Good Life

Ejo #170 – The Farm

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I was recently leafing through a Condé Nast Traveller magazine and came upon a page where contributors were asked to share their favourite summer holiday memories.  As I sat on the toilet contemplating all the far-flung destinations my travels have taken me to, my head filled with countless pleasant memories created since David and I moved to Dubai fifteen years ago.  As a lot of you know, I do not like living in Dubai so much, but I do acknowledge that residing here has given me a pretty remarkable life, full of travel and adventure and the opportunity to make friends all over the world.  With a faraway look in my eye, I smiled and reminisced as I tried to settle on just one favourite sun kissed memory. 

I thought of our three pilgrimages to Burning Man and in particular that one glorious morning when my friend Marya, David and I all woke up before dawn and cycled a few miles out to the trash fence in skeleton bodysuits to watch the sun rise majestically over the playa.  Rubbing our sleepy eyes, we squinted at the champagne coloured clouds from which a dozen or so large black dots appeared to magically materialise. 

Waiting for Daft Punk’s trash fence gig to start

As we blinked incredulously at the golden light, the dots seemed to get bigger and develop brightly coloured tails.  Marya and I glanced at each other, a little alarmed.  What was happening?  Were we hallucinating?  NO!  It slowly became apparent that what we were seeing were a number of daring parachutists who had jumped out of a plane at daybreak and were now painting the sky with their rainbow coloured chutes, gracefully trailing beautiful long flags in a wondrous tapestry across the heavens.  It was such a beautiful moment and I’ll never forget it, but was it my favourite summer holiday memory? 

After searching for months I found this video of the people that we saw dropping out of the sky that morning.

I didn’t think so, but the floodgates had opened.  I remembered wiling away long hot Ibiza days drinking sangria and eating tapas, followed by misspent nights dancing to our favourite DJs.  I remembered the simple, but delicious seafood lunch served to us by the captain of a Turkish gulet we’d hired off the Turquoise Coast of Antalya.  I remembered hiking the wild and windy coastline of southern Corsica, staying in some random Moroccan billionaire’s summer home that our friends Gwen and Didou were managing for the season.  I remembered trekking through vast mountainous canyons to explore the ancient Jordanian city of Petra, and then a few days later bobbing around the Dead Sea, smearing its healing and beautifying mud all over our faces and bodies.  And I remembered countless summer days drowsily contemplating the hypnotic cicadas in a tiny ancient hamlet called Adine in Siena, Italy, one of my favourite places on earth.  Occasionally we’d summon the energy to drive into town to eat pici served with locally caught wild boar.  And afterwards we’d devour nocciola and Amarena gelato while sitting on the cobble stones of the town square, watching toddlers awkwardly chasing pigeons and teenagers awkwardly chasing each other.  Later that night David and I chased fireflies in the hamlet’s olive grove.

Late summer days in Siena’s Piazza del Campo

I remembered trips to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan.  Mostly just to eat the street food, but also to lounge around on beaches or pools or in izakayas and rooftop bars, kicking off the day-drinking with breakfast beers and seamlessly graduating to lunchtime cocktails and then bottles of wine at dinner.  I remembered evenings wandering narrow backstreet warrens looking for the perfect place for a late night meal, and somehow always finding it. 

And of course I remembered Greece and her beautiful islands, which I discovered relatively late in life.  First Mykonos, and then, in quick succession, Santorini, Milos, Sifnos, Naxos, Zakynthos, Skiathos and Kefalonia.  Distinct memories of wandering down overgrown sandy tracks to discover completely secluded beach coves, with the bluest and clearest water I’ve ever seen in my life.  Enjoying the simple but delicious food of my childhood, chased down with surprisingly good wine by the kilo.  Always followed by the obligatory afternoon siesta.  Balmy fragrant nights laden with the promise of a good time floating on the sound of a bouzouki being strummed somewhere.  Everywhere.  These are all gorgeous memories that I will keep forever.  But are they my favourite summer memories?  I realised that no, they were not.  To access those, I had to go back to Australia.  I had to go much further back in time, to my childhood.  I had to go back to the farm. 

If sheer perfection was the criteria…

When I was about 12 years old my parents went into cahoots with my aunt Dimi and uncle Alex to buy a plot of land in the Victorian countryside.  I remember being dragged around with my sisters to endless real estate inspections of properties on the Mornington Peninsula, about an hour and a half drive from Melbourne, until they eventually found the perfect one.  Lot 3, Boneo Road, Cape Schanck was a hilly ten acres of overgrown tea-tree shrubs and native grasses.  And that was it.  It was wild, it was untamed and it was magnificent.  For the next five or six years, we spent most weekends and summer holidays at the farm.  And even though it was, in no way, shape or form an actual farm, that was what we called it.    

In the beginning, we camped in tents.  Later on my Dad laid the foundation for what would come to be known as The Shed.  And of course, because it was my Dad, it wasn’t built out of wood or steel or bricks.  He built it with materials used by NASA.  And I am not even joking about that.  The stuff was basically slabs of Styrofoam enclosed in a bright green metallic casing.  The shed was four walls and a roof.  Our family of five had a tiny bedroom to sleep in, and my aunt and uncle had an even tinier one.  My Dad built us all bunk beds.  The rest of the shed was an open space kitchen, living, dining area.  The floor was a concrete slab. And that was our holiday home.  It wasn’t fancy, but it was ours. 

Our days and nights were filled with adventures, accompanied by a rotating roster of friends, children of family friends, cousins and even kids off the street.  One morning while my sisters and I were playing at the bottom of the driveway three young girls on ponies materialised in front of us and asked us if we wanted to go for a ride.  Hell yeah we wanted to go for a ride.  Other times the three of us, and whoever happened to be around at the time, would explore the property, trying so hard to get lost, going so deep into the dense tea-tree shrub that we sometimes had to fight through the thickets on our hands and knees, our arms and legs covered in bloody scratches.  We were always so disappointed when we hit the fence-line and had to retreat back to the clearing.  But that never stopped us from trying again. 

I learned how to drive on the farm, in an old unroadworthy Land Rover that needed a crank to start the engine.  The same Land Rover that we would all pile into and be jostled around on the 2.5km dirt track down to a secluded, rocky beach that was essentially our own private paradise.  I don’t remember seeing more than a handful of people in all the years we spent on that beach, and when I recently tried to find it on a map, I discovered that it still doesn’t even have a name.  If you want to find it, it’s somewhere between Gunnamatta and Fingal beaches, but good luck getting to it. 

Driving lessons on the farm, being herded by Joshua.

Oh, that beach.  It was ours!  It was ours!  We’d drive down in the morning and stay all day, carrying down platters of homemade food for a sumptuous feast sprawled on the rocks.  We’d recline for a while in the shade of a rocky overhang, and afterwards we would fish, always hooking a bounteous catch of butterfish to cook on the BBQ later that day.  Sometimes we would search for elusive abalone in the many tidal pools, and sometimes we would be lucky.  My Mum would tenderise and pickle it, and cook it up in a stir-fry with rice, the thought of which still makes my mouth water.  My sisters and I would confidently leap from rock to rock, like agile little mountain goats.  We trudged up massive sand dunes, just so that we could tumble back down them, and then do it all again.  And we dove and frolicked in our very special, swimming pool-sized rockpool for hours, exploring every single nook and underwater cranny, trying to catch the little fishies that had been washed in with the previous tide.  But they were always quicker than we were, and they were always somehow able to dart away, out of reach of our prune-fingered grasp.  This is what favourite summer holiday memories are made of. 

The rockpool.

Back at the farm we zoomed around on my uncle Alex’s three wheel motorcycle.  Oh what a thrill it was to wrap my arms around his waist as he floored it up what felt like an insurmountable summit.  The wind whipped my hair around, because it was the 1980s and helmets weren’t a thing.  I was always scared that he would rev it just a little bit too much and the two of us would flip backwards.  But facing that fear and always reaching the crest and landing those three wheels back on solid ground was an exhilarating experience that I’m fairly sure not many other 14 year old girls were lucky enough to have. 

Our hobby farm was right next door to an actual, working farm with a couple of horses and a paddock full of grazing sheep.  There were also ducks and chickens and a pigeon coop and a small corn field and a gorgeous black and white Border Collie called Joshua.  Every time we drove up the driveway to the farm, Joshua would be there waiting for us.  And apart from dinnertime and bedtime he spent every waking minute with our family.  He would even chase the Land Rover to the beach, whenever we drove down there, and he’d spend the whole day with us.  I don’t know if Farmer Murphy was aware of it or not, but Joshua was our first family dog.  We loved him and he loved us. 

My sisters and I developed a routine of knocking on the Murphys’ back door every Sunday night, collecting large hessian bags filled with stale loaves of sliced bread and heading down to the pastures to feed the sheep.  I remember the first time we did this.  We entered the enclosure and clicked the gate behind us.  It felt like every single sheep in that three acre pasture stopped what they were doing and looked up at us.  And then, the sheep started running.  A hundred sheep stampeding towards three nervous young girls holding sheep food.  I’m pretty sure we all started screaming, and I’m pretty sure I thought the three of us were going to die.  And as they approached us and the fear escalated, somehow, we started running back towards them and the killer sheep dispersed.  And we laughed and laughed, mostly as a release to the fear, but also because it was just funny.  And we started throwing slices of bread all over the place and the sheep lunged at it like ravenous wild animals.  And when we ran out of bread, the sheep just disinterestedly sauntered away.  As if nothing incredible or mind-blowing had just happened. 

The Murphy’s were really nice to us, letting us feed their sheep and steal their dog.  They sometimes even let us chase around the cute little springtime ducklings and chicks that had just hatched.  But the truth is that they probably didn’t love us being there.  We were a rowdy bunch of Greek immigrants who would often be up until the wee hours of the morning revelling and carousing and generally being festive motherfuckers!  I remember one particularly merry night, my Dad was playing guitar and Alex, taken with the spirit, grabbed a drawer from his bedroom dresser, theatrically flipping the contents on the floor and, with his leg up on a chair, started using it as a drum, rhythmically banging the shit out of it.  My Mum, inspired, grabbed a coffee jar full of rice from the kitchen to use as another instrument in this unhinged jam session, and everyone danced and sang along.  We kids watched in wonder as our normally mannerly relatives just rocked the fuck out.  The carefree exuberance and unbridled high spirits of moments like these stay with me, and fill me with joy decades later.  These are what favourite summer holiday memories are made of. 

Sometimes the singalongs came at the end of the night.  Sometimes they were the opening act.  Depending on the tides, sometimes my sisters and I would be woken up at one or two in the morning and then we’d all drive down to the Fingal Beach hiking trails.  A dozen of us carting buckets, torches and gardening gloves, we traipsed down the steep, sandy steps to the rocky beach below to catch crabs.  As the tides started going out, the crabs would emerge from the rockpools in search of food and we would be there to grab them.  We were young kids running around in the middle of the night in gum boots on jagged rocks catching crabs as the tide went out into an inky black, and sometimes wild, roaring sea.  Hell yeah! 

The cliff path might have felt like a thousand steps going down, but it felt like a million steps climbing back up with buckets full of salivating crabs.  We’d drive back to the shed, put a huge pot of water on the stove to boil and enjoy a glorious supper of the most ridiculously tasty, freshly caught seafood bonanza you could ever imagine.  The memory of cracking open a thick leg to pull out delicious, tender, meaty morsels of crab at 3 o’clock in the morning, bleary eyed and surrounded by my loved ones has to be one of my favourite summer holiday memories in a life filled with them. 

I spent those years on the farm being a free and feral child, living a wild and precious life.  Whenever David and I go back home to visit Australia, my sisters and I always make sure to get together at Fingal Picnic Area where we used to barbeque the butterfish that we caught on our private beach all those years ago.  We gather now to reminisce about those good old days, and to pay our respects and to honour the memory of the wonderful childhood our parents gave us. 

My Mum, my sisters, fourteen year old me and a family friend at the Fingal BBQ

We were there just a few days ago and on our drive to the picnic area, I asked to stop off at Lot 3, Boneo Road.  A gorgeous new house has since been built on the highest point of the property, but the old shed is still there.  A little nervously, we walked (trespassed?) up the driveway to the shed which is now being used as a garden shed.  The exterior has been painted black, but inside it’s still bright green.  The old grape trellis my father built is in total disrepair, and the garden my Mum cultivated is a riot of wild grape vines, passionfruit plants and lemon trees.  But, most notably, nature has fiercely taken back what was once hers.  The natural world that we constantly had to fight off to build the shed, and to live in the shed during our summer holidays, has won the battle.  Mother Nature, biding her time, grew back with a vengeance, surrounding the shed, enveloping it and ultimately reclaiming her space.  My Mum and Dad are gone.  Alex is gone.  One day Mary, Pieta, Dimi and I will be gone, and every single memory of those summer days down at the farm will be gone.  But as we stood there the other day, looking at this familiar, cubic building that somehow seems to have become part of the landscape of what used to be the farm, I found that there was something really beautiful about that.  The farm now belongs to someone else.  The shed, still standing nearly 40 years after my Dad built it, belongs to someone else.  And yet somehow it still all belongs to us.  It will always belong to us. 

The top of the shed felt like the top of the world.

Ejo #168 – Just You Shut Your Mouth

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When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a doctor.  I mean I didn’t really, I just thought I did.  I was obsessed with this big, fat book my parents owned, which sat on the bookshelf in our living room.  It was a medical encyclopaedia, an atlas of the body and all its wondrous processes and mysterious biological magic.  I loved that book so much.  I would pore over it for hours on end, and I knew it back to front, which is why I was able to plagiarise from it so frequently and extensively for essays and projects throughout primary school and my early years of high school.  I was so in thrall of the inner workings of the human body, that, even though not a lot of thought went into it, it kind of seemed like a no-brainer that I should, of course, go to medical school and become a doctor. 

English was my best subject in high school, closely followed by Physical Education, which I studied up until Year 12.  I loved English, because I loved writing.  And I loved PE because I loved learning about the human body.  Biomechanics, anatomy, human physiology.  I learned about how muscle fibres contract, aerobic versus anaerobic respiration, all the systems of the body including skeletal, muscular, cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive and reproductive.  I learned about stimulus-response incompatibility, the psychological-refractory period, the single-channel theory and other brain-body functions.  Learning about the human body never felt like work to me, it felt like a gift, and I suppose that added fuel to the whole doctor fantasy. 

As it turned out, however, I didn’t really want to be a doctor after all.  And I certainly wasn’t smart enough, or motivated enough, to make the grades required to get into medical school anyway.  The hours I should have spent studying maths, chemistry and biology in high school were hours I spent writing poetry, short stories and love letters instead.  So when I got my Year 12 results I wasn’t at all surprised that they were well short of the scores required for medicine.  Stubbornly and mindlessly holding onto the ridiculous notion of one day getting into med school, I applied for a Bachelor of Science degree at Monash University with the idea of excelling in my first year and then transferring to a degree in Medicine. I really should have applied for a Bachelor of Arts instead, because hahaha, I did not excel.  Not at academic pursuits anyway.  I did learn how to play a skillful game of poker though, so it wasn’t a total waste of time. 

The dream of becoming a doctor was slowly beaten out of me by reality (thank fuck), and I dropped all interest in the human body for many years.  Until about four or five years ago.  Which is when I started aching.  First it was my elbows, fingers and wrists, and then the aches migrated to my ankles, knees and hips.  I went to several doctors and they all told me that it was just good old wear and tear, and that I was at the age now where shit just all starts sliding downhill.  And I accepted that.  Coz… doctors!!  They know what they’re talking about, right?  Actually, no.  I’m going to let you in on a little secret.  They don’t know what they’re talking about.  They really don’t.  They mean well, but they are not the be-all and end-all. 

It was a bit of an epiphany when I realised that doctors are fallible because they are taught things in medical school that are either based on unchallenged junk science, or on science that hasn’t been updated in 50 years.  I think the first time my respect for doctors was seriously challenged was when I did the thirty day carnivore experiment a little over three years ago.  As always I did a metric shit tonne of research for that ejo, and what I learned shook my foundations.  I learned that the Dietary Guidelines for America (which inform those of the rest of the world) are based on very little science at all.  I learned that eating from the food pyramid actually causes rather than prevents obesity, heart attack and diabetes.  I learned that high cholesterol is not bad for you, and yet statins are the most prescribed medication in the world.  And I learned that red meat is unjustly vilified, so why on earth would I listen to a doctor who tells me I need to stop eating red meat when I look at charts like this:

Um… what’s up doc?

So I started getting interested in the body again. Especially my body. And what I’ve done since is just step off the medicine wheel.  I no longer want to do the things that allopathic medicine says I need to do in order to be healthy.  I don’t want to take medicine for high cholesterol, because I know that high cholesterol is protective, rather than something to freak out about, especially for people my age.  I don’t want to have to eat fibre, because I know that fibre is useless (and in a lot of cases, actually harmful).  I don’t want to reduce my salt intake, because I know that salt doesn’t increase blood pressure. 

Over the last few years I’ve really enjoyed the freedom to pursue the best health for myself by completely ignoring what doctors say, and exploring outside of the constrained realms of modern medicine.  I’m at a stage in my life where I want to experiment with improving my own health.  I want to try the kinds of things that I would have laughed and scoffed at, or just dismissed out of hand, in my youth.  Stuff that I would have considered woo-woo or as having no scientific basis.  Coz why the fuck not?  What have I got to lose?  Modern medicine has its place, for sure, but unless I’m in need of surgery or life-saving treatment I’m no longer interested in allopathy as a source of information for my general health and well-being.  I don’t want to be prescribed pills, thank you very much.  For anything.  Ever.  My health is in my own hands, and that is so empowering.    

So yeah, I’ve tried some weird shit.  The carnivore diet is pretty weird, but it works for me.  Coffee naps are weird, but they work for me.  Cold showers are very weird, but they work great for me.  Getting early morning sunlight in my eyes to help me sleep better that night is weird, but it works for me.  Putting red filters on my phone and computer at night to block out all the blue light also works.  And yes, it’s also weird.  But if it works, who cares!! 

Another weird little bio-hack that I want to talk about, that I started doing a couple of years ago, was taping my mouth shut at night.  Yes, I know I’m probably getting some strange looks from some of you about this one.  But I swear there’s something about it that is very comforting and very calming, and which is amazing for helping me go to sleep.  And not only that, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that nasal breathing is far superior to mouth breathing for lots of other reasons.  Not just when you’re sleeping. 

I’ll admit I first came across mouth taping on Instagram accounts that I follow for carnivore tips.  At first I just ignored it as one of those weird, wellness, social-media fads that has no basis in science at all.  I mean, for very good reasons I do not normally get my health advice from Instagram.  But then I listened to a podcast by Dr. Andrew Huberman where he delved into the reasons why it might actually be a good idea to try it.  So I tried it.  And I slept like a baby.  In fact, the first time I taped my mouth for the whole night was the first time in a very long time that I didn’t need to get up four or five times to go to the toilet.  Two years later, I’m still sleeping like a baby.  And I tape with wild abandon.  I tape at night, I tape for my twenty minute coffee naps, and I tape at work on the night shift during my two hour breaks.  If I don’t tape my mouth before sleeping, I feel weird, I feel naked.  But you know what the funny thing is?  If I do happen to find myself without tape, I now sleep with my mouth closed anyway.  I’ve trained myself to keep my mouth shut whether it’s taped or not!  And that’s actually the goal, to become a natural nasal breather. 

Andrew Huberman, Ph.D. (@hubermanlab)

If you have any breathing issues like sleep apnoea, collapsed nostrils, chronic sinusitis or a deviated septum it’s probably a good idea to check with your doctor before trying mouth taping, but if you’re relatively healthy and just looking for a good night’s sleep I reckon you can do what I did and just give it a shot.  Make sure you get special medical tape, and don’t even think about using masking or gaffer tape unless you want to rip the skin off your face.  And you don’t have to wrap the tape all the way around your head like a mummy.  You’re not trying to seal your mouth, just keep your lips together, so a small strip is more than adequate.  David and I use 3M Nexcare Micropore (2.5cm) tape, which is recommended by people in the know.  It’s super cheap, flexible and doesn’t irritate our skin. 

You can get fancier mouth tape, but we don’t bother. 
We’re basic bitches.

So, what’s the point?  Sure, there aren’t a lot of large scale studies on the benefits of mouth taping, but there are a couple of small ones which do show significant improvement in sleep, particularly in those who suffer from obstructive sleep apnoea.  According to Dr. Huberman, nasal breathing allows for greater lung inflation by increasing resistance to breathing.  And it increases the production of nitric oxide six-fold.  Nitric oxide is a miracle molecule that you want to (naturally) produce as much of as possible. It increases oxygen uptake and lowers blood pressure.  And it does that because it’s a vasodilator, it dilates the blood vessels.  So, for those of you guys who might be having a little trouble in the trouser department (wink wink, nudge nudge), nitric oxide is the molecule that is released by Viagra to help with erections.  And you can get the same effect just by becoming a nasal breather.  I told you it was a miracle molecule!!  And if that’s not enough, nitric oxide also kills viruses.  Whaaat? Is there anything it can’t do?! 

Breathing through your nose filters out all the airborne shit flying around in the air and keeps your nasal and respiratory passages moist.  This sounds gross, but trust me you want them to be moist.  When air enters your lungs via your nose, it’s been warmed and humidified and purified, which allows for a better exchange of oxygen and CO2 when it hits your lungs.  Not only that, it helps to prevent the spread of infection, it reduces snoring (which impacts the quality of your sleep), and improves dental hygiene and facial alignment.  In contrast, chronic, habitual mouth breathing has the potential to negatively impact respiratory function and can even result in aesthetic changes to your face (psst… not for the better).  James Nestor, author of the book “Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art”, says, “Inhaling air through the mouth decreases pressure, which causes the soft tissues in the back of the mouth to become loose and flex inward, creating less space and making breathing more difficult”.  So why would you breathe through your mouth?

In 2018, Nestor participated in an experiment in which he blocked his nose for ten days in order to see what impact mouth breathing would have on his health markers and feelings of wellbeing.  Five years later he says he is still suffering PTSD from being forced to breathe through his mouth 24 hours a day.  He also says that it triggered almost immediate hypertension and obstructive sleep apnoea.  His cortisol levels skyrocketed, and his heart rate variability took a dive.  And he went from not snoring at all to progressively snoring for most of the night, which of course affected the quality of his sleep.  Immediately after that experiment, he switched to ten days of nasal breathing (helped along with mouth taping at night) and he said his health went from completely wrecked to completely normal, just by changing the pathway through which he breathed air.  In other words, breathing through your nose is the best default state for respiration.  So if you can train yourself to be a nasal breather, like I did, you’ll see lots of benefits beyond a good night’s sleep. 

It is a little scary at first, taping your mouth shut when you’re going to sleep.  Like, am I going to be able to breathe?  Am I going to die in my sleep?  The answer to that is no, you’re not going to die.  Your body is a marvellously high-tech, fine-tuned instrument and, even if you have a blocked nose, it can sense that your mouth is closed and will always clear a nasal passage for you to be able to breathe (this might not be true of everyone, but it does apply to most people).  I was even able to tape my mouth shut when I had covid, during which my nose was so blocked that absolutely no air was going in or out.  Remarkable, huh?  I’d tape up and lie down and boom, I could suddenly breathe through my nose.  Sometimes it took a few minutes to unclog and clear up properly, but it always did.  And the other great thing about taping during covid was that even though I had a terrible cough, I never coughed at night. 

If you’re a bit nervous about asphyxiating in your sleep (which I promise you, will not happen), you can place the tape vertically, rather than horizontally, which will allow you to breathe through the sides of your mouth, even as your lips are encouraged to sit together.  Another tip is to start taping while you’re awake, just to get used to the idea.  Build up to it, starting with ten minutes a day.  Then half an hour.  Whatever it takes to acclimate to it.  And then you can start taping at night, and realise all the wonderful health benefits of nasal breathing.  If you do try this, I would really love to hear about your experience so please shoot me an email and let me know how you went. 

Happy new year, goodnight and sweet dreams.

Ejo #165 – Dad

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My father died 20 years ago today.  His death fucked me up pretty good.  Actually, his illness didn’t do a bad job of fucking me up either.  Watching him deteriorate from a strong and vital man into a shell of a human being, someone I barely recognised, sent me plummeting into the deepest and darkest depression I’ve ever experienced.  The ten months of his illness were agonising, and the months afterwards were very much worse. 

Until my father died, work was a source of great comfort for me.  A place I could escape the gnawing torment of his decline.  A place of relief from the anguish.  I was working as a junior air traffic controller at Moorabbin, which is a busy airport full of training aircraft.  It’s chaos.  Delving into work, my focus was laser sharp and blinkered, all the better to not allow any thoughts of my father to seep into my consciousness.  I was depressed, yes, but I was functional.  In stark contrast, after Dad died, I became catatonic.  I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t do anything.  And I certainly couldn’t work. 

I was off work for three months, and spent all that time at our family home with my Mum and sisters.  I slept in the living room on a foam mattress which I made up every night, and packed away every morning.  Sleep was elusive; my head filled with swirling memories and jagged thoughts that were so painful I would just sob into my pillow for hours.  I was eventually prescribed sweet, merciful Temazepam to help with the debilitating insomnia, which was a life buoy thrown to me when I was drowning in a tempestuous sea of grief.  My waking hours were spent staring into space.  Aimlessly shuffling from room to room.  I was completely numb and I don’t remember much from that time.  I lost a lot of weight.  I rarely left the house.  I cut myself off from all my friends.  My father’s death knocked me out.  It was a king-hit that took me more than 18 months to emerge from.    

My mother never resurfaced from her loss.  When Dad died, a very large part of her did as well.  She never stopped loving him with all her heart, and she stubbornly refused to live a full life without him.  To my Mum, Kon’s ashes embodied his soul, and until the day she died she kept a lit candle beside his urn on the mantelpiece in the living room.  She said goodbye to him when she left the house, and hello when she returned.  Goodnight when she went to bed, and good morning when she woke up.  It was her way of staying connected to him, even though he was gone.  It was her way of keeping him alive, and that gave her comfort. 

My mother’s death hit me very differently.  Firstly, even though I knew she was sick, I didn’t know that she was at death’s door, so I was totally unprepared.  Secondly, she was my mother, not my father.  And thirdly, after Dad died, I still had my Mum around for another 15 years.  But when she died too, suddenly they were both gone and I experienced not just the loss of a very important person in my life, but the loss of my roots, my anchor, my family unit, and my very foundation.  And the loss was profound.  I didn’t get depressed, like when Dad died.  Instead I succumbed to an extreme and overpowering sadness, the depth of which I could never have imagined possible.  The sadness that I felt was not normal.  My whole life leading up to this event, sadness was a room on the ground floor.  Maybe when things got really bad, it went down to the basement.  But suddenly, when my Mum died, I realised that it was not the lowest, or the worst, that I could feel.  I learned that there were twenty cavernous levels below the earth that could fill up and overflow with my sadness.  It’s like when people say you don’t know how much love you can truly feel until you have a baby.  Well, maybe you don’t know how much sadness you can feel until you lose your mother. 

I’ve spent the last four and a half years since my mother’s death fiercely grieving her.  I miss her deeply and still sometimes cry myself to sleep when it just hits me in the chest that she’s gone and that she’s never coming back.  I think of her every single day.  I see her picture on my bedroom wall every single day.  And every single day something reminds me of her, and I’ll say emphatically, “I love my Mum”.  Because I really fucking do.    

Conversely, in the last four and a half years, I have hardly thought about my Dad at all.  Deplorably, I haven’t had any room in my heart for him.  And I feel so incredibly guilty that the all-consuming grief I feel for Mum has completely supplanted the grief that I was holding for my Dad.  And of course, intellectually and emotionally, I know (I know!) that I still love my father and I know that I miss him and I know that I grieve for him.  And of course it’s not a competition about who I love or miss the most.  But I am grateful that this, twentieth anniversary of his passing, is an opportunity for me to once again focus on my Dad, and to once again make some room for him in my heart where he belongs. 

My parents were very different people, and had very different parenting styles.  My Mum was all heart, loving, open and warm.  My Dad was more outgoing and filled the room with his personality… which could sometimes be a lot.  He had been raised in a household where the man was in charge, the man was the be-all and end-all, the man wore the pants and the man had the last word.  My Dad’s gentle nature prevented him from becoming the kind of authoritarian parent that his own father was, but still he could be pretty strict and uncompromising, especially when my sisters and I were teens.  I think that when his three daughters started growing up, it triggered an internal clash between his easy-going personality and the stern parental conditioning he’d grown up with.  And this started causing a rift in our family.  Being the first born child, being the one for whom rebellion simply wasn’t an option, I accepted all the rules.  I was the good girl.  And I’m grateful to both of my sisters, for being significantly more ballsy than I was and smashing down the barriers that had been put around us.  I’m grateful because, even though it caused a great deal of heartbreak and strife and tension in the house at the time, it was the catalyst for our father to change.  As a parent, and as a man. 

I have to give my Dad props for being able to shed generations of toxic masculinity, and to look inwards and realise that he no longer had to be so overprotective and controlling of his daughters.  He understood that if he didn’t make changes within himself, he was at risk of pushing us away, or even losing us completely.  And he changed.  He just did it.  He softened, he became more accepting, and he became more affectionate and open and loving.  He became more himself.  It was a truly remarkable transformation.  Over the years, my relationship to my Dad evolved from worship, to reverence, to fear, to shame, to disrespect, to ambivalence.  And then I went back, and I got to know him as a person, as a human being.  And I started loving him again.  And finally, at the end, after all that, we were friends.  I’m so grateful that we had the opportunity to complete that circle while he was still alive. 

I have so many beautiful memories of my extravagant and irrepressible father, whose extraordinary zest for life left an impression on everyone who knew him.  Even though it may seem trivial, a memory that I hold very dearly is of how gentle my Dad was when he put my hair up in a ponytail when I was a kid.  As opposed to my Mum’s confident and efficient method of whisking my hair up and quickly twisting the hair-tie around the ponytail, my entire head fit into my Dad’s enormous hands as he tenderly stroked my hair, trying so hard to not pull even a single one as he lovingly gathered it up on top of my head.  And I knew, I just knew, even then, as a five, or six, or seven year old, that it was a special moment between us.  I cherished that moment when I was a kid.  And I cherish it now. 

One family story that became legend over the years demonstrates how meticulous and fastidious Dad was about certain things.  He always took such great pride in the way that he looked, and in particular the clothes that he wore.  His sisters, Dimitra and Sophia, recently recalled the story for me, setting the scene at a large family dinner.  Dad, Mum, aunts and uncles and friends of the family were all there, gathered around the table.  Someone was carving and serving a large roast chicken, and a few droplets of gravy splashed onto my Dad’s shirt.  As was his wont, he became very upset.  Everyone there was accustomed to witnessing Dad’s over-the-top reactions whenever he got even a minor stain on his clothes.  But this time, apparently, he became so melodramatic about it that my Aunt Sophia (who was up to here with Dad’s histrionics) lost her patience, and lost the plot.  Wild-eyed, she pushed her chair back, walked around the table to where my Dad was sitting, grabbed the chicken drumstick off his plate and furiously started rubbing it all over his shirt, yelling, “It’s just a fucking stain, Kon!!!”  As you can imagine, everyone was so shocked at the unexpected insanity of the moment, they all burst into laughter.  Everyone, that is, except my Dad, who sat frozen like a statue, staring straight ahead with a stony look on his face. 

Hello police, I’m dressed to kill and I’d like to report a murder.

Thinking back, I remember lots of stories from my Dad’s youth.  Like the time a tree he was standing right next to was struck by lightning.  Knocked out by the impact, my father lost his sight and couldn’t see for hours afterwards.  When his eyesight returned, he went back to the tree, which had been cleaved in two, and found a stunning gemstone in the cradle of the split trunk.  The stone was a brilliant azure blue, and I remember seeing it and holding it and being in awe of it when I was a kid.  My Dad treasured that gemstone, and I wish with all my heart that I knew where it was. 

My father’s family were so poor that his parents couldn’t afford to feed all six of their children, so when my Dad was 17 years old, a deal was struck to foster him out to some neighbours, a rich family that lived just down the road.  Until then, my father had never even worn a pair of shoes.  So the pride that he took in his clothes later on in life makes total sense to me.  The couple that “adopted” my Dad were in their sixties and didn’t have any children, but they promised to secure him financially and to love him like their own.  The first few months went smoothly, and Dad helped them on their farm and generally did whatever was needed around the house.  He even used to drive the couple to church every week.  In a village where most families couldn’t even afford a bicycle, this was a big deal. 

After a while though, the couple started talking about weddings, suggesting that Kon marry their niece, but he wasn’t interested.  So the old guy started imposing a curfew, saying that my Dad (who was 19 years old by that time) had to be home by 10pm on Saturdays.  Obviously this was total bullshit and Kon justifiably stayed out until the wee hours of the morning that first weekend.  He did the same the weekend after.  And on the third weekend in a row that he came home late, he found the door to the house locked.  And that was it, that was the end of the deal.  That Sunday morning, his younger brothers and sisters woke up to find Kon sleeping on the floor next to their beds, and the whole family rejoiced that he was finally back where he belonged. 

Beloved siblings (Back row: Roula, Kon & Christos and Front row: Stavros, Sophia & Dimitra)

Kon Stathopoulos was a singularly brilliant man.  He pulled himself out of abject poverty in Greece, and created a whole new life for himself in Australia.  He completely rewrote his destiny.  My Dad was a dreamer and a big thinker!  Sure, he drove trucks, and then later taxis, but my Dad was too big to be a taxi driver forever.  He worked some shitty jobs to make ends meet, but in his spare time he was an enthusiastic entrepreneur.  Bow ties, light up yo-yos, silver screens for cars, decorative ceramic tiles.  He tried a whole bunch of innovative business ideas before finally starting his own company, Plastercraft Contractors. 

A one-man show, my Dad took solid plastering to the next level, turning it into an artform.  Within just a couple of years he had built such a great reputation in the industry that he was asked to singlehandedly restore the exterior of a large church in Ballarat.  He was also commissioned to create a new plaster cast emblem for the Red Eagle Hotel, in Albert Park, the very same bar where Kylie Minogue had her 21st birthday party!!!  He then landed the extremely exclusive job of re-designing and building the beautiful and iconic fountain at Government House in Victoria.  Every year on 26th January, Government House opens its doors to the public, and thousands of people get a chance to peek inside the stately home and to roam through the gardens.  There are also monthly tours of the 11 hectare garden which anyone can book, so why not go along on one of these tours and see for yourselves the amazing sculptural achievement created by my very own father. 

The construction phase.

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The standing ovation phase.

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The current phase.

Later on, due to the success of his business Dad expanded into larger scale projects like apartment building construction sites.  He often invited me to join him and earn a little bit of extra cash, and I once hit the jackpot, making $400 in one week being an elevator girl, asking big burly construction workers wearing hardhats, “Which floor?” for eight hours a day.  It was here that I first saw the man that my father had to be when he wasn’t with his family.  For the first time, I heard him casually throwing around words like, “fair dinkum”, “bloke”, “smoko”, and I even heard him say “fuck” a few times.  My brain exploded.  As a 21 year old I’d never heard my Dad swear at home, yet here he was cursing with such ease and regularity.  It was surprising, but also kind of nice, to discover this other side of Dad that I’d never seen before.  It added yet another dimension to him. 

My Dad left his mark on some pretty important buildings, but his passion project was building a holiday home for our family in Ancient Korinthos, in Greece.  The construction took him several years, and was (mostly) finished just before he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2002.  His dream was for the five of us to holiday there, as a family.  But tragically, he never lived to see that happen.  The house is still there, an empty monument to one man’s vision. 

Mum and Dad hard at work. Literally building their dream home.

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The dream. With Greece’s only Hill’s Hoist.

I have a cute little blue urn on my bedside table, which holds a little bit of my Mum’s ashes and a little bit of my Dad’s ashes all mixed together.  I thought that having my parents close to me when I sleep would provide me with some sense of closeness to them, like my Mum used to get from having Dad’s ashes near to her.  But I was wrong.  I get nothing from it, except an academic understanding that my Mum and Dad’s cremated remains are next to me when I’m in bed.  I have no response to it at all, emotionally.  Sometimes I’ll shake the urn, and listen to their bone fragments rattling inside.  I know what’s in there, I know that it’s them, but even so, there’s no connection to who they were when they were alive.  I wish there was. 

Hello Mum and Dad, it’s me, Chryss.

My Dad really shaped the first 32 years of my life.  His first job in Melbourne was in the inner-city suburb of Carlton.  So naturally my father was a Bluebagger.  Therefore I am a Bluebagger.  Dad inspired my love of tennis, and I played competitively for years, even aspiring to turn professional when I was sixteen.  He taught me all the tricks of how to play a solid game of backgammon.  When I was 15, he taught me how to drive a manual in a rusty old Land Rover on a hilly farm with no roads.  And once I’d mastered that, he took me to an abandoned industrial estate in Springvale to learn how to drive his crappy work van. The one with the dodgy clutch and the sticky column shift.  And once I could drive that, I could drive anything.  I’m pretty sure that the reason I love to throw epic parties (and I really do love to throw epic parties) is because I inherited my Dad’s passion for entertaining, and showing people a good time, and living large.  It’s funny, what gets passed down from father to child.  Being a sports fan can be one of those things.  Wanting things to be just right, might be another.  A house in Greece, another still.  But maybe a zest for life and knowing how to dream big are the most important things a man can pass on to his daughter. Thanks Dad.