Some more lovely old photos - I'm gradually scanning from the old albums. Don took these of the girls at about the same period he took the ones previously. Sometimes when I look at Cazzie's blog and see her family and the fun they have, it seems really like how it was with us, except there were many places we couldn't go to like the beach and others - the kids didn't miss out at all. We all used to agree that it was best when we were at home and could be anyone we wanted to be. They loved their dad fiercely but at times gave him no quarter and there was a lot of shitstirring - which outsiders didn't always get or approve of - you know, disabled people in wheelchairs are meant to be a certain way so that they are acceptable disabled people and thence get the public sympathy. We couldn't handle this sort of stuff and there was never anything conventional about Don... he'd do some really bizarre things when he thought outsiders were watching us too much - he was downright embarrassing at times but we laughed our guts out much of the time - What he left the kids with was the best bullshit detectors a parent could give a child and thats about the best pressie they could have, that and our unconditional love - which was part of the bundle.

These days I tell them that they are the sanest people I know - and they are, or are the three of us insane...who can tell?


I drove past the old place yesterday... its a real jungle now. The house had been moved and sits on a hillside near Coffs Harbour, over 100 kms away- there are four kids in that family so no doubt it is protecting them as it did ours -

Nothing has been done to the land and the wildlife and plants have gone beresk in there.

Its hard sometimes to imagine all the life that went on in that abandoned block of land, but it was bloody wonderful. There were people who lived there before us who had four kids, and then before them there were ten kids - once ours grew up, although we loved the old house... after a few years, actually almost ten years, it was time to move on. I think it needed kids in it.
We planted all the trees and now these ones in front of Don are monsters...


Just some nice memories from the late 1980's