By Greg, and then Trenna
Trenna and I lived in Darwin the capital of the Northern Territory from 1995 to 1997. Darwin, for our international readers is well and truely in the tropics.
During that time, thankfully, Trenna took the lead in writing home to friends and relatives. Yes it was the era of letters and expensive long distance phone calls. Trenna really mastered the new Word Processing technology.
For those of a geeky disposition I think back then we were using a 386 PC and probably Windows 3.1. What I do know for sure is that the letters and documents Trenna wrote there were DOS documents written with MS-Word 5, and they have been a bit tricky to convert and maintain the formatting – but I think I’ve managed it. During this series of posts I’ll show some of the original formatting.
Anyway, non-geeks, you can pay attention again.
Along with writing the letters, Trenna also compiled them into one big long document.
Most of this series of posts will be from that document.
BUT, she also started to put them in a form that read a bit more like a novel. That was never finished, but those first couple of chapters will form the start of this series of posts.
I’m thinking I’ll probably release them about one every two or three weeks.
So, here we go. This file was last edited by Trenna on 20 February 1997……
By Trenna
Chapter One
Lunch at “The Loose Box”
‘Less than three weeks to go’ I gleefully declared, wiping several spilt droplets of chenin blanc from my lips, and enthusiastically licking the peachy remnants from my somewhat salty fingers.
Greg acknowledged my remark, with a pat on my hand, and a smile of allegiance. It felt good to share my anticipation with him.
‘I wonder if there’ll be anything like this’ I said casting an appreciative eye around the restaurant.
Greg followed my gaze into the next room to a wall strategically hung with local artists’ creations. For a fleeting moment I was transfixed by a bright splash of red in the midst of a misty coloured bush scene in one of the pieces. It was the exact shade of red of my old rusted Gemini which we had only just recently sold.
‘I don’t think we should expect too much,’ he cautioned, ‘besides’, he said, as he squeezed and lifted my hand, waving it through the air, as though he were using a blackboard pointer to emphasise his words, ‘this is pretty hard to beat’.
Well, precisely! I couldn’t agree more. Here we sat, fifteen minutes drive from Perth, neatly tucked into the Mundaring hillside, soaking in the splendidly warm filtered sunlight that streamed through the windows of the enclosed back verandah of ‘The Loose Box’ restaurant.
We were effortlessly downing a delectably silky Swan Valley wine, plucking yeasty warm morsels from our freshly made rolls, soon to indulge in a meal prepared, or at the very least overseen, by one of the few chefs in the world to be awarded the Meilleur Ouvrier de France.
Although we had dined here several times, this was the first time we’d come for lunch. And what a gloriously sublime Perth spring Sunday it was. 26°c, vivid blue sky, mild afternoon sun gently warming the side of my arm and casting a golden-red ambient glow on the rich brown-red jarrah floorboards.
We were here to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary, and our imminent departure.
In less than three weeks we’d be almost as far north as is possible to go, without leaving mainland Australia. We were heading to Darwin, the tropics, the Territory, the ‘real’ Australia. Greg had successfully applied for a position at the Northern Territory University. He had, last August, attended a conference there, and liked the feel of the place. So we were about to uproot our comfy and safe lives to head north to, what?
We had limited knowledge of The Northern Territory. We knew that Darwin had been bombed in the war, and that thirty years later, cyclone ‘Tracey’ had come along and reeked even worse death and destruction. We knew the Territory’s small population included a high percentage of indigenous people, and that basically it was still a wild frontier.. We’d heard about Alice Springs and Uluru, and Arnhem Land, and Kakadu, and it all sounded mysterious and traditional. We were ready for a change.
I was abruptly brought back to the here and now when a rotund ‘beefeater’ of an English man at the next table laughed raucously as a slim man in his forties sitting opposite divulged the punch line of a tale he had been surreptitiously relaying for the past several minutes. The storyteller sheepishly looked at me, with apologetic eyes, though he needn’t have, I had not the vaguest idea of what he had said. A young waitress was at their table, deftly de-canting a thirty year old red, she replied to a question, and the table again erupted in laughter. They looked a happy bunch, we looked contented, it‘s that kind of place. No sad stories of rejection or failure here, this is a place for winners, for lovers, and we were damn glad to be here.
‘Thankyou’ I smiled, as the waiter set down our entrees. I surveyed the contents of my huge white china plate. I was wickedly amused at the pink penile-like centrepiece; a truffle and salmon sausage sitting bang in the middle of a rich creamy puddle of garlic and truffle sauce.
I smirked at Greg, and mused after the first lusciously creamy mouthful had been sent on it’s internal journey. ‘This is more than sensuous food’ I whispered leaning across the table closer to him to avoid being overheard. I blatantly pouted my lips accenting every word with narrowing eyes ‘this is erotic… I’m sure all the other diners know what I ordered and are voiaristically watching for my purrs of delight and licking of lips as I willingly swallow each creamy mouthful’
‘God, I hope they’re not!’ Greg exclaimed sharing the joke, but fertively checking the tables immediately around us, just to be sure.
‘We’re not newly-weds anymore you know’ he said wiggling his wedding ring to remind me of the occasion.
‘You’re not supposed to behave provocatively anymore’ he reprimanded me by raising one eyebrow disapprovingly and shaking his head.in an unconvincing attempt to appear shocked at my behaviour.
We laughed knowingly at each other’s silliness.
‘This is delish’ Greg muttered through his half chewed mouthful of Kangaroo and sundried tomato salad.
‘How’s your’s, really?’
‘Devine’ I purred absorbed with my efforts to clear my plate of as much of the rich earthy sauce as I possibly could without appearing crude. We love eating together, but eating out does require a certain formality that doesn’t apply to meals served at home. When bread has run out, fingers we find, are the best implement for cleaning a plate of delicious remnants, for a moment, I wished I was home.
“Are you having second thoughts?’ Greg quizzed.
‘No, no-way’ I said with conviction, laying my knife and fork together.
I heaved a self satisfied sigh, leant back in my chair and allowed my stomach a welcome stretch.
‘No, I was just thinking .. how lucky we are’
‘To be going, you mean?’
‘Yes, and all of this’ I smiled appreciatively, drifting my hand over our empty plates and then gently along the wooden windowsill that framed a lush green garden laden with herbs and camellias and azaleas, and I imagined I could smell the sweet fragrance of the large frangipanni that sat at the base of the stairs only centimetres from me on the other side of the window pane.
‘And I’m the luckiest man of all’, Greg replied lifting his glass in my honour.
‘Here’s to us’ I said clinking our glasses
Five years of marriage and we’re as in love as ever.
We chattered contentedly, until our main courses of duck and rabbit arrived. I reminded Greg of our last visit, when Alain Fabregues, the owner and chef, had sat with an elderly French speaking couple at the table next to us. We had been learning French from The Open Learning programme on TV, and we’re delighted to occasionally catch snippets of understandable dialogue
The afternoon rolled on languidly, we finished our main courses,Greg braved dessert but I settled for coffee. We were in no hurry to return to the dishelvement that awaited us at home. This was blissfully indulgent and peaceful and we had history here at this restaurant and in these hills.
We were born in Perth and bar us both indepently having lived for a short stint overseas, had spent our lives here.
The Mundaring hills had for most of our lives been semi rural and national parks. It was where families went for picnics or on car rally’s that climbed the steep winding ascent until ears popped, invariably making pit-stops along the way to pick up the requisite pine cones and honky nuts, and would more often than not end up with the smell of woodburning barbeques at the Mundaring weir or Araluen.
If you picked your time right, a visit to one of the many fruit orchards would see you returning home with boxes of cheap but deliciously plump and juicy apricots or peaches or plums or mandarins. In recent years the hills have become a trendy and creative place to live, particularly for slightly unconventional artists and artisans and architects. It offers misty views to the city, but is satisfyingly far enough away from the traffic and pollution of city life.
In winter the colours are intense. Foliage becomes a darker green, punctured with jagged and foreboding outcrops of dark grey granite The rust-red sodden clay soil and gravel evoke childhood memories of Easter camps at Araluen, swinging on vine covered pergolas, freezing swims in the fresh water pool, scrambling up and hiking along the huge pipeline that carries water from Mundaring weir to the goldmining town of Kalgoorlie hundreds of kilometres north east of Perth. The air is crisp and full of the scent of eucalypts and the sound of squawking magpies.
In summer the colours become more pastel, you can taste the gravel dust, smell the rich earth, become mesmerised by corrugated pools of heat haze, and you can almost touch the ever present underlying sense of impending bush-fire.
‘We’re a chatty lot, aren’t we’ Greg’s voice peirced my daydream.
‘I’m sorry’ I said, ‘ but really this is so wonderfully relaxing, I haven’t sat and whiled away time like this for ages’.
He conceded the point and suggested that it was time to get the bill, and get back to the reality that awaited us at home.
I reluctantly agreed, we walked through the room that displayed the wall of artwork, as we passed I could now see that the splash of red which had previously caught my eye, was in fact a weatherboard house ferociously burning, it was a sobering sight. We paid the bill and sincerely thanked our hostess as she saw us off at the door. We strolled across the pretty garden dotted carpark which was now heavily shaded by a number of large trees.
We got in the car and started the steep decent back to reality.
For the second installment, click here.