Hello again ...

Last year I turned 60.

That was expected.

However 2020 was not the year any of us were expecting. Here in Australia we started the year in the grip of truly catastrophic bushfires. Our country was burning beneath our feet. Our Prime Minister was in Hawaii on holiday. It was a grotesque Circus, the worst nightmare.

I painted water and prayed for rain. My palette was white, silver, grey, all the blues I had on hand. It rained the next day and I could not stop laughing.

We thought we could breathe, take stock, a respite before the re-building began. But no, a virus, something you cannot see with the naked eye, stepped up and literally made the whole world stop.

We're still stopped.

Last winter Melbourne had the longest toughest lockdown of any major city world wide. Masks, stay at home, work at home, curfew, no further than five kilometres from your home, one hour a day outside to exercise, essential shops and businesses only, only one family member to go shopping, no visiting. It was a long and dreary time, lonely, challenging; we became addicted to the daily updates of numbers of sick, of dead, of new cases. There was nothing else to speak about.

No visting.

This for me was the hardest thing.

Families change and recalibrate for all sorts of reasons and my own family had been through that. But my sons are my blood and bones, my daughter in-law (horrible expression) is a daughter to me, and my little grandson is the delight of my life. And to be apart from them was not easy. And if one more person throws an "oh well imagine what it was like in ...." I will lose it. Why do we constantly invalidate each others feelings? If that is your feeling you are so entitled to feel it, you don't have to compare it with anyone.

I hated being apart from my family.

But we did it, our community rallied and did the right thing, mostly. A lot of jobs went, a lot of businesses did not survive, this is repair work for years to come.

Blame is not the point, it doesn't help anyway.

Oh I did I mention my new husband was newly arrived in Australia when all this unfolded before our disbelieving eyes. So lockdown also contained one Tibetan with basic english only and an already jaundiced view of life in this crazy country! We are getting there :)

It was not the year I had planned. But there was a lot of thinking, and writing, and instead of a pile of notebooks and scraps saved here and there, it seemed timely to blog again. The Buttercupchapatti Chronicles were retired a long time ago and it didn't feel right to go backwards.

Anyway, I am 60 now, and entitled to opinions ;)

A poem written in sorrow last January for the fire loss of an unprecedented number of the unique wildlife of our great southern land -

These sad faced burned koalas, They all look confused, and tired. The roos, the mighty wombats, our beautiful dingoes, we see you on our screens.

But... Where are the tiny beady lizards wth their scritch scratch feet?

And those big slow beetles with the rainbow colours? Not this year.

The hairy giants, Bogong moths, none in my night-time windows.

The bats? Where are they? I keep looking.

And countless brawling cockatoos, And brazen possums. And all the little creatures of the forest floor ...

And ...

Slow worms, and bees. All the birds, like stars in the sky so many we had.

Even the workers, the ants in all the sizes only this country would dare to imagine. What has happened to those underground worlds?

Whole universes we never even noticed.

Who knows their names to call them back?

14/1/2020