Billalooa Farm

My family history writing career began here, at Yea. In the late 1980s my former husband and I  bought a very dry and very bare paddock of just under 150 acres. Apart from the large tree immediately behind the house, the tree in the bottom left corner and the trees in the grazing paddocks beyond the house, everything you see in this picture (house, sheds, fences, garden, dam, pump house, etc) was our creation. Hence the property's name - Billalooa Farm - combining our given names into an Australian-sounding place. My special love was the garden, which I designed and mostly planted-out. It was a struggle to keep it going during Victoria's long drought. This picture was taken a few years ago, before the plentiful rainfall of recent seasons.

Now, at South Melbourne, spring is here again and the bluebells are flowering. My gardening efforts are on a much smaller scale these days - leaving much more time for writing.