Kilometres & kindness: family time is priceless
It’s been a big couple of weeks. A wonderful couple of weeks! I always think how lucky I am when work and family collide, and collide it did a couple of weeks ago.
My family have a long history with Alice Springs. My aunty and uncle lived on a cattle station just out of Alice for tens of years; my cousin lives there. As a kid, I would be allowed to either catch the Ghan (before it was a tourist train) with my grandparents or fly solo (so exciting) to spend the holidays with my Aunty Jan.
Later, mum and dad invested in Numery Station, east of Alice. Most school holidays would see the five of us plus a dog pile in a Land Cruiser station wagon and drive up the Stuart Highway, rolling our swags out in sandy creeks and sitting around the campfire at night, on our way to Numery.
So the Northern Territory, or around Alice, is as much home to me as the Flinders Ranges. Up there I learned that not everyone has power; generators that were turned off at 10 pm sharp were normal, as were kerosene-powered fridges, frogs in the toilets and showers and hardly any water meant timed showers, no cheating!
Aunty Jan and I were always very close. She bought me my first bra and taught me to shave my legs. She had her own love of clothes, which she passed on to me and insisted we should dress well, even out on the station. ‘Clothes maketh the man (or woman)’. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Aunty Jan without a string of pearls or lipstick on, matching pants and tops and nice shoes. I don’t remember her wearing RM boots at all either.
Anyway, as I said, we were always very close; she is my secret keeper, my friend, and I love her so very much. So when work called me to Alice, I was able to spend some time with her, and that was very special.
My edits for The Buried arrived two days before I was due to leave to go to Alice, so there was a flurry of activity to try and get them done, but that was like a snowflake landing in hell and expecting not to melt! I was glad for the flights, so I was able to work while I got to Adelaide to pick up mum and dad and take them with me to Alice.
Cousins are special people, and mine are no exception! In fact, we’re double first cousins because (this is NOT incestuous!) my mum and Uncle Grant are brother and sister, and my dad and Aunty Jan are brother and sister. Tanya, my oldest cousin, informs me that means we’re royal first cousins… I suspect that saying hints at something about royal families and close relations though!
Once I got back from Alice, I jumped in the ute and drove north to my farm for a check, and then back to Esperance via Kalgoorlie. My mate, Andy (who used to be a gold squad detective), was there launching his new business at Diggers and Dealers. He’s now a PI, which is very cool and gives me a whole of new questions to ask him!
Over those two days, I drove about 2,000 km, and when I arrived home I was totally buggered. I couldn’t wait to pick Shadow up from where she was staying with my friends, Jan and Rob. When I walked in to pick her up, Jan had cooked me tea. That little gesture was the kindest thing I’ve experienced in a long time, and I was so grateful that all I had to do, when I got to my house, was go inside, eat my dinner and go to bed. Shadow sleeping on my bed, of course! Friends like that are irreplaceable.
I was home for two days before I had to take off again and speak at a Ladies Long Table Lunch, celebrating Year of the Woman Farmer. What a privilege to be able to share my story with other farmers.
So home again, jiggery jog, where the promise of cuddles and kisses awaited me! The best thing about going away is coming home. I’ve said before that home isn’t a place. It’s in amongst my favourite people and that’s why I love coming home.
