Anniversary the 10th: A Bisaster of Epic Proportions Pt5

Welcome back to the stunning conclusion to our tawdry tale of woe-begotten wallies. In this the final double-episode there will be revelations, intimations and in the end abrogation of aspirations as we let go of our desire to break out of the rut of 15 years solid routine and settle back into the comfortable buttock-groove of our sedentary natures.

Without further ado let's jump right into the first part of our finale:
Episode 5: Reasonable Precautions (plus Tea-time for Hitler)

Gathering up the small amount of luggage I had brought up to the house before the revelation of the brown water, we returned to the car, loaded up and, leaving the key under the BBQ hood, set out one final time in search of shelter, arriving finally, after 18-odd hours, at the place which we would call home for... well for a fairly short period of time at this point. As we pulled into the driveway next door I was once more struck by the beauty one can find in the absence of filthy, spider-infested trees.

The house was directly opposite the driveway and only minimally encroached by tree. It was a single story, wooden affair with a large central living, dining & kitchen area separating wings to the left and right; each containing 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and an en suite off one of the bedrooms. Best of all the Port Wing (in the absence of any idea of the direction the house was aligned to I'm going nautical) was that closest to the car park and virtually devoid of tree or shrubbery. We quickly decided upon sleeping in this section of the house and shunning the Starboard and, no-doubt, incursion-threatened wing. After checking all windows and ensuring all were closed and locked, I went back out to the car (which I had temporarily parked outside the house in the shade of the many-tree'd - but noticeably webless - section of the grounds) and began bringing in the luggage for what I prayed would be the last time.

While I was about this, Mari and Josie had the opportunity to begin exploring the house in greater detail and what wonders they did find. Firstly while the original house had been very modern-looking and very well kept, this house had an air of being much more "purpose-built". The purpose being to get a good return on investment rather than premium experience for the occupants. The floors were of varnished particle board (and pretty thin particle board at that) over joists raised above the ground. The kitchen wasn't yet completed; the gaping hole in the floor-cabinets awaiting the dishwasher that was surely on order and the skirting missing from one section of wall. The rough, unfinished wooden pillar in the middle of the living area featured a light-switch which did nothing (the 10 cent piece sized hole in the floor at its foot mute evidence of the vagaries of building contractors in the area or at least their electrician sub-contractors) and the double beds in the two main bedrooms turned out to be two singles pushed together.

Additionally the lighting while plentiful, was rather ineffective. After turning on all the lights I could find (about 12 would you believe in the living area alone) the place was only marginally brighter than your average coal mine. Looking out the back sliding, glass doors I found an enormous window complete with glass and metal frame leaning up against the back of the building and a bunch of half used paint tubs, bricks and other building errata laying outside the back door.

Clearly this one was a work in progress.

By contrast the house next door which we had originally been slated for was a palace and had obviously been bought by the retreat to offer at a substantial premium over their other... abodes. Presumably they had picked it up at a bargain price after the owners had fled the campaign of terror inflicted upon them by the horrors in the trees.

At the end of the day however (and given our desire to avoid still being in search of accommodation by the end of another day) it was a big, roomy house with a large living area you could relax and stretch out in. The high ceilings enhanced the feeling of space and ensured that if there was an incursion, the distance from us to the Abomination(s) would be maximized, and the wall of windows at the front of the living area ensured maximum sunlight in the 1st half of the day (the mountain at the house's back ensured gloom for the remainder) and afforded a picturesque view of the fields, river and mountain opposite. In a gargantuan act of mental agility to rival the laws of fluid dynamics I embraced the new environs and set about retrieving the last of the gear from the car, instructing Mari to ensure that she kept all bags closed to avoid nasty surprises (which she ignored, to my aggravation, for the rest of the weekend).

After leaving Mari and Josie to sort out all the paraphernalia we had brought with us, I took the car down to the car park, selected a spot exactly equidistant from the trees at either end and set about implementing a few "reasonable precautions". Retrieving the professional grade creepy-crawly killer from the boot, I set about spraying a meter-wide swath of arachnid death around the car, proceeding on to the gaps between the doors and the body of the car, the under-side of the body, the wheel-arches and the bottom edge of the entire frame. Satisfied with the protections now enswathing the car I moved onto the house where I sprayed the door and window-frames and the landing outside the door (which I now saw had an enormous gap underneath just begging to be violated by creeping horrors). Returning to the in of doors I found Mari and Josie relaxing on the couch, the one reading a "woman's magazine" and the other playing her DS.

Sweaty, grubby and insect poison encrusted, I grumbled my way to the bathroom where I proceeded to shower and change, making a mental division between the last 19hours and the next. The holiday from hell was over and a new day was to begin. Well, the late afternoon of a new day at least.

Emerging from my cocoon cleansed and in fresh threads I joined my lovely wife and progeny in the living room. Seating myself upon the second leather couch (at least the furniture in this joint was superior to the other place) I faced my family and waited for my presence to be acknowledged. Giving up after 5 minutes of oblivious magazine reading and game playing I said:
"So, what are we going to do now?"
"Relax"
"That's it?"
"That's it"
"We could have stayed in Sydney for that!"
"It's not relaxing at home. I feel like I should be doing housework"
"You don't do housework"
"Yes but I always feel like I should be"
"How about we go to dinner?"
"Sure"
"Ooooooookay, I'll just organise that shall I?"
"Yup"
This entire conversation occurs without eyes being raised from the thrilling adventures of celebrities played out upon the glossy pages of No Idea and Womens Weakly.

I must admit here that the crack about housework was entirely apocryphal and I was expecting an angry retort rather than the witty response I did receive. In fact while we do have cleaners come once a month the bulk of the rest of the housework is done by Mari. Too often including my jobs as well.

Since the info sheet with the number of the retreat people was in the car and I couldn't be bothered going out to get it, I rang information and got the number of the restaurant which had been the original reason for my organizing a trip to Wisemans Ferry in the first place. See, a co-worker of Mat's had heard him speak of the Swiss Eiger we go to regularly in Sydney and had mentioned a Swiss restaurant in Wisemans Ferry that was supposed to be very good. It was called the Forgotten Valley Swiss Restaurant and apparently had a B&B attached to it. So I did a search on www.whitepages.com.au for "Forgotten Valley", finding the retreat listed and booked via email. So I get the number from information and give it a whirl.

The line was answered after a brief period of overheard laughter by an amused lady who had obviously been having a joke with someone on their end. I asked if we needed a booking (how many people could there possibly be looking for a night out here!?) and was told, in a tone full of mirth, "oh yes, every time the phone rings my husband interrogates me." As she said it my eyes happened to fall upon the woodbox (for storage of, not made of, although it was) by the front door. And I noticed with alarm that it was covered in swastikas!

The words Swiss, interrogate & a swastika flashed in my minds eye repeatedly and, remembering an old routine of Robin Williams' I was momentarily thankful we did not own a BMW.

Slightly put off I stammered out a request for a table for 3 for 5:30pm and figuring, while I have her on the phone, I may as well ask for directions rather than wander around the grounds looking for the restaurant I inquired as to the location of the place. And was asked which bank of the river we were on. Like I had any idea. Realising that she had no way of knowing we were staying at the retreat and that she was likely thinking farther afield I informed her that we were guests of the retreat. And was told to catch the ferry to the other side of the river, turn right and go about 600m down the road. Turns out the Forgotten Valley Swiss Restaurant has nothing whatsoever to do with the Forgotten Valley Retreat. Not only that but once I explained the confusion she seemed quite amused that we were staying there and asked if there were many people at the retreat at the moment. In a tone that spoke volumes. An encyclopedic number of volumes filled with tales of woe and sadness and people to be pitied.

Thanking the lady vaguely I hung up and related the wealth of knowledge with which I had been impregnated in the short phone conversation. My long-suffering wife was less than surprised to learn of my incompetence anew at finding the correct accommodation and unsurprisingly alarmed at the decorations upon the wood box.

Thinking it must simply be some generic pattern that some young punk had scraped the paint off of the parts that resembled swastikas we took a closer look. And found that no in fact it was actually a generic pattern surrounding very clearly defined and purposely included swastikas. Thinking this quite odd, slightly disturbing but vastly less interesting than the rumbling in our stomachs, we exchanged shrugs and went to get the Spudlette ready for the journey to dinner.

Leaving the house I looked about the landing in the hopes of seeing some evidence that my defenses were working. Alas there were no bodies of Abominations upon the stoop to sate my blood lust. Making our way down to the car I instructed wife and the Spudlette not to touch the car (since it was covered only a few hours previously with insect poison) and opened the doors for them.

Our journey down to the ferry was uneventful now that we had had so much experience with driving around the general area. The ferry was just arriving as we pulled up and so we proceeded onto it without much of a wait and we all had our very first car ferry experience (well I went on the ferry to Tasmania when I was 3 but of course I dont recall it). It was quite pleasant and so smooth that we were surprised to see the scenery moving and had to look back to confirm that we were indeed moving away from the near shore. Josie was very excited by this but became convinced we were going to crash as we approached the far terminal.

Disembarking at the other end we turned right, as directed, and proceeded down the road where, true to form, we drove straight past the restaurant.
To be fair the restaurant was perched atop a hill about 4 storeys above the road way, the sign was on the other side of the road and the light was fading (since the mountains on the east and west of the valley meant late sunrises and early sunsets) so it was only once we were right up on the sign that we could see that it did indeed say "Forgotten Valley Swiss". But by that time of course the driveway was past.

Following a brief repeat of the u-turn discussion (see Part 1) I turned around, located the driveway and drove up the steep slope to the restaurant car park.

Whilst it was perched amongst the woods of the mountain, there was enough space cleared that there was no imminent danger of infestation by the Horrors. Upon exiting the vehicle I turned around and immediately saw to my later self-flagellation that the B&B that was attached to the restaurant was the top two floors of the same damned building! And, that there was a third floor that seemed to contain a single penthouse type room (it was a large building with a peaked roof) which would have offered absolutely stunning views to any competent enough to secure lodgings there. I pointed it out to Mari and received my well-earned look of disgust as reward.

As we approached the restaurant Josie went ahead and Mari, of course, began snapping photos of her. After a minute one of the proprietors came out and offered to take a photo of us all with the vista of the river and mountain afforded by the height of the location as backdrop. After taking the pic we entered and were seated at a nice table with a wonderful view of the valley beyond the window. We were just admiring the interior decoration and commenting on the differences between this place and the Eiger in Sydney when the waitress brought over the specials of the day and we nearly burst into gales of laughter. The days specials were almost identical to the specials the Eiger commonly offers and written in chalk upon a portable blackboard exactly as the Eiger people do. Complete with little illustration of Swiss origin.

I was sorely tempted to order my usual (Beef Burgundy half Spatzle/half Roesti) Eiger meal in order to compare the two but finally decided to instead partake of a meal the Eiger does not offer (Gypsy Roast Beef). For the first time I managed to resist the urge to get the Pea and Ham soup as entree (it always fills me up too much to finish my main) while Mari enjoyed her usual Swiss entree of fried Camembert and did have the Beef Burgundy for main.

The food was good, the child well behaved and the conversation of people around us yobbish. The music was very Swiss sounding but also very different from the Eiger where I seem to recall more polkas being in evidence. Dessert was Apple Strudel for me and neither of us can remember what Mari had (being that she has blocked out the whole weekend and it evidentally wasn't something I wanted some of). Finishing our meals we paid up, drove back to the ferry and crossed once more, in serene stillness, the calm waters of the Hawksbury river.

Driving back to our lodgings in the half darkness was quick and painless this time and while I couldn't see precisely where the outline of death was that I should park the car within, I trusted to the bathing the exterior had gotten to protect it from intrusion during the night. Entering the house I set about getting the TV/DVD situation sorted out while Mari took Josie for a shower and bedtime clothing change. I was pleased to discover that they had hooked up the foxtel with every channel available and settled back to watch some scifi channel before Mari emerged and tagged me in to handle the putting to bed of the little one while she went to organize the long-awaited spa-bath. Unexpectedly she lay still for her story reading and went to sleep straight after without the usual protracted attempts to refrain from doing so.

I emerged from the sleeping section and settled onto the couch next to a very grumpy looking Mari.
"What's up? We going to have a bath?"
"NO! @#$% waters brown!"
"Oh FFS!"
"Yup"
Shaking my head I asked her what she wanted to watch and started flicking channels while she wrapped up her magazine reading. While not actually stopping her magazine reading she proceeded to criticize every selection I made of the tv programs on offer and threaten to not stay up with me (and read her magazine) if I did not put on a DVD (that she had not had any input into the selection thereof and would undoubtedly not approve of). In the end I took the magazine away from her and tossed it accross the room at which point she agreed to properly contribute to the evenings entertainment choices. Now here's a perfect example of the differing (and unexpectedly so) natures of myself and my lovely wife. I suggested 50 First Dates as it is one of our favourite movies and a romantic, soppy one with a tear-jerking ending to boot and I thought it a perfect choice for our 10th Anniversary night movie. Mari chose Constantine, "cos I haven't seen it for ages" and wasn't moved in the least by my suggestions along the lines of the above in favour of 50 First Dates.

So, Constantine it was. Unfortunately 15minutes in Mari threw her magazine (she had retrieved it while I was up putting the DVD in the machine) down on the coffee table and stated "I'm sorry Tony, I'm just knackered. I've got to go to bed." I followed her in, tucked her into bed and went back out to the living room with an admonishment not to stay up too late. I returned to the living room, opted not to continue watching Constantine in a dark, creaky house in the middle of the pitch-black woods and instead began flicking channels on the foxtel, discovering in the process that the movie channels were not hooked up to the retreats tab and nor were the "adult channels". I watched a couple of scifi channel shows, an NBA game and the last 45minutes of a movie on the free movie channel I can't for the life of me recall before stumbling across an interesting-looking movie on SBS about a woman stranded in the desert of North-Eastern Africa when her husband dies after dragging her, her mother and her daughter out there for some stupid reason. It's called House of Sand and an intriguing mechanism they employed was that at 2 or 3 points in the narrative a significant amount of time elapses (10years, 20years) and the actresses playing the mother and the protagonist shift down one place (so the actress originally playing the protagonist is now playing her daughter - now grown to womanhood herself - and the actress originally playing her mother is now playing the part of the protagonist). I liked the movie very much. It was very well acted and shot and very sad and poignant. I have a masochistic tendency which draws me to the bitter-sweet stories of love won but lost or of the endurance of the harsh struggle through the vagaries of circumstance leaving only the few short twilight years to share what should have been a lifetimes companionship. Happiness sometimes overshadowed, sometimes sharpened by regret.

Finally at 2am I retired to my throne with The Deathly Hallows before heading wearily to bed. On the way I stopped in to check on Josie (as I had done about 6 times already) and what do you know but theres a bloody spider on the curtain in her room. Luckily far away from her bed and also luckily not a big, hairy one. It's a large, thin-legged, thin-bodied one kind of like the arachnid equivalent of a stick-insect. I retrieve Josie from her bed and deposit her in with her mother before doing a tour of the house to check the doors and windows before bed. Checks complete I retire to bed and fall asleep remarkably quickly despite the spider in the other room. Only the big, hairy ones bother me especially.

Episode 6: River Cruise To Nowhere (The Journey Home)

Next morning we rose (well they rose and I slept in), packed and leaving the baggage in the living room headed out for a final outing to see if we could track down the river cruises advertised on a large banner attached to the mountain wall along the road into town. After driving up and down the main street a few times we spotted an information sign outside a building featuring various offices and a nick-knack shop. We turned into the driveway and proceeded to the back parking lot where we saw another information sign nailed to the wall outside a restaurant tucked away at the back of the block. Mari went in to find out if they knew where the cruises left from and came back out and said that they said information was to be gotten from the nick-knack shop out the front. Why they had an information sign on their wall was a mystery at this point.

We pulled back out of the driveway and parked on the street outside the shop. Mari headed in and came back out saying that the cruise was leaving right now but that the guy in the shop was calling the captain to see if they had left yet as they often didn't leave for 10mins after the official time to wait for stragglers and that I should go in and pay as she had left her wallet back at the house. I went in and after 5mins of waiting for the phone to ring the guy decided we'd better just go down to the dock and tell them Brian said we could pay after the cruise. If we were to make it in time that is. We headed on down to the dock but could not spot a cruise-sized boat and proceed on to the public ferry dock right next door to inquire of the staff there if the ferry had left. They pointed back toward the private dock and said "yeah there it goes now". We turned around to see a cruise-sized boat leaving the dock we had just departed. Looking at each other we decided that this was indeed a fitting way to end our disastrous anniversary weekend and headed back up the main road. As we neared the information offices I suggested we have lunch in the restaurant we had found out back and securing consent I turned in and parked once more out back.

Settling ourselves at a table out on the back veranda we were pleasantly surprised to find it two storeys off the ground and open to a beautiful view of the valley. The weather was the best it had been all weekend and the air was clean and fresh. We wiled away the late morning in pleasant conversation while the Spudlette played her DS or did some coloring in. I drew a pony for her. Mamma drew a mutant Yak for her (also meant to be a pony). Immediately upon being seated I noticed the cruise ship standing anchor in the river only about 50 meters up river of the dock it had left from and every now and then I would turn around and look out over the river and see that it had not moved an inch. Pointing this out to Mari we were suddenly glad that we had not taken the River Cruise To Nowhere and had instead landed here on this pleasant veranda overlooking the valley. When I think back on that weekend now the first memory that springs to my mind is not the disasters or the horrors or even the eventual meal at the Swiss place that was the origin of the choice of location. The first memory is of that morning/afternoon we spent on the veranda in the bright morning sunlight and cool mountain air overlooking the valley. It was our little family at its best. Sitting relaxed and well fed in lovely weather enjoying each other's company. I really couldn't ask for more than that at this stage of our lives. Maybe I will want something more adventurous when Josie tears my heart, beating from my chest and leaves home but for right now I just want to sit and relax in the company of my wife and child.

If this were a movie that would have been the perfect image to fade out on. But life is seldom as well directed as a movie and so it was that the weather turned and it began to rain sending us scurrying inside with the remains of our mains. Boom boom. But it was a pleasantly hard rain that brought with it a nice strong breeze that further cleared the air. Customers came and went, the place never more than half full, and we were content to remain and idly chat and play with Josie as time seemingly passed us by.

Finally we rose, paid our bill, returned to retrieve our stuff from the retreat and left Wisemans Ferry contented and happy in the end just to be together.

The End.