals – and to gain perspective on our lives from a distance. Like an astronaut above the earth – we can see where we have come from and where we want to head to. Botton says that “Journeys are midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train…Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape.”  Sometimes ordinary life, the sameness of everyday life, is suffocating and there is a need to go – somewhere else. So we can think straight again or move forward – like the journey we are on.

Big storms

At home, in day to day life, if I feel hemmed in or stalled in motion, metaphorically, I put Domino in the car and we go… somewhere… anywhere, other than where I am. And the ‘going’ sets my mind in motion again and I feel more myself. I remember who I am and what I want to be.

On holiday, twice, Geoff and I decided to sell our home. Both times, thankfully, we made the right decision. Somehow away, we felt braver, more able to make big changes. I conceived Anna in Portugal and Hugo in Australia – children that I found difficult to conceive – were given to me. I decided to write a book on holiday. It is unpublished, but it was written.

Six years ago, at the end of January, Geoff rang me in Singapore during a twelve hour stopover, to tell me that my father, Stan the Man, had died. Geoff, Anna, Hugo and I had been with the family at Christmas and it was clear that Stan did not have long for this earth. Four weeks later, things had taken a turn for the worse and I jumped on a plane.

I remember everything surrounding that phone call. I had just come in from a quick swim when the phone rang. I was dripping wet and had a towel around me. I thought that is Geoff and he is going to tell me that Dad has died. He did. Somehow, being alone, in an Asian city, gave me the space to reflect clearly, in an uncluttered way, on what Dad had meant to me and as I walked the city that afternoon for hours, amongst strangers, I felt comforted.

We will arrive Singapore in time for dinner.

Yesterday we caught up with old friends, the Clarkes, at Austi Beach café for brekkie (breakfast) across the road from Austinmer Beach – lined with mature Norfolk pines like sentries– just down the road from Coledale. Like many of the trendy cafes that have replaced the greasy spoons of my childhood (selling deep fried fish, chips, hamburgers, and scallops – potato cakes and not the seafood), they sell the typical fresh produce that Sydney cafes now celebrate. Geoff had sourdough toast with mashed peas and poached eggs. I had banana bread and a detox juice. It was another sunny day and we sat outside.

All Aussie men know how to barbie

Rob and Kylie were at Macquarie Uni with me and then Rob, within a stone’s throw of graduation, landed up heading Leo Burnett, Australia (advertising) as CEO. His star has continued to ascend and he is now COO of Aussie Rugby. Kylie, a solicitor like me, has always been a part of the Mosman, North Shore (upper class, if Aussies have one) landscape. She grew up on the middle harbour foreshore and now Rob and she have a house right on Chinaman’s Beach, just before the Spit Bridge. History repeating itself in a good way.

With Kylie and the children

We hooked up in London when I first arrived in the late 80s and even after they downed tools and kackadoodled back to Sydney, we kept the fire of friendship burning, staying with them on our trips Down Under. Sometimes we visited her parents ‘weekender’ in Palm Beach, but think ‘Kennedy’ type complex, rather than the fibro Potts holiday habitat. All sandstone with a large courtyard in the middle and bang smack on the crest of the beach. The soap Home and Away is filmed around there. Palm Beach is where the good and the great of Sydney play. It’s where Tom Cruise Nicole Kidman holidayed when she wasn’t a resident.

Kylie was full of news and somehow we got onto the subject of Aussie musicians, whose fame, sadly, had rarely left the Aussie shores. She was a huge fan of Richard Clapton’s, aka black t-shirt man with black hair’s, music. Richard’s famous songs: Girls on the Avenue, Best Years of our Lives, Down to the Lucky Country etc.

Being a bit of a celebrity stalker myself, I could savor the story she laid out for us.

She had been at a ‘ladies who lunch’ charity lunch at the Governor General’s House at Kirribilli (residence of the Queen’s rep in Oz) and was tottering along in her glad rags to the bus stop in Neutral Bay, when she almost bumped into the man himself, Richard Clapton. The muso was laden with multiple plastic carriers of supermarket food – for home – not a gig. Not the sort of thing you expect a rock star to be doing on a typical weekday arvo (afternoon). It just so happened that she and Rob had recently crowd funded a part of his upcoming new album, to be recorded in Nashville. In return, Rich had agreed to come and play a short gig at their home on the foreshore.

So with a couple of glasses of champagne under her belt, Kylie approached him and explained that through her crowd funding, she had a stake in his new album. And that he would be gracing her home with his rock star talent. I of course suggested that it would be mega if he performed on the harbour itself of a floatie – boat, pontoon – of some sort.

So if you happen to be sailing off Chinaman’s Beach and notice a chubby, black haired and black attired man on a pontoon, belting out music, you will know it is indeed Kylie’s new bestie, Richard Clapton.

Today the weather has turned. It is stormy and I can see big swell approaching the coastline. I can see it from where I am typing this – majestic.

Yesterday, we headed to Bulli beach, as it has a nice even swell when other beaches can be rough. I saw some young grommets surfing off the headland and it reminded me of Shaun at the same age.

The thing is…my brother Shaun was what you would describe as the ultimate ‘Adventure Hero’. Before that, he was ‘Adventure Boy’. He was always up to mischief with Stephen Crundwell, the boy next door. The ‘Adventure Boys’ high jinks were never malicious, they wouldn’t hurt a blue-arsed fly, but nevertheless, they mucked up – got up to things that would make a mother’s hair turn grey overnight. Bev’s did.

They hero worshipped Evil Knievel, the 1970s motorcycle stuntman on telly, who broke almost every bone in his body performing crazy stunts – like revving up and then, full throttle, flying through the air over 10 double decker buses (Wembley Arena). He often crashed and burned. It was painful to watch. The boys were ants in their pants, wriggly worm, kind of boys, but they would sit as still as statues when Evil was on telly.

One day, Shaun and Stephen had a bright idea. They could do one of Evil’s stunts. The Crundwell’s pool was bigger than ours. They had an oval shaped above ground pool with wooden decks on the sides and a thick PVC (plastic) blue lining. The Adventure Boys poured petrol on the water, lit the petrol so there were flames leaping into the sky and then they rode their dragster bikes (shaped like Harley Davidsons) along the decks and launched themselves through the flames. They then swam, unscathed, to safety in the deep end. Mrs Crundwell spewed (blew a gasket) when she saw the post-stunt devastation. The flames had melted the blue lining above water level. The Adventure Boys hid for days.

In his early teens, Shaun climbed over the Sydney Harbour Bridge at night with Wilma’s son, David, from the farm – before it was open to the public.

Shaun was also a scientific geek. He once set up his prized chemistry set in the hall. One day when I ‘hated him’ for not letting me watch my favourite American telly shows, The Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family (starring David Cassidy), ‘religion’ to me, I smashed it up and mixed up all the chemicals. He pinned me against the wall and threatened to punch my guts out. Sibling warfare.

When I went to use the kitchen blender, I would sometimes find remnants of gunpowder.  Unbeknownst to my parents, Shaun was working on a canon. He used to strap it to his little stunt motor bike and let it off in deserted canals. The temptation to show off to us grew too strong and when he was about 14 he said to Dad, “Hey Dad, do you want to see how my canon works in the backyard?” Well we all went out to watch the demonstration. The wick sizzled slowly and finally “Kaboom”, the canon ball was released, the garden was alight and the back fence fell over. Stan hollered, “Bloody hell son. What will the neighbours say about the fence?” But under his breath as he walked away I heard him mutter, “That kid is a chip off the old block!”

When Shaun started surfing, the bigger the wave, the better for him. He appeared home one day with a gash between his eyes, where his face had met a reef. He learnt to scuba dive and would descend deep below the surface to the dark depths at places like Jervis Bay, further down the south coast, to explore ship wrecks. He swam with sharks at Manly Aquarium. He was told to keep his hands glued to his sides so that the sharks wouldn’t snack on them.

Shaun was a grommet (the name for a young surfer)

Stan, Bev and I went to watch him and then we went to the local Greek restaurant for non-Greek food – steak, chips and peas. At the time most of the European immigrants, the Greeks and Italians, owned the diners and served Aussie food. Crazy! The other immigrants, the Chinese, served Chinese food. Not crazy. 

Today we’ll catch up with Rob and Kylie Clarke, who live the Australian dream on the North Shore in Mosman.

Yesterday we headed inland, southwest, to Berrima in the Southern Highlands, to visit the Bendooley vineyard and the sandstone bookshop/restaurant/wine tasting bar, owned by the Berkalow family. They are the equivalent to the Waterstones in Britain.

I know in my head that Australia is a big empty country and that the coastal capital cities of the states that constitute the Federation of Australia (formed in 1901) are where most Aussies live, but when your eyes see the vastness first hand, it knocks the breath out of your lungs. We headed out on Picton Road to the Old Hume Highway. Mile after mile of un-populated bush land, filled with gnarled, peeling eucalyptus trees and dense, green vegetation. The earth almost rust red (the iron content).

It reminded me of Shaun’s days in the Scouts. He spent many weekends in the Aussie bush: camping, abseiling, trekking, climbing and descending into black holes in the earth. He could give Bear Grylls a run for his money – seriously! He went through cubs as a boy, then scouts and then Venturers– aged 14 to 17 – completing the Queen’s Scout Award over that period.

Shaun receiving the Queen’s Scout Award

The Award is reputed to be more taxing that the Gold Duke of Edinburgh. And in the 70s, there were no mobile phones, no GPS, to get you out of a tough spot if you got lost or had an accident in the bush. You just have to find a way out – use your wits.  Plus in the Aussie bush, there are deadly spiders and snakes. It was a proud day when the family went to Government House, down by the Opera House, to watch the governor present the Award to Shaun.

Shaun told me about the first, incredible, unaccompanied trek he did, aged 15, with his two Venturer mates, Mark Houghton (father was Skip of the Scouts) and Dave Cantlon. Bill Stevens, the leader, literally drove them into the Kanangra-Boyd National Park, SW of Sydney and left them there. They had provisions and tents in back packs. Each boy was to act as guide for one of the three days and had a topographical map of the section he was responsible for – so a map and a compass was all they had to trek for miles. At the end of day 3 they were to report to the police station in the park and then catch a train home.

The first night it poured with rain and they got soaked. The first day they had to scale sheer cliffs as they were slightly off the path. If they had fallen, they would have pegged it. The second day they were in thick vegetation with no tracks. It came to day 3. Mark had bought the wrong map. It was a large scale map of the whole area, so the terrain was impossible to read. They had to climb a waterfall and if they had fallen that time, they would have pegged it again. Somehow they managed to go the right way and when they could barely walk at 10pm, they found a couple parked randomly in a car and they drove them to the police station. The later found out the last day should have been a two day walk. When the policeman saw them, he casually said, “I was wondering what had happened to you boys.” Did he think to send out a search party???

Shaun lived for adrenaline, whether scouting or otherwise. He surfed; scuba dived and got up to a lot of mischief as a boy and young teenager. He was a scientific geek too. I will tell you more about that tomorrow. 

Shaun teaching Geoff to fish

My brother Shaun is the smartest (he came first in his Masters of Theology in Australia at the age of 28), the bravest, most practical, Aussie bloke I know. And a blonde Tom Cruise in looks and mannerisms!!!

Today, yes, we are going to swim in the surf again. I love it. My favourite thing to do! It never gets boring! The weather has been stable and between 21 to 25 degrees. It’s autumn.

Yesterday Mum showed me the Order of Service for my Uncle Quentin, her brother, who recently died. He was a kind and gentle man. She lost her sister, Marcia, 40 years ago. So it was a tough blow to lose Quentin. They grew up in Ashbury, a suburb slightly west of downtown Sydney.

Marcia became a country girl when she married Noel and moved to Wagga Wagga. She was true to her roots, as my grandmother, Vera Jones, was part of two large rural clans from County Monahagn, Ireland, who left what they knew, to go to what they did not know, Australia. The potato famine forced them to take their chances and head to Victoria. Vera’s grandfather, John Hall, arrived in Melbourne in 1859, with is wife Mary and 3 daughters under the age of four.

Next to Auntie Marcia and her lamb

The trip took 140 days and you can imagine the lack of sanitation, poor food and cramped accommodation. They went from Melbourne north to Clunes, where gold fever had gripped the town since it was discovered in 1851. Together they went on to have 9 children in all. Vera’s father, Robert (my great grandfather), was number 7.

The family moved around, but finally settled on a dairy farm in Undera, in the Goulbourn Valley, SW of Sydney. Robert married Martha Martin (also of County Monahagn). They were married in Clunes Presbyterian Church on 22 February, 1897. Robert and Martha stayed on the dairy farm in Undera until both parents had died and then they headed to New South Wales in 1908.

They were initially based at Uley Station, Ardlethan, not far from Wilma’s farm, Iventure, in Talimba, near West Wyalong – the place I visited during my teens. That was where Grandmother Vera was born on 7 June, 1910. She was the last of 8 children.

My grandmother with bald me

Four of Grandma’s five brothers fought in WWI. Miraculously they all survived. They were eligible for free land in a ballot, like the lottery, for fighting for the Mother Country in Europe. The eldest, Cecil, won a bonza place, Elcombe, near Reefton in the vicinity of West Wyalong. Tod, Wilma’s Dad, won a place nearby and the entire family worked together, until all the boys had secured farms. That was when their luck turned and they made fortunes on the “sheep’s back” – merino wool.

I have vivid memories of my time going to Marcia’s farm when I was a young girl. I remember Dad and Mum spontaneously driving us on treacherous roads overnight – Shaun and I slept on a mattress in the boot. Making plasticine food on her porch. Watching the grown ups dance to music played on a record player. Eating a cocktail onion which Marcia pretended was a sweet. She loved practical jokes. 

So today we will head into the interior towards Wagga Wagga, in the same direction, but some miles short of it.

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.

Stanley and Beverley on their wedding day

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.

The family house on Cater Street

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.