A cold day in Australia


It rained. It rained a lot.

La Serpiente came in with us at about four, which was when I got up and went to read in the living room of the apartment, until about six when I forced myself into half an hour of bodyweight exercises, and then Destroyer woke up so I took her to the nearest cafe to get coffee for my wife and cake for me. There were puddles everywhere and dripping buildings, but the rain didn’t come in again until about ten, when we headed to Moore and Moore, one of our favourite Fremantle cafes. My wife walked there with Destroyer and one of our friends and their son, while I took La Serpiente in the car. It took me twice as long to get there because of trying to find a parking space. When I did finally park a friendly passerby stopped and told me to move my car to avoid a $55 fine – turns out the Australians are no fans of the Swedish cross. So that was a narrow escape.

It rained as we walked to the cafe, then stopped abruptly, setting up a motif for the day. When we left Fremantle and drove down to Margaret River, frequent squalls assailed us. Visibility would drop as the rain crashed down, and then five minutes later there would be sunshine and rainbows

Most egregious was in a pub car park after we’d stopped for lunch after a visit to Harvey Cheese. I had to fetch something from the car, just as it started raining. I was soaked from waist to toe (hurrah at least for my Mountain Wear raincoat) in an instant, and five minutes later the rain stopped completely. And so it went on.

We got into Margaret River about six. The views of the countryside we’re gorgeous, apparently; I couldn’t gawp, concentrating as I was upon keeping us all alive. There’s always tomorrow, I guess. And perhaps my shoes will have dried out.


One response to “A cold day in Australia”

  1. Glad you avoided the fine. A local warned me about that in Lewes many years ago – the rules on one side of the pedestrian sticking-out-to-cross-the-road bit are different from the other.

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