It is time to say goodbye to the many things I enjoyed about Dondingalong . I loved the sweep of the gums throughout the gullies , and those native plants and animals that excited me when I found a new one , as I inevitably did when I made my rounds of the block, As I walked over to check tthe Christmas trees transplanted from their decorative Christmas pots , for instance , I looked up to find a giant elkhorn fern growing on a nearby casuarina . It contrasted with tiny delicate maidenhair ferns down in the almost rain forest like area below the dam , where there were also huge vines of clematis .

For everything large there was something as a tiny balance . The giant redgum at the extreme end of the block was always a favourite of mine to visit , and nearby there were the long spindly native hibiscus trees with their delicate white flowers with deep purple throats . There were native lillipillis to balance the blueberry ash and the new strain of lillipilli with the magenta leaves that I planted . The silky oaks , ( the natural grevillea robusta ), made a background to all the varying types of grevilleas I planted , and the wonga vines were delicate natives in comparison to my more robust plantings of them .

I wonder how the Moreton Bay figs , and the bunyas are going now.

Leaving the block was , alas , a necessity . The labour involved was good for the body , the contemplation of the rural beauty was good for the soul , but harsh economic necessity , combined with family concerns , led us to decide that it had to go .

We found a good estate agent who looked like Blackbeard without an eyepatch , and who informed us , half joking , that he had been a used car salesman . He won my heart on both counts.

For a while it looked as if the market would be very slow , but the agent did a good job on advertising and on showing the place while we were in Sydney . Finally a Queenslander who liked the place turned up .He has since added to the house ( sending us pictures of what he has done ) , changed a lot of the orchard , and gone in for chooks and vegetables in a way I could not .

He paid a fair price for it , and though we didn't make a profit on the sale , we broke even in cash money . We were , however , well ahead in having had a wonderful life experience .

A lot of the furniture was taken down to Wauchope by our son, a lot of the rest was dropped off by the removalists at the house at Tanilba Bay , still more distributed among the family , and the final small items stored in our garage at Coogee .

We used the money from the sale , together with some of the money from the sale of our Coogee unit , to make up the purchase price of our present unit , which is not far from the Olympic and Bicentennial Parks . The area here has the great advantage of now being developed almost as a small village with all conveniences . The departure from the North Coast was indeed a bit of a wrench , but our new home is highly satisfactory . Not the least of its advantages is that it is not only closer to our grandchildren , but is also within ten minutes of a large hospital , which is getting to be a necessity for me.

So , do I have any regrets ? Of course I do ! I loved the place , but I am in the end a realist , who understands only too well the impossibility of one such as myself being able to spend my last days out in the bush .

I will never see the place again , as I believe it would be a terrible error to go back to see what someone else has done with my pride and joy , But I wish him the very best of luck .

And I do have such a wonderful store of memories , with a real sense of having accomplished something that I would never have dreamed I could do.