Setting Goals in 2013

“You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream.”                  – C.S.Lewis

With the arrival of the New Year, I looked back on my “Goals for 2012” list I had written twelve months ago. It always provides me with a sense of satisfaction and achievement when I’m able to cross a significant number of things off this annual list.

There were twenty-four goals I had written down on my list for last year and I managed to tick nineteen of them off as either achieved (Goal 19: visit somewhere new – hello Edgar and Annie’s Excellent Epic Adventure to England!) or partially achieved (Goal 14: de-clutter house and life…)

Of the five things that I didn’t cross off (Goal 23: put photos into photograph albums), two will go onto my list for 2013 (along with my partially achieved goals) and three I’m giving the flick to because I’m no longer interested in pursuing them. That’s the beauty of goals and dreams; you don’t have to stick rigidly to them. Goals can be passionately pursued, modified or completely discarded in favour of new ones as you wander along that long winding path that is uniquely yours in life.

Having a tendency towards making impulsive, spur-of-the-moment decisions based on whims, I feel it’s to my benefit to write down a list of goals at the start of every year. Like other people who believe in the power of manifestation, I am a firm believer that it at least helps to guide me towards what I’d like to achieve… even if it’s only on a subconscious level.

Taking the time to stop and think about what I’d like to achieve in the coming year gives structure and purpose to my day-to-day life and encourages me to try new things.

This year’s list is far from complete but one big goal I’ve written down for myself in 2013 is completing the Great Victorian Bike Ride (GVBR).

I first became interested in the ride when I lived in Melbourne during 1989 and 1990 and thought, “I’m going to do that one day.” Needless to say life got busy and I didn’t have the GVBR down as a priority. Move forward to 2011 and the GVBR landed on our doorstep (literally) as the ride came through Barham. Since then I’ve thought a bit more seriously about taking part; cue manifestation…

Once you start focussing your energy on something, it’s amazing how things start falling into place. Suddenly I’m running into people everywhere I go who have done the ride. Every one of them is wildly enthusiastic, full of helpful advice and encouraging me towards my goal. In my mind, this is clearly a sign…

Summer in the 70s

Happy New Year readers and hello 2013. This week we are being blasted by a heatwave like summers of old. While some people are convinced it is a sure sign of global warming, I’m lost in the nostalgia of the summers of my childhood on the Hay Plains.

When my mother arrived as a bride at Red Hill Station in 1966 there was only one tree on the 20,000+ acre sheep station. It must have been quite a shock to her system, arriving from her lush family farm in New Zealand’s north island, where she had grown up with hills covered in green grass and abundant trees, fat, white sheep and no bush flies, red-back spiders or snakes.

The Hay Plains are naturally treeless and the trees that my parents planted took years to grow into anything significant (those trees that actually survived that is). The summers in the ‘70s out there were hot and relentless with very little shade. When they built their new homestead in 1967, my parents had a “cool room” built into the kitchen; a large walk-in fridge that could easily hang a side of beef or several sheep, boxes of fruit and vegetables and other groceries. My mother still says it’s the best room in the house during the summer and we used to take turns at locking ourselves in it as kids (and snacking on whatever yummy food we could find).

The air-conditioning in the family chariot, our ’72 Datsun 240c consisted of rolling down the windows and you had to be careful when sliding in on the black vinyl back seat (I was always a little envious of those fluffy lambskin seat covers that Mum and Dad had for their front seats).

After the flood years of ’73 and ’74, I remember scorching hot summers that seemed to stretch on endlessly. Until the mid 1970s at Red Hill Station the only room in the house with air-conditioning was the dining room (where the bassinet was parked when we were babies), the rest of the house baked. In those early years there was just one portable fan that moved between the kitchen and the bedroom my brother Tom and I shared.

We loved that fan, not just because it kept us a bit cooler but because we used to amuse ourselves by talking into the spinning blades to distort the sound of our voices… we weren’t the only ones thinking distorted voices were fun; a couple of years later in 1977, George Lucas and Hollywood delivered “Star Wars” to the world and the now famous distorted voice of Darth Vader… “Luke, I am your father!”

The hose on the back lawn, with or without sprinkler attached, provided hours of cool, wet fun. Later on Dad set up an above ground pool; a circle of tin with a plastic liner and waist-deep muddy water from the ground tank; we all thought it was brilliant despite the fact the water was infested with water beetles that would get tangled in our togs and bite us.

At some point in either the late ‘70s or early ‘80s the four of us Simpson kids were presented by our Gran with what was (and probably still is) arguably the world’s greatest summer toy of all time… the Slip ‘n Slide. An ingenious invention of a long sheet of plastic you wet down with a hose, added a bit of washing detergent for extra slippiness and ran towards full till before throwing yourself down for an adrenalin-producing slide… ahhh, happy days.   

2012 Christmas Column

The magical day of Christmas is almost upon us for another year and so long as tomorrow’s forecast Mayan apocalypse doesn’t eventuate many of us will be mingling with family and/or friends next Tuesday. Just to be on the safe side, the boys and I will be doing our “Christmas Lights Tour of Barham and Koondrook” tonight.

At the risk of sounding like the Grinch who stole Christmas, with each passing year I seem to be looking forward to Christmas less and less. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas lights, mince pies, ham and eggs, excited children, my mother’s traditional Christmas dinner with all the family and mixing a glass of Pimms No.1 Cup around 10am on Christmas morning… it’s the obligatory retail shopping lead-up to Christmas that gets me down.

Christmas for me now feels less and less about love and more and more about spending money on nonessential items that will be discarded or broken before the Christmas decorations are dismantled. I hate that.

Shopping is not one of my favourite pastimes; it causes me a considerable amount of stress. The reason behind this stress is decision making (another little thing I’m not particularly fond of) and shopping is non-stop decision making. Not only do we have to decide what we want, we have to decide on all the specifications that go with what we want e.g.: brand, colour, style, size, cost etc… and then when it’s gift shopping, we wonder if the recipient of our gifts will even like or appreciate them. Shopping is exhausting, not because you might spend hours walking around the streets or those huge shopping centres if you’re in the city but because of all that deciding you have to do.

The retailers have caught on to all this shopping angst and delivered us the “gift card” so we, the gift buyers still spend money at their shops without having to make any major decisions. Clever, very clever…

Back in the good old days when choices were limited and gifts only arrived twice a year on Christmas morning and birthdays, I imagine the lead-up to Christmas was far less stressful and a lot more enjoyable. These days we live in a world of hyper-consumerism and instant gratification, to say we are spoilt for choice is an understatement.

Yes, it’s enough to make one just want to book in for a full one hour massage and feel all that tension and stress melt away… did I mention I sell gift vouchers?

Regardless of where you are, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading Behind the Barr in 2012 and wish all of you a very happy and joy-filled Christmas and a new year of magical moments and excellent adventures in 2013.

Australia's 2nd biggest killer

A couple of Fridays ago my parents, Farmer Bill & Granny were enjoying morning tea at the Riverside Café with me before they headed north to their home at Red Hill Station… a few short hours later I was on the phone to Triple O requesting an ambulance to meet my brother, Tom, who was rushing Farmer Bill back to Barham. Out of the blue my fit, healthy and lively father had suffered a stroke.

Several times during the Triple O phone call I had to stop and take a deep breath to calm the feeling of panic that was ballooning rapidly inside me. My voice waivered badly as I explained to the operator where to send the ambulance and the condition my father was in.

A medical emergency is a frightening experience no matter where you are but more so in rural Australia where medical help may be hours away. Red Hill Station is 160km north east of Barham between Moulamein and Hay. We made the decision to bring Dad to Barham Hospital even though it was considerably further than the Hay Hospital due to Hay’s current medical crisis.

For some time now the $15 million Hay Hospital has been without a doctor. The two doctors in the town do not have Visiting Medical Officer (VMO) status and as such, are unable to access the hospital. This leaves the local paramedics with the job of transferring all medical emergencies to Griffith, a further 160km east of Hay (215km from Red Hill Station).

Our family is feeling extremely grateful for the high standard of medical services that were available to us. The ambulance and paramedics met up with my brother and Farmer Bill just south of Moulamein. He was given oxygen and transferred to the Barham Hospital where he was attended to by our very capable nursing staff and excellent local doctor, Michael Clarke, before being transferred by ambulance to Bendigo for further treatment.

In Farmer Bill’s case, his heart (for reasons best known to itself) went into atrial fibrillation (AF), where the heart’s normal rhythm becomes irregular. This caused a blood clot to form in the heart which then travelled to his brain. Although he was able to walk, lift both arms and speak without slurring, he spoke very quietly, was having trouble finding the right words to say and some of what he was saying wasn’t making sense. His left eye was slightly drooped but otherwise he just felt very tired.

My Dad has been extremely lucky and his sense of humour is intact. The stroke affected his speech and some of his memory. While he knows exactly what he wants to say, Dad has trouble finding the correct words. He has also found it harder to recognise casual acquaintances and remember in what context he knows them.

These symptoms are diminishing with his speech and memory now improving on a daily basis thanks to neuroplasticity; the human brain’s amazing ability to build new connections to compensate for injury or disease. With practice, patience and perseverance, Dad is hoping to make a full recovery.

Strokes can occur at any age, it is the second biggest killer of Australians and a major cause of disability; it is caused by one of two ways. The main cause of stroke is blood supply to the brain being interrupted either from a blood clot travelling to the brain or arteries to the brain becoming blocked. The other cause of stroke is bleeding within the brain from a burst blood vessel.

When it comes to strokes, time is critical. It is important that people learn how to recognise signs of stroke. The acronym is FAST.

FACE – has their mouth drooped?

ARMS – can they lift both arms?

SPEECH – is their speech slurred? Do they understand you?

TIME – is critical. If you see any of these signs or in any way suspect a stroke call 000 immediately.

The signs of stroke may occur alone or in combination and can last a few seconds or up to 24 hours and then disappear. So remember the FAST Test and act when necessary, it can save a life.

Surviving a heatwave in style

Summer arrived two days ahead of schedule last week with temperatures soaring to between forty-three and forty-four degrees around Barham and district by Thursday afternoon. After our very enjoyable but out of character, cool spring, it was a shock to the system I tell you.

Throwing fiscal caution and power bills to the wind, I turned on the air-conditioner and every ceiling fan in the house for about thirty-six hours. At least our heat out here is usually a dry one, like strolling around in a fan-forced oven as opposed to the energy sapping humid heat of the tropics and other places.

As luck would have it the boys and I were dining with the lovely Jo and Don Hearn out at their Restdown Winery on Thursday night. Jo had telephoned late in the afternoon to warn me that their temperamental air-conditioning unit appeared to have a forty-two degree cut-out switch… and had cut-out for the day.

Not willing to concede defeat, Jo and Don had an excellent Plan B: move dinner from the house to the winery.

For those of you who have yet to visit the Restdown Winery (just over half an hour’s drive from Barham), it is an ingenious design of concrete tilt panels. Jo and Don were first inspired by the residents of Coober Pedy, the South Australian outback town 846km north of Adelaide, where an estimated fifty percent of the town’s population live underground in “dugouts” to minimise the harsh extremes of their local climate.

Further viticultural research took the Hearns to Europe where they were impressed by the French technique of using underground tunnels to store their wine and champagne and thereby minimising temperature fluctuations.

In 2002 with the idea of minimising ongoing heating and cooling costs, Jo and Don built their winery. The concrete walls are 200mm thick and the concrete ceiling is 250mm thick with two Whirly Bird Spin Aways in the roof for ventilation. The building is embedded into the side of a sandhill and covered with over a metre of dirt. Native plants growing in the dirt add extra shade and also soak up any rain. The cellar door and only uncovered wall of the winery, faces to the east and limits the amount of sun contact to the building.

The concrete, dirt and plants insulate the winery without the need for powered heating or cooling. During the coldest of winter nights when the outside temperature drops into the minuses, the winery is still fifteen or sixteen degrees. Likewise, during the hottest of summer days when the outside temperature is well into the forties (like last Thursday), the winery remains at a very comfortable twenty-four degrees.

The cellar (where all their delicious Restdown Wines are stored) is at the back end of the building for the best insulation. The front half of the building is where the wine is made; crushing, pressing and fermenting etc…

So there we were last Thursday evening, surrounded by wine bottles and a balmy twenty four degrees, enjoying our sumptuous dinner of roast chicken (locally grown “Chooks for Cooks” from Mardie and Glen Gray’s Little Forest Produce) and a salad, accompanied by a glass of the award-winning Restdown 2011 Semillon and my new favourite non-alcoholic drink for summer – Restdown Verjus and soda. The meal concluded with bowls of (slightly melted) ice cream and fresh mangoes – all in all the perfect remedy for heatwaves! 

Discovering the Backroads Trail

This Sunday from 10am until 5pm Australia’s newest tourism region and gourmet food trail, the Backroads Trail is inviting locals and visitors to the inaugural open day. Officially launched in early October, the Backroads Trail is now open for business.

Stretching from Echuca-Moama, up through Mathoura and along the north side of the Murray River to Barham-Koondrook and everywhere in between including Womboota, Bunnaloo and Caldwell, the Backroads Trail has been five years in the making.

Don and Jo Hearn from the award winning Restdown Winery were the driving forces behind the establishment of the trail.

This weekend people have the opportunity to visit some or all of the fifteen or more small businesses along the trail that are opening their doors on Sunday. Near Moama, people can visit Pacdon Park and sample their gourmet British Smallgoods; Sevilo Grove for farm tours and olive oil; Bright on the Murray Bed and Breakfast, a 120 year old homestead on the bank of the Murray River.

Heading west along the Perricoota Road is the impressive Perricoota Station available for accommodation and functions. Further towards Barham and Caldwell on Jungle Lane is Restdown Wines with their underground cellar door and picturesque 1.4km wetlands walking trail.

The Old School Winery and Meadery (honey wines) near Womboota offers cellar door sales, a mead-mulling demonstration as well as pottery and art studios.

Around Bunnaloo you can purchase cold-extracted high quality honey from the Bassett Family Apiaries and enjoy a farm tour at Graythorn Poll Dorsets.

Mathoura on the eastern edge of the Backroads Trail is home to the delicious seedless Imperial mandarins and other seasonal local produce at Mathoura Mandarins.

Local Barham small businesses included on the Trail are; the Kurrnung Citrus Honesty Box filled with a variety of seasonal oranges and grapefruit in Lilford Lane; Norm and Jan Thomas’ Hill House Farmstay; Bundarra Berkshires Free Range Pork on East Barham Road; Border Packers just over the bridge in Koondrook for locally grown citrus; Ash and Linda Williams’ Barham River Cruises aboard “The Matilda” and the Myers Family Barham Avocados at Horseshoe Bend out on the Gonn Road.

Along the way you are encouraged to stop and read any of the nineteen interpretive panels at twelve different sign-posted sites as they explain the history of the region from the geological formation of the natural landscape through to the modern day sustainable farming practices.

Rural art and history is well represented on the Backroads Trail with the Farmgate Sculptures made from recycled farm machinery (and a creative sense of humour) at the entrance of a number of properties along the trail.

The redgum chainsaw sculpture trail along the banks of the Murray River at Barham and Koondrook provides a short history of the area’s pioneers and local wildlife.

Local museum the Border Flywheelers in Jamieson Avenue has an extensive collection of tractors, machinery and other artefacts used by the farming communities of the Murray Darling Basin. Art galleries include Grant’s in Mellool Street, Barham; an open artist studio displaying Grant Walker’s fine pen and ink rural landscapes as well as work by other local artists.

If you’re heading out along the Backroads Trail for a Sunday drive this weekend (or any other day) brochures and maps can be picked up from the Wakool Shire Office in Murray Street Barham, local visitor information centres in the region or downloaded straight from the website: www.backroadstrail.com.au

Camping in the Grampians

Last week the House of Barr expanded to include Grandma and Pampa Barr for their annual grandparent visit. This year’s trip was at short notice so I hadn’t pre-planned an excellent adventure to anywhere and already had work booked in. Not to be deterred, I quickly did some reorganising and then pondered where to go for a shortish week or longish weekend of “me” time.

As usual numerous ideas popped into my head… I phoned Tasmania to see if there was any chance of joining the four-day Bay of Fires Walk at short notice (alas, no); I googled airfares to Exmouth in Western Australia to see Ningaloo Reef (more planning needed); I checked out the likelihood of sighting a great white shark off Port Lincoln in a shark cage in November (January seemed better); I contemplated road trips (in no particular order) to, Byron Bay, Batemans Bay or the Flinders Ranges and then crossed them off as too far in too short a time and really, road trips are a lot more fun with a travel buddy.

In the end I decided to catch up with Victorian friends at Terang and Hamilton and then spend a few days camping with my Tarptent, swag and a good book at Halls Gap in the Grampians National Park, a mere three and a bit hours from Barham.

After reading numerous travel reviews, I chose the Lakeside Tourist Park a few kilometres south of town and pitched my tent on soft green grass in amongst some shady trees that looked out to an open grassy area filled with kangaroos, emus and deer.
 
That first evening I sat out on my deckchair with a glass of wine and a packet of kettle chips to share with about twenty very friendly sulphur-crested cockatoos.

As they said in The Castle, I could feel the serenity.

When it comes to relaxing, a few days camping in the Australian bush is hard to beat… especially when the weather is in the mid twenties and flushing toilets and hot showers are a short walk away at the immaculate Lakeside Tourist Park amenities block.

The Grampians are a series of imposing ancient sandstone mountain ranges formed some 380 million years ago. While the Grampians have been attracting bushwalkers since the 1890s, human habitation in the area dates from about 17,000 BC. The first Europeans to the area were Scottish born explorer, Thomas Mitchell and his exploration party in 1836; he named the Grampians after the Scottish mountain range of the same name.

Tempting though it was to spend my days relaxing on my swag reading Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel “The Help” about African American maids working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960s… the weather was too perfect not to get out and enjoy some of the walks readily accessible in the area.

Driving out to the Wonderland car park, I walked through Victoria’s version of the Grand Canyon and then along the Stony Creek to Turret Falls, where I admired the wildflowers and filled up my drink bottle.

The next day I headed back to the Wonderland car park and again walked through the Grand Canyon before continuing further up over rocks and the well-maintained track through areas of relatively thick bush to The Pinnacle (about an hour’s walk from the carpark). Looking out from The Pinnacle I was rewarded with a magnificent view across the Fyans Valley with Halls Gap at the bottom and further out to the various lakes on the eastern side of the Grampians.

Driving further along the road from the Wonderland car park heading towards Horsham, I came to the MacKenzie Falls. Situated on the MacKenzie River they are Victoria’s largest waterfalls and located about half an hour’s drive from Halls Gap. I opted for the relatively easy Bluff Walk, which gave me a spectacular view of the MacKenzie River Gorge and waterfalls.

Back in Halls Gap I discovered some excellent coffee at the Livefast Café and an even more excellent chocolate, macadamia nut and coconut slice. The perfect place to sit and write this week’s column…

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at mathematics

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at mathematics.

There’s nothing like the prospect of an enormous lotto win to draw out our inner gambler. Like this week’s solar eclipse at Cairns, it felt as though the planets had aligned last week for the gods of gambling. Not only was it the first Tuesday in November; Melbourne Cup Day… it was coinciding with the drawing of Australia’s biggest ever lottery.

Like (I suspect), many other Australians last Tuesday, I rolled out of bed feeling lucky. I had a one in twenty four chance of randomly picking the winning horse in the Melbourne Cup and even more appealing in my mind was the thought that I might buy the winning ticket in the $112 Million Oz Lotto that night. I was not the least deterred that my lotto chances were in excess of one in 45,379,000. Mathematics is not one of my strong points.

Fortunately for me, I do have friends who are good at mathematics and they have at least convinced me now, that buying more than a single ticket is statistically speaking, a waste of good money. You just have to be in it to win it.

Imagining what I would do with a multimillion dollar lotto win is a happy little daydream I like to indulge in every now and then. Even more infrequently I buy a ticket… usually when the jackpot has become so huge every man and his dog has also bought a ticket and by comparison, making my odds of being eaten by a shark a frightening possibility.

Still, my optimism knows no bounds, life is filled with serendipitous moments and amazing coincidences so surely it wasn’t too much to expect a windfall last Tuesday?

I called into the Barham Newsagency early Tuesday morning and bought the morning paper, a single Oz Lotto quick pick ticket for $4.80 and two entries in Tish’s Melbourne Cup sweep (nothing like really stacking the odds in my favour). After breakfast the boys and I had a rushed window of opportunity to study the form guide and pick our horses for the Melbourne Cup before school.

Dressed by my personal stylist (thank you Jenny Cox), I swanned off to join friends at the Barham Hotel at midday for a delicious Melbourne Cup buffet lunch, placed our bets at the TAB and entered yet another sweep.

As it turned out, it was lucky I did enter that final sweep because I had absolutely no luck in my or the boys’ TAB horse choices or my other sweep entries. I pulled out the Irish bred horse and eventual winner, Green Moon, winning myself $60 for the afternoon and making up for the previous $47 worth of totally useless betting and sweep outlays for the day.

By Wednesday morning my fantasy of winning the big one in Oz Lotto had burst (for another week), Australia’s newest multi-millionaires had been found and I wasn’t one of them. Perhaps lotto is just a tax on the poor mathematicians of the world but it’s wrapped up in hope and optimism and that happy little daydream of one day winning and becoming financially carefree for the rest of your life… I love daydreams.

Parenting and underage drinking

Fact: One young Australian aged between 14 and 17 years old dies every weekend due to alcohol.

Underage drinking is an issue that has been in my “Column Ideas” folder for quite some time but I felt at a loss on how to discuss the subject. It can be a prickly topic for both parents and teenagers and one that I find hard to negotiate because as an adult, I like to and do, drink alcohol in social situations.

Drinking is part of our Australian culture and possibly more so in rural areas where the local pub or football club may be one of the few options for socialising. As a parent and community member, I want to encourage our children to delay drinking alcohol, to do their developing brains a favour and to build confidence in themselves without using alcohol.

My parents encouraged responsible drinking but as a teenager at home, I wasn’t above surreptitiously swigging a few mouthfuls of rosé straight from the cask in the cool-room or sampling the various liqueurs out of the cupboard in the dining room. In my teenage years I was desperate to join the adult world, get on with my own life and not have to answer to anyone. On illegal outings from boarding school when I was sixteen, I would buy alcohol in an ill thought out attempt to prove I was ready to leave my childhood behind.

My concern today is the level of drinking amongst some of our teenagers. It’s not having a laugh and a couple of beers with your mates; it’s drinking straight spirits like vodka until you vomit and/or pass out.

What is driving this behaviour? How can we help our children to develop self-confidence, communication skills and strength of character so they don’t resort to abusing alcohol, cigarettes or drugs?

The teenage years are a minefield; surging hormones contribute to extreme emotional highs and lows. One minute you’re high on life, and then the next a pimple or a flippant remark from a friend signals the end of the world. It sounds trivial but it’s not. It is a time when we really struggle to work out our place in the world and how to cross that precarious bridge from childhood to adulthood.

Up until the age of twenty-five, our brains are still developing. Research in the last ten years shows a strong, clear link between alcohol and its effect on young minds. For teenagers and in particular young teenagers, misusing alcohol will stunt both their intellectual and emotional growth and increase their likelihood of drug and alcohol dependence later on.

Recently one of my sons was seen drinking excessively and smoking at a local eighteenth birthday party, my son is fourteen. I was under the mistaken belief he was having a sleepover at a friend’s house so it was quite a shock to be taken aside by one of our local police officers five days later and told the truth.

I felt a range of emotions including parental guilt for not knowing what my son was up to.  I felt angry that my son was allowed to attend the party and that other adults had seen or knew he was there and hadn’t told me.

Eighteenth birthday parties are a time of celebration for young people entering the adult world and it is also the time they are legally able to buy and consume alcohol. An eighteenth birthday party logically would have a few seventeen year olds in attendance (immediate friends who have yet to turn eighteen) but is it the place for younger teenagers or children if responsible adult supervision is minimal or nonexistent?

Our small community means age groups tend to mix and get along well. This is usually great for a community except where parties with alcohol are concerned.

Yes, I was extremely disappointed in my son’s behaviour, my son who I’m immensely proud of 99% of the time. I find him so grown up; mature and capable in so many ways but here he was smoking and drinking to the point of being very drunk at fourteen years of age. The fact that he had lied to me and broken my trust in him (giving me a good insight to how my parents must have felt all those years ago) hurt me more than anything. Rebuilding that trust will take time and a concerted effort from both of us.

Shortly after the police spoke to me, a number of friends confided that they also knew about the incident but had been unsure how to tell me or they wanted to wait a bit until they thought it would be a better time to tell me. They also mentioned other underage teenagers who they have observed either drinking or being drunk locally on a number of occasions.

While I can understand my friends and their reluctance to broach an uncomfortable topic and I appreciate their intention was not to hurt me or add to my stress levels; not broaching it doesn’t help me as a parent and it sure as hell doesn’t help our kids.

Being part of a small community means people observe and talk about what happens, i.e. you can’t do anything without people finding out. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable, sometimes it’s misconstrued but in the case of underage drinking, it is a good thing. It enables us to look out for all children, not just our own.

I like and believe the African proverb - “It takes a whole village to raise a child.” 

Shyness and social anxiety

“Nerves and butterflies are fine - they're a physical sign that you're mentally ready and eager.  You have to get the butterflies to fly in formation, that's the trick.”  ~Steve Bull


Last Saturday morning I knew my body’s fight or flight response had headed into overdrive as I woke up feeling nauseous at 4am with a little too much adrenalin coursing through my bloodstream. The day of the Red Carpet Evening’s Dancing with the Stars had arrived.

Shyness or social anxiety is something I’ve struggled with since 1978; the year I started attending primary school. Growing up in splendid isolation at Red Hill Station 55km from Hay, the first two years of my schooling were completed at home via correspondence school. My mother taught me and my brothers and my sister to read and write and then in grade two and for the rest of our primary school years, we caught the school bus into town and attended the Hay Public School.

Suddenly confronted with a large group of strangers, I felt painfully shy and self-conscious. Did I look like them? Did I look okay? Would the other children talk to me? Would they want to include me in their games? Would I be any good at playing those games?

Everyone wants to feel that sense of belonging, to feel wanted and included but I found it hard to initiate conversations and mostly waited until someone spoke to me.

Social anxiety is the fear of evaluation or judgment in social or performance situations. In a one on one situation at work or around people I know well, I’m relaxed and can be quite extraverted but with a group of people I don’t know or don’t know well, I am usually quiet and aloof and I feel socially awkward and nervous.

Meanwhile back to last Saturday… there’s nothing like having your hair done for boosting a girl’s self-esteem so off to visit the lovely Natalie at Scissors Hair Salon I went. For the very first time in my life I had my hair curled and set, and to complete the look I had booked in to visit future makeup-artist-to-the-stars, Ruby Oster.

At nine years of age, young Ruby has a far better idea on how to put on makeup and does a far better job of it than me and not only that, Ruby has a far more extensive collection of makeup. My makeup routine consists of using a basic moisturiser/sunscreen, occasionally dying my eyebrows and lashes, lipstick and nothing else (much to my mother’s despair). Ruby’s collection included eye-shadow of every shade under the sun, foundation, concealer (I was hoping for a Harry Potter invisibility cloak but I digress… ), blusher, eye-liner, mascara, false eyelashes, powder and sparkily stuff.

Roll on to last Saturday night; by the time I was frocked up, with my hair and makeup done and covered in sparkily stuff, I was starting to feel like a true glamazon. Even so, the first thing I wanted to do upon arrival at the Golf Club was head straight to the bar for a glass of rum and coke (so I did). Bearing in mind that as an adult, I find a couple of alcoholic drinks calms my fear and helps me to relax… too many would have had the exact opposite effect and would certainly not have been conducive to my salsa routine.

Once Courtney had introduced us and the music started, I felt as though I had those butterflies flying in formation. It also helped that I was wearing professional high-heeled dancing shoes on loan to me from last year’s Dancing With the Stars, Dancing Queen, Vicky Lowry from Wakool.

The crowd seemed to fade into the background and rather miraculously Shane and I managed to (pretty much) remember our steps for the routine.

My fear of falling over and/or completely stuffing up our routine (and publicly humiliating myself) never eventuated, the dance was all over in a few short minutes and we had a lot of fun being participants in the competition. Once again the Barham and District Medical Centre put on an excellent and entertaining evening all round. Thanks to the donations of many people from both our local community and further afield, the Barham and District Medical Centre raised an impressive $14,000 to put towards replacing the heavy doors of the medical centre with automatic ones – Well Done!