Holidays at last after not having more than four days off in a row since April. We’ve had an adventure in the first week, the girls and I flew to Adelaide to spend some time with old friends and see the sights. I emailed my boss Hilda from when I lived in Adelaide twenty years ago, suggesting we have a drink together and asking if any of her friends were going away or had a spare room or two to rent out as my friend Amy couldn’t have us stay because of a large family gathering. Hilda replied the same day with an offer to stay with her.
Over the five nights we spent with her, we discussed the conflict and distress being experienced by her and her friends from reactions in the community around the same sex marriage vote – she is gay; feminism; her volunteer work now that she has retired, supporting a refugee family from Afghanistan; mutual acquaintances and the components of a balanced life; and she engaged with the girls in the mornings and during dinner. They loved honing their fine motor skills playing ‘knuckles’ with animal bones she had and also building different towers out of a domino set. It was so good to see her again after having no contact since I bumped into her when I was in Adelaide with mum at the Adelaide Festival Writers’ Week when I was pregnant eight years ago.
Another friend I caught up with I also hadn’t seen since I also bumped in to at the Writers’ Week festival during that visit is an old friend from uni, Violet, who used to live in Melbourne and moved to Adelaide with her partner’s work. Her life diverged a lot from mine when she had three children quite young and she has since been a stay-at-home mother. We ate under the shapely tree at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens café, then walked around the gardens to a very tall and shady conifer that she suggested the girls climb. They went up very high while we spoke of all the friends we had known that we are no longer in touch with, touching on whether either of us had returned to St Petersburg where we met when we were nineteen (neither have yet). We haven’t regained our former closeness either in this visit or the sporadic emails in recent years. I’m not sure what will happen there.
When our child train excursion to the Adelaide Hills was abandoned because the place was closed for maintenance, my friend Amy suggested we have lunch in the Adelaide Hills town of Hahndorf anyway. We had the day together with her identical twin girls aged five (her son was at school), and I suggested we go to the Don Dunstan Adventure Playground after school pickup, which Violet had recommended.
I really enjoyed pottering around the touristy shops in Hahndorf and deciding where to have lunch. We settled on a German café, sharing a meaty plate of sausages, T-bone steak, mash and sauerkraut, with the girls sharing fish and chips. Rushing to be back in time to collect Lachlan from school, Amy grabbed some strudel to take home for dessert that night and after collecting Lachlan, we headed to the Adventure Playground. The slide was four times the length of a traditional long slide and though it wasn’t very slippery, they all had a lovely time on it, also befriending a third set of identical twin girls who were visiting their father’s family from Melbourne (‘this is turning in to a twins’ convention,’ said their mother). We also had an exciting sleepover at Amy’s house the night before we left.
I worked with Amy around eight years ago when we were both pregnant, and then she had identical twin girls less than two years after that. I have been in sporadic contact since she moved back to Adelaide with her family a few years ago so it was lovely to spend some time reconnecting with her too.
We also spent time on these holidays with Alice. We drove to the Monarto wildlife zoo with her, about an hour out of Adelaide, and spent the day being driven around in buses looking at giraffes being fed, cheetahs enjoying the sun and different types of deer grazing near zeebras in the 1,000ha park. Alice swapped jokes with the girls in the car on the way back (‘why did the orange stop in the middle of the road? Because she ran out of juice’ ‘what is eggs’ least favourite day? Friday because they get fried’). She is doing alright despite her stroke and subsequent loss of 70% of her vision, so that now she needs to use a walker and often some help to get around. We also went to the beach together and the girls dipped in the water in their swimmers, after which I helped them dig some big holes in the white, soft sand and then Alice and I ate ice-creams (the girls had had theirs earlier in the day).
The last friend we saw was Adelaide itself, visiting some of my favourite places: the Jam Factory glassworks and arts hub, the art gallery, the Central Market which sealed it for me wanting to move to Adelaide almost twenty years ago, and Haigh’s chocolates. I showed the girls the building where Steve and I met, now used for something else, and the houses where we both lived in Torrensville and Thebarton, neither of which had anyone home, perhaps just as well.
After a week away it was time to take the train to Melbourne, sharing it with loads of Adelaide Crows supporters who were travelling for the football final in Melbourne yesterday. When we arrived at the station at 7am there was live music and balloons to welcome us to the ‘Croverland.’ The Australian newspaper was there too to get some photos and no doubt some stories from fans to accompany them. I was tired from the early start but it was a good trip with plenty of legroom, a deputy principal of a primary school sitting next to the girls who was happy to chat with them, and both older and younger children that the girls could help look after/play cards with. Another set of identical twin girls aged five was in the adjoining carriage but the girls didn’t meet them – I just had a brief chat with their mum. We had many trips along the carriages and to and from the café car for meals during the twelve-hour journey and Lara read both Faraway Tree books to herself while I read Rhea some chapters. We had some craft activities and some colouring in as well. I do like train travel and the canola fields were blooming as we meandered past towns, catching glimpses of their attractions like the oval where the Stawell Gift is run and Border Town where apparently Bob Hawke was born.
It was such a good visit enjoying the company of these old friends. I have a mind to do it again next year.
