Up the river, down the river
Saturday was the day of our big canoeing expedition – well “soft adventure” is what it was actually called, but I think it was enough of an outdoors expedition for most of the people I know in Sydney ;). After careful selection I chose five girls at my church, The Bible Talks, who I thought would be up for it and I was really pleased that they all enthusiastically came and then actually enjoyed it. Mandy has blogged all about it over here already.
It was very picturesque driving down the Kangaroo Valley and my heart heaved and sighed for the hills of days of old. When we got to the canoe collection point there seemed to be cars and people and watercraft of all sorts everywhere and I wondered what kind of chaos exactly we were in for but we soon signed up, headed down to the river and lost sight of all the people. (Though occasionally someone paddled by and commented on what a brilliant idea our gloves were, which was a tip I had received from an experienced canoer.) It was so lovely out on the big wide river in the sunshine. It looked like it was going to a perfect day, with nothing in it to sensationalise the story except an erroneous detour up someone’s driveway, but a thunderstorm kindly obliged and added the drama. As we idled down the river before lunch we questioned the distant rumblings once or twice and decided it wasn’t thunder for a time, but it soon became apparent that it was as the evidence loomed up over the aforementioned hills and crept across the sky.
We found a spot that was a little bit convenient (actually that is debatable) for disembarking for lunch and had a lovely chat over salad rolls and fruit, before packing up with some urgency as the sky went darker and the thunder certainly confirmed its presence. We never did get to find out what was just around the next bend because it looked like returning from whence we came was a good idea as it began to actually rain and lightning split the sky. Mandy and I swapped places in our canoe, and I don’t quite have an explanation, but, as she has written, this didn’t quite work for us and we had a puzzling time of zig-zagging back up the river. Quite interesting, and under normal circumstances one would just enjoy the ride, but the lightning and imminent downpour did give this means of progressing a certain angst. We did, however, make it back all un-electrocuted and before it began to rain in earnest.
The blackouts we encountered in Kangaroo Valley proved the nearness of the storm and the wisdom of aborting the canoes. (We had engaged in some discussion about what would happen to you if lightning struck the river: Would a plastic canoe help? How about the metal in the paddles? Would the whole river turn into a conductor? That sort of thing ...). We abandoned the darkened fudge shop in Kangaroo Valley, finding it strange to be dashing about in the rain feeling myself to be covered in sunscreen, and went on to Berry for coffee, which was very pleasant.
Karyn, Mandy and I had a really nice time chatting in the car on the way back about a diversity of things. I suspect there may have been more actual frivolity in the brunette car, except for when Karyn told us the story of the teacher at the school where her sister works who went on a littering rampage and got up in front of the whole assembly and decided he was going to catch one culprit and find the owner of a particular piece of rubbish, whom he thought was one “Onee Lazaggnee” – when he was actually reading out someone’s lunch order on a paper bag of “one lasagne”, and waiting in a blind and vain rage for the lasagne to own up, while the other teachers all went to pieces. Oh, how we laughed.
Even despite our early finish on the canoeing it was after 7pm before we made Sydney city again so was quite a day, but a day of great fun and I can highly recommend a canoe trip up Kangaroo Valley.