Kangaroo Valley

Sadly January, designated as my Fun Month, will shortly come to a close. Latest activity in pursuit of hedonism was TM’s 40^th birthday party in Kangaroo Valley last weekend. The valley is a beautiful place, high sides and its own weather, lush greenery, mists. Population the usual mix of disaffected Sydneysiders and hardened country folk. Party included lots of kids and some great toys: walled trampoline, shark head water slides, swimming pool, mobile sandpit, glow sticks and ground-hugging scooters. If you’re planning a holiday in the Valley, here’s a link with some tourist and accommodation info:

http://www.kangaroovalleytourist.asn.au/home/

As part of the whole sustainability lifestyle thing, I’m aiming to use my car less, with the eventual goal of learning to live without it. To get to the party I caught a train to Central, carrying Sophie’s car seat, and then got a lift to Kangaroo Valley with two of TM’s friends. Coming back, there was trackwork, which meant a lift to Bowral with the same two friends, now very hungover; a bus to Liverpool; an un-airconditioned train from Liverpool to Central; another train from Central to Morisset; and then a lift from Morisset to Dora Creek. It ended up being an all day event.

Two remarkable people and one notable meal encountered en route. The first person I got talking to at the Bowral bus station. It’s a wealthy area, and I couldn’t be bother carrying the car-seat and suitcase any longer, so I’d left them on the station seat and was walking with Sophie up towards the town to get a cup of tea. Coming down the road towards me was a likeable looking woman (bad teeth, sweet smile, scruffy hair) who looked like she was heading towards the station: she was. I asked if she’d keep an eye on my bag, she agreed (later noting that she herself wouldn’t have left it there) and then, because Sophie was having the toddler equivalent of a bad hair day, walked across the road with us towards the town, holding Sophie’s other hand, chatting all the way.

Gumnut Patisserie, Bowral

Which leads me to the notable meal, purchased at Bowral’s Gumnut Patisserie, a country bakery with a reassuring array of trophies for things like scones and bread lined up on the top shelf. Great food. Sophie and I ate a couple of small quiches, and a custard pie, so rich it left a layer of creamy fat on the top of your mouth. We shared a miniature fruit tart with an enormous blueberry teetering on its edge, only just held in place with sugar glaze, like the boulder at the top of Ambush Valley in an old fashioned Western movie. Sophie got the blueberry.

Returning to the station, the suitcase and the strange lady. Odd snippets of our conversation spring to mind: her son is studying veterinary science and lives in Toowoomba. Despite having lost all his belongings in the flood, the thing that really bothered him was that all his friends in a nearby town were air-lifted out by Black Hawk choppers. We discussed the layout of the Mittagong primary school playground as opposed to the one in Bowral: Mittagong infinitely superior, Bowral involves a road crossing and a parcel of land behind a church; the age children stop whining: six to sixteen, after and before that, forget it; shoeing horses: how people think it’s easy; falling off horses: how not to do it. And the poisonous nature of agapantha sap: toddler diverted as she headed towards the station’s attractive, flowery bushes.

I’m pretty sure this woman thought I was a frigging idiot, wandering around on a super-hot day, with a car-seat and toddler, both wearing freebie Corona hats that Jules had given us, and a certain post party vibe that is as easy to spot as it is hard to hide. But I really liked her. When she got on her bus, ducking to avoid an elderly man who was getting off, apparently the lawyer who had settled her grandmother’s estate (“country towns…” I cracked, and she grinned). I said to Sophie “that was your fairy godmother” as we waved to her. No idea what her name was.

Central Station, Sydney

Second remarkable individual encountered somewhere on the line from Liverpool to Central. Young guy jumps on train with two toddlers and sits down near us. Thongs, tattoes, shaved head with rat-tail, shorts. He’s shirtless but stands up to pull a t-shirt on, realises it’s back to front, pulls it off again and eventually gets it on. I notice him mainly because he has a beautiful body, because the t-shirt is already stained with sweat, and because he seems so typically Australian, whatever that is. Sophie has, by this point, had enough of public transport and is behaving pretty badly. At certain points, there’s lots of screaming. I’m hot, crabby and not helping matters by trying to control her too much, instead of just accepting that a toddler is a toddler, not an adult, and you can’t expect them to sit there and look out the window. Sometimes you do have to let them crawl around on the crappy train floor looking for treasure.

The guy, on the other hand, is handling his two toddlers wonderfully. Segued smoothly from ‘can we see a butterfly out the window?’ to witty bouts of ‘look, Daddy’s wearing toddler hat’ and back to ‘Look! There is a butterfly out the window, you just missed it’. Brilliant stuff: masterful. Got talking to the guy, admired his skills, he looked pleased when I said that I he was obviously closely bonded to his kids. Here are some fragments of the conversation: kids names are Mark and Matthew; Matthew is two years older, but has been diagnosed with autism, ‘he’s my angel’; Dad has been through hell with his kids, he has them on the weekends, their Mum went away for a year; Mark is wearing a cool t-shirt with a carp on it; Dad used to work at a Japanese coy farm, t-shirt a hand me down but lasting well. Got off train, guy offered to help, he ended up holding Sophie’s hand and Sophie ended up holding Matthew’s hand; three transit cops looked amused as trio of wobbly toddlers exited train.

Guy tried to hit on me, politely deflected it, didn’t want to waste his time, and I know a bad boy when I see one (something about the tattoes, the body, the emphasis on being just a little bit too honest, a bit twitchy around authority figures). But I mention him, because whatever his relationship with the criminal justice system, and I’m sure there’s been one, he was managing two toddlers on a hot day like a pro.