The Pocket

"The Pocket", we used to tell visitors trying to find us, is between Middle Pocket and Main Arm. Okay?

South of the New South Wales-Queensland border, south of Murwillumbah, where the Great Dividing Range runs right to the coast and where the tropical and temperate weather patterns collide, so that the weather sometimes changes as you walk from one window to the next, is some idyllic country, of which we have fond memories, of life from later 1985 to late 1987 - and where we still have some very special friends.

We went there when Dennis fell sick in China, with a stress-related metabolic disorder, not really understood in those days. The idea of treating it by going to the countryside, engaging in hard work, on hillsides, in a very changeable climate, with cows, in a tick quarantine zone where the cattle had to be dipped every two weeks through summer in dips with many decades of mixed pesticides in them, while also being bitten by ticks, etc., was interesting, but entirely unconstructive, healthwise. But it was beautiful and we hanker after it.

We started out with very modest accommodation, and had extensions built.

Here are miniatures of two paintings of our house (with the white roof) in The Pocket, by Edwin Reid, a local artist.
The picture with the sky and the peak of Mount Chincogan
(one corner of our property was at the pointiest pointy bit - there were actually remnants of fencing there!)
is the view to the southeast.

and to the right is the view to the northwest

Margaret, of course, chaired the local pre-school management committee,
and after the record flood of 1987 that went through the pre-school,
Margaret's flood relief submission to the state government authorities ("Gee it's nice to get a clear submission")
got instant action.