Almost Home

                                                                                                                                Available for purchase here

There's no place like home, but sometimes defining "home" is not easy. Saturday I travelled quite some distance for our second family reunion. Actually it was a reunion for three extended families who mostly grew up in the same area, with marriages inevitably forging life long links.


The village of Nimbin was the location of the reunion as it was the closest settlement for these farming families who grew and flourished north east of Nimbin in the glorious foothills of what is now the Border Ranges National Park. The picturesque little village of Nimbin was the site of the 1973 Aquarius Festival which has brought dramatic and lasting attention and changes to this quiet rural area.


A few minutes from Nimbin I stopped to take photos of the familiar Nimbin Rocks which are rhyolite extrusions left from the ancient Mt Warning Tweed Volcano. Early settlers named the three most prominent rocks as Thimble, Needle and Cathedral.

This one is the Cathedral, it reminds me of a huge pipe organ.

More impressive the closer you come/zoom. These rocks are very significant to the local indigenous people, Bunjalung Aborigines, although as far as I know there have been no locally living Aborigines in living history - I have never met or heard of one.

                                                                                                                    Available for purchase here

Heading back to the car this breezy autumn day I spotted a strange structure on the hill across the road....

The camera helps reveal an unusual tipi construction, its function I can only guess at.

Before the arrival of white settlers 130 years ago, most of this area was covered with thick rainforest.

The family reunion was wonderful, providing a chance to catch up with many known relatives as well as others who were maybe distantly related, having some ancestors and geography in common. Some I see regularly, others I hadn't seen for decades while many I had only heard of.

A cake was cut by the eldest, youngest (watched carefully by her grandmother) and the one who had travelled furtherest (over 1600km/1000miles) to attend. 


To be continued.......


Sharing at Your Sunday Best.