Surfing Summer

Yes, I realise, it was Winter when I posted last... my bad...I was studying and on the treadmill of life (you know, using the 'hills' program) and the blog just got away from me. You may or may not be comforted to know that I began many a draft in my head, even if none of them ever saw the light of backlit keyboard. Apologies.
On Friday, I partook of a Surfing Victoria initiative called Play it Safe by the Water Surfing for Girls. It has been taking place all over the Victorian coastline and this is the final week, with Friday being the day for the Inverloch Swell Mamas, which I joined in late October (sounds awfully like a time I was stuck in books madly cramming for exams, doesn't it? Everyone needs a study break...at their nearest beach break...) and have been attending the Friday surf sessions ever since, with the kids in tow.
I took up surfing when I was 16, after enjoying surf beaches for most of my childhood and finally taking the plunge. Surfing was something I did for a couple of weeks over Summer on camping holidays with my family, and soon it dropped off my list in favour of clubbing with friends and, later, horse riding. I still wanted to surf, I just had other things to get done, too.
I took it up again when my sister and I were in our early 20s and more mobile, and at this point Brett, guitarist extraordinaire came into our lives. In a semi-complicated twist of fate, Brett became my surfing buddy and, then, my guitarist. We surfed almost into Winter when a work injury cut short my Winter campaign and it took me just over 9 years to dare to fit into my wetsuit again.
Moving to Sth Gippsland meant we were a lot closer to surf beaches than we had been previously and I have been dropping the hint to Big Fella about my intention to get back into surfing all year. I think he didn't believe me, but when I heard about Swell Mamas, quite by accident, I knew I'd hit on the jackpot. A group of mums helping each other surf by looking after the kids on the beach while mums take turns getting water time - how innovative! It's not just for mums of current small people - there are grandmothers and some women who don't have children and are willing to help out with the kids who come with their mamas. It's a girl-fest, really, and such a supportive network of talented and smart women. I wasted no time and joined us up. The gap in time between surfs wasn't too much of a disadvantage, and before I knew it I was back at the point I'd left when my shoulder gave me an enforced break. Borrowing club boards, and now the board of a very generous friend who offered his relatively unused board to me, I'm getting more and more confidence, and working on my backhand, out of necessity in order to avoid collisions, being that I'm a goofy footer and the waves break the other way...there's one in every crowd, I guess.
I've been attending every Friday since, as mentioned, and on Friday the 9th of December I was a participant in the Surfing Victoria initiative that brought a clinic our way, with world ranked #14, Bec Woods.  Due to having the kids with me (I was meant to have divested myself of children-folk, but Plan B worked out well, too) I didn't get as much water time as I would have liked, but ya win some, ya lose some.

Turns out, I won. I won a voucher for 50% off a Global Surf Industries surfboard, in a random draw, so while I save for the other half I can research which board will suit my needs best! As someone who never wins raffles or door prizes, I'm pretty chuffed about this. When the time comes I'll give my new board a write up and show her off. Meanwhile, (while you check out the write up at Surfing Victoria) I'm off to do some window shopping and back to visualising my technique between surfs.

Spring into Winter

Winter is here, friends. There is no mistaking it's calling card. Freezing nights followed by mornings so cold that our feet hurt. The loooooong Spring is over. Hmmm, wonder where Summer got to this whole time...
Anyhow, the last week has seen a brief cessation of rain to allow some mud to dry out. We ordered in some crushed rock for the car parking area so that we wouldn't have to wallow in the bog getting filthy just to get to the cars. I even got to ride Dante! Well, just along the road - no lovely paddock rides, because there are no lovely paddocks...they're ankle deep in water because the hills have taken in all the water they can.
The cold brings with it some very lovely sights, though. Mornings greet us with dense fog that reveal grazing steers, one by one, hour by hour, until the fog lifts over the hills and we have visibility again. Dusk sees the fog descend into our valley and over the creek line, like a fuzzy, white and sleepy dragon.
Yesterday afternoon, during my venture with Dante, I rode out of our road to see a haze over the hilltops that hadn't moved all day. I rode as far as the neighbour's, and by happy coincidence she was home and about to ride her own horse. I took my tired boy onto her arena (having been four weeks since the last riding opportunity), coaxed some nice work out of him before he just ran out of puff and convinced me to take him home. The neighbourly escort half way home was very welcome. One round and elegant Clydie cross, one fine and alert pony with their riders made for pleasant company. As we clipped and clopped softly down our road, after parting ways with my neighbour and her daughter, I could see it closing in on us and creeping back towards the creek bank. Ambling around one corner I peered out to the paddock on the other side of the creek and recognised a ghostly collection of slender eucalypts, as the white mist hovered over the pond those trees oversee; it was quiet all around and I failed to imagine The Brickyard Flats full of life, teams of navvies working on the railway cutting, the boarding house and numerous bark huts that once filled that section of Crown land. I just couldn't, it was far too peaceful.
As I approached the shed, I noticed the fog was encroaching on the road itself and I could barely make out the caravan. I saw a long shape move out to the road's edge, and two shorter shapes calling out "Mum!" following closely. It must have been a magical thing for the kids to see horse and rider materialise from the misty shroud, and I felt a pang for all the words, all the paintbrush strokes, all the shutter priorities that could never capture that moment and do it justice. The memory of the moment will have to suffice.
As the horses have been moved to a more grassy paddock further down the creek line, I continued down the road and around the bends at a trot, with Dante calling out continuously for his beloved Nook, to let him know of his imminent return; "Fret not, friend, I return from the mists of time!".  Sure enough, rounding the bend that comes out to the waterfall, Nook's anxious bellow filled the thick air, and black legs in an elevated trot were all I could see first through the saplings and bushes, as he paced along a flat section, stopping at the fence line and pacing the other way after a neat little turn on the hindquarter. Again, all art would despair to depict the sinewy passage of a black horse through scrub and mist, in sweaty anticipation of the return of his paddock companion and best friend. I do believe only Peter Weir could execute such imagery!
So, my ride at an end, I untacked my beast, brushed him down and let him out with the others, who were glad to have their equilibrium restored, their herd at full number. I packed my riding gear onto the back of the quad bike and rode back down the track to the shed, thinking it was getting very late to be starting on the dinner I had planned. I brought my saddle bag into the shed to unload it later and the aroma of a hearty meal filled my senses...ahhh! Osso Bucco, ready for a set table and some eager consumption by all, accompanied by a soft and creamy potato mash.
A perfect ending to a day, that first one of official Winter; our first Winter in residence at The Farm.

Got her big girl undies on

Girl Face rocks my world. Training undies were annoying the crap out of me, so I had her in no undies for a while there. It took an extra step out of the evacuation procedure. I did this with Boy Child, too, though it attracts more attention and tut-tutting when you let a girl go round undies-less. Anyway, thoughts on that aside, I decided it was time to experiment with undies. Problem: we didn't have any. Undies are one item of clothing I would rather not purchase from an op-shop (one day I will write about my op-shopping, though mine is only the humblest of examples of successful op-shopping!), so I submitted to the greater power of the retail gods. The smallest undies I could find readily available were in Target. Size 2-3. A bit saggy, but she'll grow into them. She LOVES them! They're not pink, nor do they have a splash of pink on them. And when she needs to go, she pulls them down and calls out to me so that I can find her a receptacle or appropriate flora. She turned 19 months old today. Some people call me 'lucky', but we all know there was more than just chance at play with this one. If I'm smug it's because I've earned it. But it's not smugness I feel, just great satisfaction with my instincts and knowing that they're in fine working order.
Whaddya think of the Elimination Communication caper, now?
Some people say I'm like a parent out of the Continuum Concept. Others like to call me an Earth Mama. I don't mind either of those or variations on the theme, they are just not of my own construction. I'm following and trusting my instincts, and backing them up with some research and traditional knowledge. I feel better for it, and it's not intended to cast judgment on how anyone else does their parenting. We're all doing the best we can according to the best information we have at the time, I hope. This feels right for us and anything else now sits at odds with what I have come to know. Just like full-term breastfeeding. Just like how I 'do' childbirth. Just like parenting without rewards and punishments. In the end I only answer to my children, I only apologise to them. We're doing ok, so far - no worse than parents 'doing it' any other way, at the very least. I'm confident that I'm going to unleash upon the world children who trust themselves and have self-belief, and I also know that my work is not done, though the bulk of the foundation has been laid. If that's 'Earth Mama' of me, then I'll wear that, too.
I now understand what Ingrid Bauer means in her book about Natural Infant Hygiene that Elimination Communication is part of a bigger process, and it's not the weeing in a receptacle that counts, but the relationship of trust and communication that facilitates the process of learning to trust oneself. By listening to my baby and trusting her own, innate knowledge of her requirements, and trusting my own ability to be aware of these, I impart a very precious gift to her; on a much deeper level I teach her to listen to the inner voice that will accompany her for the rest of her life, after my time is up and much, much longer than I have any real influence on her and her self-conduct. It's not just because I practice Elimination Communication, it's ALL that I do with my kids in combination. I aim to empower my children and arm them with sense of agency, even when it's not convenient for me, because the effects will outlast my time on earth, and the effects ARE my effect on earth.
The simple action of my girl pulling down her new undies to use the toilet reassures me that the relationship I have with my kids is based on trust. They trust me implicitly while I teach them to trust themselves in return, and I look forward to their teenage years when my chickens will come home to roost, in a manner of speaking. Because adolescence will be the true test of the parenting I've consciously chosen to do with these kids, and then I have to set them free.
Meanwhile, my baby wears big girl undies, and I pause to give myself a quick pat on the back before the next challenge presents itself.

Beach-clean feet

The days are cooling off here, and the layers are getting thicker and longer on all of us. Gumboots are de rigeur and the rain coats have been moved from the back of the wardrobe to any available hanging space in the shed (and they are ever-changing, as walls are dismantled while Tom works on the shed conversion).
Mud follows everywhere, and if it doesn't follow from somewhere else, it's created right where it wants to be after fresh rains. The paddocks are super mucky and the pugging in some sections really makes me impatient to have some spending money for fencing off the streams from springs.
The caravan heats quickly enough with our little ceramic heater and we now have dinners inside the van, ferrying the kids straight inside after a bath on the step of the shed, wrapped tightly in towels.
Our showers are had at night, under the stars or clouds, as the case may be. Some nights are kinder than others. Breezes are no longer welcome. The water comes out hot, which is a reprieve. It's the kind of shower only an Inuit could envy - at least the drops don't freeze upon skin contact. And the shower gives us more shower time than the recommended time for a household on town water - we're having 5 minute showers and still using far less than 55 litres of water, per person, per day. Still, I feel invigorated and glad for the cool night air on my skin when I'm done and walking back into the warmth of the cocoon.
In the mornings I pull on some thick socks and if I'm going out I zip on some nice boots, if I'm staying here it's either my ropers or gumboots. If it hasn't rained the ground is compacted and smooth. If it has the ground is slippery or muddy.
I love it here. It's exactly where I want to be and the caravan is temporary. The shed will be bigger, drier, warmer and fit more things in the one place without having to get muddy to fetch food from the fridge or pantry. I really do love it, and for the first time in years I'm not itching to get away somewhere for a change of scenery.
At the end of the day, after I've had my shower and used some potions and lotions, I look down at my feet. The NZ tan is fading from them, and once again, for a fleeting moment I miss my beach-clean feet. Only for a moment.

This is what I reckon...

Sending in armed forces to deal with international situations violently MAY close down a regime...eventually. Within months, maybe within a generation. And it sustains fractured and disenfranchised views of the aggressor, harbouring resentments and hardened ideologies on the way.
The following is a bit raw and unpolished. It's late and I'm getting this out before it manifests itself another way that I can't control as much. Writing it out soothes my nerves about it.
***
Memories remain, are replicated, passed down, and they ferment.
Children are the victims of war. That sounds twee. Sounds like the name of a song, even. Whatever. It's true. Think about it.
Then they react to what they've seen. They have to. They don't just forget, they're not goldfish. Memories go somewhere. Even if not on a conscious level, then deeper underground where they become unpredictable in the minds of children whose brains are quickly adapting and fragmenting reality for the sake of survival (just like children in our communities who experience trauma). Seeing what they see for what it really is would fry a child's brain into non-functionality. One minute life ticks along at its already maladaptive pace, next minute the only life they know is having the bejesus blasted from it with missiles falling from foreign aircraft, flown by foreign people engaged by foreign governments, who probably have supported the rebels, who are most possibly interested in gaining power for themselves and access to privilege and not in 'liberating' said children and their struggling families from their everyday oppressions and human injustices.
Picture your own child, and if you don't have one, a relative's child, or even yourself as one (yes, you WERE one, or have you forgotten?). Put yourself in the mind of that child, seeing the world from that perspective. You have already been told and had it reinforced a gazillion times that you are not in control of your own life (unless you're a lucky one from a more progressive family) and your older brother has been killed, your father has been detained in custody and come back home with an eye missing, untold bruising and a permanent limp (hey, I'm just jamming here; this is a pretty picture compared to many small people's realities) and you are told to make sure your twelve year old sister stays indoors or she will be raped. And you know what that means. Your family name will be worth nothing if your sister is no longer a virgin.
One day you hear the big people talking in low tones, and an already tense atmosphere becomes positively charged with anticipation. There will be bombs. The intent is for military and strategic targets, but your family knows this means your whole town is in danger. You can't go to school, you must all stay together. Your uncles go out to get what food is left on the shelves in the local traders' stands and come back with a meagre stash and a wound to the head after a brawl to get the last bags of flour. The kids are told to stay inside and stay with the big people. You cry and your mama holds you and tells you she loves you and you pray together.
Everyone goes to bed late after a meal, and as you snuggle in under a blanket with your siblings your ears are shattered by the sound of the neighbour's house being blown apart, men shouting and women screaming. Your neighbours are people who live ten metres away. Well, they were. The kids went to school with you and their mum was the lady who helped you be born. Dead, all of them. That's all you have time to think of, because now you have to choose whatever you can carry in your arms and your whole family is on the move to another neighbourhood. You may not see your home again. Your whole little life wasn't very happy before and now you don't know if you'll see morning.
Years later, you are an adult. Let's say you were picturing a boy-child in the previous exercise. What are the chances that you are a peace-making citizen who never got involved in the local militia as a teenager? How do you view those foreign invaders? Are you grateful that they bombed your life and culture away so that you didn't have the previous bad-guys to deal with anymore? Does your mind have a lot of room for advanced thinking about how to spread peace and acceptance of difference in your town?
And if you were a girl-child, do you think you live a peaceful life now? Did you get away without being raped whilst growing up? Do you think you have a violence-free home life? Are your kids living the kind of life you only dreamed of, free of fear, with happy parents who have the head and heartspace to show lots of affection and warmth and a peaceful parenting approach?
Just say you made it to another country, even. Years of detention. Seeing your brothers and father brutalised, all of you dehumanised, denied visas numerous times (because the 'system' can't have you being accepted first or even fourth time round without a fight, cos the voters in key electoral areas - which are worlds away from your own detention centre and main resettlement areas -  wouldn't like that), all your natural talents and academic learnings meaning very little because you haven't achieved them in English, and your life having turned out very, very differently from what you assumed would be your future before those bombs fell.
If you made it to another country, presumably you even made it out of that detention centre in time to go to school. If you were a girl-child in that exercise, maybe it was even for the first time. AND you didn't have to wear the burqa that was customary to wear according to the culture of your area. Still, no-one talked to you for months because you would do weird things like jump at the sound of a binder having its rings snapped shut.
Or you're a boy and you just ploughed into the boys who eventually just got too much in your face and you showed them how men fought in the town you lived in years before. You get together with other boys who come from towns like yours and you feel safer. Especially because your dad still lays into you at home when he's stressed and can't send your mum out to the shops all bruised (they don't like that here in this country, and you really, really don't want the police coming round to check your visas if someone reports an injury to your small and lovable mama).
My artistic licence might not be up to much, and I'm sorry for that. I didn't grow up with refugees from countries like Afghanistan or Iraq. I grew up with other refugees, though. Damage followed them. I can't imagine what kind of damage follows the kids who have come here in the last decade. Or the kind of damage that kids who stay in those countries normalise and replicate because there is no mitigation of the damage. There is no funding for an intervention program in those places, no counselling and debriefing services.
For the kids who do make it here, they don't just bring it with them. They bring it into our communities. The violence that happens in other countries at the hands of world powers does not occur in a vacuum. It affects YOU. It affects ME. It will affect the kids who go to school with them. These kids will one day be your mechanics, your hairdressers, your caregivers, or they will one day be the burglar, the bag-snatcher, the drunk-driver. Depending on what, if any compassion is offered to them to circumvent the patterns of violence in their short lives.
This isn't an essay about refugees and Australia's ethical and legal obligations to asylum-seekers. It's a reaction to the unquestioned use of violence to bring down regimes that won't negotiate oil pipelines into Iran, to exact revenge on one man, to show a dictator that his brand of leadership isn't wanted and he will be taken out violently (and/or the rest of his family) if he doesn't give over because that is what will make the world a better place.
It's not the wanted man who is hurt when he is killed. It is the lives of millions of children who will grow to be adults (if not killed first) in which this violence will be reflected. War is redundant. War is a cop-out. War destroys more than it achieves.
And I'm sick of having to turn the radio off AFTER the announcer has just read the initial tagline about someone being shot dead by Western forces (or whatever forces), then having to explain to my son that he doesn't have to hear about the horrible things that happen in war while he's a kid, when he's asked me what war is and who the man was that was shot dead. When all I want is the weather forecast, but have to settle for checking on the internet so that I can put the iPod on and save my children's innocence. Because at least I have that luxury.

Ponies and potties

Winter approaches and this week could have fooled me! It was sunny and mild all week - great horse riding weather (apart from some wind earlier, with which the horses were picking up on far away noises, giving rise to some toey behaviour under saddle...) and great for getting things done.
After driving all of Good Friday to Bendigo and Kilmore en route, we've chosen two ponies who are coming to our home very shortly. A beautiful Welsh mare was on offer and we had to pass her over for a cute little Australian Pony - not as beautiful, but more educated and, well, cheaper. I was already reconciled to the idea of breaking in a pony from scratch, but this little pony, Karedon Mia, has already had some time under saddle and passed the Small Boy test. With her comes a 2yo Shetland gelding that will be started from scratch, and that will be fun. My kids are so lucky and they'll never know just how so. They'll learn so much from the horses.
Meanwhile, on the Elimination Communication front, Small Girl is now effectively night-continent. I won't say she's 'sleeping through', because I can't quite figure out what that means. She will go to sleep in the evening, might wake up and need to do a wee and then stir for a breastfeed once or twice in the night. She'll begin wriggling between 6 and 7 and do a long wee. How cool is that? She's 18.5 months old and hasn't worn a nappy in months! We went to NZ for 11 days and nary a nappy was used, though three were packed and served to take up valuable suitcase space. As with her brother when he went nappy-free (at about two years of age, but not night-continent till 6 months after that), it's easier for now to keep her out of undies. So, she's either getting about the farm with no pants on, or I take her out in longer dresses or in pants with no undies. The 'training pants' I bought are just an unwieldy extra step that her little hands can't deal with, and if she's wearing a dress with them, she forgets and will pull up her dress to wee...in the training pants. So, I'll dispense with them for now. She can 'hold on' for an impressive time, too. Those doubters who told me fervently that children can't control their bladders till after 2 years of age need to ditch the conventional wisdom of nappying and broaden their horizons, because Small Girl is following the normal trajectory of EC'd kids (if not a bit later, actually - not sure why, maybe it was the 'just in case' nappies she wore for about 6 months when she could have come out of them and learned sooner - but we didn't have the luxury of living in our own home with our own tolerances to consider). I'm reaping the pay-off, as I only have to leave the house with my normal bag. Except these days the wipes and spare clothes in the car are for her motion sickness...ideas about tackling this are welcome. Thumbs up for Elimination Communication!

Bread matters

We're fine - we're living in a caravan, annex and shed, our dogs roam free, the kids do the same and I buy food from an independent supermarket when there's no farmers market. That's more than fine by me!
My biggest kid started kinder this week and loves it. He'll be fine.
My smallest kid is loved wherever I take her round these parts and that bodes well. She'll be fine.
My big fella is down here with us on leave from work, before heading back to wind up work and metro life. Plenty of work down here. He'll be fine.
I've started Zumba here, I've joined a riding club, I've met some people from my prospective new fire brigade, I already know some great chicks from the local Booby Club, I have a friend in Inverloch who's invited us for a meal (I did the Horse Property Management course with her), and, well, I'm only looking up from here in my new town. I've also learned that cooking in an electric frypan offers a world of possibilities (pasta, french toast, beans and rice).

I'll be fine.
I've already lost some girth from the week I was here with the kids by myself - a couple of walks up and down the road each day (one of those is the evening constitutional, or, "The Wombat Hunt", as Small Boy knows it) and some trips up the hill have seen to that. Nice surprise, actually - I can fit into that little skirt I bought, with much optimism, a couple of months ago...that's always pleasant.
It's the little things. The bakery in town has a daily bread specialty. Mondays is Irish Soda Bread...well, THAT makes me very happy! Of course, I could always ask my dad for his recipe...such memories eating this bread evokes! My dad used to bake this on a Sunday (when he was on shore leave) and we'd have a massive loaf for the whole week. It keeps very well, unsliced, and tastes great when toasted. One sandwich of this bread would be very filling for lunch at school, where two sangas of the supermarket variety always left wanting. This, and Small Boy's new favourite bread, Malti-Oat Bran loaf, make living here just that extra bit better. We have two very good bakeries in town, and Burra Hot Breads is my hands down favourite. Great muffins, great breads and fabulous pies. Love my new life.