When a Dream Becomes Reality

What would you do if you walked into a house you never knew existed and realised you were actually standing in the middle of a recurring dream you have been having for nearly 40 years?

But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

First, let me tell you a bit about me. My name is Gale Collins and I was born in the mid-west of America and, at 40 years of age, I left the States behind and came to live in Australia.

Gale’s high school graduation

What makes an American woman migrate to Australia at that age – love, of course!

I fell in love with an Aussie man, my husband Roger, who said he would never want to live in the States. This didn’t concern me in the least – I was ready to go out and see the world. So Roger and I married in England in 1988 and with my three children, Walker, Jenny and Jill, became a family. We came back to Australia the following year, and set up our home in Sydney.

Now, back to my recurring dream.

Roger and Gale

It wasn’t till 2004, while we were on holidays in the NSW outback, that this strange and inexplicable dream I have had since I was a young girl finally made sense to me. What an indescribable feeling it was, seeing the beautiful light from my dream, as it streamed gently and warmly around my body.

Lightning Ridge, a most unlikely place, had been calling me all my life and finally I was here – standing with Roger inside a home made of 14,000 glass bottles.  A place with no electricity and no running water.  But a place built with the love, dedication and sheer bloody-mindedness of a profoundly deaf cancer survivor in her 60s.

Gale inside the Black Queen

And it was for sale.

Nothing about the situation made much sense – but at the same time, everything made sense. I knew I was home.

Then and there we decided to buy the home, called the Black Queen after the town’s famous opal, and we have been living in and lovingly restoring it, opening it up for all to enjoy, ever since.

Have you had a similar experience, where a dream or vision suddenly becomes a real- life situation? I’d love to hear about it!