My holiday by Val T aged 54

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Monday 26 April 2004

Nervous breakdown time. I hate packing,1 and I hate flying.2 Nevertheless, it had to be done. Dac takes about 5 minutes to pack for a week; I take about 10 days. Not having had time to start till the very day of departure, I was obliged to allow a certain fine, careless rapture to enter into the proceedings. I thought I was leaving a lot out, but when the time came to close the port,3 there wasn't room for my pillow.4 Imagine Linus deprived of his blanket.

The taxi arrived on time, so that was a good start. Not so good at the airport, where I forgot to say my spiel about not seating anyone next to us ("We'll thank you, and they'll thank you too") and where they embarrassed me by attaching a big green Heavy! Bend your knees! sticker to my port. The young woman was kind enough to explain that it wasn't meant as a criticism; it was just to let the baggage handlers know what to expect. (And she didn't put anyone next to us on the plane, either.)

Largs Bay Hotel View from our hotel room After an easy, punctual, direct flight, we arrived in Adelaide at 9pm, picked up the flash hirecar (a little gold Magna with only 6000 Ks on the clock) and set off for the Largs Pier Hotel. I had the usual couple of strange car scary driving lapses, but Dac was navigating very confidently on his home ground, which was a big help. Our room was right at the end of the new (well, newer) motel bit, a reasonable distance from another guest who spent the evenings sitting out the front of his room, yacking at the top of his voice and getting through literally dozens of cans of beer. Dac thought the room was pretty basic considering the egregious impost, but it was adequate. For me, being able to open the front door and see the sea right there was enough. As it was a non-smoking room,5 I had plenty of opportunity to gaze at the sea, and a pillar to hide behind when the beer-drinking man was out ranting.

Dac's mother, Sylvia Dac's father, Frank We settled in and rang Dac's parents, who keep the same sort of hours he would if he didn't have to go to work - they sleep most of the day and stay up most of the night. That meant we could go and visit them, stopping at Hungry Jack's on the way, despite the late hour. I hadn't seen them for about eight years, and Dac hadn't seen them since Christmas 2000, so there was a fair bit of catching up to do. It's always pleasant to hear Dac relaxing into Yorkshire-speak when he's with his family.

Back to the motel quite late. The drinking man had gone inside, leaving a couple of empty beer cartons to mark his place. We walked out to the end of the pier and back, then I slept like a log despite a rather slanting bed.

1I think this has to do with confronting all the props and stays of my existence: lumbar roll, pickup stick, hot pack, special this, special that, approx. fifty thousand prescriptions and vitamins, earplugs in case it's noisy, and on and on. The pickup stick can only come if the suitcase is virtually empty, so this time I had to hope we wouldn't be doing too much littering.

2I'm getting quite blase about flying as I get older: I no longer spend the entire flight in a state of abject, sweating terror - just takeoff and landing.

3I know you non-Novocastrians say *"suitcase", but this is _my_ holiday.

4Strange beds are a Bad Thing. At least if I've got my own pillow I stand some chance of sleeping.

5Non-smoking hirecar, non-smoking motel room, non-smoking just about everywhere else. No wonder I'm a nervous wreck on holidays.

Tuesday 27 April

These days I nearly always wake up early. This is just as well, as I have to do half an hour of stretch exercises after my shower and before I do anything else. They're tedious but they help. On our holiday, they meant I could wake Dac when I'd been up for a couple of hours and was finally ready to step out.

JL Here beginneth the breakfast outings. We regard it as a great luxury to go out for breakfast: we probably do it about twice a year at home. During our stay in SA, we did comparative breakfasting, starting with an Italian restaurant near the tram stop at Glenelg. It was great. Then we wandered around Glenelg for a while, walked along the pier and so on, till it was time to find the first person we were going to visit. This was John Legg, a friend of Dazza of the 300 bps modem. John became a friend of ours when he lived in Canberra for a few years. Typically, he was flying out to Melbourne that night and would be away the whole time we were in Adelaide, so we were to meet him at the new office of his firm, Helpful Partners, and have a quick lunch.

It was a quick lunch, but it was enormous. I'm used to Canberra lunches, where you pay a fortune for three pieces of pasta, so I ordered main course gnocchi, and wondered why John looked askance at me. I understood when the table-sized plate arrived.

Dac feeding some parrots at the Wildlife Park After lunch, Dac reckoned it would still be too early to visit his parents, so we went for a drive to the Kangaroo Creek reservoir, along the Gorge Road. Gorges are gorgeous, but the reservoir was almost dry, and Dac was disappointed to find that the informative plaques that were a feature of the viewing platform when it opened in the 70s had all been removed. There was nothing to see, so I wheedled a visit to a Wildlife Park we'd passed on the way. I'd seen a white kangaroo through the fence - Dac thought it was a rabbit! We arrived at about 4pm, and the woman said the kiosk would close at 5 but we had a bit longer to see the park. We had a lovely time, and took quite a few photos.

There were an unnatural number of albino animals at the Gorge Wildlife Park - white kangaroos, a white wombat, white peacocks, a white "black" swan... It was later suggested to me that I should have been keeping an eye out for the tub of bleach. One of the nicest bits was the petting zoo, where a little brown alpaca followed us round, bunting us for a pat. It had the softest wool I've ever touched.

Albino kangaroo at the Gorge Wildlife Park White black swan Albino wombat Pompom-headed bird - these are meant to be white, I know!

We got to Dac's parents place in Semaphore in time for tea, and told them all about it. Sylvia (Dac's mum) kept saying how lovely it sounded, so I suggested we take her somewhere next day.

Wednesday 28 April

Breakfast at Westlakes Mall at a chain called Billy Baxter's. Apart from the tomato juice that I had to send back because it was fermented, and the banal surroundings (shopping malls, known and hated the world over), it was terrific. We then went to Semaphore to collect Sylvia and head off to Angaston in the Barossa Valley, where she had fond memories of a good bookshop. We had a good look at the bookshop, which had rooms upstairs and downstairs and in a tower, and then we had a pleasant lunch at a cafe called the Juniper (I think) which was recommended by the bookshop owner. And then, as we'd arranged to visit Solo1, it was time to turn around and go home.

We had a lovely time with Solo and Carol. Getting to see them at all was an achievement: I managed to persuade Solo to overlook Dac's curmudgeonly remarks about attempts to arrange a fest at the Bombay Bicycle Club by begging and pleading, and also by whingeing that I hadn't been anywhere for years and years, and now when I finally got to Adelaide... It was a great relief to be permitted into his golden presence. Despite the horrible photo Dac took of him (suppressed by request) he appears unchanged by the ravages of time.

After a tour of the new house, we settled down with thoughtfully-provided healthy snacks at an outdoor table, where Solo and I proceeded to smoke our heads off and Dac proceeded to complain of the cold. We talked about Life, the Universe, and Everything, as LTUAErs are wont to do. Solo asked after anyone we might have seen, and we asked after anyone he might have seen. Carol came home from work and agreed with Dac that it was cold outside, but it was a while before they prevailed. We finally went indoors for pizza followed by beautifully-filleted fruit, and it was quite late when Dac and I set out for the long but straight drive back to our motel.

1Solo is one of our LTUAE mates. I'll use Dey Alexander's definition here: "LTUAE was a FidoNet discussion group (an 'echo' in Fido parlance), renowned for turning flaming into an art form." Once upon a time, LTUAErs used to see each other often, travelling far and wide for fests...

Thursday 29 April

Breakfast at a cafe in Semaphore. It was raining, the place was filled with loud-voiced people and screeching children, and Dac was served a raw sausage - not one of our better breakfasts!

We checked out the Semaphore pier and the fish measuring station, then drove in to Adelaide looking for a parking spot reasonably close to the museum. We had intended to go to the zoo, but the museum seemed a wiser choice on a rainy day. There was nowhere to stop and we wound up in North Adelaide, chancing upon a park right outside the local library. Well, it had all the amenities, including Internet access, so we took a leisurely break and checked our mail. Then I had a smoke, Dac planned a route, and we set off for a parking station in the city.

The front of the museum is being done up, so we trudged wetly through the restaurant to get in. I dunno about museums. You can get a good look at some birds and animals, but you keep remembering that they're dead. They're stuffed. One good thing was the exhibit of a giant squid in a lift well - ken huge! At one stage I was sitting in the foyer beside a lion in a glass case and thought I'd finally gone round the bend when its tail twitched. Further scrutiny revealed that some joker had motorised it so that its tail twitched at random intervals, as did its ears - sometimes one by one, and sometimes together.

After lunch at some underground food hall in the city, we ventured forth to Parkside to visit our mate Brenda, who used to be in the PCUG with us. After returning to Adelaide, she kept her flat in Queanbeyan and used to visit us at least once a year when she came over to inspect her property. The flat has now been sold, so it was good to have the opportunity to catch up with her. She put Dac happily to work on her Linux box while she and I sat outside for tea and cake and (in my case) smokes. Brenda has four cats and a dog, so there was plenty of entertainment. Most of the cats were hiding but I pursued them relentlessly to say hello.

From there, we drove up to Light's Vision and had a squiz at Adelaide by night, then it was time to meet Richary1 at the Ovington Pub. The Bombay Bicycle Club proved to be booked out but curries were available from the bar, and very nice they were too. Solo had not overstated the comfort of the gaming lounge - after dinner we lay about in armchairs, drinking the rather expensive drinks, (me) enjoying the rare opportunity to have a smoke indoors, and chatting with Richary about (you guessed it!) Life, the Universe, and Everything. He seems to be settling in happily in Adelaide.

1Another LTUAE mate, who used to live in Sydney.

Friday 30 April

Breakfast took place north of Largs Pier at (I think) North Haven - basic fare from the bakery in a tiny shopping centre.

Friday was washing day and Dac's parents had agreed to let us in early. On Friday afternoon we took them to the pictures at Arndale, where we were also met by Miles Teg, who was in Adelaide visiting his parents. We saw Taking lives and it's fortunate I was distracted by Angelina Jolie's egregious lips because the fillum turned out to be rather splucky for a thriller. We spent the evening with Frank and Sylvia, and brought home fish and chips from Barnacle Bill's.

Saturday 1 May - Monday 3 May

After checking out of the motel, we drove along the coast looking for breakfast places, and ended up in Glenelg again, next door to the place we'd been to on the first day. Pretty good, but the first one was the best.

Dac's sister, Julie, with Volcano hair Dac and me with his nephews Scott and Robert The plan was to visit Dac's sister in Middleton (just past Victor Harbor) before turning back for McLaren Vale and the Coriole Vineyards, where we'd be attending a music festival. The drive down was much easier than I remembered. Julie is living with her three children in a two-storey house with sea views from the balcony - the place has a nice feel to it. Dac teased her about her hair colour, which she beamingly informed us is called "Volcano". Her daughter was at work and we ran out of time to call in on her, but the two boys were there, and very pleased to see Uncle Andrew.

We had a pleasant lunch, and Julie put Dac to work fixing her computer - a sound card this time - while we went for a little walk with the boys. Eventually Dac conceded defeat in the battle with the soundcard (Julie later managed to download the drivers he'd recommended and get it going) and we made our farewells, promising to wave from the main road to the boys as they bounced on their trampoline. Then it was time to find McLaren Vale and our motel. This proved surprisingly easy and quick. As we registered for our stay I asked whether Jehn C had checked in, and the motel owners were very pleased because he'd arrived at 10am and asked for me and they'd never heard of me. The booking was in Dac's name!

Jehn is an old friend from my university choir, SCUNA. Back in the late 60s he was one of the mainstays of the tenor line. I recently re-established contact while helping to organise a SCUNA reunion. He's a retired mining engineer who refuses to have a computer in his house. He wasn't able to come to the reunion, so when I discovered that our conductor from that time, Chris Burrell, was in the habit of running a music festival at Coriole Vineyards, I snailmailed Jehn all the information about the 2004 festival. Dac and I were intending to be in Adelaide at around that time, and I was very pleased when Dac agreed that we should go. It's not exactly his kind of thing!

To be quite honest, I wasn't sure it'd be my kind of thing either, given that the focus was 19th - 20th century Vienna. Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Webern, Schoenberg - these are not names that send me running to join ticket queues. My taste can be summed up as "Nothing after 1750, and only choral music, with the exception of Lieder and a few 20th century composers". But Chris was running the festival, and I wanted to hear what the best choral conductor I've ever worked with thought was worth hearing.

When Jehn heard that we were going, he immediately said he'd join us, and I undertook to provide transport in McLaren Vale and get him back to Adelaide on the Monday. I tried to ring him a couple of times as the weekend was approaching but never managed to catch him. So when he arrived in McLaren Vale and found no evidence of my existence, Jehn spent the day thinking about how he could get out to Coriole at 4pm for the first concert. He was very pleased to see us! When we set off for Coriole and the road went up hill and down dale, he said he was glad he hadn't had to walk there after all.

What can I tell you about the Coriole Festival? It was a blissful experience, despite being an outdoors-ish event in cold rainy weather. (The rain was actually more of a feature than a bug for Dac and me, who hadn't seen it for so long! And we don't mind the cold, especially after such a long, hot summer.) The setting was lovely - peaceful, rolling hills of vineyards as far as the eye could see; a pleasant house expanded by marquees - fortunately of the kind with roll-down plastic walls to keep out the rain and wind; pleasant gardens with an exhibition of amusing sculptures. And the company was friendly.

The festival consisted of three concerts, preceded by talks by Ken Healey (another old SCUNA friend) and followed by three meals of local produce with local wine. Ken lectures on the history of theatre at NIDA (the National Institute of Dramatic Art) and regularly gives pre-concert talks for the Australian Chamber Orchestra. It was the first time I'd heard him speak about music, although I've long known of his skill as a speaker - he was MC at my wedding in 1970, and MC at the recent SCUNA reunion.

Well, he was fabulous. (Just ask Dac!) There aren't too many people with such a background in history, spirituality, philosophy, and music, and Ken ranged over his experience as he gave a context to the works we were about to hear and suggested ways in which we could understand them. There was nothing dry or patronising about his talks - they were lively, engaging, accessible and useful. I was deeply impressed, and asked him if he was planning to write some books so that his unique educational skills could reach a wider audience. He said no; he needed an audience to bounce off. "It's just a talk with my mates." Lucky mates!

The concerts were held in the vineyard's barrel room. Dac reckoned if there were an earthquake, we'd be crushed by falling barrels. Fortunately there wasn't. I won't go through all the concert programmes - suffice it to say that the performers were excellent:

Considering that I was listening mostly to composers I've managed to avoid all my life, I found the performances riveting and the whole experience fascinating. It was a good venue for chamber music audience and performers in close proximity. You could see when hairs came loose from the cellist's bow and you knew why they'd come loose. Someone I used to know always described string players as "scrubbing away" - well, yes and no. The focus with which the Australian String Quartet "scrubbed away" was anything but mechanical. They, like all the other performers at this event, thought about every note and its effect and its place in the scheme of things. You wanted to thank them for it.

The person I wanted to thank most of all by the end of the festival was Jo Allan, who accompanied just about everything. The sheer number of notes she'd had to learn and practice was vast, and the accurate, sensitive support she provided was truly breathtaking. The reviews of the festival were disappointing because of what they left out, including Jo Allan's wonderful work. Apparently her reaction was that she's used to being ignored: she's an accompanist. :-/

Dac didn't make it through all the concerts, having a tendency to fall asleep if he sits down, unless there's a computer in front of him. Halfway through the Sunday morning, he retired to the hire car and had a private party of sleeping and reading. He got up in time to bags us seats for lunch and dinner, though, and was much admired by my friends for having come along to the festival at all. Jehn kept me company in his absence.

The festival meals were very good. I wish I could still drink, but! Breakfast on the Sunday was provided by the motel, despite the fact that we didn't put our menu in till the dead of Saturday night, long after the appointed time. On the Monday, Jehn bought us an excellent breakfast in Adelaide's China Town. Then he went off on a 4WD tour of Kangaroo Island and, Tired But Happy, we came home to our pusscats.

Page created December 2005; last updated 11 December 2005