I Adventured Across My Backyard to Farewell My Family Home

Nostalgia and adventure combined when Em explored her childhood home and property one last time to bid it farewell and pass it along to the next family to cherish.

Reminiscing on a Childhood Spent Outside

When my parents moved from the city in search of a quiet country life, they uncovered a letter in a bottle underneath the floorboards of their 100-year-old house. This was how I first knew adventure – through story and place. After 35 years, the house has been sold and nostalgia has me reminiscing on the foundations of my adventures.

It was from this house we all rode a horse for the first time, if Shetland ponies count.

From this house, we’d hike out and up into the state forest to a view of snow-capped mountains. We’d run across the paddock to our neighbour’s backyard and swap flour for eggs and stay for scones.

We’d have bonfires, watch for fruit bats, and embrace the big sky, searching for shooting stars and the Southern Cross.

We learnt of the comforting nature of the sky, how it hugs you, how it holds the weather patterns, how we always look up to see if we need a jumper today or not.

Inside our family home, we’d uncover hidden stories that fostered our growing imaginations. The letter in a bottle from a hundred years ago documented a tedious travelling party from Melbourne, which is now a three-hour commute on a four-lane freeway. Back then, it was days and days of dusty dirt roads and dairy farms.

We’d run down the driveway to catch the school bus, rain, hail, or shine, long snakey grass, a dog that often tried to follow, cars with bikes on racks passing to get to the mountains before the rush. One time we missed that bus as we witnessed a horse giving birth. ‘More lessons in this than at school’, Mum proudly boasted.

Another time it snowed, so we got plastic packaging from the new doors Dad was installing and tobogganed down the back paddock. The same back paddock we surveyed every 20 minutes during the 2008 bushfires, waiting for falling embers, listening to gums crack open and fall.

In summer, we’d tube down the river to see how far we’d get, cycle to the next town over, hike Mount Feathertop, build rafts to cross the local lake – all without leaving the postcode.

One time it was so hot our substitute teacher let us wag school to sit in the creek – our uniforms dried during the trek back to catch the school bus.

In the house, exposed pipes ran from the old fireplace and dried our clothes in the winter.

The family home and the experiences surrounding it brought a sense of what’s possible, of inspiration. But also of post-adventure comfort, of solace and warmth. After a wet, cold day on the slopes, we’d arrive home in the dark to the smell of dinner cooking, the fireplace on.

We’d chuck our snow gear on those hot water pipes and settle into an evening of storytelling of the day’s adventure.

A Fitting Farewell

This summer, I attempted a backyard adventure, Beau Miles style. Beau is renowned for embracing the possibility of adventure on your back doorstep. A chance to be curious with the familiar, to find adventure in the seemingly mundane, like the commute to work. The concept offers a sustainability lens too, as it reduces airplane travel and has the potential to lessen the burden on densely touristed areas.

My backyard adventure was one last hurrah of the family property in North East Victoria.

In between two valleys, in the scrubby hills of little-known Glen Creek, I trail ran the state forest across the road, hiked the back paddock to view the mountains, and swam the local swimming hole, to truly soak in what my childhood backyard has given us, and will continue to give the young family moving in.

The lesson learnt here, which is a continuing lesson in my life, is the impermanence of things, and with this, a deep respect for place and time.

Where I grew up, we didn’t learn of Country, of the First Nations people who lived here long before any of us can fathom. Seeking to understand this land as an adult, I’ve found that it was more of a meeting place, where borders were blurred, where multiple groups had space. It seems a bit contested, and it’s hard to find ‘truth’ – as is the nature of our colonial history.

There’s rock art out in that state forest, there’s known massacre sites, there’s a landscape so rich in diversity, water, air, and soil – there would have been good life.

I’ve attempted to honour my time at this place, as not just ‘mine’ but one that has its own history, one that was never mine to keep, but that supported me as I grew and learnt and developed a rich sense of what’s possible, of the many faceted ways a place can offer something. A place that grew me into adventure and story.

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