My primary reason for journeying to Australia was to visit with my dear friends Craig Hosmer and Daryl Reinke. We met some forty years ago in Washington, DC.  They have been the most constant and generous friends.

In 1994 they retired to Australia, Daryl’s birth place.  For years they had dreamed of a bigger garden and, by gum, they got one!  They purchased 40 acres of cleared land on the Sunshine Coast. It had been cow pasture for decades but it was previously rain forest and they set out to return the land to its original state.  Their success has been spectacular.  In the two pictures above you can see their land from my first trip in August 2001 and the same land fourteen years later.

Lots can happen in fourteen years, obviously.  Things change. Friends and family pass away. New babies are born, so are new countries.  But amidst all the swirl and chaos there is, as Paul Simon so eloquently put it, “the automatic earth.”  Treat it tenderly and it is your friend for life…literally.

In 2001 we planted a tree in honor of Robert, my late husband, who had been gone for just three months. We planted it along the left edge of that pond you can see in the top photo. And just below you can see what a difference fourteen years can make.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While in Australia I learned about the Butchulla people, an Aboriginal tribe that lives on Fraser Island. Their tribe has few laws but the first is, “Whatever is good for the land comes first.”   Part of Robert’s ashes are in that magnificent tree and it is good.  ❧