In early 1999, thinking, I'm sure, it was a safe thing to do as he'd never turn up, Debbie wrote to Kenn in the UK cordially inviting him to her forthcoming wedding.
At the time Kenn was very busy with his auto and marine electrical installation business. A long holiday was out of the question and Australia was on the other side of the world and nobody ever just nipped there and back did they! Did they?
Over copious pints of Timothy Taylor's Landlord one night down at the Fellows, Morton & Clayton pub, a plan was hatched. How about just going for the weekend? Cheap flights were available and travelling time could be juggled down to about 17 hours flight time. There was just the problem of travel at each end. A phone call to John & Teresa of n/b Wilson in Watford Marina indicated that if I drove to their place I could leave Posh Pig with them and get a lift/catch a bus to and from Heathrow Airport.
The other end was a more interesting problem. If the visit was
to be kept a surprise then a lift couldn't be asked for and Narrogin was two
and a half hours drive time from Perth. Buses and trains just aren't an option.
As I didn't have a car driving license this mean hiring a motorbike and I hadn't
ridden a bike for several years. The obvious option was to hire something I
was familiar with, ie a BMW. An e-mail to the BMW
owners club of Western Australia produced a list of dealers and further
emails produced a booking form for the use of a R80. This was looking feasible.
Flights were booked.
The
day arrived and before leaving I rang Debbie and swearing her to silence, let
her into the secret just so that my sudden arrival wouldn't throw any spanners
into finely crafted works. This was it! Me, small rucksack of clothes, crash
helmet, wearing bike boots and carrying wallet, passport & tickets I was
off. It was a dawn flight on the Thursday (remember that apart from 17+ hrs
in the air, airport checking-in times etc. there is also the 8 hours gained
by travelling west to east) so I left Nottingham Wednesday evening, spent an
evening drinking with John & Teresa and then John dropped me at the airport
Thursday morning. Thanks folks - your help and welcome were much appreciated.
Then it was off. Next stop Singapore. Stop was a bit of an exaggeration - I
debarked at one gate and had to run what seemed like miles to the departure
gate for the next plane - Singapore airport is big, really big, in just the
way that Perth isn't!!
Of course the thing I hadn't worked out was how to get from airport to motorbike shop and a fortnights holiday in WA the year before had just left the impression that Perth was quite small. Well it is compared to Birmingham and minute compared to London, but it spreads itself lazily over a what is probably about 60 kilometres of coastal strip! My planning for the WA side consisted of a printout of the motorbike booking confirmation and a pocket size fold up map of WA my parents had given me during the previous year holiday. You could count the number of marked roads on this! Remember that WA is about the size of western Europe! Fortune smiled again on the stupid for as the plane descended into Perth I sat chatting to the bloke next to me. It turned out he had a car in storage at the airport and was willing to to give me a lift to the bike shop! Once through customs and some strange looks - "How long are you staying, Sir?", "Oh just the weekend", "Pardon, I though you said just the weekend", "That's right", "Most people come for months at a time, it being a long way, Sir?", "Yes, well its my sisters wedding so I thought I'd just pop over", "Right!" - don't think he believed a word of it but he stamped the passport and didn't get the rubber gloves out!!
Next I rang the bike shop, they pointed out it was Friday afternoon and they wanted to pack up and go home and to get a move on and that they had good news and bad news. The bad news was that the R80 had been disposed of as getting old but that the good news was that I was getting a new R1100 with ABS, paralever suspension etc. etc. for the same price. And get a move on. The bloke and his car turned up and we were off - it was quite a long way, having lived here 4 years now I realise how far and mate, who ever you are, I am eternally grateful, you saved my bacon that day!
The bike shop owners first question was what was the thing with Nottingham folk, as I wasn't the first by a long chalk to hire from him. To further add to to the coincidence he had lived and worked for years within a stones throw of my boats mooring in Nottingham. Who said it isn't a small world? He also said was I sure about driving to Narrogin that night. I said I didn't remember it as being that far and he gave me a look! The bike was new and shinny, huge and quite empty of petrol! First stop a petrol station. I paid in cash and was introduced to the fact that although Australia works to the nearest cent they have no coin less than a 5 cent piece so they round up and down all the time!!
Not knowing where I was really and guessing from a squint at my map I set off. Somehow I found myself near Bibra Lake and recognised a road and made it to the Albany Highway and Armadale Hill. It was now quite dark (gets dark early this close to the equator!). I had a sudden introduction to Australian road signing. A road sign said something about roadworks and loose surface. In the UK this would probably mean sometime ago they did some work and its still less than good, perhaps, somewhere..... Here it meant, here, right now, 8" of loose gravel. I was suddenly immensely impressed with the BMWs handling and suspension as it just shook its head slightly and plowed on. Phew! Now I was out on the dark highway with nothing but skippys and the rare car in the opposite direction for company. And it is a long way. Probably at least an hour goes by, even at warp speed, without anything, nothing, nada, just road and dark and road and rain. Oh yes, I seemed to have brought that with me! Eventually just as I was beginning to wonder if I was on the wrong road and heading straight out to the outback and certain death, the town of Williams appeared over the horizon. Australia doesn't go a bundle on road signs like the UK. Basically people are expected to know where they are going, be responsible and act accordingly. In actual fact Narrogin isn't far by WA standards, close enough that I even considered commuting at one time after I moved here (about 5 hrs a day but plenty of people in the UK do that) but at the time it seemed like the map should be marked "...and here be dragons".
Three quarters of an hour later I pulled into my parents drive, gunned the
engine and shone the headlight into living room and kicked down the side stand.
My old man came out and with the helmet on didn't know who it was. "Ay
up, how ya doing" I said in broad Nottingham. His jaw dropped as I pulled
of the helmet and eventually a "What are you doing here?" lurched
out. "Someone said there was a wedding....." I rejoined, hoping suddenly
that I hadn't got the dates wrong or that my sister hadn't wimped out!!
After that it a was a sudden blur of relatives, shocked mother, large amounts
of alcohol and I think the pub. Certainly the next thing I remember clearly
is being pried off the living room floor the next morning so that my sister
could have her make-up applied!! At the wedding
Uncle Kenn was assigned, for some unfathomable reason, the duty of looking after
Adam however I seemed to manage OK and he survived the day without being dropped
or otherwise scarred for life!!
The rest of the day went OK and a good time seemed to be had by all.
I then had a couple of days to recover from the jet lag and the copious alcohol.
One day was spent on a trip out to Wave Rock. This is also a long way so I drove
until the tank reached half empty and then hitched a ride in the car with Mum
& Dad and picked the bike up on the way back. Wave Rock is a very impressive
sight, several hundred yards of an enormous
rock shaped like a huge wave.
Then
all of a sudden it was all over, a ride back to Perth, regretfully hand back
the BMW and climb on the big white bird. Wednesday night I was back down the
pub: "....and where were you last weekend?", "Australia for my
sisters wedding","Yer, right, pull the other one!"