About Me

What, you want to know more about me? Don't get me started or you will be wading through my website for hours. But then, you have plenty of time don't you! The theme of my site should immediately tell you a lot. Instead of Barbie dolls and teddy bears, I love horses and zebras, and cats are also very important in my life.

Where do I begin? Firstly, all I can say is thank goodness my mother never dressed me in hideous, frilly, pale pink, girly clothes. It wasn't very practical anyway living on one acre of land which was absolutely HUGE to me as a child. I could not understand how my cousins could bear living with such small backyards in the suburbs.  I would have died being so cramped up and having to spend so much time inside.

My cultural heritage is European and in the early days, our one acre of land was well utilised. It was full of animals - a cat, a dog, chickens, ducks, domestic rabbits at one stage, a goat, a lamb; large vegetable garden and plenty of fruit trees, namely apples, plums, quinces, figs and a lemon tree. What my parents could not grow or make themselves, they bought, and that was not much in the food department.

I grew up on fresh fruit and vegetables, freshly slaughtered meat which was purchased directly from a farmer (beef, pork or lamb). My maternal grandmother did not waste ANYTHING from the carcass which she, together with my grandfather, would spend the whole day carving up and packing into manageable portions into their freezer, often with the help of my parents. In fact, my grandmother even made her own noodles - you can imagine the delicious full flavour of my grandmother's (and my mother's) chicken noodle soup made from home grown chooks, home grown vegetables and home made noodles. A restaurant would do anything to have such a meal on their menu.

Don't forget that my parents and my grandparents survived the second World War in Europe and nothing was ever discarded until every usable part was finished with. Another example is how my mother provided us with feather pillows amd feather doonas for all our beds and my grandmother made exquisite crocheted lace borders for the pillow slips for our duck feather pillows. Having such resourceful parents (and grandparents) was definitely an advantage in many ways.

Instead of writing screeds here, I will recall memories from my childhood, teenage years and adult life in separate pages. Bear with me as I add to those pages over time.

• My Childhood
• Teenage Years
• Adulthood
• My Family