LITTLE WILLEM IN AUSTRALIA


By our grandson Willem, who is four years old now
a certain corner in the garden has been called Australia.
Why, that is not clear. It is a spot where the rhubarb grows
and where is standing a mulberry tree which birds are fond of,
certainly when it is summer and the berries are ripe and black
and juicy and  sweet. Some flowerpots stand there,
a zinc bucket, a leaky watering-can, and an old window frame.
Sometimes you find there daddy-longlegs or some wood-lice,
but I think that part of the garden is not a bit like Australia.


From the moment  little Willem knows he is going to live
in Australia a lot of Australia has come in his life.
The bedside stories I  tell him must often be situated in Australia.
His pet is a soft, light blue kangaroo. Grandad Wim, he says,
tell me a story about Australia! And so the story has to play out
in Australia and often the story has to be about kangaroos
which are doing things and  play at leap-frog.
They are joined by grasshoppers which can jump
higher then everybody else an they just fly over the kangaroos.
It is dead easy for them. They have red wings.

From time to time a huge salt water crocodile
rises up from an orange river to devour
an innocent poor little kangaroo. That is fearful.
Willem can accept this, but he does not like bushfires.
Okay, he says, crocodiles are allowed but no bushfires, Grandad.
This said, even the teeniest of tiny fires or even a walking match-stick
are absolutely forbidden to enter the story. Even not when a dark
little rain cloud appears in the clear blue Australian sky.
Or when an elephant is coming with its useful long snout.
But with that elephant element Willem does not agree.
Elephants are certainly not residents of Australia, he explains to me.

At the end of the story I put all the kangaroos in a circle
around a  non-burning campfire. It does not even smoke
and  it is not worthy to carry the name of campfire.
The kangaroos start singing a polyphony kangaroo campfire chant
Under the light of a promising Australian moon.
After that Willem will  go to sleep quietly.
And his Dreamland will probably resemble his Australia.

Far and vague is the land
that is called Australia.
Its nights are green and its moon is blue.
Don’t think that I shall forget you. 




By Wim Hofman

Isle of Skye, our farewell Scotland holiday

A few days left

Next week the removal company will pack all our things. Friday is Jamie's last day at work. The boys are saying goodbye to their friends and their favourite parks and we've got goodbye parties on Friday and Saturday. Saying goodbye to our lovely friends is the hardest part. And I will miss Scotland as well, the mountains, glens and lochs, the silence when you're in the middle of nowhere. It's just so beautiful here!
But we're really excited about Perth, there'll be plenty of wilderness in Australia, just different. And we'll be meeting lots of old friends again who we've said to before. So it's a double feeling. We will stay in a serviced apartment when the packers are here. Then we will drive to England to say goodbye to Jamie's family and then we'll be in the Netherlands. Jamie starts work on the 5th of July and me an the boys will join him on the 23rd of July (just to enjoy a bit of summer in Europe). Exciting, busy times!

Hi again!

Our visas were approved yesterday! Jamie resigns today. In 4 weeks time the removal company will be here and we will be leaving Aberdeen. After nearly 7 years....

Exciting, strange..

Busy now!

Ha, more than a year later and we are going down under again! At least that's what we think/ hope! We've signed the contract, but that doesn't say much.... we signed one last year as well..

But Woodside offered Jamie another job. Weird because this time we had other options: Kuala Lumpur, Canada and we found it real hard to decide... but the Australian life style is such a good one... still it is very far away....

Anyway lots of work to be done now!

Well, that's it then... the end of the blog Down Under, as we are not going Down Under anymore... We are desperately sad but the credit crunch has also reached Australia and the oil price is low.. Jamie got a phone call last week Tuesday morning to say there's simply no guaranteed work... We went to Burn O'Vat here in Deeside this weekend to enjoy the snow and we comforted ourselves with the thought the boys can't experience this in Perth. See http://picasaweb.google.com/machteld.irons...

Hopefully there will be another opportunity soon...