Convicts, chicks and chocolate - what more could you ask for?

Flickr slideshow for the Book Thieves weekend away

We were reading The Secret River (Mother knows this one well!) for my Springwood book group this month. A while ago we decided that, because the book was based on the Hawkesbury River and the main character, William Thornhill, is based on an ancestor of the author called Solomon Wiseman who settled there in the early 1800s, we'd go to Wiseman's Ferry on the Hawkesbury for a weekend.

Months ago I rang the Wiseman's Ferry hotel to see about room costs and booking. I was told we didn't need to book. Last Wednesday I filled out an online booking thing and, not having had a reply in the stipulated couple of days, rang them on Friday to check. Good job I did. They were booked out. I was told they are always busy on the weekends! The man on the phone didn't hold out much chance of me getting a room in Wiseman's Ferry that weekend - there was a wedding on. Turns out he was right and, many phone calls later, we ended up having to take rooms at a place called St Albans, some way north of Wiseman's Ferry. Catherine gave the woman our sob story though and she gave us a special rate.

Not everyone was able to stay overnight. In the end there were just 5 of us staying overnight and 8 of the full group quota of 11 who were able to go at all. We gathered at Mary's house for 11am on Saturday morning and headed off in two cars. We'd not arranged a rendez-vous at our destination but figured the Wiseman's Ferry hotel, built as a home for Soloman Wiseman, would be the logical place. Luckily the girls in the other car thought so too.

Having 'powedered our noses' we headed back down to the riverside park to have a picnic lunch. It had been cloudy all morning but the sun came out as we set up the table and it was lovely by the river, feeding crackers to the kookaburra. After lunch, with champagne, we went back up the hill to the hotel, everyone grabbed a cuppa and we had our meeting.

Heather still had the last couple of pages to go. They happened to be the pages where William Thornhill is sitting on the verandah of his house looking out at the cliffs opposite. The description of the cliffs, as the rest of the story, is beautiful and Heather read it aloud to us as we gazed on the same view. We then got on with a discussion of the book, all had enjoyed it, and put in our reading suggestions for next year. We don't usually have a meeting in January because folk are away and this year it would be on New Year's Day so we've determined to go on an excursion to the movies - regardless of what film is on!

The meeting over, we said goodbye to the day trippers and Catherine, Trish, Heather, Mary and I piled into Mary's car and headed off for St Albans via the ferry. En route we stopped at a tiny little cemetary. They seemed to be a healthy lot; even in the mid to late 1800s the people were living into their 80s, 90s and even one to 100.

Finally we arrived at the Settlers Inn. We'd booked two rooms with the hotel needing to put an extra bed in one of the rooms. This seemed to be a bit of a challenge for the staff but finally we were shown to a couple of cabins out the back of the lovely old 1830s Inn. Drawing our names out of a hat, we decided on who was sleeping where and I ended up in Cabin 6 with Heather.

We had a drink in our room before going across to the Inn for dinner. The menu didn't look real great initially, there were no vegetarian or even chicken dishes on the menu and I thought I was stumped but when I asked about getting veggie something I was offered goats cheese tart which turned out to be very very tasty.

Waiting for our meal we were joined by two french men, Jean-Paul and Christophe, who ended up joining us for our meal. Everyone we met asked what we were doing there and we'd tell them about reading The Secret River. One of Jean-Paul's children had had to read it for school so he knew about it. Later we were joined by an aboriginal man, Colin, who had also read it. We also met Henry who is Deputy Captain in the RFS up there.

Back in our room we had more wine and chocolte, chatted and went to bed. Mary and Catherine were up early and out for walks early the next morning but Heather and I must've slept until 8:30 or so and were last ones up.

We had a breakfast of leftover picnic bread, salad and cheese then went for a wee walk across the river from the Inn. Saw a lovely cottage, Price Wilson Cottage, which looked idyllic. We ended up stopping in Windsor for fish and chips (the fish shop there is famous) and in an absolute downpour checked out the local markets. Then we headed south and back home.

Weekend report

Got our computer back on Thursday. They still hadn't looked at it (a week later) when Ian called after work. As he told them, they'd had it longer than we had at that stage. They said they'd get on to it and rang back later to say it was good to go. Seems ok so far but we'll see . . . any more trouble and I'll insist on my money back.

Friday night we went up to Jamie's school to see the musical. Jamie is working as stage crew. The musical they are doing is "Into the Woods" (Wikipedia entry) and it's a 'fractured fairytale'. It involves the Baker and his Wife who, in order to have a baby, need to go into the woods and collect one red cape (from Little Red Riding Hood), one snow white cow (Jack of the Beanstalk's best friend), some hair yellow as corn (from Rapunzel) and a golden slipper (Cinderella's). All the fairytale folk are in it; the Big Bad Wolf and Grandma, Prince Charming and his brother, the Wicked Stepmother and Stepsisters, the Giant.

A friend's son is playing one of the princes ("I'm charming, not sincere"). He's a tall, handsome boy with curly hair and dark eyebrows which he put to good use, hamming it up with the audience. Adam planted his feet on that stage and owned it; he was very funny. He and the other prince, a friend of Jamie's, sang a duet that quite stole the show (unhappily, Jamie said last night Adam was off-key for that song which brought Matt undone too and it was not good). The cow was also hilarious.


(Hope that works, if not go to: YouTube video )

At the end of the show everyone went home happy. The Baker and his Wife had collected everything and were to have their baby and the Princes had found their Princesses, Jack had been reunited with Snowy White the Cow.

Only it wasn't the end of the story. Just the intermission. After the break, the Princes were not so enamoured of their Princesses (Rapunzel was constantly in tears), the other Prince had a crush on the sleeping Snow White only couldn't get near her because of the dwarf guarding her, Charming fancied the Baker's Wife, Little Red Riding Hood's Granny had gone missing (again) and the wife of the giant that Jack had slayed was on the rampage looking for Jack.

It was all good fun and Ishbel has a crush on Adam now I think although her highlight was seeing Jamie each time he rushed across the stage, moving props.

Saturday had Ian and Jamie up at the crack of nothing to be across town for his AFL game. Jamie apparently played well and got a Coach's award : "James Coquhoun played his best game of the season and is this week's deserved recipient of the prestigious "Green Car" award". You can read the full Under 18s match report here. (No idea what the Green Car thing is . . .)

Rob went off up to Katoomba yesterday afternoon to the annual Winter Magic Festival with some friends. He stayed overnight at Leigh's house, Ian and Jamie are just away to fetch him home just now.

They are also taking home Ishbel's friend, Britney, who stayed the night. Only lots of threats (from both sets of parents) got them asleep before 10pm. Ishbel has had a lot of sleepovers, either here or at her various friends' houses lately, I think we may have to have a break for a week or so; she's just not getting enough sleep.

This afternoon I am off up to Katoomba for my book group meeting. We are having a fundraiser quiz for the MS Society in addition to our usual book chat. The fundraiser is called Throw the Book @ MS and all we had to do was register with them and they sent out all the questions. We held the quiz night with my Springwood book group at the beginning of the month and raised over $150. Unfortunately, we had to pay back Catherine $77 of that for wine prizes that she'd bought so next year we'll either not borrow, or make donations of prizes.

That book group we opened up to friends and family. We charged a $5 entry fee then I managed to squeeze extra money from people by charging 50c each time they called out an answer (they had to ping and then wait for me to invite them to answer), charging 50c each time they got a wrong answer and by charging $1 if they wanted to buy an answer or point - they were collecting sweeties - each correct answer, or $1 fee earned a sweetie with the team with the most sweeties being declared the winners. The Katoomba group weren't wanting to open up the meeting but we decided on a $10 entry fee and when I told them how I'd squeezed the extra out of the others they agreed to the extra squeeze so hopefully we'll raise a fair bit more for MS.

I started reading one of those Cyprus books of Shirley's this morning. I hadn't got around to it before because of the reading I need to do for two book groups. I've only read a few chapters but I must say I'm enjoying them. I'm looking forward to getting on to Google Earth this evening and having a look at the villages she talks about. I suspect things are not quite so quiet as 1984 when they first moved back. Harry's pictures are great, but I would have loved some photos of the house they built and some of the village characters. I'll email Shirley later on and tell her I've started reading.