27 10 2011, Moorland

farm
fags
fortified shiraz
father
family
food

slow conversations
of past
waiting for sentences to finish
learning of grandparents, great grandparents, Switzerland, Sydney, Moorland, and the depression
"country bumpkins" ? ha ha !

Benedict Weber (great grandfather, immigrated from Zürich), James Otto Weber (grandfather), Ada Aileen Weber née Pryor (grandmother), Flora Helena Weber née Kidd (great grandmother, whose pendant I wear now), etc.

Benedict came to Australia in (circa) 1883, first to Kangaroo Valley, where he married Mary Flynn, and had two children, then settling in Moorland after Mary's death. There he married Flora Helena and they had seven children, including James Otto, born 1906.

Jack (Otto's older brother) was visited by Joseph (cousin in Switzerland) in Paris where he was in hospital during the First World War.

Aileen lived in Sydney with her Aunt Jean until she was 25. They went to the Randwick Races often; Aileen's father Arthur Pryor bred horses and Aileen liked to bet!

Aileen went to evening dos with her cousin, a dentist. She wore crocodile skin shoes.

Jean and Aileen cooked and served food to homeless and hungry people during the depression. She wore crocodile skin shoes.

Otto lived in Moorland, where he worked the farm, played piano in a band called The Chequers, and represent the North Coast of New South Wales in both Cricket and Rugby League.

Aileen and Otto married when Aileen was in her mid-thirties, Otto was seven years older. Jean didn't approve of Otto for Aileen, who she thought could do better (read: richer).

James Michael was born in 1949, when Ada Aileen was nearly 36.


love over money romance rendered so by (me) (and) decades hindsight
maybe it was
we will never know
but the story goes that they loved each other


we play piano, violin and sing
go for walks in the paddocks, along the river, creeks and dams
to explore familiar land
with those still here

looking at maps of the world, maps of possibilities, histories and lives lived
by someone important to someone
then looking out our own broad windows to a whole world
a whole history
that is somehow irrelevant, somewhat irretrievable
and at once vital, necessary, useful for self-narrative
for future narrative and time perspective
connecting now flesh to then flesh will enable future flesh, perhaps
otherwise it is lost? lost is a silly concept. it doesn't need to be found if it is really lost.
i guess that's why we attempt retrieval while it's still possible
to get an idea
to create that narrative

this irretrievable is sought
through the slow conversations
the wandering across paddocks
the attempt to ask, to retell
to remember
what is long gone

people who i never knew, will never know
people who never knew me, will never know

people i have nothing to do with
except blood and earth
depending how you look at it
what day it is
and if you are on that earth

which is a lot and nothing