Day 2 | Lower Chittering: but it's actually at the top of a hill
rest day
Long, slow farewells yesterday, early on The Chef and later, when packing achieved, Patrick, my other housemate for the last 8 months. None of us does goodbye well, but we are all blokes so we cope.
Then it was off to the Bubble Lounge for a last coffee and rendevous with CJ. Considering my attendence over the last year, just for a great coffee, it was finally time to munch on a significantly sized chunk of one of their outrageously tempting range of cakes, there must be 30 specimens lined up. Typical, I order the most puritanical, the orange almond cake, solid, sweet, dripping with orange flavour and about the only species not encrusted with an equivalent dollap of dense cream. Only now it became apparent the cause of the eager patronage of this joint, and I’d thought it was the extravagant decor.
CJ saddles up and accompanies the caravan for a while until it’s time for lunch and a more emotional farewell. I offer up a few crushed lettuce leaves and yesterday’s buns to go with the smoked salmon. She had a little bundle of booty, a sewing kit and a small roll of indulgence money, only to be spent of something you wouldn’t otherwise do.
As a farewell she sings me James K Baxter’s 8 line poem, High country weather, highly appropriate, I’m heading eastwards to NZ, finally heading home after 22 years of roaming.
Alone we are born,
and die alone.
Yet see the red-gold cirrus
over snow-mountain shine
upon the upland road,
ride easy stranger.
Surrender to the sky
your heart of anger.
I swear it was the 50km/hour headwinds as I battled up the Swan Valley that had me wiping the tears away.