Love, bubs and life on our little farm

my daughters are able to love the amazing place I grew up.

I spent the first 18 years of my life living in paradise. And as you do when you have something from birth, you don't appreciate it. It was only after I left, I realised that it wasn't the norm to live in rambling tropical gardens, grown wild and barely tamed like something out of the Secret Garden, to live on a peaceful plateau balancing over a valley with views to mountain ranges and to lighthouses 30kms away.

And nothing has changed - in the 12 years since I left. The gardens are wilder, more perfect in their picturesqueness, just tweaked tiny bits by my mothers brilliant hands. Little lanterns hanging from the shady boughs of a tree over a little metal garden seat. Sculptures of fungus sitting in niches of gnarled tree trunks, little paths winding through thick ferns.


And the wooden handmade swing, hung by my father, still suspended from the straight low branch reaching from the giant tree grove. Everything has grown even bigger since I was a little girl, and Elka looks like a little fairy swinging amongst the thick leaves.

The girls race down the paths I loved skipping down and marvel at the little animals - bilbies, wallabies, giant tree frogs, that I thought everyone got to see everyday when I was young.

And they get to follow their beloved grandparents around doing the morning and afternoon routine of feeding the animals, that anyone who owns property knows is the backbone of your daily life. They even get to do something I didn't have when I was little - the newest additions to the beautiful gardens is a magical little fish pond.

Call it what you will -- the circle of life or such. But there is something that feels complete in my heart seeing my dear little girls experience everything that was magical in my childhood.