Making the Right Decision

The Man and I were at a really bad place in our relationship when we decided to give our old life the flick and start from new.
'The farm' became our hope and saviour.
To anyone else in SA a 'farm' or 'property' is usually a stretch of spinifex-studded sand bigger than Tasmania.
To us, it was two little blocks of land looking over miles and miles of wheatfields all the way out to the Flinders Ranges – The Man's favourite place in the whole world.
At childcare and kindy The Kids would talk incessantly about 'the farm'.
If they saw pictures in a book they'd point out farmers, dungarees and tractors.
I didn't have the heart to point out to them that it would be more a case of gardeners, straw hats and a push-mower.
They just don't put those kind of pictures in board books about 'careers'.
Here we were, the capitalist children of hippies, servicemen and hoons trying to balance careers and self-sufficiency - it just doesn't have the same ring to it as 'Old MacDonald'.
While I was slugging away on production weekends at the paper, The Man would pack up a trailer full of books or furniture, throw The Kids in the car and drive the four and a half hours to 'the farm'.
I didn't get there as often but I knew we'd made the right decision when, two months before leaving, I ran away with The Family for a weekend at 'the farm' and discovered The Kids hadn't even touched the boxes of toys we'd taken down and the TV was only tuned in to SBS and ABC - and even they were snowy.

The Laura Debates

After The Boy and The Girl were both born and I returned to work, we bought the house we were living in, in our old home-town.
I guess that's when The Man and I - for the first time at the same time - started seriously talking about our future.
It was a big shock to learn just how different our plans were.
I was still talking about volunteering in Asia or Africa.
But while I was picturing Rwanda or Cambodia, The Man was thinking of a little B&B in Laura.
I'd talk about the islands, or even NSW - and he'd mention Laura.
I'd talk about trees - he'd assure me there were trees in Laura, in fact it's just half an hour from a state forest.
I'd talk about beaches - he'd tell me how Laura was just half an hour from Port Broughton, which has a beach.
Laura, Laura, blah, blah, blah.
I found myself bawling on the back steps one day, screaming at him that he was never to mention Laura again.
I wouldn't move to Laura if my life depended on it. And possibly, his did.
If he even drove past a turn-off sign to Laura on the way to somewhere else I'd pull it out of the ground and wrap it around his throat.
So, without ever going to or seeing Laura it had become the epitome of stagnant parochialism for me.

I'd like to apologise to Laura, and its inhabitants - especially now that I'll be living just half an hour up the road from the gorgeous, green little Flinders Ranges town.
I love the place. I do.
And if you see me twitch when someone mentions it in the street that's just an old habit.
I'm hoping it will go away eventually.

I hate him when he's right.