The Old Eltham Post Office

  My Brilliant Career I grew up by a river, a big and very beautiful river. I wrote an ode to it in later years… ”Light rolling, rippling river of light, your waters washed us in our youth, that baptism now reveals a truth. To June and Lou whose time was not in vain, that constant fall of steady rain has cleansed us of all time-worn pain, and now that ripple has become a flop a loving source of life and blood……  I literally lived for the river, leapt about crazily on it’s smooth round rocks in the heat of summer and swam in it’s dark and mysterious depths. Diving down into pools and wondering at the flow and beauty and depth. I “knew” it so well on an elemental level and its light rippling waters in the rapids. My mother had suggested to my father in the early 1950’s that with a growing family why wouldn’t they move out to her Paternal Grandfather’s house in Upper Hutt. It was on several acres of land and a grand old estate known as “Gatehouse”. I was eternally grateful to her...