Travel Reference
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enthusiasm and within the week, short of two days actually, we had painted two coats on
the entire exterior of the two stories. They were very happy with the results and that night,
being a Friday, Gavin and I decided to sneak off to the neighborhood bar for a few rounds.
We drank a little too much and met up with an odd local Aussie man who found out that
we were sailors. He was a dreamer who had a strange idea about designing a radical multi-
hulled yacht. I told him I didn't think it would work, and we had hours of heated discussion
about the merits of multi-hulls as opposed to mono hulls between schooners of frothy Aus-
tralian lager. The bar doors were eventually slammed closed on us, and we staggered home
to the caravan with our new friend in tow.
I believe we might have been a little too noisy, for soon Val thrust her curlered head out
the window directly up above the caravan and let loose with an admonition that still rattles
about my embarrassed mind to this day. Our new friend cowered in the dark and slunk
away into the night; we never saw him or his whacky boat ideas ever again.
We were again severely dressed down by Val in the morning; she was worried about us
bringing strangers to their house, as they were old and frail and were afraid of being
murdered in their beds. They accepted our humblest apologies gracefully. I was terribly
hungover but wanted to get away on my own for a while. Gavin slept most of that day, and
I set off down the road to the nearest bus stop. Val had persuaded me to go and witness the
farmers' annual show, and I am very glad I did. I found the right bus and was deposited a
few hundred yards from the Canberra farmers' show grounds.
My headache had all but disappeared, and I was left with a euphoric and deeply philosoph-
ical feeling of witnessing the people and the show around me without being a part of it. I
was on the outside looking in, still pleasantly anesthetized from the heavy night before, and
I floated about the grounds in a pleasurable trance. I sat in a beam of sunlight at the little tea
garden watching the farming folk of Canberra, washed and soaped for the occasion, wear-
ing their ill-fitting Sunday best in various forms of discomfort. I watched the little girls in
their frilly, pink lace dresses and black, patent leather shoes chase the little boys in their
blue shorts and grey shirts.
I cast envious looks at the beautiful young women who hung onto their farming men's
strapping arms and saw the looks of content and past yearnings of the elderly who had seen
it all. I saw, with a mutual and heavy heart, the looks of sadness, depression, and loneli-
ness of the single people, both young and old. I walked about in the noise and throng, get-
ting lost in thought and memory. I marveled at the great bulls and shining cows, muscular
horses, bloated pink pigs with flicking ears, and cute little kid goats.
Now, abrasively on the metallic intercom system, they were calling our attention to the dar-
ing stunt car drivers flying over ramps and narrowly missing each other, cars in heart stop-
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