View from inside.

 

The view from inside.

This photo was taken from inside our home through the open sliding glass doors. So, no matter how the outside world sometimes seems, the real world is how we deal with the chaos. No better way than to look at a garden. It brings back the importance of  things that matter. It cannot but lift the spirit. Talk about spirit. Our PM Mr Scott Morrison claims to be a spiritual man. Yet, he had no hesitation to promote Sydney’s Opera house to be used as Australia’s biggest billboard. I don’t understand how such a self proclaimed Pentecostal spiritual  pious and religious man can have no qualms about assaulting such an important spiritual cultural Icon. One wonders if he ever contemplates the beauty of a garden or listens to music, read a book! There has to be a hiatus there. Something us missing. Something is wrong!

You know the ducks know a thing or two. One seems to be looking at one of the clivias. The other one, his mate, is looking direct at my camera. On top of the little table is a plate with mixed seeds that the birds flock to. It really is a world on its own. The Alyssums do help create magic together with the Mock Orange, the Spathiphyllum  and white Cyclamen.

Here is a beautiful piece of magic singing. One of my favourites. It never fails to bring tears to my eyes. I don’t know why.

 

Reffos and Tulips.

A carpet of Tulips in Bowral.

The film ‘The Ladies in Black’, left enough of an impression for me to urge people to see it. The film deals in some parts about the influx of reffos into Australia during the fifties. That’s the period this Australian film is set in. The ‘reffo’ was a shortened term for refugees. Our family came to Australia in 1956. We were not reffos in the strictest term. Europe in Australia during the fifties was seen as a war-ravaged stain on a map. Geographical and political differences between Hungary or Holland were beyond interest or hardly known. The issues in this magnificent movie really hit home. The differences (and similarities) in cultures are what this film, in a kind and humorous way, points out. The poignancy for H and I was overwhelming. One is always pleased when things we experienced about the past, agrees and coincides with others. When pointed out in a major film, it is double pleasing.

https://theaimn.com/nostalgia-and-sunshine-bruce-beresfords-ladies-in-black/

The ambiguity of migrating to another part of the world will probably stay with me till the very end. Was the pain of leaving own country and friends worth it?  The mental dehydration suffered in foreign and strange suburbs! Those differences experienced between the locals and the Reffos during the fifties, the lack of herrings, garlic ,olives, and real coffee. The blight of the determined curmudgeon.

Australia in the fifties was a kinder and more tolerant place though. The governments of that period did not foment xenophobia nor detained refugees on hellish islands for years on end.

The present Prime Minister is a fervent Pentecostal believer. Yet on his desk he proudly shows a sign ‘We stopped the boats,’ referring callously to the detained refugees on those islands. Their punishment is used to warn and prevent refugees from trying to come to Australia. They are saying ‘if you try, and come here by boat we will lock you up on those islands for the rest of your life.’ In the fifties Australia did not try and demonise a single African group doing 1 % of crime and yet close their eyes to the other 99% of crime perpetrated by local born.

The tulips belong to a different class. Nothing scary here, dear readers. You can tell they are just there to give us pleaure.  This photo was taken this morning. There must be thousands of tulip photos being e-mailed around the world. The Tulip show in Bowral was magnificent. https://www.southern-highlands.com.au/tulip-time

It always brings me back to the time in Holland. I used to cycle to the tulip fields. Can you imagine seeing tulip fields as far as the eye can see? In different colours too. The tulips in Bowral are in cahoots with sun and clouds. I am sure they talk to each other.It dazzles and so many people taking selfies. In years to come grandchildren might find the tulip photos in drawers and wonder about the lives at earlier times.

Try and see ‘the Ladies in Black’, and the Tulips.