Wagga Wagga

Before coming to Australia, Dad reminded me that we have relatives living here – specifically our cousin Felicity Ronald who grew up in England like the rest of that side of the family, but moved to Australia about 30 years ago. My grandmother Zizza had a brother named David, who had 3 children – Douglas, Sheila and Felicity. I’ve met Sheila and her husband Gerald before, as they’ve travelled to the US a couple times, but have never met Felicity (who we call Flee). I emailed Sheila prior to coming to Australia and she gave me Flee's address and phone number. I sent Flee a letter before leaving and then called her a bit after settling in Sydney. She suggested that I visit her over the long weekend of June 8-11 – the Monday was a public holiday celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s birthday. 

I arrived into the small country airport of Wagga Wagga after a quick 1 hour flight from Sydney. Only the little planes go into Wagga that you have to walk onto the tarmac to board or alight. I didn’t know what Flee looked like, but she let me know she was bringing her black and white Cavalier King Charles Spaniel – because of her cute puppy Daisy I was able to recognise her right away. 

Here's precious little Daisy, first in front of the stove and then a close up. 

Unfortunately, it was dark when I arrived so I couldn't see much on the ride home but I did notice how it was pitch black and how there were no lights or anything on the road. After about 20 minutes, we pulled into a long, dirt driveway and arrived at Flee’s. She lives – and happens to be the sole resident – of a tiny town called Book Book. Apparently the history is that whoever settled these lands had a stammer, which is why all the names are repetitive.

About 2 years ago, Flee unfortunately went through 2 floods and also a tornado recently. Her house is still in repairs from this and a lot of her things are packed up. I can’t even imagine going through those natural disasters – she had more than a metre of water throughout her house!

Anyways, we stayed up eating dinner and chatting for a while. I met her other dog – a 12 year old yellow lab named Abby. The temperature fell to about -4 degrees Celsius (about 24 degrees Fahrenheit) during the night and was really cold considering the older houses in Australia don’t have indoor heating. Flee has a lovely wood fire stove in the kitchen / sitting area and we’d turn on our electric blankets to heat up our beds before going to bed.

Here's our yummy dinner from night one - CRAZY that she has the same design on her dishes as I do (which Aunt Kathleen gave to me)! 

Also, here's Abby. 

Here are a couple quick shots of my cute little room that I stayed in while visiting. 

Here are some beautiful paintings by Flee, decorating her kitchen. 

I woke up on Saturday to a frost, which turned into a lovely sunny and warm day. Flee has a wonderful garden surrounding the house and behind the back garden is a paddock with sheep. I got a little carried away taking photos of her garden.

In the morning, some of Flee’s friends came over to help set up for the garden party planned for Sunday in honour of the queen. I met a few of Flee’s best friends and also some distant cousins. Then, we saw a bit of the surrounding area driving to her friends’ house to get frozen chops, sausage and soup for the party the next day. Later that day, we took a walk through the fields behind her house – you could go on and on for miles if you wanted to. 

Sheep in the back paddock!

The view walking through the sheep paddock.

Flee and Daisy. Daisy looks like she's pooping...just ignore that.

Flee's garden looks so great.

The back of the house.

Pumpkins that Flee grows. 

Sunday was the garden party to celebrate the queen’s birthday and her diamond jubilee. We organised everything in the morning and then everyone – 92 people – arrived at 12noon, all dressed up very nicely. The idea of the party was for the women to wear diamonds and broaches and the men to wear medals. The day was gorgeous and it was so nice to be there to help Flee for her big party. I spoke with a lot of Australians, many of whom are farmers or work on the land in other ways, and are also very posh at the same time. It was great to meet so many new people and I’d love to visit each of them to see their day to day lives out in the country.

Look at all those people!

God save the Queen.

Me and Flee!

Here's a video of everyone singing in celebration of the queen.

We ate so much meat this weekend. The men who came over on Saturday to set up barbecues, which were basically fires on the ground with grates over them – real life barbies! We had sausage and hogget chops – which is the meat of a “juvenile sheep older than 1 year” or as Flee put it, a sheep with 2 teeth as opposed to lamb, which has 1 tooth. Or something like that. Check out all this meat - this isn't even nearly all of it: 

Flee remembered how much I love Downton Abbey and we watched it on Sunday night!!

On Monday, a few people came in the morning for some final clean up and then we went to lunch at Flee’s friends’ Buzz and Leath. Leath’s son, daughter-in-law and 2 grandkids came over, as well. It was really nice to have a small gathering and get to know everyone a bit better. The lunch was delicious – more meat – and a fresh salad. Leath made a beautiful pear cake, which I had seconds of.

After lunch, we went to François and Lynn’s. They have acres and acres of land, which we drove all across and through their cattle in search of wild kangaroos!!! The land was beautiful, as were the cows, and variety of tress that they had on their land. The main tree in this area is the gumtree, but François and Lynn are practising biodynamics by planting different varieties of trees to see which one grows best in the area to create biodiversity. It was really nice just driving through and we were scared all the kangaroos had taken the holiday off. However, we got lucky and saw a few kangas. It was so cool to see them hopping in the wild through the hills. 

Here's our path starting to drive through the land. 

Oh hey, there. This cow was literally right next to my car window.

KANGAROOOOOS! SEE THEM SEE THEM? I could see them better in real life.

Lovely end to a wonderful weekend in the country with Flee!

I loved being in the country with her, it was a part and way of Australia that I would never see otherwise and I feel so lucky to have had that time with Flee at her house. I also loved her English accent, idiosyncrasies and phrases, as they reminded me of my wonderful grandmother Zizza who we all loved so much.