from the south 9

So now Stephanie is playing & we’re playing & she’s not crawling but by golly she’s warming up on the starting blocks & we’re dancing in the kitchen under the light of the fluorescent energy saver globe to entertain Steph & we’re loading & listening to our CD collection on iTunes free software & the track right now says: “wake up lazy bones, I’ve been watching you & wondering & now the morning’s gone” & I stick it on random-mode & any one of 2302 songs will play next & we’re home from a Sunday BBQ lunch & we’ve been for a walk around the back streets Coburg & the lemons are all ripening & laden branches are draped over fences & lemons hang within plucking distance & for all it’s low low prices has anyone come across a more disorganized shop than Bi-Lo & the ducted heating coming into it’s own in the depths of the southern winter & memories of bright sun & humidity & whistling kites & pandanus spiralis now quite distant & other-worldly.
Walking along the Merri Creek among flowering Acacias & singing magpies (carna ‘pies) & tracking the curving path to CERES Environmental Park in Brunswick for a cuppa & cake alongside the chooks & walking home to Coburg with the northern winter sun in our faces & then our 9-month old girl contracting the Melbourne chest cold of July 2006 & barking her way through every night for at least a week & CJ celebrating a birthday & going to the movies for the first time post-Steph (Jindabyne) & the dawning realization that life in Melbourne 2006 is very very different to life in Melbourne 2004. Nights at the pub? Nil. Bands seen? Nil. Family days in the cool & grey & green & shade? Every day.
Second teaching placement of the Dip Ed now over & back to uni as a student next week & enjoying the placement & getting some terrific feedback from students & other teachers & very much looking forward to life as a teacher & CJ working 3 days/ week now.
Holidays in the Grampians as a family very cool & very freezing cold with overnight temperatures around minus 3 & the 270km road trip to Halls Gap taking all day with a grazing lunch stop in Ballarat & an afternoon pot in the Ararat front bar & thinking that on the Stuart Highway we would have covered that distance before brekky & loving the tranquil pace set by the demands of a little ‘un & frost & cockatoos & a burnt-out shell of a landscape around Halls Gap with charred Eucalypts as far as sight can see & regrowth sprouting defiant & bushy & green from the trunks at every turn & climbing Mt. Zero in the north with panoramic views of olive crops & climbing in the fog in the south & wheeling the pram to the summit of Mt William & there was no need to take half the gear we did. Slow cooking spaghetti in the cabin at night as the frost came down & Steph sleeping on the floor & all of us bunking in together for night after night in the quiet & the cold. Ahhh, the bush. Ahh, abbotsford Invalid Stout.