YOUR PAGE

AS WE CELEBRATED MOTHER’S DAY, MAGGIE MACKELLAR’S PIECE ON MOTHERHOOD RESONATED WITH MANY OF YOU, WHILE OTHERS TREATED THEMSELVES TO SOMETHING THEY LOVE.

HOPE GROWS

Today,i’m calling it: the drought is over. For us anyway. I am mindful that the awful dry remains for some, and we are all many months from any income, but I recently made my first ‘non-essential’ purchase in almost three years: a subscription to Country Style.

About 18 months ago, during my lunch hour, feeling sad and fed up with the relentless dry, I happened across an old copy Country Style and found myself spellbound with Meaghan Willis’ garden (July 2018).

After that find, any spare time not at work or feeding stock was spent daydreaming and planning on how to recreate something similar when the drought was finally over. Simply, it gave me hope when all around us were shades of brown and tan or the vast deep grey of the bare black soil plains.

Joanne Hamilton, Gurley, NSW

CHANGE IS COMING

Time has moved so fast, reading the Your Page letters about drought, fire and then floods, we thought we had seen the worst. And yet we Aussies continue to stand strong and defiant in face of adversity, to do the right thing for all in our nation. I can’t wait for the day we open back up for business, so we can support our local industries, support the fire and drought ravaged, and those thrown to the ground by isolation. We must come back looking more towards our own producers, and less over the seas. It is time to celebrate and nurture our own skills, talents and raw materials, let these become our prized possessions and exercise a better form of sustainability, rather than cheap consumerism. Learn from the past but make it better for the future. Our world is turning for the better

— I can’t wait for the changes!

Tania Serovski, Yagoona, NSW

NEW ARRIVAL

As I sit in the cool darkness of my son’s newly purchased home awaiting news of the arrival of my first grandson, I read Maggie Mackellar’s stirring piece on motherhood — a beautiful reflection on the all encompassing role of a mother.

There’s no instruction manual with these little souls when they arrive, and we have such a rosy view of the new world we’re about to enter, unaware of the beautiful chaos about to envelop us.

It is a crazy mix of joy, fear, laughter, tears, tradition, and the unknown, each day presenting a new challenge. The days and years melting away in a blur of birthday parties, school days, holidays, graduations and eventually departures. The feeling of loss that comes with an empty nest coming as a complete surprise.

We do the best we know how, vowing to do it differently from our parents. Yet you look back and realise that we didn’t step so far from the mould.

Thanks Maggie for this heartwarming read, it touched my heart and bought back a flood of beautiful memories. Then came news of little Archie, who entered the world just before midnight, filling our hearts with joy.

Lynelle Elliott, Woy Woy, NSW

Photography @marniehawson Styling @_michellecrawford We couldn’t resist putting this image of the sweet cubbyhouse that belongs to seven-year-old identical twins, Elisabeth and Maggie Wiltshire, on our May cover. The sisters live with their parents, Rob and Marian, on @thehutflowerfarm in Oyster Cove Tasmania where we visited them and stopped and smelled the roses — we all need to from time to time!

Photography @kararosenlund We visited Katie Robke’s little red farmhouse on the Sunshine Coast in our April issue. Here, @mumma_robke’s children are forever running wild — and this pleases her no end. Growing up on a ginger farm 15 kilometres outside Pomona in Queensland, gives Asher, six, Koda, four, and three-year-old Luna plenty of space to dig holes, play superheroes and screech about.