Beginnings

Artwork by Chloe Stewart

The sloping block was interspersed with eucalypts and black butts. Purple hardenbergia interweaved between the native grasses stirring gently in the breeze. This looked like a great spot to live with our expanding family. For many years there were no fences, nappies dried between the trees and the boys roamed with their neighbours, no barriers to their adventure play.

Over time, as the landscape urbanised with further housing developments, native animals sought our place as a refuge. The blue tongues made their home in the sandstone rocks, and upturned lorikeets drank from the grevilleas. The kookaburras sang their morning call, and at night a wise owl sat waiting for prey on the new clothesline.

But then came the brush turkeys — fluffy little babies with no sense of their own destructive capacity in a garden. Now it is the possums who seek shelter, whether in the chicken pen, the roof, or the incomplete verandah. We have hosted many possum parties and their raucous dancing at midnight.

As our family grew, our ageing parents came to live with us and we became an intergenerational family. The house has now been added to by grown up children and grandchildren.

This is a place for young and old. This part of the Central Coast — Green Point — is our home.