Acton Park

Lesson 1 Only a Fool makes the same mistake twice.

I had a picture in my head of our departure. It involved a final check of the gear list, a tearful hug of the pets, a whistful look around at the property and then with a few toots of the horn we would all madly wave to the small crowd of cheering onlookers as we triumphantly began our journey. Perhaps a bit fanciful but that seemed about right.
Instead 2 hours late stressed and confused and minus the checklist we roared out the driveway with not an onlooker in sight. The only thing we had got right was the tear stained eyes. This was the exclamation mark on the last few months of preparation.
So what makes a family want to uproot itself at enormous effort and expense and live in a tent for a year as you travel around Australia. For some people the answer is obvious. For others the idea is insane or abhorrent. For us it was the fulfilment of a dream of adventure that we both had nurtured for some time. But in the last few years for me it had become more then this. Our life had hit such a pace between working, labouring around the property, kids sports, kids parties, kids other events that I had started to lose some of the joy in the things I loved. Worse still, was even though I was spending time with Liz, Erin and Ben they were ever so slightly becoming strangers to me as the constant merry go round exhausted us all.
I had always imagined as a Dad I would periodically sit down with my children and as they gazed up with rapt attention i would impart some hard earned words of wisdom for my kids. My kids were now nearly half way through their journey to being adults and I couldn't remember a single word of wisdom I had given them. ( In my defence I had delivered some scintillating senseless rants from time to time though I think the only thing my kids leant from this was that dad has at best a tenuous grip on sanity)
So now finally on the road I began to reflect on what life lessons I could teach my kids............ Hmmm............Got nothing, nada, zilcho, the old donut ........ Bugar.
Ok what did my dad teach me. My dad is a wise man. He is considered and humorous. He is even tempered and fair. He tells a good story and when he talks I had noticed that people listen.
One of Dads sayings that I can clearly remember is that Only a Fool makes the same mistake twice. Presumably as he was clearly dealing with a fool this phrase was oft repeated.
This took me back to the Primus Gas Lamp......
We used to go away camping with dad in an ancient dilapidated shack in Fingal. It was a boys only camp. We would hang the Primus gas lantern with its heavy cylinder base from a rusty wire hook, dangling from the old wood shingled roof. Its strategic position was just off to the side from our fold out card table where we would eat. And so there it lurked with quiet malice, just above eye level, waiting, always waiting. When it struck there would be an enormous eruption of laughter from the rest of us as its victim would stagger around clutching there head. It is hard to describe the joy it brought us as a group to see one of our family members concussed by the Lamp, yet we all hated the blasted thing. We never moved its position over several years (fools that we were) and always kept a running total for head knocks. My brother Bill and I were often the stars of the show.
Sometimes it would swing back and collect you a second time, this nearly always resulted in spontaneous incontinence both for the victim and the doubled over on lookers.
Dad who was a little shorter then the rest of us would only suffer the odd glancing blow.
One night after finishing his evening meal Dad was contentedly sliding his camp chair back to stand up.
The chair stuck on the uneven floor boards and Dad trying to maintain his balance shot up to a standing position. The lamp King hit him. This was no sneaky blow from behind but a glorious middle of the forehead sledge hammer blow. For a second even gravity was caught up in the spectacle as Dad levitated in mid air, then remembering itself and as if in compensation gravity kicked back in with a vengeance. As he crashed to the floor clearly incapacitated we strangely found ourselves equally incapacitated, it is not easy to laugh that hard.

Sometimes it is Ok to be fool , I should know I come from a family of them.

PS Carlton beat Sydney at the G and we travelled a long way up to my Brothers place in Boompa QLDRead more