Friday, November 7, 2014

Nostalgia

I would not really go off crook if someone accused me as being in mock of the great Outback, especially these days.

I live in the beautiful sea side holiday resort on the New South Coast of Australia, writing about the Outback, or Outback  experiences, but it is from memory, most of it, and to me, that is good, as I did go back to the Outback about thirty years after I left there and it was sad, it was disappointing, it was not what I had hoped it would be.

There were Video Hire shops, there were kids sitting in the streets drinking from brown paper bags, and get this for destroying the Outback dream..There were neon signs...Didn't need 'em in my day...we knew where everything was.

Luckily for me, I developed an instant love for that country  in the early days, a bit like falling for a cane toad, I guess, but I fitted in, mostly and earned my right to complain about the flies, the heat, the floods, the droughts the fires and the crook bosses, but only to me' mates...You never want to let anyone else know how good it is, or they  will turn up in droves.  Like now.

It is probably a good thing that I write novels, fiction based very loosely on fact  or Fair Dinkum events that may or may not have happened., which is how fair Dinkum is. I liken this to making a Fair Dinkum bush stew in a camp oven: You toss in some steak, some chops some rabbit some duck lots of spuds and pumpkin, onions and all the stuff that looks like some sort of vegetation in the bottom of the tucker box, water, curry powder to taste, or to take the taste away, and let it simmer...You never really know how it is going to turn out, but you can bet your busted braces that it is going to taste good.....I hope me' yarns are like that.

Now, about the coast: I have two lively doggies that love the beach and the water, and when I toss them into this 'camp oven of happiness', they love me more than ever...That can't be bad, Hey?

In my dotage, I recall the times, when living at Bondi as a kid, my mum and dad would want to walk on the beach, in the long summer evenings.  Times when  you could do that without taking a baseball bat, ifn' ya' know what I mean.

I don't recall my parents ever going out together except for these times, I mean, I was the youngest of seven kids, so even I could see why this happened.

But now, like today, after the doggies had run themselves ragged, we sat on the sand, the evening cooling, watching the ocean, and me thinking of those most beautiful days when Mum, Dad and me would sit like we did just talking about life...Brings a little tear, It does.


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