Tim Mallon reflects on the magic of Easter

Did you feel them lap around you and us, like gentle lakeside waves? Did they make you breathe deeper, slower? Did you, on their changing season tide, take an Easter time floodplain ride?

The way around these-here-parts, Easter makes possible sojourns to the sea or the hills; how around here, creeks and riverbanks and forests and beaches  and calm back verandahs open their arms for us, for our less feverish selves - our better angels.

And how out of the back-yard sheds came the tents and cookers and stretchers. Came the bikes, and billy-cans and lay-out-on-the-autumn-grass-blankets

And we were away - and Australia Easter time dreaming was at hand again…

The way down the years I done been to the seaside - to sleepy gum-tree scented Hawks Nest, to glassy-watered Tea Gardens. Fell asleep up there with the inside-a -hell sound of the ocean in my ears - ancient, ineffable, and wondrous strange for a floodplain boy.

Learnt about love and friendship up there; back then, in them lost Australia Easter dreaming days.

I’ve spent quiet resurrection weekends in Telarah, Horseshoe Bend, Cooks Hill and Largs, journeying only between a kettle and a calm seat. Have devoted slow Good Fridays to the craft of salmon-pattie eating, back-yard laying, football listening and all that …

The way I heard the story from earnest nuns of the stone pushed aside from the cave that Sunday - marvelled with innocent ears at the thought of the carpenter turning his cheek, forgiving them all and rising up - healed of his grievous wounds.

Have taken walks and rides and ambles and runs throughout the soporific autumn streets of here - have always loved Easter time, the way it’s a balm for the brain.

Have always thought it was the right time for north-bound roving - for meandering up into the soft undulations of Vacy, Dungog - and on to regal Chichester.

And there’s a place dear friends - the dam.

Up there above beautiful Bandon Grove: past rustic dairies and idling cows; over clinking bridges and along arcing, slender roads. 

And then to see the glassy, black stillness of the reservoir…

And the bellbirds and mossy trunks and cool clear water. Then to boil your billy-can; to take tea, and time.

To lay down flat and full and smell the woodsmoke fire, to look up into the trees and see the stag-horns and remember the beer garden at the back of the Royal Hotel - and in my mind taste chips and cherry-cheer again.

And the way Easter time dreaming days - and how they still go …

Goodnight.