I went to Port Macquarie for my first (family) holiday since I went to Melbourne in May, 2009. The only other time I have had off work since May, 2009, was to write my thesis and go to a funeral in Dubbo, none of which (thesis, funeral, Dubbo) are a good time. So, as you might imagine, I had high expectations that this would be the trip that could change my life. And, in some ways, it did.
For instance, I awoke every morning by 9 o'clock at the latest, which has rarely happened to me, due to both laziness and a rare blood disorder that makes me allergic to the early morning frosts. But I thought "hey, if you don't get out there and face some of your obstacles, such as a rare blood disorder that makes you allergic to the early morning frosts, then what kind of midday movie starring Meredith Baxter-Birney or Tori Spelling can you expect to have?" The answer is: not a very good one.
On these mornings, I also walked "The Airport Route", which was about 45 minutes from the resort (loosely termed) that we stayed at. Why was it called "the Airport Route" I hear you ask? Well, we had to navigate some pretty rough terrain, as those of you familiar with the Lonely Planet: Port Macquarie guidebook might know. There was bitumen. There was grass. There was occasionally a puddle of water that had turned brown like a half-avocado that you left in the fridge and forgot about. Given the roughness of the terrain, we required a fearless explorer to guide us, and his name was David Airport. He was British, about 47 years old and sported a neatly-manicured salt-and-pepper beard. It was not actually comprised of the seasonings themselves, but rather coloured like when you shake both of them onto a white surface and its a bit speckly. Other information about David Airport is scarce, mostly because it's late and the joke's already over and I clearly named the route after the airport we walked past every morning.
We would eat brunch each morning at a small cafe on the banks of the Hastings, where a charming and enthusiastic girl would take our orders (except on her day off, when a girl who seemed to lack her joie de vivre spat our orders back through her braces and destroyed the sense of homeliness that Girl 1 had striven to create). I often ate bacon and egg rolls, feeling bad for the pigs who gave their life so that I might eat, especially as I don't eat breakfast or any special hybrid of breakfast and lunch, and so the pigs probably took my change in diet quite personally.
I exercised regularly, with at least an hour, if not more, of tennis every day. This is because I do not completely bite at tennis, and also because I had the correct footwear as outlined in the bungalow compendium provided. I contemplated using the gymnasium on the grounds of the resort, but upon inspection of how everything else (sans tennis court) had gone to absolute shit, I felt it unwise to lock myself in a small room with a cranky treadmill.
My family shared many heartwarming Kodak moments. My mother weeped and my father looked sideways at her like she was an alien while they watched "The Notebook". My brother and I stole sheets from the bungalow compendium about nudist beaches and removed cards from the bathrooms which requested that women dispose of their used sanitary products thoughtfully. My brother and my father played pool and passed wind a lot in the clubhouse. And on the Monday night, I patted my mother's back, got her a glass of water and tucked her into bed when she drank too much.
Immediately on Tuesday morning, I realised that at the ripe age of 25, I had swapped bodies with my mother yet there was no Disney film in sight.
One day, my brother and I decided to go Cybernet hunting in town. We packed a small satchel of goodies (my iPod, the aforementioned sanitary notice, a scarf, $2.45 in change and the iron supplements that I forgot to put on my bedside table) and were dropped off on Horton Street, which is apparently the main street of Port Macquarie. Except that every street in Port Macquarie is the main street of Port Macquarie. And do you know why? Because they are all incredibly long, have little signage and look identical when you walk around for nigh on two hours looking for the public library.
A word to the governmental representatives of Port Macquarie: if your library were more clearly-signed and exciting like this Magic Library, finding shit would be much more effective. Perhaps then less young people would be pregnant or with child because they would have been able to look up "contraceptive" in the comprehensive reference section of said library. (And I mean that, too. Scientifically, Port Macquarie has more young pregnant people and young mothers than any other town that I have seen in the last 7 days. You could probably look that up in the science section of the Port Macquarie Library, except it exists on some bizarre temporal plane to which I have no access).
But we found the library eventually, because we went to the Information Centre on the corner of Hay and Clarence Streets. I know this because we looked at an Information Booth on the corner of Hay and Clarence Streets and thought, "theoretically, this says that the centre is on the corner of Hay and Clarence Streets, so we must be standing right on top of it". But the diabolical politicos of Port Macquarie did not have an underground lair. The Information Centre was instead about half a block down from the booth and not (!) on the corner as advertised. Unfortunately, the library was several kilometres across town from the Information Centre (and in fact, one block from where we had reached when we said 'this is hopeless, let's try and find the Information Centre').
Looking like something from 'Six Days, Seven Nights', with Harrison Ford and Anne Heche, we trudged back to where the library was alleged to be, according to a map.
And when I say this, I do not mean we looked like a fading action hero and an occasional lesbian with an inopportune fondness for mens business shirts. Rather I mean that we were tired, sweaty and hungry. So we found the library, a non-descript grey building, full of non-descript grey books and non-descript grey people, and further discovered after two hours of searching, that the interwebs could only be accessed by members of the library.
As you might gather, I flew into a rage and hulked out (ironically directly in front of 741.5 of the Dewey Decimal System), destroying some glass panelling and a girl's sandwich in my frustration. Except none of that happened. No, instead, we quietly snitted amongst ourselves and vacated the library, cursing the very founders of this cruel, cruel town.
So I guess the lesson here is threefold. One, always ensure that your plan has a backup in case of mysterious disappearing libraries or a more generic problem (we fortunately found an Internet Cafe almost immediately after). Two, sometimes it's just the cruel hand of fate that makes what starts out as an extremely pleasant holiday increasingly difficult for the poor young man who has a rare blood disorder which makes him terribly allergic to early morning frosts. And three, 'Six Days, Seven Nights' is just appalling and don't even get me started on 'Men In Trees'.
