Staying on the roller coaster without falling off!
Wedding day – Gayndah, Queensland January 12, 1974 and the beginning of the great Queensland ’74 floods.
Our first rented home in Banyo – a space unaffacted by the Brisbane January 1974 floods.
Our first mortgage was on this place in Banyo .
Three more moves before settling in Brisbane again in 1995.
Brisbane, Kingaroy, Melbourne, Bundaberg, Brisbane.
Now in the back yard of the house we have lived in since 1995 in north Brisbane and almost 50 years after the wedding day.
The roller coaster still runs at Luna Park in St Kilda rattling around, up and down in a quaint bit of sentimental old fashioned Saturday afternoon wind down. After Saturday morning work, before television, high mobiility or digital media, the ride on the roller coaster was one to go to – catch the tram or walk for miles. My mother walked from Sandringham with her two younger sisters there in the 1930’s.
Our marriage in January 1974 is about to celebrate 50 years and it started without any idea that roller coastering was to be our experience. Romantic post World War 2 boomers but roller coaster it has been. Ups and downs, blind corners and changing destinations. Four children and 10 grandchildren, full memories, gratitude and never ending new awareness. There are occasional moments of wondering “what if” and sadness, never to be answered questions and mystery. But we are here, less inclined to opt for roller coasters while aware that they sometimes take us.
NEW YEAR DAWNING
There comes a time
When awakening
Arrives
On mountains of discontent
accomplishments are grasped
To salve the wound.
Unless love takes over.
Unless
humility,
Courage
and transparent rigour
are sown in every crevice.
The fertile soul is ready.
Or despair knocks
with banging insistence.
The day is full of grace
Love with beauty is embraced.
The only call joined with
Brush mark language
To farewell tribal pride.
Cruelty buried by its own hand
Waters joy
Around the morning dew.
Peter Breen 2023
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