" Don't worry darling, just come home and we will grow a veggie garden."

The year I turned 19 I went to live in Melbourne....

I had Just finished VCE and just passed! I had spent the summer trekking in Nepal and hanging out in Bangkok, which I loved and thought I could possibly just stay there forever....all the chaos of life and whirl of noises was just amazing. But I returned home to the take on the city, this was going to be a piece of cake, I was doing a year at a college building up my folio to get into graphic design at Uni, it was going to be fantastic ... after all I had just tackled the Himalayan mountains!

So I went. Living in St Kilda on Chapel St. I  jogged in the parks with my walkman, I swam my laps in the local pool, I went to school and met a few other students and was going to make the most of this place....  

But we all know that life always has a different plan, you know the one we never see coming.

There was a sadness in the people I saw on the streets and it seemed to single me out and thats all I could see, there was a shallowness around me and my feet could no longer feel the ground, I was seriously loosing my footing and I had always been such a great climber..

I,m not sure If it was all that concrete crowding in on me or some of the other sad events around me but this was not what I was hoping for...this loneliness, this displacement. School was not high on the agenda anymore but apparently wandering the streets and smoking way to many cigarettes was. I found myself lingering around the little organic veggie shop around the corner ... the smell of the oranges and apples was beautiful to me..

Living with my lovely two older guy cousins at this time was great but between the three of us we each managed a year of life changing events and dramas. Mine was rather insignificant in comparison, just the fact that after 8 months in Melbourne town I had to admit it was not going to work or maybe I had never wanted It too...    Oh.. but how to tell the parents??

Fortunately for me my father had gone "walk about"  and Mum was left to deal with any family issues.

One day my older brother came to visit me. We were at the Malvern train station going somewhere or coming back from somewhere and there was a poster on the little overpass advertising The Grampians National Park  with a picture of a rocky outcrop and mountains as far as you could see... My brother made a passing comment about the poster saying "that's where it's really at" I stood in front of that picture for the briefest moment  and I realized straight away I was Just in the wrong place, thats all, I Just had to get back there......    home.

So I rang Mum and told her everything (and sometimes you never know what your parents are going to say and if they are going to get it right) so this is what she said   "don't worry, just come home and we will grow a veggie garden!" Sweet mum....well she got it perfect that time.

So I did and we did do a small veggie garden and when my dad materialized  back from overseas he could not help but get involved to grow vegetables again too... (of course he new how to do it properly!)

Some times the balm to the most difficult situations can be as easy as the offer to help someone be self suffiecient, useful and to simply grow your own food....... I hope Wayne and I can always offer this option for all of our children as life can throw you up some crap sometimes.....

I know life is not as simple at times but we get so focussed on the outcome we don't look at the sustainability of ourself along the way. Often not reaching the top is far more enriching, there is so much you miss when you don't look around you along the way.

Anyway blah blah blah!


(Sorry, a little in depth I know but I think you get my point.)