Dad’s in his Workshop
My Floating Childhood was Anchored in Leadlight and Woodwork
Dad’s in his Workshop — All’s right with the World
My family traveled and moved a lot (over great distances) as we grew up. We lived in many homes, but the constants in all these homes were always a sewing table in the lounge room and a workshop out the back or under the house. I write about my mum quite a bit because I still sometimes reach for the space that she left when she passed, but I rarely mention my dad. Because, well, — he’s always there.
My mother used to get restless and go ‘walkabout’. She’d take her car and go places. Sometimes she took us, kids, with her. Sometimes for weeks on end. And when we got back; Dad would be there.
In my last year of high school, my brothers and I were in boarding schools (different schools all three of us, and two of us in Australia). We returned that term to our Island home, to find that our mother had bought a house elsewhere. Well, my parents had bought a business, in another town 200km away; but it was clear that the business was my mother’s, as was the home where our dad dropped us off. He sat in the car and did not come in with us. And there was no workshop.
To see the World in a Grain of Wood
I returned to Australia, and the following year I did not go back, not for many years. All of nineteen, I was still ‘up north’, going to college, working at a women's hostel, and living in a tiny flat of my own; which I absolutely loved. It was one half of a split Queenslander with golden floorboards. Sparsely furnished, with a little square picnic table with two fold-up chairs (all wood, of course). My flatmate and I both had mattresses on the floor for beds, but that close to the beach; we were in paradise. As I lay on my floor bed, tracing with my fingers, the sunbeams coming through the leadlight windows — I knew that angels danced in the grains of wood.
It's only now that I realize, that I chose my first flat, with the leadlight windows and grain in the woodwork because of my dad. Even then, he didn't get my conscious acknowledgment, because he was always there.
Rosewood by any other Name…
A few years later, my dad moved back to Australia, bringing my younger brothers with him. I had made my way down to Melbourne by then, so, once again, I had a family home to go visit. Of course, there was a workshop under the house; grander and more established than all previous workshops (with a pool room, a cellar, and bar attached), because it was now, a house of men. And it was wonderfully stocked with timber because Dad had shipped everything back, packed in crates made from two exotic timbers from the islands; Kwila and Rosewood.
Still living in twenty-something share houses then, I asked Dad to make me a kitchen table. After politely eating a meal off his lap, he agreed.
I got my kitchen table and it was a hit with all who sat at it. I have so many memories of important conversations, friendships made, meals shared, art created, exams studied for, essays written, games played, food prepared; if you have a dear kitchen table, you know how it is.
About a decade ago, my dad and his partner moved again and built another house on a large property close to the state border. As this is the home of his twilight years (he turned seventy last month), they planned carefully to get things exactly as they wanted (straw bale, solar passive, single-level, open plan with plenty of hobby space, etc). Dad’s workshop is now housed in a country-sized shed (it’s basically a warehouse).
When I called him today to talk to him about writing this, he told me there was now an international ban on felling and trading rosewood. (It's listed in the appendices of CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora ). So, he said; my table and sigarap had more value than I thought.
He’s wrong — I know the value of things my dad makes for me.
Thank you, ScienceDuuude for inviting me here to Wood Workers of the World Unite!!! If anyone else wants an invite — you’ve got one in here:
