On Mother’s Day weekend my brother and I drove down the main street of Mt Tamborine; out-back Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. I say drove, ‘cruisin’’ or ‘rollin’’ is more apt. We were in my brother’s Lotus Elise, which, if you can’t be bothered to Google, is a fancy sports car. As in, if this were Transformers it would be the one with a sassy mouth (wind grill?) and a heart of gold. Rednecks rubbernecked. In the parking lot a small child pointed and yelled Lamborghini, to which his parents gave him a sharp yank to the arm. My brother and I don’t look like the people who usually drive these cars. We lacked the scarves and fake boobs for a start.
We met out parents at some kind of touristy place. I’m vague because it was the kind of new building that is indescribably tasteless, like water. ‘Clinical Barn’ is the closest I can get. Local cheeses, yoghurts were being sold in a room like a fancy shed, sort of like a provedore/abattoir. My family sipped their drinks while I basked in some cosmopolitan disinterest. Hey—it’s difficult not to fall into cliches when the locals are staring at you. I think this was the fashionable crowd. They were eating their Eggs Benedict in evening wear. The palette was coral, mushroom, oyster, and beige. There were white pumps. I couldn’t discern what their ogling was for. I mean, perhaps we had a few noticeable differences; none of the boys were in board shorts or pastel polos, for instance. And although my mother wasn’t in the usual mature mother get-up (i.e. ruffles, it’s always ruffles) she wasn’t in anything outrageous either. Perhaps it was my Dad’s cap; a wide, flat brimmed NBA one you may have seen on your local, monied hoodlum, which meant there were two possibilities; a) they though my Dad was charmingly free spirited in his hat choice, or b) he was mentally handicapped.
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Mt Tamborine is a cloistered place. Transport seems to be by car only. Everything is spread apart. There are more people wandering around Main Street than going into the many gift-shops, cafes and cafes/gift-shops. Perhaps this was due to the sunlight. Without the miasma of humidity and pollution, the sun was free to beat own on us. Shadows of trees looked like cut-outs. It made the insides of stores look dark, depressing, or just plain creepy. Or perhaps that’s just my families’ aversion to lavender soaps and wrought iron animal sculptures. Although props to the person yelling ‘that’s friggin ba-yoo-de-fool!’ from inside the German Cuckoo-clock shop. It’s that kind of enthusiasm and disregard for the indoor-versus-outdoor voice dilemma that makes me love country folk.
We wound up at the St Bernard Hotel; a pretty little place overlooking the hinterland; thickly forested ripples of land, topped by the sandy pocket of Stradbroke Island on the horizon. A speckled peacock wandered amongst the tables. The namesake dog (like the one from Beethoven) kept turning up in a variety of sleeping positions. I think it was just trying to convince people it were dead, so they’d finally, dear God finally, stop rubbing it’s head and pulling at its face-fat. Inside was finished in dark wood and all the usual country accoutrements; I especially enjoyed a folk-painting of a highway running up a gum tree. Were they miniature cars or was it a humungous tree? –I liked it’s style. Perhaps I’d been inhaling too much burning wood. Not that it mattered, since one whiff of the bathroom cleared my senses. Question; at what distance from the city do all bathrooms get the smell of urinal cake, piss and besser brick?
Mum and I went and pulled a Jane Austen in the garden. Or rather, I pursued a fanciful internal monologue (‘Oh these Hydrangeas are devine! What’s that, they come in different colours depending on the soil? – how marvellous!’) while still maintaining my cynical mien. Then I started laughing at the ducks, since I find all birds fundamentally hilarious— especially geese aka the ‘crotchety grandpa’ of the ornithological kingdom.
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