The Wild Reed: Family Time in Guruk

Wednesday, July 09, 2025

Family Time in Guruk

I’m currently in my homeland of Australia where I’m spending time with my family – my mum in particular. As some reading this will already know, mum has recently had some health issues.

I noted previously that although she continues to make a good recovery from the stroke she experienced in April (just a day after my return to the U.S. after a month-long visit), mum has moved into the assisted-living hostel that’s part of the retirement village in Port Macquarie that’s been her home since 2013, first with dad and then, after his passing in 2019, on her own.

For the first half of my time here I was by myself at mum’s villa, visiting mum once or twice a day in the assisited-living hostel that’s walking distance from here. My sister-in-law, who lives with my brother about an hour-and-a-half south of Port Macquarie, has been doing a geat job at posting on Facebook Marketplace pictures and descriptions of the bigger items of furnitire that can’t fit in mum’s room at the hostel. I've been meeting people as they come to the villa to collect the items they’ve bought, oftentimes helping them load them into their vechile. The villa needs to be emptied and vacated by the end of July.

I've also been going through my own things that have been stored for years in mum’s garage, and organizing a small storage unit in town in which I’ll pay to have them safely kept moving forward.

As often as I can, I go to Shelly Beach or Town Beach and watch the sunrise. This continues to be a very grounding, very anchoring way to start each day.

I even saved a baby shark one morning! . . . The image at right of a young grey nurse shark at left is not mine; it is, however, a picture of the type of shark I came across on the morning of June 26 after it was stranded at low tide among rocks on Shelly Beach. Lifting and carrying this young shark by its tail, I brought it to the shallows and (as gently as I could) threw it into the sea. I’m happy to say that I soon spied its two fins cutting through the water before disappearing beneath the waves. It was clearly making its way back out to sea. 🦈

Above: Mum and her former neighbor Glynnis – Friday, June 27, 2025.

As I noted previously, I arrived in Guruk (aka Port Macquarie) at around noon on Saturday, June 21. After showering and freshing up at mum’s villa, I decided that before visiting mum in her new home, I would call in on her neighbor Glynnis who lived in the villa next door. I did so to thank her for the crucial role she played back in April in notifying my brother about her concerns for mum, whom she hadn’t seen for a number of days. Thanks to Glyniss, family and paramedics were able to come and get into mum’s villa, find her down and unconscious, and take her to the hospital.

Above: Mum being visited by her neice (my cousin) Sharon and Sharon’s spouse Ross – Friday, June 27, 2025.

Above and below: On the weekend of June 28-29, 2025, my aunt Ruth (mum’s younger sister) travelled by bus to Guruk from our hometown of Gunnedah. It was great to see and spend time with her.

Above and left: My neice, the award-winning author and illustrator Sami Bayly, at her booth at Port Macquarie’s annual ArtWalk, a “galactic night of creativity and wonder” – July 4, 2025.

Above and below: My nephew Brendan, who arrived from the United Kingdom (via China) to Guruk on Saturday, July 5. First thing the next day I took him to watch the sunrise on Shelly Beach.

Brendan’s staying with me at the villa, and together we’ve been going through and sorting stuff, visiting “grandma” everyday, helping make her new place more homey, and taking her out to lunch with her longtime Port Macquarie friends, something she hasn’t done since before her stroke in April.

Opening image and above and below: Family time in Guruk – July 2025.

Brendan’s older brother Ryan soon joined us in the villa with his two young sons, Ramy and Jake – my great-nephews and mum’s great-grandsons. They came all the way from Melbourne.

Above: Brendan and Ramy chattng with Glynnis in the warm winter sun – July 9, 2025.

Above: Jake, preparing what he called “frog soup” for his great-grandma, who, judging from her expression below, didn’t find it very appealing. 🤣

Above: Great-grandma is always a good sport, however, even to the point of happily posing with her beloved great grandsons and the “frog soup” they made for her.