Camping

When our offer to buy the land in Majors Creek was accepted we had to decide what we were going to do with it. As the Anzac Day long weekend approached, Peter suggested we go camping on the block – and I agreed! I am not a camper. Peter and the girls have been going camping for years. He started taking them to Folk Festivals when they were still in nappies! They all loved it and on the few occasions I went with them I was given strict instructions that camping was different to being at home and they had their own camp rules and I had to learn to live with their rules while at the campsite.

The first time I went along they took me to a caravan park down the coast. As we drove in I thought it looked quite nice and I would be happy there for a few days. There was lots of green grass, a pool, games room and kiosk for ice creams. We were then directed to our campsite in the area put aside for camping with dogs. Yes, our dog Madeline, loved going camping too and unfortunately for the family our campsite was not on the grass but in the dirt. I spent a lot of time with a glass of wine by the pool. Luckily the amenities block was clean.

I agreed to go with them to a folk festival near Wagga Wagga and Peter decided it was probably best if we stayed in a caravan in the caravan park. He didn’t think I would cope camping in the showgrounds where the festival was being held. Clever move I thought. The amenities block was close by and clean too. Being able to go home each night to a caravan was more my style than into a tent. It turned out to be a fairly uneventful weekend, the music was wonderful and we met some lovely people.

 

My next invitation was to a folk festival in Cobargo. ‘We would like you to come and you will enjoy the music.’ I agreed. We set off and were about an hour and a half from home when Peter quietly mumbles, ‘oh sh ... ’

‘What is it?’ I ask.

Car trouble flashed through my head; we were packed to the gills, had the dog, two young kids and were miles from anywhere. ‘I think I have left the tent poles home,’ Peter quietly told me.

‘You’ve left the tent poles home!’ I couldn’t believe it. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Let’s keep going and we can buy some rope or maybe some poles in Bega.’

All I could think about was if we couldn’t camp it was a long drive home and we couldn’t go to a motel because we had the dog.

We arrived in Bega and couldn’t buy any tent poles but did buy some rope and Peter thought we could probably figure something out when we got there. We arrived at the showgrounds where the campers were and he was able to rig up the tent as we camped underneath a shelter. As soon as we arrived I opened the esky and a bottle of wine.  As I sat in the sun with my wine, the campers next door came back and commented on how early I was getting into the wine.

‘It has been a long day,’ was my icy response, and they left me alone after that. Peter rigged up the tent and it was fabulous. We had a great weekend, the views were beautiful, the music was great and a good time was had by all! Didn’t mean I was in a hurry to go again.

We did find a great camping ground at Wee Jasper and I did have some great experiences with them. We camped by a pretty creek, there were lots of trees and green grass and a fairly clean amenities block. I did enjoy the lifestyle at the camping ground. I was able to sleep in as long as I wanted, Peter did all the cooking and I helped wash up the few dishes we used. I took my coffee plunger and learnt how to use the camp stove to boil the kettle and enjoyed sitting under the trees drinking coffee, reading a book and eating the abundance of treats we took. There was no housework to do, the kids happily went off to explore or sat around reading or playing cards or other games they had packed. Peter and I were able to sit quietly outside with a glass of wine or two in the evening. I was getting used to the camping thing. We even went there twice and I enjoyed each time.

So back to the Anzac Day trip. When we arrived in Majors Creek the cows were roaming the land and we decided it would not be a good idea to camp with them. We set up camp at the local recreation ground - toilets, water and no cows.

We met some locals as we wandered around the village and there is certainly a mix of those who have historic ties and those who just fell in love with the place and never left. The camping didn’t go too badly either which Peter saw as a good sign although on the last night it was very cold and during the night I woke up freezing and very uncomfortable. The bloody air mattress had a hole in it and had deflated just on my side! I was sleeping on the ground and was freezing. It was drizzling with rain outside and was very dark because we were in the country and there were no suburban lights to help me find my way to the car where I thought I might sleep. I must admit I threw a tantrum and if I could have driven home there and then and left them all to it I would have. There was no way I was ever going camping again!

For the next year’s ‘Music at the Creek Folk Festival’, we decided to camp on the block. Yes camp! Peter purchased a proper camping toilet with a shower tent to put it in. It was certainly an interesting experience and the air mattress behaved itself. It was freezing at night and raining but Peter and the girls didn’t seem to notice as they created a bonfire down on the back paddock and toasted marshmallows on the campfire. I went back to the tent and tried to get dry and warm.

We camped again the following year but this time we camped in the house. It was nearly finished and much warmer than a tent.

I haven’t been camping since and don’t feel the need to as I have my house in the country and I am quite happy camping there!

Moving to the country

When we purchased the land we had to decide what to do with it. Our first thoughts were to build a small cottage and use it as a weekender. As we spent more time out there we wondered why wait? Let’s move now! If we could possibly get there within two years our kids could go to the local high school. They would have a country upbringing during their teenage years. The district was growing and we could be involved in what was happening in our village. A bit naïve and idealistic but let’s give it a go. We could always sell up and move back to the city.

As for this move to the country, my friends could not believe I was going to do this. I was not exactly Country Woman material. I didn’t like cooking and was not very good at it. I couldn’t knit, sew or make jam and didn’t even know how to make scones! My girlfriends were in shock because my plan was to retire to an inner city apartment where cafes and restaurants were on my doorstep allowing me to go out for breakfast, lunch and dinner and there would be no gardens to worry about. There was talk of building a chook pen and buying a couple of cows. Oh my god, I was scaring myself!

We knew nothing about living in the country. My only knowledge was from holidays at my Granny and Grandad’s farm when we were kids. My sister and I would get up early and go to the milking shed with Grandad. Granny would have the wood stove going and cook lots of delicious cakes and scones and Dad would always take us to the outside toilet in case there were spiders in there. I did religiously watch A Country Practice and Blue Heelers and learned about village life from Midsomer Murders and Heartbeat! We would need to be more organised as the local shops are 16 km away and the Hyperdome 100 km. There is no take-away food delivery in the village and I refused to think about the dirt roads and wildlife!

Luckily we only have about 500 metres of dirt road to drive on. The fact that we have two acres of land with nothing on it and we needed to plant trees and create gardens was not even on my radar. There is lots of green grass as our land has been a cow paddock for decades. Our neighbours have beautiful properties with gorgeous gardens. We saw the photos of when they started on their bare blocks and eventually ours will look like theirs with lots of trees and gardens – in about twenty years time maybe!

Our land is on what used to be Falls Farm and there is a beautiful waterfall not too far away. I have only been down to the Falls once and will not be going again. Our real estate agent took us down there when we were looking at the land. Peter and the girls had been many times when they were camping but I had not had that pleasure. Walking along the narrow dirt track where you had to fight your way through the overgrown bush on one side and make sure you didn’t fall over the cliff on the other side was not my idea of fun.

When we started the process of figuring out what type of house we wanted we had no idea. Would we go for transportable, relocatable or kit home or have a house built? We spoke to the bank, builders, the council and looked at every web site on the internet and were bombarded with brochures in the mail.

We decided a kit home would not be a good idea, as we knew nothing about building a house. Peter certainly discounted the idea of living in a shed on the land while we built the house, as he didn’t relish years of camping with me! We finally chose a builder and designed our country cottage. Majors Creek is a historic gold mining village and most of the houses date back to those days. We wanted a house which would fit into the village and decided to build a weatherboard cottage with a wrap around verandah and a tin roof. It would be a thoroughly modern house inside and we would have a long hallway and a large kitchen/living area and timber floors.

Peter drove each time we went to Majors Creek and he had to do all the paperwork for the purchase, development application, builder’s contract and all the purchases we had to make. He also had to fill out all the forms for my doctor and hospital visits. I had trouble choosing items for the house because I could not see them clearly. All the carpet looked the same in the shop and choosing paint and colours for the walls and roof was challenging. Choosing all our plumbing fittings was fun because they all looked the same to me!

We loved visiting our block. With all the chaos happening in our lives it was lovely to just sit on the grass with only the sound of the birds and the cows around us. It was often very cold and we would take our thermos of coffee and our blanket and rug up and enjoy the peace. It became harder and harder to leave each time and we could not wait to get started on our house. We would wander around and measure up everything and plan where the veggie patch and chook run would go. Watching our house come to life was very exciting. We camped in the house for the Folk Festival. We had walls and windows and part of the floor down and it was fun to set up the camp kitchen in the kitchen. The house was also a lot warmer than a tent!

Getting Help

The loss of vision in my ‘good eye’ was gradual and it wasn’t untiI I was finding it harder to be at work and do simple things like the grocery shopping that I realised I should do something about it. We made an appointment to see my GP as I wanted a referral to another eye specialist. My specialist was telling me my eye was improving but everything was getting worse and I was losing sight in both eyes. Dr Rowe was stunned at my lack of sight. He asked me to stand against the door and look over at the opposite wall, and tell him what I could see. I couldn’t see anything and then realised there was actually an eye chart there. He was shocked by my lack of vision and made an emergency appointment at the Canberra Eye Hospital. After seeing one of the doctors I left with my eye padded. During the last eighteen months whenever my eye needed to be padded, I had one good eye and could still see enough to get around but this time my vision was very poor and it was very scary. During the night I woke up with a very sore eye and ended up sitting in a chair for the night because I couldn’t lie down. Mid morning I took the pad off and my eye was red and watery and I knew I was in a bit of trouble. Peter rang the Eye Hospital and made an appointment with Dr Kate Reid.

She started making plans for me. A contact lens bandage was put on my eye to protect it and help it heal. She told me about an optometrist in Civic who has contact lenses which don’t actually sit on the cornea but on the white of the eye and that helps the cornea to heal and also helps with vision and gave me the names of two specialists in Sydney who she thought would be able to help. It was a really positive appointment and Dr Kate explained that the window to my right eye was damaged. The cornea surface will heal but there was some scarring that was causing the problem with the vision. Another transplant may be able to fix it, but that was something for the surgeon to decide. She explained that the left eye’s window was OK but there was a lot of damage behind the window. It is like a cork plugging up the line of vision, and surgery will be needed to unplug it. During the last eighteen months this wasn’t explained to me and I was under the impression my left eye cornea was healing after the graft detached.

I walked out of there feeling that a load had been lifted from my shoulders and I knew I had found my new eye specialist.

I took leave from work and then started to figure out how we were going to get through this. I was in a bit of trouble and needed to make some adjustments to my life.

While all my eye dramas were happening we were making big changes in our lives. We had decided to buy the block of land in Majors Creek, build a new house and sell up in Canberra. Peter changed jobs and he was going to be travelling a fair bit, we had two teenage daughters who we were going to uproot from the city and move to a small country village and I was menopausal and nearly blind. There is never a good time for this stuff!

Losing Vision

For years, Peter and the girls had been going camping at the Majors Creek Music Festival. When they came home from the first trip he told me how beautiful the area was. A couple of years later they invited me to join them. My response was ‘ok, but I’m not camping!’ My home for the weekend was a lovely B&B in Braidwood. Majors Creek was gorgeous and I understood why Peter loved it so much. I still wasn’t going to camp there. Each night I drove back to my beautiful Victorian bedroom, had a shower and was able to go to the toilet in the middle of the night without having to get out of the tent, take a torch and find my way to the portaloo miles away from the cow paddock Peter and the girls were camping in.

He came home from the festival a few years later and said there was some land for sale and maybe we should consider buying a block? We visited Majors Creek a number of times during the next couple of weeks and while driving down one weekend I noticed something pretty dramatic was happening with my eyes. As we were driving the lines on the side of the road were double and the cars coming towards us were a little strange with my eyes seeing one car on top of the other.

At an emergency appointment the next day, the eye specialist told me. ‘Double vision is not a visual problem - you probably have a cyst or a brain tumour. You need to see a neurologist.’

‘Oh my God, I am going to die!’ was my initial response.

This was a very scary time. I had an initial x-ray and an appointment with a neurologist. As nothing showed up on the first x-ray and my double vision was getting worse I was sent to have an MRI scan. One possible diagnosis was MS. We looked into this and told ourselves if this were the case we would figure out how to deal with it. I had two appointments cancelled because of problems with the machine and even though the time frame for all this was only two and a half months it felt like an eternity before my brain was given a clean bill of health and I was told there is probably something wrong with my eyes. By this time the vision in my left eye was really poor.

While I was seeing the neurologist and waiting to have scans, I was also regularly seeing my eye specialist and as I was not able to drive now, this meant catching the bus, which took two hours each way. The diagnosis I was given was that my cornea graft had detached but was settling down again. The surface of my cornea was continually in distress and was sore and I had lots of emergency appointments. The staff at the eye clinic would just slot me in when they heard my voice on the phone. My eye often needed to be padded for a couple of days to help it heal. On one really bad day I caught a taxi home and cried all the way home. The poor taxi driver was very concerned and helpful but I’m sure he was glad to deliver me safely into the care of my neighbours.

Eighteen months later I lost the vision in my ‘good eye’, and life became even more challenging. It was at this time that I started to record a journal of my experiences and emotions. When I started talking into the tape I was surprised by how emotional I was and knew my days of pretending that everything was ok were over.