There's a wide main street and even wider footpaths. We sit underneath an awning outside a cafe while they make our sandwiches. The woman comes out to tell us that there's a tap around the corner to get water for the dog. She asks the people sitting at the table next to us whether they want to order or they're just having a rest. Just having a rest they say and she goes back inside. Ray and I follow her to look at some of the paintings on the walls but it's no cooler in there and soon we're collapsed back into chairs out the front.
We take the sandwiches and head for Chichester Dam. By the time I get to the last bite the bread is stale from the dry air. We're at the picnic ground by the trickling river on the downside of the dam and we're the only ones until another car pulls up with three older travellers. Are they German? No, Scottish, says Noonie and then we realise that they have DK and the Danish flag on their car. Ray says that they must be from the south of Denmark because people in the north are stylish. We're all wilting and I can't help thinking that looking stylish in this heat would be the last thing on your mind if you were from Denmark.
After lunch, the KP news and part of the crossword the air cools and there's thunder. A storm on the way. We head down to the river to wet our legs and feet. It's colder than Charity Creek and slippery so I end up on my knees grabbing for my thongs as they start to float downstream. After that Ray walks beside the uncoordinated rest of us to steady us along the way.
The storm is so near as we walk across the dam wall that our hair begins to stand straight up with electricity and Ray fears we'll be struck. He crouches down and huddles back towards the cars while the rest of us nonchalantly walk upright, smiling and laughing - and inside hoping that he is not proven right.
Chris and Ray set off through the scrub with their red and blue li-los under their arm. Noonie and I had the same ones when we were kids on holiday at Little Beach but we called them surf mats I think. We negotiate the large slippery stones until we find a spot for sitting. It's shallow, so the water is not much cooler than the day but it's clear and the current moves quite fast. Chris and Ray call it rapids but they're being dramatic and ambitious.
It's the Manning River. This part near the low bridge is called Charity Creek and it's where Pickle learns to swim. He easily makes it to our sitting spot in a mixture of scrambling and desperate dog paddle. Then as he becomes more brazen he starts to swim past us towards the deeper mid part but already he's being swept down towards the bridge. Noonie leans from her position and grabs his hind leg to pull him back in. After that his forays into the water are circular, always ending back at Noonie's stone or on the shore. One time he does a bigger loop into the deeper water and back towards Noonie. He's judged it perfectly with the current bringing him in an arc towards her, but he's taken in a bowl ful of water along the way and as he comes to rest with his head over her outstretched legs he vomits it back up, that bit of the river, straight into Noonie's lap. Luckily her lap is under water and it all just dilutes.
By the time that Chris and Ray come floating down we're lying on our stomachs with just our head and shoulders out of the water. We've got our hats on and Ray says that we look like something out of another time. Chris says it's not a very English thing to do, sitting in the river. We talk about our houses and the things that we'd do if we had the chance like painting wall murals or stripes, and not buying everything from Ikea. It's relaxing until a man across the river finishes swimming and then turns on his iririgation pump that chugs at our ear level. As we're picking our way through the stones and back up to the bridge a little girl yells out: did you have a good swim? I smile at her, nod and make wide eyes.
We wake later than everyone else and when I walk bleary eyed into the kitchen Aunty Jude says: oh, you look lovely today. Cousin Bradley jumps in with: as opposed to yesterday. He offers to cook us breakfast on the barbie despite the fact that Dave has already cleaned it following the first breakfast sitting. We read the papers over bacon and eggs on the verandah and it's bright, white hot already. Peter Beattie thinks he is up for federal politics, Warnie is intimidating Ponting on the field and tsunami is already one year ago.
In no time inexplicably it's lunch and we're eating ham, turkey and seven types of salad and drinking yet more white wine. There's talk of Scrabble before we tend the tennis court in the cool of the afternoon. After a few chapters of Christina Stead on the sofa, cricket test in the background, I wake to find the ant bed court already raked and lined. First it's a cup of tea accompanied by a sweet platter, and we wonder how we've got this far through Christmas without rum balls. We start tennis just before six and it's still way too hot. My new padded visor is soaked with sweat but the pace of the court ultimately works for us, and we're committed. We lose track of the score at one point and I'm prepared to vote for 1-6 if it means we can stop now for a drink but Noonie insists on 2-5 and I'm forced to play through. I get to 3-5 before she agrees that she needs a breather as well. Jude and Lorraine join us and it's twilight and cooler. The smoke haze makes the trees soft and purple across the plain.
After dinner the best Scrabble word is svelte and it's the first one that Bradley puts down. David hovers over our shoulders muttering words and their spellings under his breath until we tell him to go and sit down at the head of the table.
I stand at the clothes line in my Christmas Day frock, bare feet and Uncle David's leather bushman's hat. The clothes are almost dry by the time I've pegged them and I have to stand on the grass rather than the path because I can't stand the heat on the soles of my feet. I identify a patch that's free of bindies and stay there moving the line only. I tried to remember about saving the water from the machine but forgot that for this to work you have to do whites before coloureds.
Noonie has brought a couple of bottles of Veuve, a Christmas bonus from her work, and we crack one while we're in the kitchen dancing around each other getting veggies done and gravy made. Even Gran has some.
We stray into tricky territory during lunch when Hon starts to rail against the need for OH&S in general but then it's diffused by pudding and we all drift off to various couches and beds to nap. I begin on the sofa, glass of champagne by my side but then retire to the bed on the black and white tiles underneath the house. Pickle is there flat out on the cool floor, still, after a morning spent alternately tearing around the garden and on the verandah worrying at the many burrs caught in his fur and paws. When I'm at the clothes line even he stays in the shade of the house. Keep your eyes down says Uncle Dave. I wonder why and then realise he means so that I don't step on a snake.
When I wake we sit outside on the verandah and drink iced water. The others are still sleeping and Hon is sitting in the shade by the tennis court with his book. Lorraine buys Kate Grenville's book for Gran. It's based on the life of Solomon Wiseman. We're descended from him and we wonder about his life in England, because we already know that in Australia he was a hard man. I remember being fascinated as a child with the rumour that he pushed his wife off the balcony of his inn at Wisemans Ferry.
After dinner the temparature drops rapidly. I go back to the clothes line to watch the last of the sunset over the plain, and can feel coolness coming towards the house. In the semi dark the path still warms my bare feet but it's bearable now. The night air takes about half an hour to reach front of the house and our outdoor dining spot. The thermometer on the wall still says 29 but I think it's swayed by the warmth of the brick wall. We retire inside for Scrabble.
Snails eat the mail before I can retrieve it. By the time I get the invitation to the Christmas party for our street there's just an uneven hole where the date would have been. When I take the letters out I prise the snails from them and stick them to the drain pipe. The snails, not the letters.
I sit on the step outside waiting for a cab. The black curly dog from across the street darts from its house and races growling towards me. It stops inches from my knees with its owner yelling: Barney, come here right now. She looks right at me but doesn't say anything. The dog cocks its leg on the ivy to my left and trundles off up the street. Ben says that his mum does a lame type of whistle at their dog while holding two fingers up towards her mouth but a few centimetres away. Apparently it makes a difference.
There's a grasshoppery thing on its back on the pavement trying to right itself. I flick it over using a Joh Bailey Myer one offer card from the Bruce Springsteen bag and hope for a change in karma. As it limps off I think that it looks more like a cockroach from this perspective and perhaps it wasn't the right thing to do. Still no cab, mobile phone battery flat and home phone disconnected so I go inside to call from the charger.
Later, on the bus home we pass The Vanguard and the sign outside says Tonight: Russell Crowe. I hope that everyone on the bus is rolling their eyes and being actively unimpressed like me.
There's chalk graffitti on the Sydney Uni campus that says Unfailing Cod and the picture in my head of an earnest fish makes me laugh.
Then I'm walking home across the park. There's a quarter moon and a tortoiseshell cat sitting on the path. The air has finally cooled but the house holds the heat of the day. I have to stand on a chair to open the top part of my bedroom window, stuck since the end of last summer. Even though there's the street right there I open the blinds up too, and the breeze flows in. When I lie on my bed that quarter moon is caught between the bars on the window. It comes and goes as clouds move fast across it.
