So we arrived in at Lesley and James' house in Maclean late, of course.... Got there about 10 to 6, just in time for hugs and hellos all round, followed by beer in hand and the news on the TV - had to see if we were on it after being filmed in Port Macquarie and we were!!! On the TV in Australia!!! Kids were well impressed.
As soon as we arrived, James (junior), Will, Ella and Caitlin formed a Gang of Four and disappeared off to get up to gang-like shenanigans. They weren't seen much in the next three days. The adults decided that there was nothing else for it but to drink - quite a lot, actually, which seemed like a good idea at the time! As you can see, Phoebe joined in with the beer... And yes, that is a beer cooler/stubby holder with boobies.
They're classy, those Aussies...
Spent a very long evening catching up on old times - haven't seen L and J since before they left the UK 18 months ago (funnily enough, that involved drinking too) and we managed to convince ourselves that really we hadn't changed much since our university days. Yeah, right...
Loved Les and James's house - green and lush surroundings, verandah most of the way round for watching the local wildlife, and across the road from the primary school, where their daughter Caitlin starts in January. Not likely to be an arduous walk to school in the mornings! Also loved being out of the van for a few days - although we slept in the van at night, it was great to have a bit more space to relax in - and other adults to talk to!
Discovered that Maclean has a long-running rivalry with Glen Innes in NSW about which town is the most Scottish - well, I can tell you all that from our point of view, Maclean wins hands-down - every single lamppost in the town is painted with a different tartan and her is a picture of me with mine - for anyone who doesn't know, my maiden name was Russell...
Just as an aside, the Spar in Maclean also has a Visitors' Book. And loads of people write in it. To be fair, I think it's more a Visitors' Book for Maclean, rather than one where you can record your innermost thought abour Spar per se (Lovely buns, please could you stock alphabetti spagetti etc), but I was tickled by it - never been in a supermarket quite like it before...
Anyway, the next day (in spite of niggling hangovers) we headed off to Maclean's outdoor pool - didn't really expect what we got in a town of 2000 people - an olympic size main pool, huge kids' pool and a water slide... So Les and James, remind me again why you like living in this friendly, lush, tropical riverside town with great amenities?
Can't remember what else we did that day, but I am sure the evening involved James barbecuing on the deck - I can say this with some certainty as I have the picture to prove it. I'm willing to bet the evening also involved beers. I don't have the pictures to prove this, either mental or photographic, but it would seem like a fair assumption.
Next day was baking hot, so we hid indoors - in this picture Les is getting ready to bake a quiche which involved a fair bit of preparation... and was sadly doomed from the start, but more about that later. Note more beers on the table...
We decided to soak the children in lieu of another pool trip (and obviously so we didn't have to travel too far from beer central) and once they were wet and cool, we decided to soak them again - this time in the bath....I'm not sure whether it had any actual effect on their dirt levels, but they had fun!
You'll gather that there are no water restrictions in Northern NSW. It was so nice to be able to turn a hose on the kids as we just can't do this in Geelong - in theory, we can't even fill a paddling pool in the garden, unless we do it with bathwater... And it was so great to see green again - it really brought home to us how brown Geelong is.
So, Les popped the quiche in the oven and off we went out to dinner in Yamba, about 15 minutes down the road on the coast. Great laid-back restaurant with a huge climbing playpark onsite for the kids - which of course made for a laid-back dinner for the parents! And more beer...
So we headed back to Maclean, and as I was getting out the van back in Les and James' driveway, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye... And there, perched on the side moulding of the van door was the biggest spider I had ever seen. Now, let me say up front that (a) I don't mind spiders in the slightest and (b) I had been warned about Huntsman spiders and how big they were. Fine, thought I, a really big spider, but Huntsmans are not poisonous, so I figured seeing one really wouldn't bother me. What I was not prepared for was the ... well, meatiness of it. I mean, a good butcher could have gone to town on it. And it was sort of hairy - grey, unnattractive hairy like a rat with eight legs. So I very gingerly, very quietly got out the van and shouted on Nick to come and see it, which he did, and then I left him in sole charge to go and get Les, James and a suitable removal container.
This was a Very Bad Idea. By the time I got back outside to the van, Nick had lost the spider. Conversation went somewhat as follows:
'Where is it?'
'Ummm - I dunno'
'You what? (Voice rising)'
'Ummm - I turned around to speak to the children and...'
'You did what? (Voice becoming hysterical)'
'I turned ar...'
'So where 's the bloody spider?' (voice now stratospheric)
'Well, it went across the back of the seats and then I lost it'
'INSIDE THE VAN?????????? INSIDE THE VAN?????????? WELL YOU'D BETTER FIND IT OR I'M NOT SLEEPING IN THAT VAN AGAIN.'
So James, armed with a flip flop, and Nick, armed with the knowledge that he would be spending a lonely night in the van with only Helga the Huntsman for company, set off hunting in manly fashion.
I went inside, where Lesley was surveying the charred remains of a once-promising quiche. Something to do with new oven, unfamiliar timer and leaving the house in a rush, but I can confirm that a quiche which has spent four hours in a hot oven is, in fact, beyond consumption.
Within minutes, the boys had done the job and Helga was no more. I really wanted to take a picture of the beastie, but poor Helga had had such a furious flip-flopping that she wasn't the creature she used to be... I did spend a reasonable amount of time inspecting the remains to be sure they had, in fact, once been a spider, and weren't part of some cunning ruse dreamed up by the boys to get an early night...
So off we all went to bed, drama over, and can I just say, I'm really proud of the way I kept my cool during the whole event, never once becoming hysterical or unreasonable...
Sadly, the next day it was time to pack up and get going again - not without a tinge of sadness. It was great to catch up with old friends, great to do not very much for a few days and great to see Maclean. But all good things come to an end, and we had more catching up with old friends to do in Queensland.
First though, a photo opportunity for gratuitous flag waving atop Maclean's lookout point... Nice eh?
As soon as we arrived, James (junior), Will, Ella and Caitlin formed a Gang of Four and disappeared off to get up to gang-like shenanigans. They weren't seen much in the next three days. The adults decided that there was nothing else for it but to drink - quite a lot, actually, which seemed like a good idea at the time! As you can see, Phoebe joined in with the beer... And yes, that is a beer cooler/stubby holder with boobies.They're classy, those Aussies...
Spent a very long evening catching up on old times - haven't seen L and J since before they left the UK 18 months ago (funnily enough, that involved drinking too) and we managed to convince ourselves that really we hadn't changed much since our university days. Yeah, right...
Loved Les and James's house - green and lush surroundings, verandah most of the way round for watching the local wildlife, and across the road from the primary school, where their daughter Caitlin starts in January. Not likely to be an arduous walk to school in the mornings! Also loved being out of the van for a few days - although we slept in the van at night, it was great to have a bit more space to relax in - and other adults to talk to!
Discovered that Maclean has a long-running rivalry with Glen Innes in NSW about which town is the most Scottish - well, I can tell you all that from our point of view, Maclean wins hands-down - every single lamppost in the town is painted with a different tartan and her is a picture of me with mine - for anyone who doesn't know, my maiden name was Russell...Just as an aside, the Spar in Maclean also has a Visitors' Book. And loads of people write in it. To be fair, I think it's more a Visitors' Book for Maclean, rather than one where you can record your innermost thought abour Spar per se (Lovely buns, please could you stock alphabetti spagetti etc), but I was tickled by it - never been in a supermarket quite like it before...
Anyway, the next day (in spite of niggling hangovers) we headed off to Maclean's outdoor pool - didn't really expect what we got in a town of 2000 people - an olympic size main pool, huge kids' pool and a water slide... So Les and James, remind me again why you like living in this friendly, lush, tropical riverside town with great amenities?
Can't remember what else we did that day, but I am sure the evening involved James barbecuing on the deck - I can say this with some certainty as I have the picture to prove it. I'm willing to bet the evening also involved beers. I don't have the pictures to prove this, either mental or photographic, but it would seem like a fair assumption.
Next day was baking hot, so we hid indoors - in this picture Les is getting ready to bake a quiche which involved a fair bit of preparation... and was sadly doomed from the start, but more about that later. Note more beers on the table...
We decided to soak the children in lieu of another pool trip (and obviously so we didn't have to travel too far from beer central) and once they were wet and cool, we decided to soak them again - this time in the bath....I'm not sure whether it had any actual effect on their dirt levels, but they had fun!
You'll gather that there are no water restrictions in Northern NSW. It was so nice to be able to turn a hose on the kids as we just can't do this in Geelong - in theory, we can't even fill a paddling pool in the garden, unless we do it with bathwater... And it was so great to see green again - it really brought home to us how brown Geelong is.So, Les popped the quiche in the oven and off we went out to dinner in Yamba, about 15 minutes down the road on the coast. Great laid-back restaurant with a huge climbing playpark onsite for the kids - which of course made for a laid-back dinner for the parents! And more beer...
So we headed back to Maclean, and as I was getting out the van back in Les and James' driveway, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye... And there, perched on the side moulding of the van door was the biggest spider I had ever seen. Now, let me say up front that (a) I don't mind spiders in the slightest and (b) I had been warned about Huntsman spiders and how big they were. Fine, thought I, a really big spider, but Huntsmans are not poisonous, so I figured seeing one really wouldn't bother me. What I was not prepared for was the ... well, meatiness of it. I mean, a good butcher could have gone to town on it. And it was sort of hairy - grey, unnattractive hairy like a rat with eight legs. So I very gingerly, very quietly got out the van and shouted on Nick to come and see it, which he did, and then I left him in sole charge to go and get Les, James and a suitable removal container.This was a Very Bad Idea. By the time I got back outside to the van, Nick had lost the spider. Conversation went somewhat as follows:
'Where is it?'
'Ummm - I dunno'
'You what? (Voice rising)'
'Ummm - I turned around to speak to the children and...'
'You did what? (Voice becoming hysterical)'
'I turned ar...'
'So where 's the bloody spider?' (voice now stratospheric)
'Well, it went across the back of the seats and then I lost it'
'INSIDE THE VAN?????????? INSIDE THE VAN?????????? WELL YOU'D BETTER FIND IT OR I'M NOT SLEEPING IN THAT VAN AGAIN.'
So James, armed with a flip flop, and Nick, armed with the knowledge that he would be spending a lonely night in the van with only Helga the Huntsman for company, set off hunting in manly fashion.
I went inside, where Lesley was surveying the charred remains of a once-promising quiche. Something to do with new oven, unfamiliar timer and leaving the house in a rush, but I can confirm that a quiche which has spent four hours in a hot oven is, in fact, beyond consumption.
Within minutes, the boys had done the job and Helga was no more. I really wanted to take a picture of the beastie, but poor Helga had had such a furious flip-flopping that she wasn't the creature she used to be... I did spend a reasonable amount of time inspecting the remains to be sure they had, in fact, once been a spider, and weren't part of some cunning ruse dreamed up by the boys to get an early night...
So off we all went to bed, drama over, and can I just say, I'm really proud of the way I kept my cool during the whole event, never once becoming hysterical or unreasonable...
Sadly, the next day it was time to pack up and get going again - not without a tinge of sadness. It was great to catch up with old friends, great to do not very much for a few days and great to see Maclean. But all good things come to an end, and we had more catching up with old friends to do in Queensland.
First though, a photo opportunity for gratuitous flag waving atop Maclean's lookout point... Nice eh?
No comments:
Post a Comment