It’s Easter weekend as I write this. A time of sunshine and showers, which is pretty normal for this region. The clocks have also gone back and consequently everything feels a tad different. My body clock is telling me to have lunch too early.

In the past, we would nearly always come up to Cloverdale at Easter, often adding a few extra days to the public holidays. It was a time to reconnect with the place and to see friends. It was always special. The nine-hour drive was a process of shedding, leaving the everyday buzz of working life behind and contemplating what might need to be done in the days ahead. I couldn’t wait for the peace and quiet. We would arrive in the dark to the damp smells of the Northern Rivers and its rainforest trees. The air would be filled with the strident whirring of insects, and the belching boom of tree frogs. It was a world away from suburban Sydney. I yearned to live here.

One of the first things Anthony had done was plant out the paddock behind the house and on each arrival we would marvel at the growth of the trees, astonished when they began to arch together over the back drive.

The grass in front of the house was only occasionally slashed so usually it was long and wild, swamping the new avenue of cypress trees that Anthony had planted, and sticking up straw-like clumps among the pecan trees. There would be fences to fix and fallen branches to clear away and burn but I always found time to laze with a book on the veranda. This was a holiday, after all. As the house was rented out, we camped in the old milking shed that we had rebuilt but very occasionally we would stay in the house itself  if it was between tenancies. I would wander through the rooms imagining all that I would do when we took over, unaware that it would be some years until that happened.

A few of these little trips were taken up with bigger projects. Like lining the tin walls of the farm shed with hoop pine or taking up the carpets in the house so that the beautiful boards could be sanded and sealed.

Tarmacking the drive was a particularly big job and I’m still amazed that it was my job to flatten the road base using a tandem roller that juddered and swayed alarmingly. Several times I nearly toppled over.

Life changed when we bought a proper ride-on mower, and suddenly our trips included days of mowing. We would leave the place looking pristine but we knew that in just a week or so it would be back to its overgrown state again. There was a grass fire one year, which quickly spread from hot ashes laid under a tree. I was certain the house would go up in flames, my dream destroyed, but thankfully the local fire service arrived in time to stop it. We were left with a forlorn scene that made me think of wartime Flanders.

I still picture that blackened patch when I look over today’s garden beds of roses and dahlias. I see also the faltering line of distant mountains that was once such a dominant feature of our view but which has all but disappeared behind the trees planted by us and our neighbours. It’s hard not to see the past when you’ve been coming to the same place for so long, remembering those little staging posts along the way.

I greet the day with real pleasure now that we live here full-time, every bit as good as I’d hoped. The feeling is permeated with all those things that brought us to this moment. I see all those steps we took to shape the landscape, change the house, and create what means most to us.

Being mindful is The Thing today, and certainly I know its power. When I walk by the sea or potter around the garden, I’m often thinking of nothing in particular, simply allowing the sounds and smells to wash over me. My eye might follow a swooping bird or linger on the beauty of a new flower, but eventually I re-emerge, back to the day ahead, somewhat refreshed. But always, always, there is the presence of memories in those moments, a fleeting image from the past, the way the new flower reminds me of something or someone, perhaps from my long-ago childhood.  

I find it almost impossible to turn my mind from the past. It’s not a ‘good old days’ nostalgia but is more an acknowledgement of everything that has brought me to this exact moment in time, a background motor that powers me onward. For some, memories are to be escaped, a burden, like forever lugging around a satchel full of books, but for me they are treasures, even when some are tough. It’s no wonder, then, that such intensity of emotion can seem to seep into the land itself, haunting the landscape like ghosts. Indeed, Cloverdale is full of the energy of the past, way before me, stretching back even to the Big Scrub rainforest time before the arrival of timber getters and gold seekers in the nineteenth century. Wisps of time flutter through everything, even a mindful moment.

This Easter weekend, my mind is tuned to the beauty of these lazy days, but aware also of the shadows of the past that help give clarity to the future.