Fifty years ago, my Nana and Pop left this home and took their family to a different place. A place with further opportunities for farming. A place that was my home. A place that has allowed my family to be successful in their farming venture.
I have spoken about this home before here. I had never visited this home. The home of my family for generations before. I have heard of it for the whole of my life and have never quite fathomed how my Nana left it. What a sacrifice of love and devotion to her family.
A little while ago, the family who live here were in contact with my Dad. They were interested in the history of this home and of the people who have lived there before them.
We were invited to visit. I was so thrilled.
And so, we visited.
Tears flow now as I remember this day. It was wonderful. To see my Dad walk the farm and tell us the stories. Some of it I had heard many times in my life. Some of it new. All of it wonderful.
My Dad was brought home to this place as a baby in January 1942. My Nana had moved here as a bride in 1940. My Pop lived here his life with his parents.
This is our family home.
Not that where we have been for the past fifty years is not, it is in the original history of our family arriving to Australia and taking up this land in the Goomburra Valley that holds my attention and my heart.
We strode accross these paddocks and saw where the animals had been kept and the buildings that had housed them. Many of them built by Pop and Dad. Many of them older than that.
The Wisteria that I have been told of over the years, magnificent in its stature, growing on the arbour built by our family.
Oh to see it in the Spring - I may have to take a little trip!
Stories of a young man helping his father build a barn with timber cut from the farm and allowed to develop in age to be used and of the barn up the road which is identical built to help a family member.
Yards and fences built by the hand of my Pop.
I wanted to stay forever.
The method the same as the one my Dad used on the fence around my vegetable garden.
Eva and Mike so kindly invited us into their home. I could almost not contain myself. I felt tears slipping down my cheek constantly as I remembered my Nana and the wonderful woman that she was.
We went from room to room and Dad told me where each precious piece of furniture that I own had once been in that beautiful home.
I imagined the card afternoons, the birthday parties and the dinner parties. All in a different era when the ladies arrived and left their hats and gloves on Nan's bed until home time.
These handles all original to the house, I couldn't help but touch and remember those who have lived here and are no longer with us. Worn with time but beautiful forever
Iffley, a moment in time etched in my heart forever.
