Hola mis queridos amigos, hoy vamos a mirar hacia una historia de vida; Ebonee Gregory creció en un faro remoto de Tasmania. No había tiendas, bares e incluso ni colegio ni una biblioteca. Va a contarnos sus experiencias personales. Espero que os guste.
Info: from Speak Up magazine.
Photos: alamy.es / canstockphoto.es / oropesa.es
LIFE STORIES BY EBONEE GREGORY / I GREW IN A REMOTE LIGHTHOUSE.
My childhood home was an isolated island off the coast of Tasmania. You could walk from one end to the other in a day, but I wouldn't recommend it because of the deadly snakes you might meet on the way. There were three houses, one car, a satellite phone, an electricity generator, about seven beaches and a lighthouse -that was it. There were no shops or restaurants, no schools or hospitals, no public transport. There was no crime, and there was no police force. There were no strangers, only two families lived on the island, one of which was mine.
DAD'S JOB
My father was assistant lightkeeper, and his job was to help the head lightkeeper run and maintain the lighthouse and island. They would take turns each week, turning the light on every evening and off it in the morning, polishing the glass, taking weather readings, and drawing the curtains closed in the daytime to prevent a fire from the concentration of sunlight on the prisms. My father had been a fisherman for years, and when he spotted the job ad in a local paper, he and my mother saw this lifestyle as an adventure.
HOME DELIVERY
Our food was delivered by plane every two weeks, along with any post. If there was bad weather, the food deliveries would be postponed, and we'd have to manage with whatever tins we had left at the back of the cupboard. My father would go fishing for seafood in a little boat and my mother used to milk a goat; we grew our own vegetables, too. I wore clothes made by my mother.
SOLITUDE
I dind't have any friends. A picture of my second birthday party shows no other guests my age, just the two families on the island. The kids in the other family were my brother's age, so they would hang out together while I spent a lot of time on my own. I don't remember being bored, though.
I made my own fun. I remember playing on the white, sandy beches, sliding down the dunes. In later years, we moved to an even more isolated island surrounded by cliffs, and my younger sister and I would play at leaning into the wind, to see the angle we could reach without falling over, sometimes 45 degrees.
SCHOOL DAYS
I learned about the history of the islands, and was fascinated by the shipwrecks; the lightkeeper who fell off a cliff while herding his sheep, the gravesite for just two babies.
My mother was home-educated until I was five, but then we all moved to mainland Tasmania so we could go to school. It was my first time being around kids my age, but it was a small school, so I never felt overwhelmed. When I was a teenager, my family moved to another island, and I asked to be sent to boarding school. When I had to come home for weekends, I'd spend all my time on the phone to friends, wishing I was with them.
GETTING AWAY
Now I'm in my 30s. I find myself seeking out that sense of isolation. If my husband suggests a holiday, I always research sparsely populated destinations in Scotland or Scandinavia. When I was growing up, the only outside noise I heard was bird song, and the night was pitch black. When I camped in the garden with my brother one night, we saw a sky filled with stars.
LONDON LIFE
After studying fine art at university in Tasmania, I had office jobs for a few years before I decided to come to the UK for an adventure. Then I met my husband, so I am still here. London can be so overstimulating. When I first came over and started commuting, it was hard to believe that people in a first-world country earning good money could live like this.
MY SON
Our two-year-old son is growing up in a far more frenetic world than the one I knew. I want to see him learn to make his own entertainement. I hope he finds that sense of peace I had as a child, sliding down the dunes, happy in my own company.
But he will never experience the world I grew up in. The lighthouse I lived in have been decommissioned: my father was the last lightkeeper for each of them.
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VOCABULARY.
-THAT WAS IT: eso era todo.
-LIGHTKEEPER: farero.
-TIN: lata.
-TO MILK: ordeñar.
-GOAT: cabra.
-GUEST: invitado.
-TO HANG OUT: pasar el rato.
-TO SLIDE DOWN: deslizarse.
-CLIFF: acantilado.
-TO LEAN INTO THE WIND: inclinarse hacia delante contra el viento.
-SHIPWRECK: naufragio.
-TO FALL OFF: caer.
-GRAVESITE: cementerio.
-OVERWHELMED: abrumado.
-BOARDING SCHOOL: internado.
-SPARSELY: escasamente.
-PITCH BLACK: negro como la boca de un lobo.
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*WOULD YOU LIVE IN A LIGHTHOUSE?
*DO YOU LIKE ISOLATED PLACES?
*CAN YOU NAME SOME LIGHTHOUSES THAT YOU KNOW?
SEE YOU MY FRIENDS!
