Six days ... again

Six days.

My resolution to write every day has not quite slipped to writing every week, and I might even finish the wedding story.

The brothers return from the North Bank road. They tell us it is fine to drive on. We may need to put a few signs up directing people, and there are one or two places where water is lapping over the road, but it is not impassable. The locals all smile reassurance, but Bruce and I take Nerine aside and suggest that we should start establishing a plan B just in case. 

Easier said than done. We are in a strange town, we need a wedding venue and a reception venue to accommodate eighty people in five hours time. The Gleniffer Minister can get access to the Bellingen Uniting Church with no difficulty, and is happy to arrange it. We drive around to check it out - St Stevens Methodist Church is one of those delightful rural churches. It is a tiny red-brick jewel of gorgeous proportions with a high pitched roof and steeple all timber and tradition inside and of course some time during the seventies, some long-haired, guitar playing pastor who thought we should get 'with it' convinced the parishioners that rather than repair the roof on their old church they should build a squat, blond-brick 'worship centre' with stackable plastic chairs and carpet that looks like spewed creme de cacao. You'd imagine that country christians, of all people, would be fond of tradition and history and the places where previous  generations had been christened and married and sent to the grave. As beggars cannot be choosers we thank the reverend sincerely for access to the worship centre.

We have better luck with the reception venue - the manager of the Butter Factory, a Dutch woman named Guus, greets Nerine with open arms, and promises her that everything will be fine. It is true, everyone in Bellingen has been promising that all morning with no discernible slowing in the rate that the river has risen, but somehow with Guus, we believe it. She suggests that we set a deadline and decide at that point whether the wedding will be in Gleniffer or Bellingen. if it is to be Bellingen she will have everything ready by 5 O'clock.

We are completely relieved, even slightly triumphant, when we return to the beauty  salon with Plan B in place. Fortunately the locals don't let Nerine hear the news that the butter Factory is always the first place in town to be cut off during a flood.

The SES are managing a major disaster in several parts of NSW including the Richmond River valley which is a declared natural disaster area and in which people have died. Nevertheless, they are unfailingly polite and helpful when we call for information. "And which wedding are you?" - it turns out there are three flood affected weddings in the area, but they make time for all of us, give us updated weather and tide reports and tell us what the river levels look like further up the valley. They also close North Bank Road, but tell us that it may re-open. If it were me down the end of the phone I would be hyperventilating and suggesting that the wedding should be cancelled while life and property are under threat, but instead they ask us what the deadline for deciding the venue is, and promise we can call for a full update at 1pm.

The rain is not falling. The tide is going out. The river begins to drop. We ring the SES at dead-line time, full of hope. A storm has hit Dorrigo, the water is already rising in the creeks below the plateau. We are spared an agonising, six of one half a dozen of the other, decision. Nobody is going to the Promised Lands that afternoon and even if they did, there would be no way back, and weirdly enough that's okay. A few phone calls and everything is in place for the change of venue. Nerine looks at us is despair - "it has taken me a year of stress and hard work to organise this wedding, and it runs out I could have done it in an afternoon.

The Sportswriter

Okay. It's not a full week since I swore - publicly - to write every day like a true professional. It is six days. The wedding is already receding in my memory. Worse, I've discussed one of my favourite wedding stories with my sister and discovered my memory of it is inaccurate. Bugger. I've traded that one around. Regardless of these set-backs, I am at my computer writing, substantially inspired by Richard Ford, the wonderful US writer whose novel The Lay of The Land last sent me down the blog track. I'm reading his first Frank Bascombe book - The Sportswriter, and spending time in silent wonder blown away by his creation of a truthful universal story out of the detailed minutiae of one man's weekend.

Having already - by dint of laziness - blown the fiction that I am writing a real time story I continue ...

It is Saturday morning, wedding day, well possibly wedding day. If the river has risen over the road at Marx Hill then the groom will be in Urunga and the bride in Bellingen and there won't be a wedding until the floodwaters recede. Or perhaps it could be a proxy wedding like in the Middle Ages when kings married off their children in utero. The owner of the guest house promises us that the river will go down and we will make it to the Promised Lands. This is very reassuring. She has lived in Bellingen for many years. The river always goes down quickly. The tide is going out etc.

We have breakfast with the other guests. Two German ladies with thick hiking boots and bumfluffy moustaches are uninterested in the wedding and consider the weather personal attack on their plans. The other couple are fascinated, which is good because they are the most fascinatingly unlikely couple. The older woman is the central casting version of a  school librarian, buttoned up blouse, calf length skirt in a sensible print she looks at us all in nervous silence. If she hadn't emerged from a bedroom with another woman, I would be convinced she is uncomfortable about breakfasting with same sex couples. The younger woman is the opposite, bright and bubbly, with platinum blonde hair that looks entirely natural, she is dressed like a young Australian who has spent a year in Italy and spent judiciously rather than extravagantly. She asks about every detail of the wedding. She also appears to confirm her couplehood, by constantly referring to 'we' and 'our' and possessively touching the older woman's hand.

Later, I almost mention to Bruce, how interesting it is that the only guests of a rural bed and breakfast are same sex couples. I'm glad I don't because the next morning we hear the younger woman calling, "Mum, it's breakfast time." And the age disparity and the discomfort suddenly become crystal clear.

We meet Nerine and her friends for coffee in town. Everyone is able to bring their own piece of local knowledge gleaned from the people they are staying with or the waiter who has served them. Unfortunately, all the local knowledge is identical - I have lived in Bellingen for years, the River goes down quickly, the tide is going out etc. And yet the river steadfastly rises in defiance of the local prognosticators. It is now over the bridge and lapping muddily at the edges of town. Nobody wants to be the one who says it, but we will need to prepare a back-up plan. Just in case.

The Coach company call. They have been hired to do a run from Coffs, through Urunga and Bellingen out to the church, so no-one will be forced to drive a winding country road at night. They have spoken to the SES who say that, at this stage, they will not be able to take a coach into the area. They aren't giving up hope. The river could go down. It is wait and see.

Nerine's hair and make-up is being done by a local girl who has driven down from the Promised Lands that morning. The night before, people had been trapped by the rising creeks. Visitors were forced to stay the nights with their hosts. Some tourists in the area had to rely on the kindness of strangers. But when she passed the Gleniffer church that morning it was high and dry, only the grass all around it had been flattened by floodwaters from the Never-Never Creek. "It's okay," she tells us breezily, "The North Bank Road is open".

A couple of family members are sent to explore the North Bank Rd. The hair-dresser's father is a Gleniffer Real Estate agent. He knows everyone who has ever lived in the town and has their mobile number in his phone. He stands on the street and calls a back up coach, a couple of back up reception venues and a back up priest and leaves messages for all of them. If your wedding is to be rained out, it is certainly better for it to happen in Bellingen where the locals rally around and offer all the support and assistance they can, than in Sydney where it would be seen as an opportunity for price gouging.

More to come ...

Like rai-ai-ain on your wedding

It is Friday night and my sleep dissolves and resolves with the rain on the roof. Waking to silence means that at 5pm tomorrow my sister's wedding will take place in the Gleniffer Community Church, beside Never Never Creek, at the gateway to the Promised Lands. Her now fiancée took her there years before to show off the magical places of his childhood. She said at the time, "this is where I'd like to get married." Which I'm sure caused his stomach to give a sudden lurch because they would have been about 22 or 23. However, his courage did not fail him and, years later, they are tumbling and rushing towards the altar with the same unstoppable tumult as the rising floodwaters of the Bellinger River. Waking to torrential rain on the tin roof means that tomorrow will be spent watching those floodwaters, preparing contingency plans and finally making a call between the planned wedding and reception and whatever plan B can be put together at a couple of hours notice. 

To the north lies a charming flower strewn chapel in a glade, tables and chairs covered in stiff white linen, place cards laid out, glassware, cutlery and alcohol chilling in ice-filled eskies. To the south are eighty guests, a groom and a bride. To the east is the mighty pacific, pulled by the moon into high and low tides capable of draining the floodwaters away or pushing them back over the bridge and to the west a massive low pressure system and a catchment area designed like a giant water-slide funneling into  my restless sleep.

Rain to silence is running at three to one.