We had a two nectarine trees in our garden when I was growing up. As the fruit was beginning to develop, I would eagerly await the first sign of redness and snaffle it straight from the tree and eat it. My timing was inevitably off, and it would be a hard green all the way through. So I would lob the once bitten fruit into the big circle garden.
It wasn’t that big, but when you’re 8 years old, the world seems impossibly big. It was the big circle garden because it had a path of broken asphalt that ran all the way around it. Mum could walk around the big circle garden in ten steps. To me, it seemed an impenetrable jungle of plants. Lobbing a green nectarine into the vast expanse of the untamed landscape seemed a sure way to avoid detection of my transgression of wasting food.
My mother would find these green, bitten fruits in the middle of this garden that she had taken two steps into to pull up a few weeds. Raising the fruit on high, she would demand to know who had only taken one bite and discarded the fruit.
The benefit of being one of eleven means the possibility of being discovered was remote. Luckily, Mum didn’t have moulds of our bites to match.
Forward 60 years, I sat in the doctor’s office, and he handed me 4 sheets of A4 paper, lists printed on both sides. Mostly the lists consisted of foods I was no longer allowed to eat if I wanted to regain a sensible use of my bowels.
Nectarines were on the list.
I love nectarines, I like them crunchy, not green because I don’t have a big circle garden anymore, not soft and squishy. Nectarines need a blush of red, firm and crunchy.
Nectarine season is almost here, I’ll just have to rely on my memory now.
There is no doubt that parenting is by far one of the best jobs you’ll ever have.
Sure, there are plenty of books around that tell you how to do it. If you’re unlucky you’ll have family around who think they know better than you and won’t be afraid to tell you. There are barriers and obstacles, dangers and traps, every single step of the way.
Let me tell you, as a man on the brink of grandparenthood, it’s been one heck of a trip and not one bit of it would I change.
From the moment of discovering that Caitlin was on her way, this has by far been the best adventure of my life. To be present, really present, in the lives of Caitlin and Tomas has brought me such joy and happiness.
I was there when they opened their eyes, I was there when they took their first step, hurt themselves, rode a bicycle without the trainers, thrilled at their first concert, watched their first movie, gazed at their grandparents in awe.
I was there when they threw up in the car, had a toileting accident, screamed in agony in a public place, didn’t succeed at a task.
I’ve been the brunt of their frustration, I’ve been the fixer of feelings, the hugger and carer. I have gathered them in my arms to console them, and hug them and tell them I love them.
As the next chapter of life begins for Caitlin and Glen, I look back at the thrill of it all. I am so glad to have been able to be a part of her life.
It’s at this point, that I feel obliged to reflect about what I would do differently. And there are plenty of things I wished I could do over. However, the best thing I ever did was to be there as they grew up. Sure, it was tough to work part-time, never to have quite enough money, lonely and stressful. Alas, even with that, I’m so glad that I made that decision to be their care-giver. In all of life, raising kids is the best.
Grasp the chance with both hands, get in there and get dirty. Thrill at the pure joy of the unfathomable love that comes unexpectedly when a bundle of joy is passed to you the first time.
Tears streamed down my face as I looked at both my children for the first time.
We started a journey together, and I’m delighted to have been part of it. The best way to be a parent is to be there as much as you can. Take time off work, reduce your hours, do school drop offs and pick-ups, watch them dance, watch them sing, watch them act and play. Just be there, always with a warm word, a hug, a kiss and a glint of pride in your eye.
I find that I have plenty of time on my hands, and I’ve been listening to tapes and watching some of my old VHS videos.
One of those cassette tapes from the 1980s is an interview with my Grandmother. It’s wide-ranging and covers all sorts of stories from her life.
Grandma died in 1991.
My brother Shane and I visited our grandmother, she was living with her eldest daughter, and recorded at least 2 hours of stories.
On this little snippet she talks about the sort of work my grandfather did. Mostly he was a blacksmith, but things were changing, cars where making their way onto the roads, and the need to shoe a horse was no longer a life-time job.
This image appears on a Facebook group I’m a member of.
I’ve seen it described as ‘Harold Hadden’s blacksmith shop, Glenthompson’. When I visit the State Library of Victoria’s page, where the image is held it’s described as ‘Buggies outside blacksmith’s shop‘. The photo was taken between 1890 and 1917 – my Grandfather didn’t have a shop in Glenthompson until 1928 at the earliest.
The surrounding countryside doesn’t really look much like Glenthompson either.
The photographer also took this picture
The country-side looks very similar and it’s captioned, ‘View of town-Archies Creek?‘ which is out Gippsland way.
In amongst my old things I’ve also kept this invoice:
He has invoiced Mr. S Beggs, very likely is Sandford Beggs, father of Tammy Fraser.
Anyway, all of this was enough to inspire me to put together this little video of my Grandmother talking about the work that Harold used to do.
The white tablecloth starts pristine, covering and protecting the tabletop. The family gathers around it to drink and eat. Breadcrumbs spread around as the loaf is cut and they gently coached into little piles to be swept away.
Main course and the cloth endures a splash of water, a piece of chicken skin and a sneaky wipe of a greasy palm.
The family ebbs and flows as does the conversation, cryptocurrency, prime ministers, weather. They all ebb and flow around the table. The main course is done, and the table arises, some head off to the TV for the Friday night footy match, others to the kitchen to deal with the remnants of the meal, stragglers sit around as the table is cleared, glasses removed, plates and cutlery stacked and carried off the kitchen.
There’s a respectable time before the final course appears. The time between sittings is not something that can be solved with a mathematical formula. It must wait until the newspapers have been flicked through, mobile phones have been checked and new apps downloaded. The kettle boils, coffee is brewed, tea-bags are dangled, and a fruitcake, a crumble and choc chip biscuits appear. Nobody needs to be called; the family knows that the magic sweet spot of dessert has arrived. As the crumble is put into bowls and passed around, milk and sugar added to the hot drinks a packet of Tim Tams appear on the table.
There’s only five left. Tim Tams come in a packet of 11, not 12, not 10. 11. The outer packaging is stripped and the five tempting biscuits sit on one end of the inner hull. Tempting those around the table.
The final ritual of the evening begins. Light-hearted chat while eating the sweet treats.
Then there’s one left.
The lone Tim Tam has the gaze of the table. Silence as all eyes are upon it. Who will break the convention and eat it?
Then the question and the offers.
“Are you going to eat it?”
“You have the last one.”
“That has your name on it.”
The final call is the forlorn question, “What’s so important about that Tim Tam?”
Then like a cold, soggy tea-bag the Tim Tam is forgotten.
The table breaks, everything is whisked away. Good nights are said, kisses exchanged. Lights dimmed.
All that’s left is a few crumbs, a couple of spills and the lone Tim Tam on the white tablecloth.
This is my dog. Was my dog. He’s gone now. Went a long time ago.
He was a Koolie, an Australian working dog. He was also a little thick. Still a wonderful dog that was devoted and happy as dogs tend to be.
We called him Waddley Archa. Waddley for short. It’s a name I picked up from a song that I learned in the USA in 1984. I was working at an American summer camp with the Scouts for 6 weeks. Every week we’d have a campfire as the grand finale of the week with that group of boys. We’d sing lots of songs, I’d lead them in Waltzing Matilda. It was a fun time.
I learned several new songs, as you do when you travel around. I brought them back to Australia and taught my own Cub Scouts these new songs, Waddle-ee-ah-cha was one of them. It was really just a nonsense song, no purpose to it, and it had a nice little tune, good to sing around a camp fire. It may have had some actions, and I’ve been sitting here singing it and going through the actions, they don’t seem right, and I look a right dill waving my arms around poking my nose and kicking my feet up.
Here’s the lyrics as recorded in the song book from the summer camp:
Waddle-ee-ah-cha, waddle-ee-ah-cha
Doodle-ee-do, doodle-ee-do,
Waddle-ee-ah-cha, waddle-ee-ah-cha
Doodle-ee-do, doodle-ee-do,
Some folks say there ain’t nothing to it,
All you gotta do is doodle-ee-do it.
I like the rest but the part I like the best
Is doodle-ee-do doodle-ee-do, Oy!
So, nice story. But wait, there’s more!
I was playing around on the net and found myself at archive.org, The Internet Archive. It’s a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. I saw that they had a bunch of music recorded from old 78rpm records. I’ve got a few old 78’s in the cupboard, and an old gramophone to play them on. So I began searching through the treasure of old music to see if there were any recordings that I knew. And there was.
In amongst them was one called Doodle-Le-Do by Harry Raby and the 3-D Valley Boys. It’s not dated. I almost went right on past it, then the words began to sing in my mind and I thought, no, it couldn’t be. I hit play and there it was! The song actually has music to it!
So, here’s to Waddley and Darcy, our two dogs. Hit play and feel free to sing along.
Here’s me in the kitchen again, this time cooking some ANZAC biscuits.
ANZAC biscuits trace back to the first world war and it’s said that the wives of soldiers sent boxes of them to the front line as they kept well. Check out the history on the Wikipedia page.
In my family however, they are simply a quick and easy biscuit to make to feed the hungry masses.
ANZAC Biscuits
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup sugar
1 cup of flour
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 teaspoon bi-carb soda
2 tablespoons boiling water
125g butter, melted
Oven 160c
cooking 18-20 minutes
Mix oats, sugar and flour in large bowl
Mix golden syrup, soda and boiling water in a small bowl. While frothing add melted butter and pour into dry ingredients, Mix thoroughly.
Drop in spoonfuls on tray and allow room for mixture to spread
Recently I made a Weet-bix cake based on my Mum’s recipe.
Well, this clearly has to be topped by something even better and more wonderful – enter Angela.
For the first time in her life she attempts to make a Pavlova. We check Mum’s recipe and note that there are just no details on what to actually do, just a list of ingredients, so out comes Cookery the Australian way, the bible of cooking during the 80’s and the text-book for many Home Economics classes.
Pavlovas or pavs as we like to call them had been a staple of our family celebrations.
There’s 4 pavs in this spread – that must’ve been something special! There’s no way Mum was using her own recipe. Perhaps she’d committed it to memory and was filling in the blanks.
Here’s the video of us making our own pav – it’s not even close to the magnificence of Eve’s pavs.
Every year we have a lunch at work, we have a rich and diverse community. We all bring along something to share from our country of origin.
This year, I share my mother’s recipe for Weet-Bix cake, a childhood favourite.
Did a video too:
Here’s the details!
Ingredients:
4 weet-bix
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 cup coconut (desiccated is probably best)
1½ cups self-raising flour
¼ cup margarine (melted)
and 1 cup of milk.
Crush weet-bix finely, add sugar, cocoa, flour (and coconut), melted margarine and milk
Mix well and press into shallow tin.
Bake 10-12 minutes. Ice when cold. 180º
Just putting this out there for you to think about.
The Australian Christian Lobby and other religious people are always telling us that allowing same-sex couples to get married will mean that they will want to have children. They tell us that this is unnatural as it deprives the child of either a mother or father. The argument is that it doesn’t matter about children who find themselves without one of their biological parents from desertion, accident or some other misadventure, from their recent media release:
“Every time a child loses their mother or their father, whether by family breakdown, death, desertion, it is a profound tragedy.”
But why doesn’t it matter? Why don’t they agitate to fix what they must surely see as a huge social issue.
In June 2012 there were 641,000 single parent families with dependents in Australia1. Of those families 84% where single mothers.
In the 2011 Census there where around 33,700 same-sex couples. Of those couples, 6,300 children live with them2
I would think that since the ACL is so worried about thinking about the children that they would be much more concerned with the amount of single parent families. After all, it’s clear that they see a child’s right to be raised by their biological mother and father. Where is their campaign to either restore both parents or prevent them from having children in the first place?
This seems like a much bigger issue from their moral ‘christian values‘ and one that they seem happy to overlook.
Instead we find their focus on the children of gay couples, children that have two parents and live in really happy circumstances, children that are wanted, loved, nurtured and doing really well.
The only reason I can think of is that the ACL is determined to victimise gay people as evil.
Society’s focus should be on the children, and we should look after all of the kids, regardless of their family situations. Families need our support, if they are struggling then lets help them.
Just so we’re clear, plenty of single parents raise really good kids.
I’ve been in a very reflective mood today as I mull over the events of yesterday.
Two things happened. Bob Katter appeared on Q&A and as expected more or less said that there are no gay people in his electorate.
Ivan Hinton-Teoh returned to his home town to confront the past. He was a victim of homophobia in his small rural town.
Ivan is an online friend, we both have an interest in marriage equality, Ivan is the Deputy National Director of Australian Marriage Equality. His story is powerful and emotional. A story that needed to be told. It made me think about my own small town experience. It has awakened in me just how much I hated growing up. I felt I was surrounded by bullies and vilified on a constant basis at home and at school.
The home stuff was a lot about being teased. I was pretty good at teasing too and would wind my brothers and sisters up as much as they did me. What we didn’t know at the time was that I was gay. The best way to niggle at me was to tell me I was a poof. At one time my name was Gregory Elizabeth Storer. For a young lad trying to come to terms with his sexuality that sort of teasing had a lasting impact on me. There was no intent from my siblings to cause any damage other than normal sibling rivalry. I’m not trying to lay blame at all. I want to highlight just how easy it is to damage the young mind and how long it can take to undo that damage.
School was just horrible. From Grade Four I was labelled a poofter, well before I even knew what any of that meant. I was often the victim of playground taunts and bullying. That only escalated in Secondary School. By the time I reached adulthood I was doing everything I could to appear heterosexual. I lived a double life. I had a boyfriend and we would sneak away as much as we could. I would pretend to be straight for my family, my work, the scouts and the church.
I knew how bad it was to be gay, how we spoke about gay people. Religion, the community, my friends, they all despised homosexuals.
I suffered from my own personal homophobia. I hated the gay in me. I felt a cheat, a liar, dishonourable, fake and a freak. My personal integrity is key to my sense of self-worth, so being fake and dishonourable weighed heavily on my mind.
At times I wanted to die. Often.
I was well-regarded in my small town. I was even made Young Citizen of the Year. On the inside I would be arguing about how much I would be hated if only they knew that I was really a homo.
It took a long time, a lot of money, a shitload of personal reflection for me to work out that the public me and the inside me could be joined together. I didn’t need two sides of me.
In fact, if you don’t mind me stroking my own ego, I am honourable, reliable, decent bloke. And I am that because my key value is honesty. Above all else I hold that to be significantly important to me.
I was devastated last night watching Q&A to witness the blatant disregard that Bob Katter has towards gay people.
How devastating to listen to a squabble about gay people on #QandA – resilience wearing thin
As Josh Thomas was taking him to task Katter was unable to even look at him. Here is Katter talking about the importance of mental health for farmers and he is completely unable to acknowledge that gay people exist and at times suffer great mental anguish, something that he has had a hand in creating.
We really shouldn't need a bloke like @JoshThomas87 to take on Bob Katter. This is 2014 not 1950. Time to represent all, not just farmers
It is his attitude and those of people like him that allows him and our society to marginalise and vilify people just like me. It is people like him that I went to school with that picked on me and thought it was all in good fun.
It is people like him that even now cause me uncertainty. Every day I have to deal with what I tell people. Will they treat me differently if they know I’m gay? Do I tell them? What would the ramifications be? I’m trying to do a job here and it shouldn’t be an issue. Do I come out to that contractor? How much of a friendship do I want with that supplier? Is that a look of contempt from a colleague because I’m gay?
More and more now I simply don’t care, people can like it or lump it. But a lifetime of checking oneself is hard to simply give up in 10 short years. How much of it is in my head? How much is real?
So that’s me. I have resilience and support. I have a great well of support, my husband, my children, my family, my friends, my work-mates. Despite the odd bit of insecurity, I know who I am, I’m not afraid to tell you and will even take you to task at the drop of a hat. But imagine being young, searching, unsure. If you are gay and trying to understand yourself and how you fit into this society then last night’s program may have had a negative impact on you.
If you’re a Bob Katter then you need to watch what Ivan has to say. You need to feel his raw emotions on display for the world to see. You need to see his vulnerability. Because Ivan is the young gay kid in every rural community struggling to make sense of himself in a world created for heterosexuals.
Thanks Ivan.
This is mental health week – take care of your mental health. Be aware of other people’s mental health.
You never know where your homophobic attitudes will land.
If you need to talk to someone about mental health, please phone Lifeline on 13 11 14.
