We did go to the Medieval Fair and I had a good consultation
with a herb crone who gave me a bit of licorice from her garden and told me
mugwort was good for premature ejaculation (not, I hasten to add, because I
asked). I also had a long
conversation with a spinster who dyed her own wool like me but using only
plants and rough and ready methods. “None of this boiling and sieving – just
sling the lot in and whack the hell out of it like this and the seeds fall
out.” Her wool was so beautiful –
soft purple and pink, lime green and palest of browns. No blue. That was the royal colour, she said and needed indigo.
The whole fair had the relaxed feel of something that had
been happening for years. Families
wandering around in their costumes, a weary looking fellow on stilts. “I’m looking for somewhere suitable to
sit down “ he said”and get my gear off”’.A couple of matrons with wreaths in
their hair settled on the grass listening to the lute music.
A lot of bikies
had been sharing the road with us for a couple of days. Or not sharing. Once, when we wanted to get petrol they
had swarmed the petrol station all higgledy piggledy round the pumps. No room for our hulking van. “The toads” said Gramt although he
didn’t use the word toad but a worse word. “Shush” I said.
They looked rather menacing.
But here they were all dressed up in leather with swords and shields
battling it out in the arena and lying very convincingly dead when beaten by
rules I couldn’t understand.
And all this in the beautiful Adelaide Hills still with
traces of a bush fire which must have been beyond scary. Now the burnt tree trunks sport little
green branches in the amazing way they do.
We went on to visit Ruth’s parents in their new house – huge
by our standards with a large shade place for orchids. A select few of their thousands had
come from the old house.
They were so pleased to be in this place. I got the woman’s tour from Ros while Grant was initiated
into the mysteries of the vast tool shed.
Ros said the last few months had taken years off her life but it didn’t
look like that to me. For all the
world they were like a young couple nesting. And they’d bought a couple of dozen rose bushes in Gawler
that morning. “And I’m going to
get some more” Ros confided. We
rang Ruth to tell her we’d made it to her parents and handed the phone to
Ros. Whatever Ruth said Ros answered “But they look really clean.”
Huh!
Ros lent us a broom to
get the fortnioght’s worth of crumbs out of the van and presented us
with a dustpan and brush with a picture of a redback spider on it and Iain
hustled us off to get safely to our night’s site before nightfall and we were
so pleased we stopped in.
Our Gawler
caravan site was a mix of residents and passers through like us. Grant got into conversation with a 92
year old who lived there. “I wouldn’t
live anywhere else” she said “There’s always new people to talk to and there’s
six other van residents here to
keep me company” The rent is $193 a week for a van. And that includes power and
use of the amenities block. Apparently the park owners often buy vans of people
who die and built up their stock that way. If it comes to that I think I would quite like to end my
days in a caravan park.
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