cast: melba and family, sister of melba and family. mother of melba.
total children: 5 ranging in ages from 6 to 13.
location: somewhere near lakes entrance.
and in a week, this is what went down:
- cool, comfortable if windy weather, with a couple of nice, warm days thrown in.
- baby scorpion in hut on the last night. it looked like a real scorpion and everything.
- many ticks, i had a couple non-implanted. and a couple implanted. which led to the following quite hysterical nightly routine:
- full-body erotic tick checks, for me and clokes. full-body non-erotic tick checks for the kids.
- mosquitoes by the trillions
- a couple of pideys but nothing clokes couldn't handle
- spotlight tiggy x 2 games. the first game was on the first night, and saw me in thongs, doing full-body commando crawling across the dark ground. refer to full-body erotic tick check above.
- one game of sardines. it's awesome fun.
- night bush-walk. we saw three tawny-frogmouth owls, kangaroos would come through the camp every dusk, one had a joey and it was fucking cute.
- attempts at fitness, read slow, shuffly jogging around camp locale. thoughts of truro and shallow graves while on the gravelly paths. my sis saw an echidna. i did not.
- phosphorescence in the water at night . OH MY GOD IT WAS LIKE IN MY FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS, you know when margot is on the boat at night and trailing her hands in the dark, greek waters, and there was phosphorescence. talk about magic glitter black sparkle awesome incroyable look-at-the-water-when-you-throw-a-handful-of-pebbles-in wonderfulness. this was a highlight of the holiday and my life. srsly.
- industrial kitchen with lots of bench space. you could really s p r e a d out your breakfast, sandwich, coffee, fruit platter, champagne, castello cheese -preparations.
- hookey board
- scattergories
- trip to lakes entrance to take the kids to see high school musical 3. new and inappropriate crush on zac efron.
- bbqs. many.
- eating. much.
- drinking. so much that the day the matriarch was due, we managed to get around to recycling our empties. it was an embarrassing amount.
- melba sobriety: constant since new year's day. not a new year's resolution, but a decision to go alchohol free in january. i did in october and it was alright. much easier than i expected. so i am planning to make it a regular part of my year. makes it easier for me to think i'm not an alcoholic then, you see?
- space. much.
- blue castello cheese. i ate the whole thing over several sessions, and my sister and my ma got one schmear each on a vita-weet.
- ice cream. much.
- shopping x 2 trips. $280 first trip, over $200 the second trip. NOT INCLUDING ALCOHOL.
- new year's eve party x 1. dress-ups which saw appearances by bride of frankenstein (yours truly, complete with russian accent and elaborate explanation to wide-eyed 6-year-old nephew of origins of my "scars", graveyard man with knife, rabid dog etc) and a fully-wrapped toilet paper mummy (my sis) who lost most of her leg paper during her grand entrance and subsequently turned out like some sexy mini-skirted brazilian music video dancer (but with mummified head). our husbands are mild-mannered men and i sometimes wonder what they make of us crazy sisters. i'm sure they adore being married to us, are so proud of us, never embarrassed and really enjoy the life we breathe into them with our assorted hijinks. there was also a scarily accurate princess-amy winehouse, but with gorgeous skin and no nicotine-stained fingers, and a fake tattoo. our rage peaked too early. photos and video taken on the night while we were doing our wildest dancing shows it was still light outside. a bit sad BUT WE HAD FUN.
- cricket, none really. not for me. there was a tv and i worked out rapidly that it wasn't on because australia was going shit. but there was some radio listening done by clokes and bro-in-law. they like to listen even if they are going shit. i'd been amusing clokes for about a week by calling symons "simmo" and him going "no, roy" and me going "SIMMO IT'S BETTER!" and then while reading one of the papers, he laughed and showed me a little headline which referred to "Symmo" and I said "I told you so, much better than 'Roy' ".
- no family arguments which was pretty good, considering the bust-up we had in turkey. so yay us there.
- hammocks. we had 3 going and it was ace.
- reading. i brought a cache of books to share, and so did bro-in-law. i read mao's last dancer and midnight in the garden of good and evil, as well as 3 trash mags and the couple of newspapers we got.
- precisely one counter meal which was maximum ordinary and quite disappointing. that was in paynesville.
so a terrific time was had by all. i called my sister today to tell her i was missing them all, and we started chatting as if we hadn't exhausted all topics during that week. it was great, the kids drifted around and played and got their own breakfasts and often lunch. this, to a parent, is sheer bliss. there were no accidents, no bushfire tragedies, no car crashes. we returned unscathed and happy.
this is our pit-stop then we are off to another spot tomorrow. one with rock-pools and lots of italian home-cooked food, care of clokey's mama. hopefully some cherries from the orchard, certainly lots of reading, and newspapers every day.
then, after that, 2009 begins proper.
happy days all.
x
11 comments:
Sounds like a top holiday - reminds me of school camps! Next time you're in Paynesville, get on the Raymond Island ferry and head over to Cafe Espas - much better food than on the 'mainland.' Also Fisherman's Wharf but it's too sloooooooooow.
Next time you head down this way, let me know and I'll be more than happy to provide you with a cuppa on the way home/there!
I see your 5 children aged 6 to 13 and raise you myholiday with 5 children aged 2 to 4.
I should blog about it in detail. If I do, it will mostly involve:
1. Shiraz
2. A lengthy discussion of why old Warner Bros cartoons should never be shown to children
3. An equally impassioned rant about why the Pussycat Dolls and Channel 7's Sunrise do not mix well
4. Detailed descriptions of the experience of playing the Big Bad Wolf for five children who delighted in telling me about all the different ways they planned to kill me. My favourite was the pot of boiling water with "guns and a large fire and poo" in it.
I had a truly magnificently fun time.
They should have just grabbed this blog entry and got Baz Luhrman to direct it and call it 'Australia'.
I second what Perseus said.
They could get one of the cloke brothers to play clokes.
Funnily enough, Clokes is called that after Travis Cloke. Clokeeey is the full name, and he is a Collingwood fan and chose the name years ago for blogworld.
Ooooh, spooky symmetry.
And Luhrmann would have just fucked up my holiday. AND MADE NICOLE KIDMAN SHARE MY CABIN!
Owls?
Pfft!
That's a holiday with too many ticks in it for me. Even if their eradication involves erotic body checks.
What's a Hockey board? Sounds like a great holiday none the less. I am travelling australia too. If anyone wants to follow my blog with lots of pretty pictures feel free to check me out A Canadian in Australia
Nice. I love these kinds of holidays, minus the ticks of course. But it sounds like you had some good-quality family bonding time. Gotta say, I'm a little envious.
xx
Hmmmm, phosphorescence hey? Great stuff. Im was on a small boat in the pacific ocean one night where I saw it everywhere. It was a full moon, and there were glow-in-the-dark dolphins swimming alongside. Pure magic!
sorry jeremyinc, at first i thought you were spam, but then realised you aren't. a HOOKEY board is a board with hooks and numbers on it, you hang it on the wall and throw small, rubber rings at it. they hang on a hook, or fall to the floor. you get your points. you play another person. kind of like darts, but with rings.
and man at the pub, hey haven't seen you for a few years! dolphins, oh my god, i think there were dolphins in "my family and other animals" that would have been so beautiful. as my sister said while watching it "who needs drugs".
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