Lavende: A rare French connection

She lost her husband in a trucking accident when he was only 26 and she was a widow with four young children under six years in a foreign country.

A superb story-teller-cum-amateur actress, her hands flail about recalling an ill-starred, possessive Yugoslavian lover commanding her life until she met her second husband 30 years ago, Terry Wilkinson and they moved from Victoria to Adelaide and eventually to Nairne.

A Pentecostalist, Christine believes “God directed my life’’ through the Amplified Bible and she quotes from Deuteronomy Chapter 8, that the Lord would bring her “into a good land…. Of wheat and barley and vines and fig tress…a land of olive trees and honeys…where (she emphasises) “out of whose hills you would take copper’’.

That day,. Terry suggested a drive to “somewhere different’’ to Callington, once acopper mining town, where the road ended in a tangle of old cacti.

And verily, Christine’s eyes were opened because that was the first day she saw the old, delapidated police station.

“Oh look, they are so French those arched doors’’, and then I saw this big, faded “for sale’ sign under the hedge,’’ she recalls.

“The moment I saw it, I knew this was my destiny!’’

They spent years restoring it until a film crew from Postcards became lost and stayed to film the fieldstone building with its red brick quoinwork, concave verandah and barred cells.

“When tourist coaches started arriving, we thought, ‘Oh my goodness, they must have shown our home on the telly’,’’ says Christine.

“English cooking is so boring, but I thought I could make scones or soups,’’ she says, her hands whipping up excitement.

“But Terry will tell you he hasn’t got a scone-making woman, he has an entrepreneur, so I took the Larousse to bed each night (French cuisine dictionary). “I discovered French cuisine is totally creative.

“Passion for French food was my teacher… cooking with wine, cooking slowly…choosing the best ingredients.’’.

(There had been a funny incident earlier when my French-born husband in his thick accent had ordered the Poisson a la Provencal, from the menu board.

The waitress, who was new, had looked perplexed and asked “Is that a dessert?’’

“No, it’s fish,’’ he had replied to our chorus of laughter.)

Now Christine, robed in her white cook’s jacket, takes a breath, leans forward and says “Voila!’’ and declares with the flourish of a traffic cop “I feel French.’’

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