THE NOT SO SWINGING SIXTIES

When a younger generation looks back over a record of my life the thing I expect they will find so different from their own was the expectations that marriage brought to men and women when I married Stewart McIver in 1960. At this time in Australia a married woman was still expected to leave her paid employment to become a wife and mother. Often, it was also impractical for country women to take paid work away from their farm homes because they didn’t have any form of transport. The family car or utility vehicle was possessed by the man of the family.

My parents gave me a substantial dowry when we married, on condition that Stewart’s parents would assist him with an equal financial contribution. This enabled us to borrow additional money and purchase a mixed farm - dairying, grain, pigs and beef cattle at Walker’s Creek near Bell.

The first farm

This large square hill was in the centre of our property at Walker’s Creek. I took this photo when visiting the area a year ago.

The prevailing attitude of the time was that the husband was the provider and the wife’s role was to meet the needs of her husband. Below is a copy of a text that was still taught to high school girls in 1962 as to how they should greet their husband on his arrival home at the end of the working day. Read the rest of this entry »

Self Portrait 1

I’m approaching seventy years of age, April 2010, and consider this something of a milestone. When people suggest retirement could be an option for me, I laugh and tell them of my grandmother, who at seventy years of age was still riding after her cattle. Grandma lived to the age of 94. My father and mother are still active at the respective ages of 93 and 92. So what does that tell me? It would appear that with such excellent genes for longevity I might live for another 25-30 years. In looking back over the years in which my hair has turned from black to silver, I recognise that it can be broken up into three clearly defined segments.

• The twenty years I was my father’s daughter.
• The twenty-five years I was wife to Stewart McIver and became the mother of five children.

These forty-five years I fulfilled the roles expected of me.

• The almost twenty-five years I have lived with my second husband, Eberhard Helwig, during which I have discovered a personal identity no longer totally reliant on fulfilling roles.

I firmly believe that life is what you make it. You will meet with good fortune and misfortune, but it is how you face the challenges that will determine the end result. I was blessed with loving,  healthy, hard working parents who set out to instill a positive attitude in all their children.

We were never allowed to cry over spilled milk - don’t look back.

If we fell off our ponies Dad told us to “Pick your self up, dust your self down, and get back on your horse before you become scared of it.”

Our mother said, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

I was reared in the country with lots of fresh milk, beef and home grown vegetables but had few toys and no pets. Just as most children don’t recall when they learned to walk, I don’t recall when I learned to ride a horse, as my father began carrying me in his arms when I was aged three months, while riding to bring home the dairy cows for the afternoon milking.

Fay sitting on Peace, one of her father's horses, in 1943.

Eleven years later, I photographed my brother with my first camera, a Box Brownie, sitting on our father’s Australian Stock Horse stallion, Blue Boy. Read the rest of this entry »

A GREEN DROUGHT

The Severn River which forms one boundary of our farm flows south-west to join the largest river system in Australia, known as the Murray-Darling Rivers system. Like the Mississippi River in the USA it drains inland waters south to the sea. Early Australian explorers thought there must be an inland sea in the middle of Australia, as all the rivers they discovered on the far side of the Great Dividing Range drained westward. By following these rivers they found that they later joined with the Darling River to flow south and into the sea in what became the State of South Australia. Thus water from southern Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria flows south over several months before reaching its destination in South Australia. It is a slow flowing river and subject to periods of drought when it becomes nothing more than a series of water holes. A hundred years ago paddle steamers worked the river, carrying out wool bales and other produce from the interior. During times of drought they remained stranded waiting for “The river to come down.” During the past decade drought has once more dried this mighty river to a series of water holes.

Here on the Granite Belt at the northern end of this river system, we rely on summer storms to start the water flowing. Most years we get sufficient rain to bring our river down in a flood and on average, once in a decade we will get a mighty flood as happened in January 2008.

Flooded Severn River January 2008

Since this January flood we have received little rainfall and experienced a dry winter.  During these spring months, storms have only brought small falls. This has created a green drought. The countryside appears green, but there is little grass growth. The abundance of water in our frontage to the Severn River has provided me with the ability to irrigate my garden and Remembrance Field of Flanders poppies during this drought. Read the rest of this entry »

AN IMPORTANT DAY 11NOVEMBER.

As experienced by Fay’s Granddaughter.

I was only 22months of age when I helped my Gran with her duties last year on 11th November and my mother took these photographs to record the event.

Gran was serving breakfast to her guests at Das Helwig Haus B&B when I burst into the room with my usual shout of glee, throwing myself into her arms and giving her a kiss. This caused much laughter amongst Gran’s guests, one of whom said, “She’s a little pink blossom!”

Gran had work to do in preparation for the crowd about to arrive and at all times I tried to assist. I’m getting good at going on to the buses with Gran to welcome the visitors. Then the two of us stand at the entrance to hand out sprigs of peppermint for the guests to use as fly swats.

Welcome

After I had given the last sprigs away to the visitors, I has to fight my way through their legs to keep up with Gran who was telling them all about her garden. Read the rest of this entry »

IMPRESSIONIST VIEWS

Sue Webber was the first journalist who, when writing about my garden in 1996 for the Australian Country Style magazine, said that it was like a living Monet painting with the pastel blue and mauve dotted by splashes of crimson from the poppies. At no time is the similarity to impressionist painting truer than on a misty morning. In the view below you see the winding brick path leading to the front door of Das Helwig Haus B&B. Perfume from the white star jasmine sprawling over an old stump pervades the damp air. Dark blue cornflowers mingle with lighter blue ‘Love in the Mist’ and pink snapdragons demand to be noticed, while further away red poppies dot the greenery and spears from red hot pokers thrust upward against the rounded foliage of shrubs.

Star jasmine beside brick path.

During this season of the year I sometimes wake to find my view enclosed by a misty ground fog. It is magical to wander in my garden at that time, because I can imagine myself anywhere in the northern Hemisphere or New Zealand due to the plants that I have established here at Glen Aplin on the Granite Belt. Over the years so many of my guests have told me, “This garden  reminds me of my mother’s garden in England or New Zealand or Holland.” What they are saying, it that particular plants growing together give them this feeling of nostalgia. It is the plants like foxgloves and forget-me-nots that they don’t see in most Queensland gardens. Read the rest of this entry »

FUN OVER FIFTIES

On Sunday 2 November it was my pleasure to escort through my garden the first of three tours this season brought to me by Toni Brennan of Fun Over Fifties Tours. Toni has been bringing tour groups to my garden and to enjoy all the other attractions of Glen Aplin on the Granite Belt in November, for several years.

http://www.funoverfifty.com.au

As with every tour group I positioned these thirty visitors on the veranda of the apartments at Das Helwig Haus B&B where they could overlook the garden while I answered their questions.

Veranda of Das Helwig Haus apartments.

Toni’s tours are punctual and never hurried which means the visitors are happily laughing and have the time to question me in detail as we proceed down through the vegetable and herb gardens. Read the rest of this entry »

DRAMATIC SEASONAL CHANGE

One of the joys of living at Glen Aplin on the Granite Belt is that due to the cool mountain climate this district experiences the four seasons of winter, spring, summer and autumn. Much of Queensland only knows the hot, humid wet season of summer and the warm dry season of winter.

In 1990 when I visited Europe in the early spring as the snow was melting I witnessed the dramatic change as tulips and pansies flowered in April just as the fruiting cherry and apple trees burst into blossom. in May they were followed by the lilac, phingst rosen and climbing red roses.

When we moved to live here at Glen Aplin in 1992 I realised I could grow these same flowers. I was agreeably surprised at how rapidly, just like I had seen in Europe, spring arrived and dramatically changed the appearance of my garden.

These photos taken in August, when the decision was made to remove large eucalyptus trees, and photos taken of the same scenes now reveal the changes.

Last month of winter at Das Helwig Haus B&B 2008

The Remembrance Field had been cultivated at the end of June. The Flanders poppies had germinated but were merely a green tinge across the soil due to the dry and frosty conditions throughout July and August.

We had made the decision to bring in heavy equipment - a large excavator on tracks, with a bucket in which a man could be raised to tie chains to the branches of these eucalyptus trees. With a chainsaw the branches and tree trunks were cut to then be swung out and dropped onto the field.

The excavator claws then gripped these heavy lengths of timber and the machine clanked away to drop them in heaps off the field, where once more a chain saw could be used to cut wood into rounds, later to be split for firewood.

Now for the “WOW” factor. Read the rest of this entry »