Agnes and Ecstasy

September 2007

The Other Heaven can Wait

Springtime is one of the four best seasons of the year at Agnes Water 1770.

It's not hot enough yet to make bronzed boys shed their tee shirts or old men cut their pony tails and for most, mid-day work is still bearable; that does have it's draw backs though.

Morning, noon and twilight we now hear the excavator and back hoe clearing the land behind us or making a hill top house pad for new residents. The Cove (the area in which we live) is currently under review as the Most Desirable area of Agnes Water 1770. Can this be just cos Tom and I moved here? *smile* Actually, it had such enormous potential over anywhere else when we purchased the land, that it is not surprising.

The zany side of me loves that any given street of four acre blocks lying languidly beside their neighbouring acreage can disport anything from a neat timber cabin with crocodile (plastic) in the roadside dam to faux Southfork mansion to double fronted brick with two giant black plaster dogs protecting intruders from the occupants.

Here there is no leggo land of pillared mansions afraid to not copy its neighbour; no six feet of separation from each dwelling; no patchwork of roofs suffocating the landscape. Did I mention I live in heaven? I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about that Other Heaven since my darling Mum used to send me to sleep with wonderful word pictures of the cream and pink pearly gates and the soft sweet smells and gentle strains of flautists there. Of course I knew my pets would be there cos that's the kind of God I made up. I particularly like Russell Crowe's God - when interviewed about what God would say to Russell when he got to heaven, Russell replied - "G'day"

It has been fascinating me how girlfriends of mine - mature, sassy, cosmopolitan, never-lived-in-the-country women have flourished when they have chosen 'life on the land'. I think it is the freedom that is the overwhelming attraction. Freedom not to perform - therefore allowing you to be whichever part of yourself you find fits for that day or that job, without stress or pretense. In the Australian psychic we have a bond with the land that comes through our favourite ballads, favourite paintings, our heroes, our national anthem (the real one*, not the Sons Rejoicing), barbecuing, picnics, gardening. OK - so 4 acres doesn't constitute much land but it's enough to satisfy the owners' need to 'be on the land' at some point in their life. We just left it till the last point - cos I certainly am not moving and heaven and high water cannot come into the argument cos this is heaven and we live on a hill.

This movement out of urbanity into rurality may be a two edged sword towards individual accountability in the global warming issue.

* Waltzing Matilda is, briefly, a song about a tramp who camps by a creek and steals a sheep. Three policemen arrive; rather than submit to capture, the tramp commits suicide by drowning himself in the creek.