The kids hate me at the moment.
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I'm the worst father/uncle in the world; a curmudgeon, a tyrant, a Nigel No Fun, a wuss.
They were promised a rope swing and were duly greeted with a spectacular exhibition of just what can be achieved with a length of plaited fibres, a nutant tree and a pristine waterhole.
I felt sorry for the Hyundai each time the Jack Black doppelganger - proud, festive-season belly protruding over his trunks - put his beer to one side and used the little car's buckling roof as a platform from which to launch himself over the creek. Performed with such aplomb, his perfectly timed releases and reverse summersaults into the depths were a master class in the laws of momentum, velocity and centripetal acceleration, not to mention a bravura of bodily abandon fuelled by that unholy trinity of holiday masculinity: alcohol, testosterone and overconfidence.
With each voluminous ripple generated by the keg-on-legs' deeply satisfying re-entry, the collection of cousins, up to their necks in a pool of goodness fed from these north coast mountains, turned to look my way, seeking imprimatur as I assessed the situation from my high and dry and, mercifully, fully clothed vantage point.
Looks like fun, I thought, seduced by the effortless athleticism of our tubby Tarzan. Might even give it a go myself and unleash my own post-Christmas love handles onto this nook of innocent holidaymakers.
What could possibly go wrong in such a beautiful place?
MORE B. R. DOHERTY
The whole scene brings to mind artist Tom Thompson's homage to Australian riparian leisure, A Getaway - in the Upper Shoalhaven, and I've been peering up and down our winding corridor of indolence and found myself uncharacteristically filled with a creeping sense of calm (a state of mind which may or may not have something to do with the funny-smelling cigarettes those two personable young chaps are smoking over on that rock).
This amazing space in the shade, punctuated with visits from fantails and flycatchers, is replete with tourists, who, just like us, have sought out the spot not only because it's gorgeous but because it's something of a freshwater sanctuary compared with the salty, ravaged coastline.
The beaches up this end of the state are still recovering from the violent rearrangement they received a few weeks back. It's been difficult to negotiate the mountains of fetid seaweed rotting on the sand and the Pacific is anything but, still churning with a spiteful energy, as if a beaten bully who's now looking to inflict his own hurt and shame on weaker beings.
Armed with boogie boards, the family has made a few sorties into the tenebrous froth to battle heaving, abstract waves, gutters, sand bars, undertows and rips. It's been far from postcard-worthy but, if nothing else, the excursions have provided an important learning experience for the kids. For the first time, they've been on the receiving end of some serious dumpers, emerging from the cement-truck-agitator-ocean with those wild eyes of slap-in-the-face epiphany.
Even though they're becoming strong swimmers and must become stronger yet, I want the children to understand they're no match for this powerful and unpredictable medium and they need to be able to recognise its inherent dangers before they even get their toes wet.
Similarly, we parents - particularly us ageing dad-bodded dads - must never be blasé when it comes to our own aquatic abilities, as new statistics from Surf Life Saving Australia so starkly indicate. It was sobering to learn this week that since November at least five men have been the victims of "bystander drownings", ostensibly deaths while trying to rescue kids.
Meanwhile, recent tragedies inland and calls for rescue hubs on our rivers are another reminder of how good, clean fun can so quickly turn nightmarish.
Not wanting our fleeting time in this beautiful oasis to be marred by the overprotective paranoia of middle age and having watched that inspiring trapeze act, I'm seconds away from giving the green light for our tribe to "swing away", as Mel Gibson told Joaquin Phoenix in Signs.
Obviously with the same idea, another family makes it over to the rope swing before we do and we all watch and wait as a pair of adult brothers herd three young'uns high onto the bank opposite and prepare them for the thrilling exercise. As they get organised, the wife of one of the men stealthily swims across to a midstream outcrop and stands on a boulder with a commanding view of the enterprise involving if not all, at least one or two, of her offspring.
It doesn't begin well.
One of the men goes first and mistimes his release, so he drops terrifyingly close to the bank. A collective groan escapes the now-sizeable audience and the uninjured albeit chastened guinea pig clambers up the dirt to assist his brother. We watch through parted fingers as, undeterred, the men help the older pair (both taller than the tallest child in our own group) barely reach the swing with probing, outstretched digits. After a few tense minutes, both kids rather unconvincingly plop into the deep water.
Emboldened by the "safe" landing of their test pilot contemporaries, all those cousins again look back my way and pepper me with a barrage of "Can we? Can we? They did it! They did it!"
I want them to have fun but I'm wavering. I'm now on the fence, and they know it.
When it comes time for the remaining (much younger and much shorter) child to clutch the rope, the pair of now clearly unqualified operators hoist the boy up battering-ram-style before spending several seconds trying to convince him how important it is he engage his weak, sparrow claws to grip with all his might before letting go at precisely the moment one of his adult handlers was himself so very publicly incapable of calculating.
A palpable anxiety floods our amphitheatre as the child holds on and the men prepare to torpedo him out towards us.
"Put him down!" the watchful woman in the water yells, pertinaciously waving her hands in front of her face.
The crowd sighs. Today's sacrifice to the gods of summer stupidity is cancelled, the boy goes free and the now M-rated rope swing dangles, victimless, over the water.
"Can we still do it, dad?" my least-astute (ie: male) child asks.
"No bloody way," I say, casting a grateful glance towards the decisive mother.
Thank goodness for busy-bods.
- B. R. Doherty is a regular columnist.