Australia Fair? Is that on the Gold Coast?

We spent the Australia day holiday listening to the Triple J hottest One Hundred.

We also were invited to go out to a dam to go water skiing and other frivolity involving jet skis etc.

Now, we had spent a lovely morning listening to the J’s, eating a meat pie and some lamingtons, and waiting for the paddling pool to fill up with water (from the rainwater tank people, not town water, calm down.)

We watched the lorikeets eating the nectar from the bottle brush trees, fed the young kookaburras, who live in the Jacaranda out the back , some meat and shooed away the indian myna birds.

We discussed the implications of having Australia Day on a sat – and having all the shops open, then the holiday on the Monday, when they would be closed, rubbed in sunscreen and sang along with the radio.

Then we went out to the dam.

Now the boy who invited us is lovely, despite his upper middle class cotton farming boarding school up bringing, and we were looking forward to hanging out with him.

But he was there with a large group of people – of all ages – who did not get me AT ALL.

I mean AT ALL. Not just not a bit. Of course I was engaging in the conversations, throwing out witty one liners etc. No one laughed. (except my boyf and my mate – but that was more like sniggering)

I will give you and example:

Players in this scene…..

Girl – 19 thin quite obviously dyed blonde wearing Aust flag bikini
Boy – 22 tall well built, straight teeth, degree in Ag Science

He is – giving her shit for being a dumb blonde

Scene Begins:

Me (to her) – You should just work on the same theory as Dolly Parton

Her – whats that then?

Me – well when she was asked how she felt about being stereotyped at a dumb blonde, she replied “Well, firstly I know I’m not dumb, and secondly I know I’m not blonde….”


Beat

Her – but she is blonde

Beat

Me – Oh sweet heart, I can’t help you from here……


Yep. Now they were well meaning people, hospitable, accommodating.

But they just didn’t get it. And then I realised that now I work with people like me, and my friends and family are clever and funny – it has been awhile since I have been in a group of people who are like that.

So we only stayed for 2 hours, got back in the car, turned on the J’s had the top seven still to go, sang along, talked about what an appropriate prize for a silly contest would be (a golf umbrella and your name on the perpetual cup – kept at the CWA hall) – was horrified at the number one (muse? I mean – cheer up emo kid), and pretty much decided that if hanging out with each other is better than ok, then we are ok.

I hope waterskiing is not my calling.

Wagons Roll

I have been thinking recently about lovers past and present.

It probably has something to do with the house, and the fact it now seems as though I am committing to something for the next 30 years, which is pretty close to marriage when you think about it.

Firstly you have to find one you love. Now you might get lucky like I did, and it will be the first one you see. But most likely you will have to experience between 10 and twenty before you find the right one.

Then there is the phone calls to siblings/parents/influencers, telling them all about it, moments of doubt about wether you have made the correct choice, hearing stories from all and sundry about the things that happened before you came along, convincing yourself it will be different when you are there, picking bits that you want to keep ( and those you want to change).

Then all the paperwork, and the questions, and the planning, and then, when the deal is sealed, and it is all going ahead, crapping yourself because you appear to be in for the long haul.

But I am doing with someone who I finally feel will be there with me the whole way.

In the past 10 years the lovers, good and bad, have either walked two steps ahead, or two steps behind.

And as beautiful as they all have been, they have not been the sort that I thought – you know what, I could hook my wagon to this.

Which is, after all, the reason it has taken until now to do anything remotely grown up.

Although I still love them all, and probably always will, I have decided that not only could I hitch my wagon to this one, I have moved all the stuff out of the wagon, put it on eBay, sold the wagon itself to a German backpacker, and got on board on a whole different one!

Whilst all precautions have been taken to ensure a painless exit should the wagon say, break down, fall over a cliff or start taking on extra passengers (!), I really feel like the father in “The Children of the Oregon Trail” – headed off in a new direction, into the unknown, but knowing deep down, that it is the right thing to do.







Now – as long as I can avoid dying of dysentery……

There's No Place like Home (or even Toowoomba)

I'm buying a house.


I have started to talk about renovations.


I am trying to prepare myself to be very very poor - and not being able to flit off to another country when it all gets too hard.


(insert freak out here)