a trip down memory lane

Recently I made a trip to Melbourne and delivered some paintings to Glen Huntly gallery, Louey and Lane.

There are 8 paintings in total available now. Some have been framed. So if you are in Melbourne please drop by, it would mean a lot to me.

On the way to the gallery I decided to drive passed my grandfather's old house...well where is house once stood. A single fronted red brick house with a garden full of meyer lemons, a bird avery, a hydrolic clothes line and a carport that was covered in a blanket of twisted wisteria.

It was a difficult decision for me as I hadn't visited the site since he died in 1999. Even during the three and a half years we lived in Melbourne I could never bring myself to make that right hand turn on my way home from work. His house was one of the very few remaining on the Caulfield Racecourse carpark.

It was where my 68 year old mother grew up. It was where my sister and I would go for holidays or weekends as children. Where we would get up early and go to the stables, play in the bluestone alley ways, ride our bikes in the carpark, and walk to the track after a meeting to run through the tunnel underneath the grounds yelling out our names and listening to the echo. Even now after all this time I can get teary thinking about those fun days. And laugh too at my Pa's eccentric ways. He would steal toilet paper and pile it high in his loo...a habit that developed from his days of being a young homeless man in the great depression.And it was really bad toilet paper at that.

After he died, the house was sold to the racecourse officials who then demolished it in order to squeeze in a few more cars. Now stands a wire fence. But through that fence grows his wisteria.

Apart of him is still there.

So I stole some. 

Comments

[lily boot]

oh my - that is just around the corner from us - it is such a wasteland down that way. I so sorry for you and your family that such a lovely home has vanished - I know I shall notice every time I drive past now. My great grandmother's home - with all the fruit trees and stories and deep verandahs in Chalk Street Lutwyche is now part of the shopping centre's carpark. It's very unfair.

[Kylie]

So lovely that the wisteria is still there :) I know how you feel... We had a beach shack that we went to every single school holiday of my childhood. My mum sold it a few years ago now when she couldn't cope with maintaining it anymore... there's a massive glass architectural masterpiece on the block now and even the hibiscus bushes that used to line the fence are all gone. This is what I'm told anyway.. I still haven't been able to bring myself to go back to Currumbin and have a look. These paintings are just wonderful! Hope they go well in Melbourne :) Kx

[michelle]

Such a lovely story. I was with you all the way. xx