Up and at ’em five hours later, something like six in the morning, Broni puts the finishing touches on our old place as I load all our boxed up rubbish and essentials into the truck, finally after two hours of that, we hit the road being careful that everything we’ve stacked up doesn’t fall over as we turn tight corners and anyway, top speed is only about a hundred and with the weight we’re only hitting ninety.
It’s hot again today but not so sunny, more a stifling mugginess. As soon as we leave the city we feel some relief from its constraints, the beauty of the Central Coast shining in the sun like pictures of Disneyland when I was young, so deep and colourful like paintings, so perfect not sure if they were real.
We pick up the keys and pay our bond and arrive at the drive of our new home. The drive is incredibly steep and we realise everything in the truck will fall over if we try to tackle it so we park on the road and have to carry things down one at a time or put the old tea chests on the trolley we hired too. Back and forth till I’m saturated in sweat, in our brief rests we marvel at our new spacious home and it’s beautiful surroundings.
Everything’s off except the washing machine, I stick the trolley under it and bring it up towards the ramp, then with a big pull it drops the six inches off the truck on to the ramp and then hovers in slow motion, teetering on one wheel of the trolley and I’m pushing to stop it from tipping but it’s too heavy and I have to jump and watch as it upends and lands on it’s top corner, crash on the tarmac, front and sides slowly peeling away.
Me and Broni laugh our socks off, can’t be bothered with anger and worry, just pick the thing up and drag it down the back to the laundry room. We don’t think it works and we’ll ask Broni’s dad to have a look at it when he comes on Christmas Eve.
I hop in the shower and hot foot the van back across Sydney while Broni unpacks here at home. The drive is mad and hectic but I manage to find my way across the traffic straight to the rental place which had been broken into last night and had everything taken, did we get out in time? The city is gonna explode, pick a city any city, time limits for destruction.
I run to the train station still full of adrenaline energy, knowing I’m gonna be dead on my feet tomorrow but hell I can’t stop myself in my mad enthusiasm, back on the train up to the city and then up to Gosford and then the bus to Terrigal, all this takes a couple of hours or more and then in Terrigal, still running, still pumping energy I run around the streets trying to discover the best ways to get to our house from the seafront.
A light drizzle now from the dull grey sky but still warm and humid, still surfers in the water. I run the steepest hill I’ve ever seen and look at the map and work out where I am and then run down and up the next hill and down into our street set in the bush and the rainforest, I later discover this way looks the quickest on the map but didn’t account for the two hills, but I didn’t care, I loved the feel of new muscles pushing against my tight skin, pushing me on and on, fell into the shower and into some beer and into bed – fucked!
1994ever 