A time for celebration

On the 12 November, the day after Remembrance Day, my dear Dad, Syd, turns 75. On that day or shortly thereafter, this website will go live, the culmination of months of work, in reality,  years of work in the writing of my first series, The Iceberg Trilogy.

It has been a difficult labour of love – not the writing or any of the creative aspects – but getting it out there into the hands of new readers. Thwarted by conventional publishing avenues – after some promising associations – but urged on by my early readers, I have followed my heart’s desire. The kids need to leave home, go out in the world and have their own life. There are other stories crying to be told.

It is heartening that this is happening around my father’s big day, for my father is a risk taker — you should play 500 with him!  He likes to dream big, and I like to think a little bit of that has rubbed off on me.

Young farmer SydIn the late 1960s he  (and my mother) was a pioneer in dairy farming, planting new grass varieties, irrigating, fertilising and slashing long into the night, to encourage verdant growth which saw an Australian record for buttermilk in our jersey cows. His experiments were a resounding success. He featured in a major promotional campaign for the Department of Primary Industries and our farm was visited by agro-academics from all over Australia. The next year, he went large scale, ploughing up all our fields and planting a new tropical legume plant called Siratro. And then before it could barely take off, the unimaginable happened. Drought struck. For three years, it barely rained. We had to resort to pulling out old bean plants from neighbouring farms to feed the cows; my mother returned to nursing. Eventually my parents had to walk off the farm, narrowly avoiding bankruptcy.

But one thing my parents knew how to do well was to work hard and save money. Five years later they purchased another farm  – this one outright  – at the junction of two creeks and a lagoon at the head of Cedar Pocket, jut over a mile away from where my father grew up.cows in lab lab 1981

This farm had two deep, clean-flowing rock pools that were always cold, even in the height of summer. It had wide open pastures full of kikuyu for me to gallop across on my spirited new horse. And when you walked outside at night and gazed at the stars you knew you were in nature’s cinema.

There were stars like the ones that enthralled Samuel in my novel Seldom Come By. Yet at other times, you had this sense that the world was out there and you were missing out on some  kind of wonderful — like how Rebecca felt when she gazed out onto her chameleon sea longing for the sighting of a single iceberg to light up her indifferent world.

So on the eve of my Dad’s three-quarter of a century celebration I have decided to take a risk, dream big and back myself. In formation behind me are some amazing family and friends who believe in me.

Happy birthday Dad. Thanks for going the distance! Let’s hope I do too.

4 replies
  1. Sherryl Caulfield
    Sherryl Caulfield says:

    Margarita, thank your for your note. I seem to recall you mentioning your Gran Jessie once in a Facebook post but I never knew about the Canada Winnipeg connection…How did I not know that?! And even more of a coincidence – Winnipeg is a major location in Come What May, the the next novel in The Iceberg Trilogy, which I wrote after I left Hong Kong (possibly why we never got round to talking about it!) That novel is set in the years 1939 to 1977 so will be keen to hear your reflections on that. 🙂

  2. margarita
    margarita says:

    Lovely to hear about the farms… i was interested too to read today that you had a Gran called Jessie.My dad’s mom was Jessie. We called her nana.. she had been from a very poor family who immigrated to Canada,Winnipeg when she was 10.However later she worked as a ladies maid and picked up much ‘daintiness’ which i always admired.She insisted on a properly set tea tray and porcelain tea cups.

  3. Leisa
    Leisa says:

    I can\’t wait to read the entire trilogy. You have always followed your dreams and it inspires me to know women like you who follow their heart.

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