This morning I got to thinking about something that happened to me last year, it crosses my mind occasionally, I don’t know why it just does! So if I tell you about it now it might help me clear whatever it is up.
In February of 2007 my brother and I went over East to
When we rocked up we went for a walk around, and singing in front of the open microphone crowd was one of my favorite people Dave Prior. A country musician, great poet and radio station guru.
I got inspired to go on stage but I didn’t have a guitar and had a few butterflies. This cute old guy came up to me and he seemed to be one of the organizers so he helped me find a girl to lend me a guitar and he pushed me on stage.
I did two of my own ballads and the crowd loved it, I was so thrilled! It was my first time singing in front of a non Western Australian crowd. Afterwards that guy came up to me and introduced himself as Ray. I couldn’t remember his name off the top of my head so I dubbed him “Ray from Charlegrark”. I gave him my name, address and phone numbers.
He said he liked that I sang in a relaxed Aussie country style like Sara Storer and could he send me some of his poetry for me to turn to song for him. I agreed even though I had never done that before.
Ray called me a few times over the next few months and we chatted a little but I hadn’t done more with his poetry than listened to it. I was annoyed at myself but time kept slipping away.
Nearly six months later we started having this beautiful hawk like bird hang around our backyard. We identified it as a Swamp Harrier, a bird more commonly found in cooler wet climates as they generally live on fish and small animals. I got a great photo of him.
That was one weird thing that happened, the other was that not many people had my home phone number so I hardly used it as a phone and it was permanently in the back of my dial-up computer. One day I bought a fax machine for my home business and switched to ADSL so my phone line was free.
I just happened to be walking past the phone at one point as it rang, normally I don’t answer it in case of telephone marketers but in that instant I did.
I heard “Is that… Anita”? I replied “yes” and the lady nearly burst into tears on the other end of the phone, she was the sister of Ray. Ray passed away a few weeks before hand and she was going through his paperwork looking for poems, she found a note by his phone saying “Call Anita in Meekatharra” that’s all it said but it stood out to her. Judy didn’t know how to contact any Anita’s in Meekatharra and so she started going through books.
In despair she sat down at her kitchen table and her elbow knocked a book off the table onto the floor and the page opened up at my details. In shock she phoned me, and just happened to catch me. We both agreed that it was divine intervention.
During the phone call we chatted for ages about Ray, he had passed away from Liver damage, and years before there was a house fire which burnt a lot of his poems. Judy was calling to see if I happened to have any of Ray’s poems that they might not have had. I didn’t, only the cd he sent me of a radio production which she already had.
She had found a few poems laying around but without any names attached and so she asked me if I thought they were his, they were beautiful talking about women battlers in the Australian bush, everything Ray was passionate about so I told Judy that I believed they were his, that made her really happy as if Ray was talking to her through them.
In the chat I learnt that Ray was a huge fan of birds and was always paying attention to them. That makes me believe that the Swamp Harrier was Re incarnate or a messenger or something, it was definitely strange to have that beautiful bird here in the desert so far from its natural environment.
I believe all this came about to remind me to write the songs in Ray’s honor, I still haven’t had time but I do believe these things happen when they are meant to. I will try and put some of his poems on here at one stage for you all to hear.
Thanks Ray for being a part of my life, even after death!
Hmmm! Before I finish this story, there’s another weird thing happening right now, just as I’ve been writing this it’s been raining! Not a normal occurrence.
Do you all believe in angels???
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