Continuing on my Tenterfield Theme, here are a few more shots in Black & White .
Now I didn’t give you the back story to this trip. It was taken at Easter back in 1995. A friend was driving up to her Uncle’s shack, 2 kids in tow, for a spot of country air and R&R. She failed to tell me we were about to embark on a 10+ hour drive. She also failed to tell me what the ‘shack’ would look like. Of course I had romantic notions of this simple country shack and, although without modern day conveniences, I still imagined it would be somewhat romantic and restful. The ‘Shack’ turned out to be a ‘Shack’, no frills about it.. ha ha..
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Her Uncle lived on a horse farm with just a few working dogs for company. It seem the dogs didn’t mind the 4 inches of dust and dirt on the floor and the cupboards and the chairs and the old sofa. Nor did the dogs care there was no electricity or hot water and the only shower was an external cold water bucket shower.. The dogs didn’t care … cause the dogs didn’t have to use it.. ha ha. I am such a wuss at the best of time, but this was extreme to say the least. We spent the first hour boiling water and scrubbing a wash pan so we could then boil water and scrub some cutlery and plates to eat off. After all this scrubbing, it was off to bed .. socks and hiking boots still on. I don’t think those boots came off the whole 4 days.
Now bear in mind this was back in the days when I still thought blow drying my hair was as essential to my daily rituals as brushing my teeth. So the first day or so was full of ‘resistance’ on my part. After that I seemed to relax into the rhythm of the country. I stopped fussing over the unnecessary things and spent my time focussing on more important things like the people around me and the ‘drop dead gorgeous countryside’.
On the long drive home I felt somewhat liberated from my everyday necessities that really aren’t necessities at all. The radio was playing George Michael’s ‘Freedom’ as if it knew I had discovered the secret to this elusive state of ‘being Free’. This first image below is the Bruxner Highway leading out of Tenterfield on the long trip home, as seen through the eyes of a newly liberated Country Soul!
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See the Magpie above!!
You can see this week’s Black & White Sunday participants over here [don’t forget Sunday comes early to Sydney]
Hosted by ‘Anne Marie of Na-Da Farm Life’
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IMAGE SOURCE: All images by me [being Ruby]
Thoughts For A Sunday: The concept of Freedom is a strange animal. I was sad to leave Tenterfield and the sense of Freedom I had found escaping the paraphernalia of city living. Paradoxically, Peter Allen, a son of Tenterfield, found his Freedom by embracing the big smoke and a life of fame.
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