The Magic Of Fairy Hills

My very first memory is of walking to the next street, holding my mother's hand, to go to the Fairy Hills Kindergarten which was held in a big old house. Yes, I was living in a place known as Fairy Hills. I would have been about 2 years old.

This was a massive contrast to the denuded flat lifeless area which I have just described, my next home. It's a contrast I don't think I've ever recovered from. Such a big emotional shock.

My mother found our new home, where we lived before moving to the government estate when I was a teenager, after travelling by train from our inner suburban duplex home until she reached the end of the line. Then she started walking across the vacant fields until she came to a house for rent.

Unknown to my mother at the time, our new home was on a corner near where the Darebin Creek joined the Yarra River (the river which runs through the city of Melbourne and out into the bay). My mother had found a natural Australian fairyland and the 2 year-old Neil was lucky enough to find himself living there.

That little corner of the world turned out to be a small wilderness area with not much traffic but lots of trees and native life. Like snakes. The river and the creek had cut deeply into the earth so there were hills and steep slopes down to the river and creek.

There were always kookaburras in our garden which we'd feed by hand. Sometimes one would arrive eating a snake – which was good. There’s a certain bird, I don’t know its name, that flies from Japan when it’s winter there, across the planet to Australia. This bird has only ever been seen in the wilderness of Fairy Hills, nowhere else in the world.

There were street names like Fairy Street and Elfin Street. My best friend Josie would tell me about fairies in her garden but in spite of looking I never saw any. One night I had a dream of little people under a huge old gum tree at the end of Fairy Street.

Often I'd walk along the road that went past our house and wound around the side of the hill to the river. There were nature walks around the river and back. On one river bend there was a small sandy beach where people would swim and sunbake.

Near the swimming hole was the First Ivanhoe Sea Scout's den and boat shed which was on pontoons (empty drums). When the river flooded the boat shed would float on the water so the boats inside wouldn't get wet and be ruined. I joined the scouts before long.

Also at the swimming hole a group of miniature train enthusiasts set up a little train with tracks running around beside the river and through the trees. At weekends they would take the kids for rides for free.

Every Easter my Dad would gather up his ladder and some buckets and we'd all go to the river and pick blackberries and my Mum would make delicious blackberry jam.

I also loved the creek. Once I took a spade and some hedge clippers and made a little 'cave' in the blackberry bushes and would sit for hours watching the creek rippling over the stones at the bottom. I loved just being alone in the cave gazing into the shallow water on a fine sunny day.

I never imagined we would one day leave Fairy Hills for something very un-fairylike and not at all hilly.

Neil 
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