The Two Of Us...

In this post of Penny's, she talks of her relationship with her "Mum" and the "Girls Day Out" they planned together...

I cannot even imagine, what her Mother, brother, sisters, cousins, husband and daughters are feeling now...

If she is like me, her busy life made those precious times with her Mom, even more special...especially since her Mom moved to be closer to Penny and her family, as Penny was the only child, out of her five children, to remain in New South Wales...

The two of us.

Penny
June 21, 2010 at 11:20 am
Categories: animals, family, travel, weekend
URL: http://wp.me/pSnOU-h8

"Once a month, my mother and I have a Girls’ Day Out. When I was a child, my grandmother, mother, and assorted aunts and older cousins would “tart themselves up”, to quote a younger male cousin, pile into an old Studebaker or Chevrolet (or two or three) and disappear for the day.


These outings were planned well in advance; the date set, the tables in the tea rooms booked, shopping lists organised, and arrangements made to meet old friends (who were then included in the proceedings).
 My mother’s family were sheep farmers. They weren’t isolated in the way that outback farming families were, and still are, because “Town” was only 45 miles (72 km’s) away from my grandparents’ farm and a similar distance for other relatives who were farming in the district. But the older relatives had grown up in a time when the roads were unsealed, pot-holed, muddy if not impassable in wet winter weather, and transport was unreliable. My grandmother and her sisters were young girls when the first cars appeared in the district and they could remember buggies and horses, bullocks and drays.

So a trip to Town was a planned event, and not undertaken lightly. Supplies for the farm, and things like large sacks of flour, were purchased by the menfolk on their days; the women had other requirements.

My brother, sisters, cousins, and I were not included in these outings until we were in our teens. Most of us were “townies” and staying on farms for the school holidays was a big adventure, so not being included didn’t bother us at all. We had our own adventures; catching small fish in the creeks, making bows from willow branches (bows that never worked properly, although we persisted), digging China holes, getting underfoot at shearing time, and getting sunburnt.
 Over time, relatives died, farms were sold, relatives moved to other countries or other states, and lifestyles changed with the times too. My mother was one of eight children and is the last still living; she is 87 now and is feeling her years. She lives a long way from familiar surroundings, moving several years ago to a nearby and larger town to be close to the only one of her five children to still live in New South Wales.
 Mum says that I was her most rebellious child, the one that gave her more than a few sleepless nights. Of course, I don’t remember it that way; my recollection is that she was too strict. I do remember one incident though, when someone had an argument with her and accused her of having “lost her marbles”. I bought a big glass jar, filled it with marbles, put a note on it that read, “Now no one can say you’ve lost your marbles”, and gave it to her as a joke. She was not amused, in fact the joke upset her enough to ground me for two weeks.
 A Day Out means a lot to her; the event is planned, but not as a shopping day, Mum spent most of her adult life in a city and that has no appeal. So we pour over maps, decide on a long rural scenic drive, preferably one that takes us through a town or village with a good café and facilities suitable for an older person, and have a Girls’ Day Out, just the two of us.
 I feel that there’s a certain irony in this."


** The comments below, were captions below her photographs, which were deleted when her blog was closed. **

"This weekend our drive took us west to an area known as Cabonne Country."


"Yellow leaves still hanging on to these poplars."


"The town of Obley is no more - a former gold mining town with just a few remaining ruins. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can see a kookaburra on a branch in the mid top. (Corrugated galvanised iron was invented in the 1820's. I didn't know that until I looked it up because I was surprised to see some in the ruins of an 1850's town.)"


"Red berries give a corrugated iron shed a point of difference."


"Beside the still water."


"Afternoon tea at a café in Orange with a blazing fire – very welcome on a chilly day."


"Some of the locals."