hammock

My dad’s an early riser, always has been. A year or two ago he managed to sleep in until around 9am, and he said that was the latest he’d ever woken up. Any time I somehow manage to find myself awake before the sun has risen, I expect to find my dad sitting in the lounge room sipping at a cup of tea, having already been wide awake for an hour or so.

It had been several weeks since I last visited Matcham. My dad was heading over 6am Sunday morning, and the fact that I was willing to tag along with him at that hour says volumes about the place. The last time I was there my dad and I had just finished laying the bricks for the back patio, and the last time I was there my head was still riddled with unhappy thoughts. Things have cleared up a lot since then but the place is still the same, though the trees are beginning to molt now, and the lotus leaves have all withered away and died.


We’ll soon start building some fencing around the garden to house a couple of alpacas; another one of my dad’s quirky ideas. They’ll help keep the lawn manageable, he says. The fence building did not start last Sunday though. We went whale watching in the morning before I had time to take a recovery nap from the early start. I was too sleepy to do too much else on the day, and spent most of my time lying in the hammock my dad bought me for my birthday. I remember drifting off to sleep with the sound of bell birds in the background, wrapped in the smell of a log fire. There was a slight jarring of the hammock an hour or two later, and my dad’s voice said that it was time to leave.