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Vignettes of Australia


Short stories about our Australia.


Spiro and Cheryl have travelled widely throughout Australia visiting many places off the beaten track to see the real Australia away from the tourist track.

Having worked in an assortment of itinerant jobs both Cheryl and Spiro have experienced suburbia, the country life and the city delights!

With mixed heritages both Cheryl and Spiro have seen Australia from their parents and grandparents points of view as well as their own.

These short stories are just a taste of what we have seen, felt, heard, tasted and experienced.



 

A New Day


THIS MORNING WHEN I WOKE UP....

I felt new, wondering what the world would was like today. I could hear the sound of Cheryl's voice as she encouraged the children to meet all in their lives with courage.

Yes, I thought, I made a difference too. Last night has flowed into this day and we are together, a family and best friends. Sometimes it seemed, life takes care of itself.

This morning when I woke up I felt loved...I knew I
made a difference to the lives of the people in my life and I was grateful for the gift of belonging. A new day, unknown, unlived. If all else failed, love and an imagination would come in handy.

Spiro


Through The Bougainvillea Boughs



Outside my window a vine stretches up and around the verandah post. Cerise Petals frame the view. Beyond that, to the left stands a grevillea, its orange flowers glowing in the spring sun. To the right stands a bright bottle brush in full bloom the cylindrical flowers speckling the dense green leaves with bright red.

Just outside the house fence in the back paddock low native shrubbery is regrowing amidst the tall gum trees. The trees were rescued, gladly for me, from the original owners bulldozer enthusiasm by a second thought.

The shrubbery is untidy and the neighbours complain. I don't care if they don't like it, one day that back paddock will more closely resemble how it once looked.

No mower has touched it for a year now, no mower will touch it again. Bushfire danger some say! I say poppycock! It is no more dangerous than the disappearing bushland that recedes faster and faster each year.

Soon my back paddock, just one and a half acres, may be the only piece of almost natural bushland left in the area.

Yes one day the council will send a notice to state it must be mowed at least 8 feet from the fenceline and that is what will happen. The slasher will go into my back paddock and slash and 8 foot wide strip along the fence line and I will feel sad that no one sees the beauty that is Australia! No one sees the glory of letting Australia have just one and a half acres back to do with what she pleases!

I have noticed that neighbours whisper about the mice and rats that feed in that back paddock but what they don't know because they haven't looked is that the mice in that back paddock are not mice at
all they are small kangaroo mice, marsupials, not rodents, a dying breed, dying from a disease called progress! The rats come to the paddock compliments of the several near neighbours who keep horses
and the horse feed that goes with them feed a multitude of rats.

If I had more land I would let it return to Australia too and let her care for it as she did for the many millemia before progress came here!

Before bulldozers and axes. Before concrete and glass monstrosities rose skyward from the once fertile plains that hem Australia's mainland.

Perhaps I will save up some money and buy a bigger piece of land and let it return to its native state too! Perhaps I, like the gum trees and kangaroo mice will succumb to the power of the bulldozer and axe and be swallowed by the concrete and glass......perhaps..

(c)CRD 2002



The Tenement


The tenement (circa 1960)

The total destruction of the tenement row was met with a rather melancholy response. Former tenants, now moved on to newly built accommodation by the government-housing department, made a no-show.
Their sparkling new, layered concrete boxes the most modern buildings for miles.

Hundred-year-old bricks tumbled in dusty heaps amid the sound of jackhammers and sledgehammers. Wrought iron filigree fell in rusty heaps, staring up at the sun. Sheets of corrugated iron bent in
contorted shapes piled high by the fence awaited their final journey to the tip.

Three young boys, sling shot in hands, marbles in pockets, stood in awe of the sight across the street, mouths open, eyes wide at the fun that the big boys got to have.

There was no real concern for the consequence of hammering away the history of the oldest tenement row in the town, just a quiet expectant hope for the college soon to be built in its place.

The editor of the local rag had raged on with his arbitrary debate, with no one in particular, about the loss of history in the town, a town who'd rather forget its history and move on into the 21st
century without a backward glance.

The editor was ignored. The boys awed. The college was built. Life moved along at a different pace as hopeful young people filed through the college doors, dreams of diplomas filling the space between their ears.

The tenement was gone.
©CRD2002


 


 


 
 



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