The Wild Reed: In Northern Rivers Country (August 29

Monday, November 18, 2019

In Northern Rivers Country (August 29 – September 31, 2019)

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It's been over three months now since my return from my August visit to Australia. High time, then, to conclude my documenting here at The Wild Reed of that important sojourn in the land of my birth.

I say "important" because as most reading this would know, this particular visit was precipitated by word of my father Gordon Bayly's sudden decline in health and his subsequent death on August 5, a day I never actually experienced as it was the day I "lost" as I traveled across the International Date Line to Australia from the U.S.

In this concluding post I share images and commentary on my time spent in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales. Here I visited my friends Mike and Bernie McGowan and a number of their adult children and their families. (I was last in Northern Rivers country four years ago, in March of 2015.)

Right: Clarence River Light, also known as Yamba Light or Clarence Head Light, is an active lighthouse located on Pilot Hill, Yamba, New South Wales, Australia, south of the entrance of the Clarence River. The current lighthouse was built in 1955, replacing a previous lighthouse built in 1880.

I first got to know the McGowan family in Goulburn, where Mike had been the principal of the primary school at which I taught from 1988-1993. Before relocating to the U.S. in 1994, I taught two of the McGowan children – Jeremiah (in 1989) and Tess (in 1992).

I’ve stayed friends with all the members of the family ever since our shared time in Goulburn, and I always try to catch up with as many of them as I can each time I visit Australia from the U.S. Mike and Bernie's second eldest son Raph visited and lived with me in the Twin Cities for a good part of 2004. He visited me again in the U.S. in 2011. Back in Australia in 2014, he cycled over 1900 kilometers in memory of his sister Tess and to raise awareness and funds for melanoma research and prevention. (For more about this inspiring achievement, click here, here, and here.)

Unfortunately Raph wasn't able to be in Northern Rivers country when I was there visiting his parents and sister Dominica at the end of August. Nor were sisters Mim and Collette. But Jeremiah, his wife Kristy, and their two children Frankie and Sonny, as well as the third McGowan brother, Iggy, and his partner Samantha, and her daughter Izzy, were all there, which was wonderful.

Above: Izzy and Frankie (front left) and then going around the table from left: Sam, Iggy, Jeremiah, Bernie, Dom, Mike, Kristy, and Sonny – Maclean, New South Wales, Saturday, August 31, 2019.

Above and below: The McGowans are one of a number of families, both in Australia and the U.S., in which I am welcomed and loved as a member. And, yes, I am incredibly grateful for this! For one thing, each and every member is a very beautiful and special person and I feel honored to know them and be inspired by them and their life journeys.