On the long hot 35-plus degree days last summer, you could hardly blame me for reminiscing about canoeing down the Mary River at Kenilworth in the shade of the overhanging camphor laurels and river oaks, sometimes dipping my hands into the water to cool off again or pulling over to the bank to slip into the water.
One such day stands out in my memory. I’d paddled vigorously (well, more or less) upstream to the bridge, under it and a little beyond. Then I slipped the paddle into the canoe and let the outgoing current carry me quietly, gently back to the Homestead Africa , as I drifted silently downstream amid the loops of overhanging vines and trees lying out across the edge of the water.
Reflections of trees lay green and perfect on the surface of the stream, fairly narrow and still in that part.
I listened. Silence. Nothing and nobody to disturb my idyll. Why would I ever want to return to the city? Then I heard a slight rustle of twigs and I saw a tiny red-breasted wren hopping around in the long grasses at the water’s edge.
Gliding faster now across the swimming hole between the towering mud cliffs, I watched the kingfishers swoop and dart in and out of holes in the mud walls. Great walls, carved and sculpted by the surging and scouring of violent flood waters. That river periodically changed from a silver thread to a vast brown relentless torrent.
I reached the beach near the Homestead
There was no sign of anyone in the kitchen. Nobody was home. Apparently.
After a quick lunch I went to the office, breathing in the fragrance of furniture polish and old books. Selecting a book to read, I was soon back in ‘my’ room at the Homestead
Sleepy after canoeing in the sunlight, I lay on the big old brass-knobbed bed and gazed through the lace curtains to the mountains beyond. I began to doze. Cloud-reflections, like the surface of the water, slid across the screen of my mind. Sounds blurred.
Suddenly Justyn’s voice interrupted my half-dreams. Justyn’s voice surprisingly close to the wall beside my bed. “And this is Lord Lamington’s room,” he was saying in his most cultivated tones. “We call it that because he once slept . . .”
Two of the broad cedar panels beside the bed concertinaed open to reveal a group of immaculately dressed, astonished tourists led by Justyn. And there amid the antique beauty of the room lay, well, not Lord Lamington, but me – with messy hair and a crumpled dress.
I don’t know who was the most surprised. There was actually a doorway of the Secret Panel variety right beside my bed!
“Oh!” he laughed. So did I. Most of the visitors looked amused now, some slightly awkward. Justyn, of course, had not realised I’d come back from my expedition and was just doing one of his duties, showing visitors around the Homestead
I later discovered there were quite a few of these secret panels, connecting various rooms to one another in unexpected places. Broad red cedar boards, about two of them, would fold back and become doors.
Those two, Elvira and Justyn, must have had fun growing up there! I often wonder how Jim and Jennifer kept track of them!
