And I can’t quite bring myself to clear it away.

A happy night with friends too seldom seen.

It’s the same outside. Grapevine and gingko.

If we clear it away.

We’ll lose these beautiful moments …

Maybe … maybe just a wee bit longer …

As some of you know over on the facebook page I’m virtual traveling my way around the Mediterranean in the hope of doing it for real in 2016. We’re in Libya at the moment and while I’m sourcing as many beautiful shots as I can of the country, bombs are going off outside the hospital in Benghazi.

I think about where I live in Australia and if bombs were going off in Sydney or Canberra we’d be watching it on the night time news too. We’d be feeling it more keenly because it’s closer to home, we’d be horrified, we’d be worried for our friends and family living there, but our lives would continue on, largely unchanged.

I often think about the people we met in Syria in 2010, in the countryside and in the cities. I wonder how they have been effected by the violence of the past two years. Are their hotels empty? Is there food on their tables? Is there still laughter amidst the chaos? Does the charming elderly professor we met in a dark Damascus alley at 2 in the morning still visit his sons in Germany? They were both studying to be doctors. Are they still? Is the manager of our hotel in Damascus – who was moonlighting as a waiter in a restaurant at night to put his children through school – is he still working two jobs? Does he have a job? Are his children still at school? Are they all still alive? I hope so. I so hope so.

Slowly. Ever so slowly I am making some online friendships in North Africa through Facebook. It’s happening. I can’t believe it’s happening. And still I have this gnawing feeling that travel is a middle class luxury – virtual or not – especially when a country is wracked by violence.

And then I stop myself and think friendship is friendship – virtual or not.

The thing that I love most about travel is that it allows you to step into someone else’s shoes, or the Putting on Special Clothes Room as the case may be.

It can take you out of your comfort zone. It can challenge you. It can change you.

How can I know what makes people tick if I don’t know the people. It could very well be a cursory, touristic version but with a little bit of local knowledge it could very well not.

If travel can broker a little more understanding, then surely that can only be a good thing – can’t it? 

Thankyou so much to the people in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya who have extended the hand of friendship so far.

Mine’s out there too.

I know it’s nothing more than a gesture at this point in time.

Let’s just hope we have that coffee together one day.

Are you free in 2016?

I hope so.

x

UPDATE 18.5.13: Stumbled on this thoughtful article in the Sydney Morning Herald today.  Louise Southerden’s tips on minimising your footprint abroad, while helping communities prosper.

Coconut oil. Turquoise bikinis. Sun kissed.

In the pubs … Midnight Oil. Australian Crawl. The Angels. Split Enz.

In our bedrooms … Nick Drake, John Martyn. (Not literally … musically).

Prawning on summer darks. Fish and chips on a headland.

Rugged up denim days. Washed out blues. Cold greys.

Late late nights. Darts and red wine.

Friendships we wouldn’t have believed would last so long.

Lucky are we.

May you never …

Especially when there are pretty young things around.

But it’s important to have some old girls in your life.

They can surprise you.

We have lived where we live for 18 years and there’s a non descript old girl up the back called Ellie Agnes.

I’ve always loved her leaves, particularly when you lift up her skirts and explore what lies below.

But up until this autumn I’d never realised she bears flowers.

She keeps them hidden but oh what tiny, precious, giftwrapped flowers they are.

Secrets … stories …

Wise words and laughter.

They were always there.

I just had to look …

I’ve lost some of my old girls along the way, including my mum two years ago.

Thesedays my gang of old girls is very small. But it is enough.

In years past when I’ve sat on a back step crying lonely tears in one of life’s troughs, I’d go and visit them and I’d ask “What was it like for you when you were 32 or whatever?” and one of my old girls would reply “Oh .. mmm.. well that would have been The Year of Tears. Two miscarriages and we were declared bankrupt.” Right. Suddenly my problems were put in perspective.

Old girls will be there for you because they’ve been there themselves.

I love my old girls.

They love a drink and they love a good laugh.

And best of all, I know they love me.

Last Saturday we had to do a shoot in Mudgee and during the course of the afternoon we met a lovely woman called Angela who, it turned out, had stayed with our new next door neighbour a few days earlier. He’d been describing how the old man next door had been giving him tomatoes and from his descriptions Angela had envisioned this little old Italian man. She was quite surprised to discover it was Steve. And let’s just say Steve was more than a little surprised to be described as old.

A six pack of beer from our neighbour and lots of cross-fence jibes and laughter are slowly restoring his wounded ego. Men are such fragile creatures.

So upon discovering that I’ve been living with a little old Italian man all these years without even knowing it, Stefano and I did what all good Italians do at the end of autumn – we spent the day in the vegie garden.

How can one man grow so many bloody tomatoes.

Home made tomato sauce … pity I don’t have any jars to put it in.

I don’t know about you but we don’t think of ourselves as old. I have 80+ year old friends who I never think of as being old. Maybe we’re deluding ourselves. I do know I’ve entered that awful phase when women become invisible. I do feel that at times. Australian actress Ruth Cracknell wrote a beautiful piece about that in a book some years ago. Set in Venice. So poignant. I know my friends are feeling it too.

Hey you young male shopkeepers, behind these glasses there’s the spirit of a 24 year old girl!

Anyway I digress. I haven’t had much time for anything lately let alone making vats of tomato sauce or abusing young male shopkeepers. My main computer has been crashing over the past couple of weeks and that explains in part why I’ve been a bit absent from the blog. I’m also trying to change the focus of the business and that’s meant doing lots of training and climbing another mountain or two. So much for getting away from the computer.

Steve just walked in looking at his phone and one of our friends just alerted him to the fact that he’s won the Bathurst Waste to Art 3D section for the second year running with this sculpture which is one of my faves … The Strongman and the Acrobats.

We completely forgot about the opening.

Hopeless.

What was I saying about getting old … personally I think we just have too many bloody balls in the air. And tomatoes in the garden!

We planted a pomegranate tree two years ago and in line with the bountiful autumn our little pocket of the world has been enjoying, our tree is laden and we’ve just picked a first fruit this morning. A little different to the ones we first fell in love with in a market in Uskidar in Istanbul in 2007.

The events of the last week in Boston have dominated media coverage here in Australia. Jonathan Green wrote a thoughtful article over on the Drum, questioning the media’s coverage of the week’s tragedies: “What separates a death in Iraq from one in Boston.”

I’m not a political person. I look at the world through creative eyes.

Naive eyes maybe.

But be that as it may, I know this …

There is no excuse for violence wherever it occurs.

A mother is a mother.

A child is a child.

Tears all taste the same.

I won’t stop believing that the majority of people the world over are decent, moderate, loving people …

I won’t stop questioning the diet of fear served up to us by Green’s “gatekeepers of mass media” …

Now more than ever we need to be talking to one another, using this wonderful gift of communication to get to know one another a little better. Please join me over on the facebook page. We’re virtual travelling our way around the Mediterranean, currently in Tunisia. Everyone I’ve ‘met’ so far in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia has been incredibly encouraging about this project. The plan is to do it for real in 2016. I don’t know if we’ll pull it off, but that’s the plan. It’s a drop in the ocean to what’s needed but it’s my drop in the ocean. Maybe it’s naive. Maybe we could do with more naive and less cynical.

:

If you’ve ever travelled to Istanbul you’ll remember the orange and pomegranate juice sellers, pushing their little carts through the streets. I’d tried to buy a juicer when we were over there but we ran out of time and I couldn’t track one down. I have a friend, Guven, who runs a lovely shop in the Grand Bazaar and when we got back I emailed Guven and asked him if he could track one down for me. Of course. No problem. Money exchanged on trust. No problem.

Four years later I am squeezing my first home grown pomegranate with Guven’s juicer.

It’s not a patch on the juice of those Istanbul streets but that’s not really the point is it? I close my eyes and imagine I’m sitting in a sidestreet of Galata. Or Adana. Or Damascus. Different languages, different smells, same smiles, same desires.

At heart, we all want the same thing.

I won’t stop believing the world is a good place …

But we’ve just celebrated our first 12 months.

And I seem to have more dreams now than when I started.

Who would have thought that 12 months on I’d have begun this crazy journey over on the facebook page, virtual travelling my way around the Mediterranean, building the seeds of friendships with people in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

Next stop Libya. Come on.

With the intention of doing it for real in 2016. Really? Who would have thought?

And who would have thought I would have interviewed my Italian cooking hero, Marcella Hazan? Highlight!!

There’s a lot that goes into blogging – particularly time – far more than I originally envisaged but it’s been a lovely journey so far. I so hope you’ve enjoyed it too.

I took a bit of time out on the weekend and went to Hill End for a yoga retreat with a group of girlfriends.

We stayed in a teeny tiny miner’s cottage and a ghost visited me one night in bed. Just snuggled in next to me. Not scary at all.

I left the computer behind. I relaxed. Found stillness. Inside and out.

And I picked up an autumn pencil.

It had been too long.

My friends told me they’d found a place where there is more land than sky.

So late on Sunday afternoon we went to find it.

Hill after hill, rolling into a pale blue distance.

Perched on a high point, with pencil in hand.

We found ourselves some space. Inside and out.

A beautiful here and now.

I can’t tell you how good it felt.

You might start to see a little more ink and paper in the coming months, a little less computer.

I hope that’s ok.

Thank you so much for sharing the last 12 months with me.

Marg xx

So things are looking up.

Anyway, while he’s been off work he’s being doing some sculpting and I thought you might like to see some of his pieces.

They’re all made from found metal and I know I’m completely biased but I think he’s more than a bit clever.

The Strongman and the Acrobats

Full Sail

Light Winds

Australia’s Immigration Policy
(you can’t see it in this photo but that chain on the right is attached to an old rabbit trap at the back)

Untitled

The Sculler

Rowers

Reeds

Bullrushes

The Strike

The Samurai

But within the confines of the track (which is only used a few times each year) you’ll find vineyards and orchards that soak up the warmth of its north facing slopes.

This year has been an amazing season for local producers.

The days are still warm … the nights just starting to get a bit cooler.

And the fruit is peaking.

We’ve got a full moon at the moment. I don’t know if it’s a harvest moon. I don’t even know what a harvest moon is, but if it’s not, it should be.

And if it’s not …

We can always pretend.

Have a lovely Easter my friends, wherever you are in the world.

xx

Harrie is an artist. An artist who needs space.

But thankfully she’s also a girl who needs company …

And not just of the human kind.

She’d flown from a treehouse with a real life cowboy by her side

And found a studio in the mountains.

Because that’s what you do when you fall from a horse and smash your young body to pieces.

You find a way out of the darkness

You search for light

and lightness …

in a different form.

Never forgetting your first love.

Because when you know something so intimately

You become a part of it …

And it becomes a part of you.

If you’d like to see more of Harrie’s work here’s her website.