Australian Adventure

Episode 10

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...in which our intrepid hero marries the girl of his dreams, and makes a return trip to the Blue Mountains.

So it's all happened. All the planning paid off, and everything was just about as perfect as it could be. And get this: "I'm married"! Eve being Mrs Clark is still a big novelty, and the first time I referred to her as "my wife" made me stop and ponder the newness of it all.

The erratic weather of the last week gave us a bit of a scare. For the last three days we've had everything from torrential rain, through fog and thunderstorms to blazing hot sun with cloudless skies, all on the same day. Sunday dawned overcast, then during the rehersal the heavens opened and we all got soaked. It returned to overcast, but rained like hell again while we were out buying beer (second set of drenched clothes) and continued to rain steadily for the rest of the morning. I had calls from the caterers asking if the outdoor ceremony was still going ahead, then once again with the same question, but added desperation. A quick phone call to the met office and they assured me it would clear up.

Fortunately it did, with about 90 minutes to spare the clouds all blew away and the sun came out. It stayed sunny and calm for the whole time.

And what a time! Eve looked fantastic, the ceremony was great and the food and party afterwards were perfect too. A veritable army of people had spent that last ninety minutes frantically decorating the garden, inflating balloons and arranging flowers. It looked excellent.

The photographer was dead fast too, getting all the shots developed in two days flat. We'd asked for someting out of the ordinary, and the feel was very candid, rather than posed. Black and white, colour and freaky-colour cross process shots added to the variety, and Ben stayed around for the whole evening to catch everyone in various lights.

Thanks for your cards - they've certainly livened up our bookshelves!

On to Tuesday, and I cashed in my Xmas present from Eve, a day's rental of a Nissan 300ZX which we took to the Blue mountains. With five of us in total we also needed the Rav4, and Karl, Stephen and Sparky from the office rented motorbikes to complete the roadtrip experience. You can't go very fast anywhere in NSW, but you can accelerate as quickly as you like, so we chose the windiest, hilliest road we knew.

Great fun too - some coaching from Lenny on the fine art of taking bends at light-speed without wetting yourself proved invaluable, Eve and Dad squeezed more performance out of the Rav than I would have thought possible keeping up with us, and there was good cake in the famous cake shop, without which no trip to the Blue Mountains is complete.

Tonight, "my wife and I" are off to see some friends visiting from Perth, and tomorrow we're getting away from it all for a weekend of indulgence up the coast.