The Monaro
Categories: uncategorized
Date: 08 March 2006 03:04:51
This picture is of a region in South East New South Wales known as “The Monaro”. 
It has always been grassland and the native grasses are always this brown colour. Coming home from our recent trip to Sydney we drove through the Monaro. It was quite a nostalgic trip.
We lived at Cooma, the main town on The Monaro and the “gateway to the Australian Alps”, for three years very early in our marriage. We absolutely loved life there, the nearby Snowy Mountains are a treat for a young couple discovering life together and enjoying bushwalking, fishing in summer and snow in winter. Our first child was born in Cooma, a minus 10 degree morning that I'll never forget.
But what surprised me was my feelings now, thirty years later, no longer the excitement of new places and adventures, but a drive of memories. As soon as the brown Monaro plains came into view I felt very melancholy, happy but also sad. I felt connected to these brown sweeping hills that had been the first thing we saw each morning for a few years. I don't think I feel like that about any other place we have lived. We went through the local phone book and couldn't find one name that we remembered. I think this must be what old age is like.
As we drove on toward the much greener hills of Gippsland the words of Bob Dylan's dream were on my mind.
“with half damp eyes I stared to the room,
where my friends and I spent many an afternoon.
where we together weathered many a storm,
laughin and a-singin, til the early hours of the dawn.
oh, I wish, I wish, I wish in vain,
that we could sit simply in that room again,
ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat,
I'd give it all gladly, if our lives could be like that.”