A blog of the Freer Family's adventures and misadventures emigrating to Flinders Island, Tasmania, Australia, and settling there.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
You rock my world - the Penultimate stage
It's here. Team Bowman delivered our rock. They all came, in convoy with their red rocket and on it... our rock (you need the impossible moved - you know who to call and to rely on). A 300kg piece of hand-cut African sandstone, cut from the mountainside of the Drakensberg in about 1870, sled-dragged by oxen across the red clay of Africa to the house to make part of the strong foundation of a frontier farmhouse - a symbol of sheer bloody-minded determination and hard work, of family and mostly of continuity, finally arrived here, on Flinders island, Tasmania.
We've come here to build and grow. To be Australians. But you do not forget the roots which made you. That rock is piece of our history, and we'll build it into our home, so that we and our children (and I hope their children's children) can remember that determination and hard work, and keep the continuity going.
Strong foundations make for solid homes - and there is more than just bricks (or stones) and mortar in them.
Now just my beasties, and my kids finally here and we're home.
I miss them.
But we've got this far and we have our rock.
You can do anything with a rock
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Hurray! I'm so glad to hear it has made it! And hurray for Bowman's, who seem to have come to understand how a thing can come to be invested with such significance, and who all came to be part of it.
ReplyDeleteYour fur-people are more than halfway through their durance vile now, aren't they? I hope you have good reports of them.
Abigail Miller (following your journey with fascination from Texas. I never even *heard* of Flinders before!)
The beasties are just over the half way mark. Miss them! And almost no-one ever heard of Flinders island before :-)
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