Thursday, 2 February 2012

Obligations

Ty, our neighbour from Altona in Narracorte, referred to our time in Robe as being the “last of our obligations”. To call spending a week at the beach with Sadie, Mark, Roy and Della an obligation is a bit harsh, but he did have a point.

Robe is not a place I will hurry back to. The beach is stunning but the wind, the wind! If it's not a Northerly, it's a Southerly, or a South Westerly. And it's always a wind, never a breeze. We did have a few hours of stillness, but that was followed by a raging storm that threatened to pick us up and fly us across the Nullabor. Luckily Will the truckie from Horsham ( “They make wind here”), lent us some guy ropes that tied the annex down and let me sleep at night.

Robe saved itself partially though, by providing me with two things; benign 2-3 foot waves and on Bill Fry's recommendation, the Caledonian. This pub is fantastic, built in the 1850's, cold Coopers Pale on tap most of the time, low ceilings and good food. Could have easily wasted an afternoon in there.

The kids had a ball as expected. Ollie, Roy, and Ned lived in the TV / games room. All of them found money in various places and used it to win soft toys in the claw machine. Ivy and Della were queens of the disco and the jumping pillow although it wasn't as pumped up as it could have been. Scooters, those damned scooters were everywhere. Ivy was glued to the boogie board, and there was cricket on the beach with Roy the legside legend, and Mark “Flipper” Hughsen. Dinner was usually by the BBQ's on the foreshore. Time flew, until Sara got sick and the computer died.

Sara was out of action for the last three days at Robe having picked up some sort of virusy gastroey thing. Nasty. The computer went out in sympathy, with neither Mark, nor Perry and David, the next door IBM IT experts able to restore it. It went back to Melbourne with Mark along with the white elephant of a solar panel. Got a bit enthusiastic on that purchase. Said good bye to the Powsens, packed up and took off for the Coorong. It was time to leave our obligations behind.

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