Our family went to The Master plan Conference, a Homeschool camp a while ago. Most families had a cabin each, somewhere on top of the hill, the place is aptly named Ridgecrest. The view towards the nearby lake is magnificent. And only one of the many great things about the weekend.

I drove past a house the other day and it inspired me to write, this;

Once this was not a sad little house, I am sure. Once a man, or maybe more, laboured on its foundations. Each wooden slat, cut and placed by loving hands. With joy and laughter, looking forward to a brighter future, this house rose up from the steep hill. Finally the wife arrived, the furniture, and the corrugated iron for the roof. It rumbled up on a slow moving wagon, drawn by a team of oxen, maybe. Maybe they had trudged the tree boarded track up the mountains for days, weeks.

Once, maybe once, the young wife ran up and into her husbands arms,  so glad that they were together again. So glad of the beautiful house, a house of her own, with wooden boards to sweep the dust from. Together they would make this their home, possibly.

As the rain fell, it drummed down on the roof, horrendously noisy, but they sat together, knowing that the house was solid built. It would not blow away, or collapse like a tent of canvas. Maybe soon after that children could have come.

Once they could have leaped off the bottom step and run down the slope, crossing over the fallen tree that bridged the creek, and jumped into their fathers arms as he arrived home. Did he come from taking their cattle to market? Or selling the furs of the animals he trapped? Or from the homestead where The Boss lived? 

Other times the children could have run with buckets down to the bubbling mountain stream and tried to catch the little mosquito fish, that darted through the clear water. Little trousers, or skirts, hoisted high. Maybe muddy little feet ran back up the hill to show Mother their prizes. Or maybe they fished out the fat black tadpoles, and kept them in a jar, watching as they grew legs, squiggly tails shrank and then disappeared. 

Once upon a time, long ago, many things could have happened in and around that happy little house. House of promises, hopes and dreams, once. Now though, it sits a weathered grey. On a hillside, far from anywhere, a dull house rots, silent except for the clatter, bang, and scratch of the rusted iron roofing, that has now come loose. Each gust of wind, pulls at the house, and it succumbs, sinking away, slowly returning to dust, and memories.

What memories it must hold though, if only I could hear it speak. If only the creaks, could, be interpreted, or the language of old things found out. But the people who lived there once, have gone, grown old and died. Maybe the children still live on somewhere, I wonder have they forgotten, the once happy little house on a hill. Or are they no longer, here to be able to remember, have they too passed away. I do not know, but I wonder, what does that sad little house remember?

Lake Macquarie

My family just got back from a camp at  Lake Macquarie. I took a lot of photos, It took an hour to load them on to the computer.... But because nearly all of them were of people (and I may need permission to post so many) this is a sunset post! With words as well as photos. We had a lot of fun at the camp, tubing (or taking photos of it), eating, talking and playing card games... like Scum and Mafia and a lot more talking, sitting or standing around, playing with babies, riding on boats and having fun, with not much sleeping involved..... especially with daylight saving happening that weekend!

On the second evening I looked down the slope toward the lake and saw golden light falling between the trees. I could also see the water and a trail of gold leading across the water to the sun, but a fence surrounded the campsite.

It also happened that barbed wire encircled the top of the fence so climbing over would be doable but potentially hazardous, and climbing in looked even harder than out. Then I noticed the gap between the locked gate and the ground.... I managed to squeeze under, just. I also got rather dirty in the process.  Not something I like doing but for photo opportunities....

I had though about the difficulty of getting back in if I climbed over but not getting under again. I also realized that the tea time siren would probably not be loud enough for me to hear from all the way down at the lake and no one actually knew where I was....

Getting back through up hill proved awkward and I had trouble getting me and my camera through but I did..... and then I ran up the hill and found the siren had gone ages ago and people had already started eating.... So the next night I got a key for the gate first... and because of daylight saving we went straight after tea and I also acquired a few more people with cameras, who had seen my photos from the evening before. And I had my lovely sister a a model too.

There were also some random people fishing from the jetty too, which added a nice human element to the photos.

Isn't our Gods creation so wonderful! And here is the link to the [sermon] Pastor Dave preached on Sunday at the camp. God is Good! His word is Good!

Psalm 19:7-11 

7 The law of the Lord is perfect,

reviving the soul;

the testimony of the Lord is sure,

making wise the simple;

8 the precepts of the Lord are right,

rejoicing the heart;

the commandment of the Lord is pure,

enlightening the eyes;

9 the fear of the Lord is clean,

enduring forever;

the rules of the Lord are true,

and righteous altogether.

10 More to be desired are they than gold,

even much fine gold;

sweeter also than honey

and drippings of the honeycomb.

11 Moreover, by them is your servant warned;

in keeping them there is great reward. 

(ESV)

I went camping again for the first time in years.... quite a lot of years. After the first night I remembered why. I tend to not sleep well on a less than an inch thick inflatable mattress. It sure makes me thankful for the beautiful, comfortable bed I have at home! 

I shan't mention more than the fact that there was something called a toilet and that I don't wish to dwell on the thought.  But to the good parts, food could be found in plenty... Though some of it was rather strange like the Nettle Quiche. Because we had arrived the night before we went up to the house and helped make the "Mud" Roasted and crushed wattle seeds. Oh they were hard to crush. Later that day we mixed up some Wattle Blossom Pancakes, which are exactly as they sound. They were fairly normal pancakes, a bit thicker, with wattle blossoms in them and no they did not taste fluffy. We used the "mud" in the cream to go on the pancakes, it felt so strange to scrape in the rather mud like stuff in to the white cream (that refused to thicken).

Wattle Blossom Pancake mixture

"mud"

Nettle Quiche

We also ate Prickly Pear Jam on "twisters" which were like bread/damper that we twisted on the end of a stick and cooked over the pit fire. We also tried some Blackberry Nightshade Jam on the pancakes along with the cream and mud mixture. We also had pizzas that were pretty normal except for the fact that they were cooked in camp ovens or the big mud oven thingy (I forget what it is called). Other people ate the kangaroo, possum, and fish.... I didn't, there was quite enough other food. 

We were shown lots of bush tucker... mostly weeds that could be eaten like the native bush above, you eat the fruit which if you get a less mature fruit is really sour, there is not much of it to eat though because most of it is seed. We also chewed on black boy spikes and ate flowers, violets. Huge Variegated Thistles grew all along the driveway but they were things to be proud of and not got rid of. We were shown the Green Hooded Orchids that often are hard to find, but because of a bushfire there last year they were springing up in tens and twentys all along the creek where we walked. The Aboriginals used to eat the bulb... I think. We ate Wandering Jew like it was lettuce along with chickweed, after learning how to tell if it is real chickweed or false. (the false chickweed is more hairy and the real chickweed only has hairs on one side of the stem.)

Variegated Thistles

Green Hooded Orchids

We did crafts like mat weaving... I got titled something like master mat-weaver, I had done it before so I knew what to do.... and I don't actually know if anyone else finished theirs. We also got covered in mud making clay things, the problem was we had to remove as many stones as possible from the clay before hand.

We threw boomerangs and got them back out of trees and found the ones we lost. Some people made "spears" (sticks with pointy ends) and chucked them at a box. We were attacked by wild goats.... ok not exactly.

Well my shoes counted themselves attacked at any rate. We did a bit of standing around fires talking, and I have a lot more things for an Awkward and funny post I'm going to do soon.

I also could not be bothered to put my water mark on so many photos.... I have to do them one at a time so I just exported them and bulk watermarked them... easier. And now follows more photos...