We’d missed going away in
April, due to circumstances beyond our control. We’d also missed
going away in April and October 2012!!! Enough was enough. Our last trip, in
October 2011, had become a distant dream.
Michael was exhausted,
having worked to renovate his beloved Forbes Building at a relentless pace
since July 2012. My style had been severely cramped since breaking my ankle in
April 2012. I’d also had to remove Alex
from unsatisfactory (that’s putting it mildly!) accommodation and find him a
new home.
This story had ended happily ever after, with my boys sharing a
lovely unit in Yokine, central and close to shops and transport.
I had become stuck on the
treadmill of home, work and trips to Perth. I had spent all this year playing
catch up, never finishing the improvements I’d longed to complete. I needed a
break. Michael needed a break. We needed to have a break!
And then, I started a
joke… (apologies to the Bee Gees). During a warm, lazy autumn lunch with our
friends Charl and Alex at their Perth home, we hatched a plan to escape to the
Goldfields during the July school holidays.
Alex, a Scot, had always
only endured the blast of Perth’s heat and was unconvinced that anywhere
in Western Australia ever became cold. She also had an ulterior motive for
escaping Perth. After 35 years as a school teacher, she was retiring! Feeling
she would be at a loose end, the idea of a Goldfields trip seemed quite
attractive.
Charl, a charming South
African by birth, had been Michael’s friend for many years. He had been out
camping with Michael in obscure locations, had delusions of grandeur of
becoming a master blacksmith (!) and loved the isolation of the bush, any bush.
He immediately put his hand up to join a Goldfields expedition in winter.
Michael was exceeding
apprehensive. He had vivid memories of bitterly cold windswept mine sites, made
even more dreadful by grey misty drizzle. He had never been in the Goldfields
in winter by choice.
As a result of committing
to this trip, we realised we needed extra thermals, warmer sleeping bags and
enough cold weather gear to join Douglas Mawson in the Antarctic! These we
purchased, along with a queen sized camp bed and self inflating mattress.
Unbeknown to us at the time, the stretcher and mattress proved to be the
absolutely the best equipment we could have bought!
I also revolted at the
idea of preparing and cooking frozen meals to take away. Too much effort and too much space. So dehydrated meals were researched,
sought and bought – I was after easy, quick and tasty whilst creating minimal
dirty dishes.
Given the fact we were all
old farts, a bit of luxury was very attractive. Slumming was out; easing us
into holidaying into a potential fridge was in. Hence 4 out of our 9 nights
were booked interior accommodation – the Gold Rush Motel in Coolgardie, Hoover
House in Gwalia (for 2 nights!) and Views on Hannans in Kalgoorlie. We felt
that if the weather was kind, some camping could even be pleasurable!
This trip was the first I
had totally organised. Usually, Michael decided where we would go and how we
would get there. Since this would probably be the one and only time Alex would
experience the Goldfields, before their move to Tasmania, I considered a tour
loosely following the Golden Quest Discovery Trail would show her the best of
this amazing country.
The last weeks before we
left on our Goldfields adventure, my weather research had become very
contradictory. This winter, our third in Beverley, had been very dry and very
cold. We had experienced night after night of temperatures at or below zero; we
had watched a bewildered Ruby the cat trying to drink from a frozen bird bath early
one morning in our front garden. In contrast, the Goldfields seemed positively
tropical! Were we going for a trip to a freezer or somewhere far more benign?
And thus, Kate and Michael turned into tourist guides!
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