Growing up on a sheep farm in country NSW forty minutes from Yass on The Lachlan River, I dreamed of celebrating Halloween. I’d catch my bus home after school, watching the “town” kids all dressed up trick or treating with their friends. I wanted so badly to be part of it that even now I get a little giddy this time of year.

This festival that worships all things scary has become a celebration of community spirit and family in our little village on the peninsula. All week, as we have completed our Halloween Craft we’ve watched as houses around us have put up their decorations. For the most part, these ghosts and ghouls are also handmade which adds to the feeling of it all so unlike the glitz of Christmas around the corner.

The biggest event around these parts is the Nicholson Street School Halloween Party. In its 19^th year, this fete is scary on steroids. Parents let loose and prepare for weeks huge fleshy pumpkins , floating headless ghost women, trees filled with spider webs and hanging bats. Stalls with freakish delights waiting for the littles to close their eyes and plunge their hands into the gooey goodness that awaits their groping fingers and lucky dips that are almost too gross to attempt. Almost.

I know how she feels

pumpkins blowing in the wind

 

Brushing spiderwebs from our hair for hours

Tonight we don our costumes and head out into our community. Mossy will  be Trick or Treating with the kids, while I hand out lollies from our front porch which is dressed for the occasion in paper chains and ghosts. Wine in hand of course. Our piece de resistance,  our jac-o-lantern sits centre stage as I say a little thanks under my breath that I got what I always wanted, my Halloween.

Dorothy & Toto

our finally completed Jac-o-lantern!

 

a gang of ghosts