It was lovely hearing you all say you enjoyed the wedding. I've already told some of you that Nana Edwards was a combination of my mum and one of the ladies who shared her dementia ward. The bizarre things she/they said were direct quotes. LOL. Pop Edwards was Dad at my son's recent wedding, grabbing the limelight to dance with the youngsters and show everyone he's still got it at 95. It's all on the video my cousin has of him, complete with the Abba song blasting in the background.
Seems like everyone is sick at the moment. Ipsy is not well, so a big thank you for soldiering on for me, sis. People everywhere here are catching covid again.
It's sweltering when we meet Charlotte and Gemma for brunch at the rooftop bar, and I'm very grateful we didn't get this heat for the wedding. They can't believe the time has flown so quickly, but they are both eager to see Bree, who has apparently been delighting her grandmother and cousins. Hugging them both, I know it's the first of many emotional partings to come, unsure when we'll see each other again, and as soon as they're gone, I want to get back to the family.
My mood improves when our parents join Masen and I for a swim at the beach, and we end up having fish and chips with Sue, Harry, Rose and Emmett. I stare at Masen with his hair tangled from the ocean, salt encrusting the tips of his ears, and the shy smile he gives me doesn't belong to the animal I had in my bed last night, but I'm crazy about every version of the man I've married.
Sadly, we have to end the evening saying goodbye to Emmett, who goes home in the morning and won't be back to get Rose until after we leave for Adelaide.
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As instructed, we're waiting outside our house at five, wearing warm jackets and comfortable shoes. The time of day and clothing has me considering all kinds of theories for what this surprise gift might be, especially when I know what they did for the other three weddings. The first was a long degustation at a winery, the next a weekend at Phillip Island for the Motorcycle Grand Prix, and two years ago, they all abseiled down a building in the city. Masen states the intention has always been to create shared memories to last a lifetime, and he insists he has no clue what to expect from this one, except that some aspect must be taking place outdoors.
Tyler and Gianna pick us up and drive to the city where we pull into a big parking garage. They confirm that Emily will be joining us after all, and I wonder what kind of activity will be over quickly enough for those of us going to work, especially when ours is the last one of these wedding events, and Masen seems certain they're going out with a bang.
Garrett and Tia are already standing outside the entrance to the Grand Hyatt Hotel, and we don't have to wait long for Randall and Emily to show up. She's bandaged from her fingers to her wrist but relieved nothing is broken, confident that she surely would have heard from the cops by now. While she's aware she's dodged a rather large bullet, she has no regrets about punching Royce.
A minivan and trailer pulls into the entrance to the hotel, and I don't make the connection to the Balloon Man signage until I see Tyler and the driver pouring over a clipboard. Confirming we're going up in a hot air balloon, I can hardly contain my excitement, and hugs don't seem enough to express my gratitude when I have always wanted to do this!
It's still dark when we reach our park north of the city, given simple tasks to help unpack the balloon and prepare for takeoff. Once its opening is tethered to the basket, they use a huge fan to inflate it, then gas burners to heat up the air. There's no taming the massive balloon until it forms its vertical position, and it strikes me that the process hasn't changed that much in the last hundred years. While the burners might be more efficient and follow stricter safety guidelines, taking my spot in the basket feels like stepping into a Jules Verne novel.
As we climb into the wakening sky, long-forgotten memories of other dawns come from nowhere to haunt me. Dawn arrived at the end of a long night of tears when I found out Tanya had died. Finally numb, I retreated under the blankets, emerging from my cocoon with a hardened shell. The remnants of that misery are gone today because she somehow gave me wings the moment I was ready to fly.
There was another dawn when I was at my lowest, clinging to the hope that there was a valid reason why my prom date never showed. It wasn't even his cruel indifference that flattened me. My only real friend never called to find out where I was, so, apparently, when the in-crowd befriended Lauren Mallory, our friendship was the first thing to go.
At five foot five and barely a hundred pounds, my physical appearance did affect my confidence, but the girl who couldn't fill out a AAA bra now has a caring husband who describes her as a goddess. Somehow, I've been blessed with everything I could have ever wanted, and I don't need Jules Verne to guide me on my next adventure.
"What's the matter, baby?" Masen asks, looking worried.
I may share the details of those dark times with him one day, but they're not going to mar this one, so I wipe the tears from my cheeks and kiss him. "I just feel so lucky to have you and your generous friends and this amazing experience. I don't think it gets better than this."
"Yeah, it's unreal," he agrees, wrapping me up in his arms.
I hold onto his forearms, having no words to describe the sensory explosion. The sky in the west is hazy and cool, while the glow of the dawn competes with the colors of our companion balloons, and I love seeing them glow with each new blast of flame. It's the only real sound up here while we float in the currents of air.
As it gets lighter, we're all taking selfies, and I have to remind myself to stop, breathe, and commit this to memory.
Our southerly journey is restful and slow, and our guide takes group shots from a tiny camera suspended from a swing hanging off the side of the balloon. He's full of history about the landmarks below, the city skyscrapers glistening in the sun, the hallowed turf of the Melbourne Cricket Ground and the arenas where they recently held the Australian Open Tennis Tournament.
The Yarra River then offers up all its silent pastimes—squadrons of rowers slicing through water, bike riders and runners—all less ordinary when viewed from up here.
The gradual descent over the Botanical Gardens is the perfect end to our flight, but I'm sad when we land in a park close to the bay. We all help to pack up and return the basket to the trailer so we can leave for the city. It's a shame we can't hang around, but we're all heading off in different directions, and we've agreed to keep Wednesday night free for a farewell dinner.
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Mom and Dad are ready when we arrive back at the house. Carlisle and Esme have gone to drive Nana Edwards home to Ballarat, so we waste no time leaving for our foodie tour of the Queen Victoria Market. Masen insists it's not a wedding gift, but I love that he's picked something to share with my parents, because what I have chosen for him is best enjoyed in private.
Known affectionately as the "Queen Vic,'' the historic landmark has served the people of Melbourne for 140 years. Our guide takes us through the food halls, where we meet vendors and sample a variety of food from delicatessens overflowing with cheeses, breads, and smallgoods, to seafood stalls where some of the prawns are the size of small lobsters.
We spend time with an experienced butcher, learning how to choose the tastiest cuts of meat, when to marinade, rub and coat, and how to prepare them for various cooking techniques. He recommends a temperature probe to guarantee how well something is cooked. Using griddles to sear and caramelize definitely enhances flavor, but 60 degrees will always be rare, 65-70 is medium and 75 is well done. Even Dad says that nobody has ever explained that before.
Unfortunately, the man is no expert on portable barbecues, but he offers enough good advice that Masen is now itching to go and buy ours. While I'm just as eager, I can't leave without finding out why the line of people is still so long at the American Doughnuts food truck, and I am not disappointed. Their hot jam doughnuts are so worth the wait.
Mom and Dad want to stay and explore the rest of the market, so we give them our Myki travel cards in case they decide to take a tram before we return.
There is no one store that sells all brands of portable barbecue grills, so we have several places to visit to see what's on offer. Tiring of BTU readings, reversible hotplates, trivets, woks, pizza stones, roasting racks and thermometer probes, we finally know we've found the one when we see our Ziggy. It's a little embarrassing when I add up what we're spending, including accessories, but I tell myself we'll be saving money on every meal we cook for ourselves.
I don't know which one of us is more in love with our new toy, but we're breaking it in on Wednesday night!
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Mom is still asking about contacting Serena again, so we schedule a FaceTime call for eight o'clock, just before lunchtime in Athens, and Serena asks when she can see our wedding photos. I tell her I'm dying to see them myself, but showing her our new wedding rings seems to satisfy her for now.
She asks where we go after Melbourne and if we have printed maps or navigate by satellite. I'm honestly shocked she understands GPS and, at the same time, knows about paper maps. I inform her that we always have both since we go to places where there is zero coverage, and that National Geographic supplies us with great big maps we can spread out to help with our planning.
Mom is being really annoying, obviously bored with our chit chat from her leg bouncing under the table, and I hold her hand to stop her from butting in. If she thinks I'll let her be rude to this nine-year-old kid, she's mistaken.
As if Serena senses the tension between us, she holds up a drawing of what "less than one-forty" means, asking if we recognize it. It's just a circle, sliced up like sections of pie, the lines drawn quite precisely.
Masen frowns at the screen and asks, "What do you think it is, Serena?"
Makenna sighs. "We're really hoping you'll know, like you did before."
"Is it a target, like a dart board?" he asks me, but I'm stuck on portions of pie, games of Trivial Pursuit.
"I have no idea," I reply, and Serena looks disheartened, as if this is another thing that might take a long time to understand.
It could be a wheel, a compass, or a clock, but finding a connection with one-forty is going to be a challenge. I ask her to be patient but I can't let it go when the call is over, wondering how the puzzle might be solved. It has to be something we can see or measure if we're going to remain below or underneath it. We could measure distance, but identifying the starting point is beyond my knowledge. Surely it's not speed. We'd have to have a death wish to be driving that fast.
If it's a clock, then one-forty seconds, minutes, or hours are strange chunks of time to measure. One-forty days doesn't seem to represent much of anything either.
"What are you drawing, babe?" Masen asks, sitting down with cups of tea for us.
"Thanks," I say, kissing his cheek. "I'm just doodling really, thinking about one-forty and how it might fit in with our trip.
"Any possibilities?"
"We have to know how to stay under that figure, and I've been tossing around distance and time as the most obvious."
"Distance?" he asks, not on the same wacky page as me yet.
"Yeah, the lines could represent distance as the radius of the circle, like how far we could travel from somewhere, but from where?"
He raises his eyebrows. "Okay, so what is this one with the arrows?"
Still doodling, I reply, "It's a compass. I haven't gotten that far yet, mainly because I'm not exactly sure what a compass measures."
He's thinking, watching himself spin his mug of tea. "I guess you could say it measures direction in relation to the earth's magnetic poles … like … meridiens. I'll be right back."
Walking out of the room with a serious sense of purpose, he returns with a map he lays out on the table. It's the one of the whole continent, a little dog-eared and definitely treasured.
"You almost got it on your own, Bella—time, distance, and direction—all measured in lines we know as longitude. Fifteen degrees represents an hour and an amount of distance east or west, with the distance decreasing the further you are from the equator. If you saw a map of the globe from above the pole, including lines of longitude, it would look like her drawing." Pointing to the map, he adds, "Uluru is roughly 135, Mallacoota is smack on 150, and our one-forty is the border between Victoria and South Australia."
I shake my head slowly, amazed. "So why would we have to stay less than one-forty?"
"It's west of one-forty—she might not realize, but she's warning us to stay away from the eastern states."
"For how long? I mean, that won't be a problem for the next six months, but then what?"
"I don't know," he replies, picking up our empty mugs. "But I'm sure you and Serena will find the answer." He rubs my knee. "Hey, it's been a long day, and I'm feeling old and buggered. I'm going to bed."
I laugh because he's neither of those things, and I'm sure I can get another hour out of him. "Give me a minute and I'll come up and scratch your back."
He smiles and kisses me shamelessly. "Don't be too long, Mrs. Edwards."
When Mom walks into the kitchen, I'm studying a map, my doodles stashed in my pocket, and I've decided not to share our discovery. Knowing what it means doesn't help when we don't have the reason, and I'd rather she lose interest in a circle with lines than continue to worry about an unknown problem we might face when we come back to Sydney or Melbourne.
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Carlisle plays tour guide for the day, driving us up to the Dandenong Ranges in a rented minivan. The higher elevation brings blessed relief from the thirty-degrees we left in Melbourne, and the air is fresh from the forests of mountain ash and giant tree ferns in this region that miraculously escaped this summer's fires.
At the lookout at Mount Dandenong, we can see all the way to the city and Port Phillip Bay. Dad, Masen, and I trek down to the base of Olinda Falls, realizing the others were wise to stay behind when we have to face the 800 meter climb back up the hill.
We wander through a strange forest gallery with a hundred clay sculptures, almost entirely of Aboriginal people. The sculptor was a master at capturing the faces of subjects he found during many trips to the Northern Territory, apparently obsessed with the connection between Aboriginal people and the land. Esme asks for my impression, and I have to say I don't see it says anything about Indigenous culture, wondering if it was a genuine admiration or gimmick. She smiles, telling me the exhibition is still controversial, with many people considering it racist, but that artists are often eccentric, depicting their subjects from skewed perspectives.
For the first time ever, I have high tea, and the restaurant is a big sunroom looking out onto lush gardens and lively parakeets. We're served delicately made finger sandwiches, yummy pieces of frittata, blinis with smoked salmon and sour cream, baby sausage rolls, and cute little quiches. Round two is warm scones, raspberry jam and cream, tangy lemon tartlets and mini vanilla slices, chewy-crunchy marshmallows, and brownies. It would be an obscene amount of food except everything is just the perfect pop-in-your-mouth size to savor and enjoy.
Masen sneaks off to pay for lunch, and I'm glad to be putting our wedding gifts to good use, because saying we didn't want any has translated into a lot of cards we opened on Sunday that had cash or checks inside.
After a quick tasting at Payten and Jones Wines, we pick up wine for tomorrow night, plus a couple of bottles we'll put away for special occasions.
Our final stop is the Healesville Sanctuary, a zoo-based conservation organization, committed to fighting wildlife extinction, and they know there are tough times ahead in rehabilitating bushfire-affected animals. In total admiration of people who can do this kind of work, I can't bear to see the awful scars that remain after these poor creatures were burned and traumatized, their habitats and food source destroyed. It takes all of my resolve not to walk away in tears, so I am relieved when Carlisle suggests we get going.
Not far away, there's chilling evidence of a fire that ripped through here years before. It must have been extraordinary, because this hasn't sprouted again, standing as eerie gray trunks, towering over the fifteen-meter babies that flourish today. Carlisle says the Black Saturday fires of 2009 are known as the worst natural disaster in Australia's history, and that these trees it annihilated were 300-years-old.
After what I've seen today, I know there's no place for scarred animals or exterminated forests in my documentary. Maybe one day I'll toughen up enough to tackle such subjects, but for now, I can't see myself needing to record any of that.
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Carlisle and Esme take Mom and Dad into the city. After returning Alice's unwanted dresses, they're spending the day on the tourist trail, visiting the Immigration Museum, the Old Melbourne Gaol, and the city's graffiti-covered laneways. I would have gone with them if Alec hadn't invited us over to view our wedding photos!
Firstly, we have to see the van before they leave in the morning. Alice has named her "Cinnamon" after her caramel-colored paint job, and I bet it won't be long before we're in a convoy of cinnamon vehicles since I've seen how the outback's ocher dust sticks to everything.
It's fascinating how much thought and work goes into one of these van conversions. The boys are already at the rear and up on the roof, geeking out over amp hours, solar converters, and Bluetooth monitoring panels, while I'm just happy that Jane will sit on my lap while Alice shows me the interior. Things are made to swivel in here: the driver and front passenger seats, a dining/work table they can mount in several places, and a decent-sized monitor that doubles as a television. They can even angle it to watch from outside. Two more passenger seats allow Alice to sit beside Jane if she's unsettled, and to control the chaos that is a ten-month-old feeding herself.
I comment on the polished timber counters and white-painted paneling, and she explains the fitout was done by a boat builder, demonstrating the foot pump for the sink faucet. She pulls out a drawer, revealing a sizable top-opening fridge, and I have to ask about a cooktop, noting the lack of built-in appliances.
"I can't risk Jane getting burned, so we have a portable induction cooktop and an air fryer/multicooker. We bought one of those cheap little propane stoves in case we run out of power, but we're not using that inside the van. There's an awning Jazz will no doubt be rolling out soon."
I'm happy to hear we'll have backup methods of cooking between us, and I remind her it's our treat for dinner tonight.
A bed takes up the rear of the van, with Jane sharing it, albeit from her own little travel bed, complete with luxuriously thick sheepskin. The fully screened baby tent has outer flaps that can be lowered for privacy, and the open mesh allows airflow from windows on each side of the van to exhaust fans in the ceiling. Its UV protection means they can also use it for a shady play area outdoors.
"One of the reasons we could afford this van is that the bed doesn't convert into a sitting area. Jazz's only demand was a bed he could stretch out in, so this section at the end is just for feet." She pulls back the cover to demonstrate. "By lifting this top cushion out, we have more seating."
I think it's simple and clever. "Maybe I'm lazy, Ali, but I like that much better than having to dismantle the bed all the time."
"There's not enough space for a bathroom, either, but we can take a hot shower at the back, and there's a composting toilet for emergencies. It's for Jasper. I am not using it, and I'm certainly not emptying it. If I need to, I'll dig a hole outside."
I have to laugh. "I'm sure we'll all be digging holes at some point."
"Needless to say, we won't be trying to toilet train Jane this year." With that comment, we both crack up.
Alice has done a stack of research on living in vans and traveling with a toddler, and she admits my success with paring down my wardrobe inspired her to pack light.
"When I studied Jane interacting with her toys, she picked most of them up and turned them over, casting them aside quickly, so we had a garage sale before we left. Her two favorites by far are Bruce, the Aussie bush baby with multiple textures, and Blossom Bea Bunny, complete with long floppy ears and a tiny blanket they share at naptime.
"Jazz was already overwhelmed with the amount of baby gear we were bringing to Australia, so he was on board for the experiment. Apart from one set of brightly-colored stacking cups and two plastic balls, the only other things we packed for Jane were crayons, a few paintbrushes, and a handful of books we will swap out during the trip. I spoke to Gemma about it, and she is already donating some of the stuff they've accumulated for Bree."
What they've spent and the amount of planning that's gone into this trip makes me honored that Jasper accepted this job, and I must tell him how lucky I feel getting my number one pick to run the photography for the project.
We go inside, and Alec's photos are exactly what I wanted, showing the stunning view, the painter, flowers and cake, and our guests animatedly enjoying each other, talking and dancing. The drone footage on the beach makes me so happy I have to hug him. He points out the picture the artist chose to finish the painting, and I start to cry when Masen wraps his arms around me, having never seen a photo that truly captures the way we love each other. Alec tells me he would have been gutted if I didn't have an emotional response to that one.
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I call Charlotte on FaceTime as we're serving her prawn and pancetta skewers. Since we've followed her recipes, I hoped it might make them feel part of the farewell dinner, but it's actually Bree the others are gathering around to see.
Masen thought we were the only couple with a plan to have babies, but with Rose saying it's far too early to tell anyone else that she's pregnant, I'm predicting Emily will be next. She and Randall have that close physical connection I saw between Rose and Emmett the night at the Secret Garden. I imagine it's similar to how I feel about Masen. He's been an exceptional partner, shopping at the Prahran Market, helping to prepare the food, assembling our new barbecue, and cooking from Charlotte's instructions. Once the prawns disappear, we have lamb cutlets and sausages warming in the oven. Charlotte's mango coleslaw and her watermelon salad are in the fridge, ready to go.
She is eager to share her expertise, and I think this will be a great way to stay connected. I look forward to cooking one of her creations and FaceTiming from a spectacular remote location.
xo Thanks for reading
