Dismay at Honeysuckle Cottage

I record this favourite family story here to share in trying times when a laugh can help the time go by. 

I think the funniest away from home experience I have had, happened on a day trip.  It was when my sister and I both had small children and not much money. There was a quartet playing in a private but open to the public garden at Mt Wilson in the Blue Mountains near Sydney so my sister and I organised for our husbands to watch the kids and we took off in her car, having prepared a picnic of our favourite things.  It's a couple of hours journey, so along the way we took a break at a mail order nursery I was quite fond of because of the old roses and perennials they stock. Now this nursery was/is a ramshackle place. It is great on painting beautiful word pictures to sell themselves online but in reality it has an overgrown and weedy, never quite established garden with tiered shade houses full of alive but not really thriving plants. It's one crowning glory though was a mature Albertine climbing rose which is so glorious it's worth a detour to see when it's flowering. It has little in the way of facilities.

Now before we go on, you need to know that my sister has always had lots of medical problems and as a result has always been extremely concerned on matters of hygiene. Extremely diligent. No drying hands on the same towel as her husband or children. Really super germ aware.

Anyway, we park the car on the rough dirt slope outside the nursery, enjoying as always the sound of the bellbirds calling in the bushland.  I quickly head over and start browsing. I'm in my happy place. Sis will catch me up, she just needs to go to the loo. The loo is a portable toilet just near the car.  After a few moments my browsing is disturbed by a howl of deepest anguish. “Ooooh nooooooo” emanating from the Portaloo. Naturally, I hurry over. This can only mean one thing, but surely not.  Yes, Sis has dropped the car keys into the Portaloo. I collapse in hysterical laughter, thinking of the torturous process that will be required if my Hubby needs to drive an hour so so each way to retrieve us. Of all the people for this to happen to, it would have to be Sis.  Luckily, the nursery adjoins some messy bushland and Sis has lost no time finding a forked stick.  Now she is headed purposefully back into the Portaloo. Accompanied by a soundtrack of my doubled over laughter,  Sis fishes about for a few minutes. Luckily the Portaloo is not that full. And we call encouraging words to each other as the process proceeds. Soon Sis is thanking God and emerging from the blue plastic key trap, filth coated keys dangling from the end of the stick.  

But now what? How do we clean these keys?  She heads into the little corrugated iron lean-to the nursery calls their Still Room to ask if there’s somewhere she can wash the keys. She’s directed down to a tap in the garden but after hunting unsuccessfully and annoyed that the staff didn’t offer more sympathy or assistance, in desperation she resorts to rinsing the keys in a birdbath – the only water available that she can find in her panicky state. But this is not enough obviously, because what about all the germs on the keys. Sis could not possibly expose herself to these. The keys must be disinfected.  

Things are looking up.  With relief, Sis says “thank God I keep a bottle of tea tree oil in the car” and off she goes to rummage around in her boot (trunk).  Hmm. But how can she retain enough tea tree oil to thoroughly coat the keys? There’s a bunch of keys and not much tea tree oil and tea tree oil is expensive.  A bit more rummaging around in the boot, all she finds is her favourite plastic bag. It’s a limited edition Christmas motif department store number. With a sigh of regret, Sis drapes the plastic bag over her cupped hand and sits the keys in the little basin thus created. Next step, she drizzles the tea tree oil over the keys and uses the plastic bag as a protective sheet as she massages the oil thoroughly over the keys.  Now, tea tree oil is a powerful substance, like eucalyptus oil you can use it to remove sticky glue marks, chewing gum and indelible pen. Sis discovers that it will also breeze through the removal of printed colour on a plastic bag and even compromise the bag itself.  Sis’s brow is furrowed as she satisfyingly works the disinfectant oil across every  possible surface of the keys, but is contorted in horror as she exclaims “oooooh noooo”  The keys are disinfected but now they and her hands are covered in a sludge of potently fragrant red bag ink mush. That’s the end of me for attempts of sympathy through the laughter. I’m wiping away tears.

What now? She can’t dip the keys in the bird bath again because then she’s back to square one on the germ front.  Between my desperate gasps for breath as I battle hysterical laughter. I eventually recall and mention that I think the Still Room sells fancy soap if that helps. It’s REALLY expensive soap. However, this is an emergency, so what can you do. Sis, with keys suspended well away from her body between finger and thumb, strides purposefully into the Still Room.  The guy there has clearly been listening to what’s been transpiring outside.  He passes her a cake of soap and as Sis starts trying to figure out how she’s going to extract her purse without spreading red sludge all over herself and her handbag.  The guy behind the counter lets her off the hook, saying. “It’s on the house. Who knows where your money has been.”

A sheepish thanks, and wry little half-hearted laugh, but the end of the tunnel in sight, Sis goes again in search of water, this time finds the tap, washes up properly and returns, shaking her head and making a visible effort to regain her composure. We check our watches as we resume our places in the car, and continue our journey to the elegant affair at Mt Wilson, both of us laughing at what has just transpired. 

Later in the day, we made our way out through the picnic rugs of raffia hatted ladies holding long stemmed wine glasses of Chardy (chardonnay) to line up to again use some fairly rudimentary facilities. This time it’s what we would call a “long drop” or “dunny”. It’s not plumbed, just deep hole with a toilet over it, inside a small wooden shed of appropriate dimensions. Dropping something in this one would be an irretrievable disaster. Sis has joined me in laughing about it long ago by now, but we drew some looks as we each divested ourselves of every removable item bar clothing - watches, jewellery, handbags handing them off to each other as we take our turn before venturing through that dunny door.