My Journal:

May 2009

As happened in April, the month of May has also seen me welcoming and farewelling house-guests, some long-time friends from Sydney whom I hadn’t seen for some years. It was great to catch up with them and their doings but we did give the wine a bit of a bash and it took me a couple of days to recover!

There were some lovely rains during May but we are still the hole in the donut (and yes, that’s American spelling but it’s quicker!). Brisbane’s dams are all full, or almost so, while Toowoomba’s is still at 10%. ‘The drought has broken’ the premier declared. She forgot to add that here, and west of the range, we are still in drought, although a green one. In other words, the rain has been enough to freshen and green things up, but nowhere near enough to sustain life and crops for more than a few weeks.

Members of our local community centre have decided that we need to do some serious work on our meeting place, Jessie’s Cottage. The cottage has a lot of history and in order to attract more visitors, we are thinking of ‘dressing’ the rooms in particular decades, where we can display our craft for sale. To this end, May was busy with fund raising events, and June promises to be the same. Which of course means more work; all in a good cause, I guess.

“Jessie” was Jessie Taylor. The Taylor family built the cottage in 1899. In the 1950’s it was purchased by the Dodt family. Jessie Taylor was allowed to remain in the cottage until her death in 1966; she is buried at Toowoomba. Jessie was apparently a bit of a recluse and a local identity. An older brother used to come down from Toowoomba each week, to bring her supplies and to make sure she was okay. If she needed anything in between his visits, she would visit the little local shop, taking her wheelbarrow along to carry her purchases home – even if all she had to buy was a box of matches!

After Jessie died, the cottage was left until it deteriorated to what was considered ‘beyond repair’ and the land was purchased in 1992 by the then Gatton Shire Council (now the Lockyer Valley Regional Council) for use as a recreational ground, now named the MCG (Murphy's Creek Ground). It was around then that some local concerned citizens began to seek funding to restore the cottage. After much frustration and disappointment they eventually received a grant from Jupiters Casino Community Benefit Fund. The cottage today is used by the community and is the home of the Murphy's Creek Neighbourhood Centre.

There seem to have been lots of birthdays this month, so plenty of coffee mornings and dinners out. [The ladies of my book club go out for coffee when one of us has a birthday, and I’m a member of a group who go out to dinner once a month, to celebrate birthdays. There are more than 20 of us and so it is generally someone’s birthday!] Not that I am complaining. I know I should be spending more time writing, but I do love to eat out and it’s nice to do it with friends. Besides, a writer needs fodder for the pen so it’s not as if I’m not working when I’m not working, if you get my drift.

Only a couple more weeks of teaching for me. I’m going to miss it, but a friend phoned me recently and that may change next year. She is working towards finishing her TESOL course, and is then going to do a Certificate IV in Training and Assessing. When she has completed those, she wants to go and teach in China and asked me if I’d like to go along. Of course, I said ‘yes’. The only reason I haven’t gone to China before this is I didn’t want to go alone. Although I’ve travelled a lot in Europe by myself, and felt quite safe doing so, Asia is a different story. Roll on 2010!