As I enter the house the smell of antiquity hits me.

The walls are lined with photos from a time long turned to dust and history books.

She is frail, time is extracting its price one day at a time.

She tells me she has bones turning to chalk, and jokes about her osteoporosis.

I try to tell her that her type of air-conditioning unit is not suitable for the trial.

But she starts to tell me about a dream.

She dreams of winning the lotto and going home, "I wish to leave this god forsaken place, if that boat that landed us in Fremantle had turned back around and gone back to England I would have been on it! ''

They were migrants.

She tells me how much she wants to go home to Cornwall. Home to England.

Her eyes glaze over and she smiles as she recounts her life in England and her travels in Europe. Rome, Italy, France, Germany...

How we travelled by train "oh the sites".

She talks as though her husband is sitting next to her, the photos and war medals on shrine like display tell another story and I feel a twinge of sadness.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

She tells me that it's her birthday on Monday, that it will be four years since they said goodbye to their son.

It's a slow and strained walk but she has followed me outside and down to the gate, imparting advice the whole way down on driving and staying safe.

"No parent should have to bury their children."

She tells me on her birthday she will be getting radiation treatment for cancer in her lungs, it's from the cancer she had in her breast - not the cancer that was in her stomach.

She tells me that she has to go in everyday and then laughs saying they will give her the weekends off though. 

I wish her happy birthday for next week and tell her that I hope everything goes well.

She's to be 96 next week, her doc said there's a chance she won't make 97.

I get in my car, put my stuff away and back out the driveway.

She's still at the gate, there's a look on her face that paints a picture.

To have lived for so long, so rich a life only to fade away alone and so far from home.

She didn't care what I was there for, she just wanted someone to talk to.

My work in the hills - November 24, 2011