Sunday scribblings "Disconected"

G'Day
The Sunday Scribblings prompt for this week is "Disconnected".
The blog writer Granny Smith was the first entry in this weeks prompt with the sad news that her beloved husband Otto has passed away suddenly. All of the Sunday Scribblings people know her and the extraordinary life that she and her Otto have lived together and I wish to tell her that my heart goes out to her at this difficult time. Dear Granny.
This got me thinking about being disconnected. I thought more along the lines of being disconnected from the things that you love than the things we depend on like power and shelter and sustenance for existence.
I have a friend who has always felt disconnected to where she lives. She is almost in tears every time she brings up the subject. She is from Tasmania where it is green and cool and lush for the larger part of the year and she married a farmer who lives on a dry, flat, drought ravaged farm in the western Riverina. She has been married to the same man for many years, bore him children and lived on the land with him there but she always said that it is not home to her and the antitheses of where she belongs. I guess on on level I can't understand this because I have moved around all of my life and had to learn that a home is not a place where you belong but the sum f the people who live there. But then I think of my beloved Murrumbidgee river where I feel I belong and wonder about that. I am sort of connected to that area. My land, a part of it, where I was born and spent the most years of my life. No I don't own the land there but I feel at home there. The familiar towns and names and places. The smell of the earth and it's colours and plants.
On another level I am disconnected from my children who are living in Wagga.I am going there this afternoon after lunch. A 3 hour drive and my first drive of the new car we brought last week. My daugther is sick and having surgery tomorrow.She needs to urgently have her gall bladder removed because it is diseased and causing complications with her pancreas. Nasty, you can't live without a pancreas, but you can without a gall bladder. I will bring her back here after the operation for a while until she feels better and ready to go back to uni in Wagga.
Another thing that the prompt this week made me think of was being disconnected to your culture.
I thought of the Australian artist Albert Namatjira from the Hermansberg region of the Northern Territory. I think he died in the year I was born or shortly afterwards. Anyway he lived on a mission up there and was taught to paint his own adaption of the European style of landscapes from the area. The style is very different to what traditional aboriginal style arts are. It is a style that speaks to my heart though, with his special depiction of the flora, landscape and colour of the Australian outback of the area.( An area I knew something of from my childhood living in Darwin. When I moved back south with my parents the trees and colours from up there stayed with me.) He became very famous for his work, sharing and teaching other members of his clan and family, similar style art. He was swept up and along in the art world and out of his country to exhibit in Melbourne which was so foreign to him. He suffered in his health with the change from a traditional diet and life style to the white man's way of life and he paid dearly for it. It resulted in heart disease and diabetes. So so sad to lose your culture like that. His daughter Maisie married a man called Benjamin Landara who also became a painter in the same style and I have one of his water colours. I found it in a second hand shop for $20 and couldn't believe what I had found. It, like Albert's work was aimed at the tourist maket of teh time. Albert's teacher was a bloke called Rex Battersby and I am sure he wrote the book about the artist that I got my info about Albert from. It has been many years since I read it, so I hope I remember it correctly.
Albert was disconnected from his country and his culture and paid the price..
I had better get a move on and on the road to Wagga.
Please google Albert Namatjira and have a look at some of his paintings.
Bye.
Love Linda.