Home meant just one place to us despite our six years spent nearly 1800 miles away. Home was South Australia, and as we crossed the lonely desert called the Nullarbor Plains by train for our permanent homecoming, we had plenty of time to reminisce about our previous road trips.
Our families and old friends had been an irresistible magnet, drawing us back for three of our Christmases. Those spent in Western Australia had been fun--great parties with all the decorations, bells and whistles—but deep inside a sadness always remained that we were not sharing this special time with our most beloved ones.
Maybe it was because we had not been home for nearly 2 years this time. Or perhaps because my Mum had survived a serious operation without me at her side, after all we had shared. An awareness had been growing that there were no certainties about the time we may have left to spend with our four parents.
Certainly we were more than ready to begin our own farming career and there was only one place in our hearts for this permanency—home in South Australia. Our friend Sam begged us to stay. We had achieved many improvements together and he had fine plans for so much more. In fact, one of the carrots he dangled was for us to share-farm the property we were living on, with a view to buying it at a later stage.
Tempting indeed, but an uncanny sixth sense drove me to threaten the unthinkable, that I would go home alone if necessary. Nothing about my Dad's health indicated we would only share seven more months with him. How special and happy and precious those days were, although two regrets remain to this day. He didn't live long enough to enjoy his well-earned retirement after an extremely hard-working lifetime that had started when he was still a boy... and he never saw us on our own farm. He would have loved that.
We had bought a new car in the months prior to going home, and crossing the Nullarbor in it was not an option. We drove to Kalgoorlie, put our beloved new Volkswagen Station Wagon and ourselves on the train and travelled on the Indian Pacific train to Port Pirie in South Australia. The bunk beds of that time were good, but nothing like the beds we were used to. Once again fortunately, youth was on our side, along with excitement and anticipation. At that wondrous time of our lives, the kinks soon unknotted themselves, and all discomfort faded fast as the beloved names of our home State's northern towns flashed by, and all signs pointed to Adelaide. I still tear up today, remembering the heart-thumping joy of getting closer and closer to the most wonderful of our reunions--the last one. The end of an era, and the beginning or our brave new rural world.
Some days ARE diamonds... and this was one of our most sparkling.
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Old McLarsen had some Farms
Non-Fiction"You two become farmers? You must be kidding!" How little our friends really knew us. Sure, that's how life had been for the Secretary and the Building Supervisor... but those were the keywords - "had been". An opportunity had arisen to learn farmi...
