There is no moonlight yet, as the lunar light has not emerged over the distant hills, it’s nearing 8.00pm and all is dark moist and still here. I reflect on my day, and the Nature in it. I walked my arthritic dog at first light this morning, encouraging him to come with me; he has been giving up in the heat lately. It was lovely and cool, fresh and invigorating as we headed up the gravelled dirt road that feeds the property. Walking over the usual fox, hare and rabbit droppings that leave their foreign mark in the native landscape, light spills gently on the red gums that line the road, planted when this place was established back in 1849. They stand as the protectors, the keepers of the secrets of generations, each wise, majestic and aged for they have held the earth here for 110 years before I was born and I will be 54 this year.  The newly born calves are running around in the paddock to our right, kicking their shiny black hoof’s in the air with delight as they run as far as they can till they realise it’s time to head back to mum, and they turn and dart right back. This makes my walking companion excited, he loves the little babies, and it gives him renewal and onward we continue. We make it through the gate, up past the lime orchard and the neighbours cows who stir as we approach, to the top of the second dirt stretch onto the tar road where I walk over to check the letterbox. We turn for home, and the vista before me takes my breath away, as the light from the sun still behind the hills of the national park is silhouetting the clouds with a golden redish aura…magic!

Before me is a beautiful valley filled with emerald green paddocks, with dams that shine like mirrors in the morning light. The paddocks studded with angus bovine and one merino ram, sweep down the hill to the hundreds of giant and ancient Lily Pilli’s that hug the rivers banks, sometimes in depths of two’s and threes, a haven for birdlife, and a retreat from the midday sun.

Living here for the last ten months has meant the world to me, it’s like waking up in a suburban home and walking outside into a camping area that you don’t have to share with anyone else. It feels like I am a thousand miles from anywhere and that I was planted into one of the most beautiful corners of the world.

15 years ago at the age of 40, I gave up just about everything I owned, I put my life into three suitcases, one was my computer, and I moved to live on the other side of the world, apart from my partner then I didn’t know a soul, and I went to what felt like the scariest place I’d ever been. I moved into an apartment that was archaic, half renovated, and unbeknown to me it was the local crack house. My only neighbours I shared the hall with were drug dealers and prostitutes, I was in a black neighbourhood in a very dangerous city in the US. I think I cried for the first month, I was terrified, vulnerable, and stunned, like an animal in the headlights. This time of my life seems also like a thousand miles away, what and adventure that cost me so much on so many levels. Life changed so radically for me, I dived into the darkest pools of grief, pain, physical and emotional torture.

Today thanks to the love, patience and understanding of the most amazing man, I now have the freedom to be exactly who I am, and sometimes to his detriment, the past has left many scars and yet this man weathers the storms and the fair weather with me equally.

Mark I love you so very deeply for being who you are, never doubt that xXx