Break from Brunswick: East Gippsland.

With the teaching year at an end, we left Melbourne for a few days. On the way to Bairnsdale, we stopped as usual at the Art Gallery in Sale, and this time we saw a wonderful exhibition of the Donald Thomson collection of Arnhem Land bark paintings.

But here I want to write about Jacarri Cottage at Goongerah. This is about seventy kilometres north of Orbost, in a beautiful location on the edge of the Errinundra National Park. The main reason I wanted to stay there was because I am a supporter of Environment East Gippsland and I had heard so much about Jill Redwood.

Although my main interest is the conservation activism undertaken by EEG, it was Jill’s farm and the location on the banks of the Brodribb River that enchanted me. The paddock in front of the cottage is a moving tableau, as the two horses, goats and alpacas, flock of geese and visiting wild ducks visit and leave as they will. Across the paddock is the large netted area of Jill’s organic garden, where I was able to pick raspberries. In a large grove of European trees is the house that Jill built.

 

I had quite an emotional response to the whole setting. I found myself rambling on to Jill about various plants and I must have talked about my mother at least three times. I think there was just so much that brought back memories. Raspberry picking south of Hobart with the beautiful hills in the background, and later making jam with mum, cleaning the jars, putting the cellophane on and the stickers with the date. The Vacola set, in which Mum bottled peaches, pears and apricots. The wild strawberries, which although tasteless, used to remind Mum of her home, and which she planted along the fence in Howrah. Dried poppyseed heads, linden flowers, loganberries. The pressure cooker, which mum used frequently, and which Jill writes about in Earth Garden. All these things brought back memories.

I remember Mum’s horror in the sixties as the woodchip industry was established in Tasmania. Although she would have been the only one in her circle of friends to espouse environmental politics, I know she supported the Franklin blockade. I am sure that my mother would have loved to visit Jill Redwood and would have been right behind her in trying to save the forests.