Yesterday was the wedding of our friend, Tracey Francis, to Londe Iki. The wedding was held in Tracey's hometown of Dorrigo in New South Wales.
It was raining when we turned up at about 3pm (for a 3:30pm wedding) and was still drizzly when the groom and groomsmen arrived. Fortunately for Tracey, it had basically stopped by the time she arrived.
Londe is from PNG and would have liked to have been dressed in his traditional dress but apparently it couldn't pass through Customs (I'm guessing that the spears would have been a problem for Customs and any plant material would have been a problem for Quarantine). Instead, he and the groomsmen were all dressed looking like people's mental images of 1920's USA gangsters (sans tommy guns). They all wore black hats and the bridesmaids wore matching white ones. As one of the pastors said, they looked very sharp.
Unfortunately for Londe, none of his family was able to make it from PNG due to sickness. Tracey's brother and cousins were the groomsmen. Most guests were members of Tracey's family or other friends from the Dorrigo area. There were a few from Toowoomba (where she did her degree) and Darwin (where she taught early in her career) and Ian and I from Mackay (where she teaches now).
The reception was held at the local bowls club. Tracey and her mum did an excellent job of making sure all their guests would be fed appropriately. We ended up very full! We don't think we've been better catered for at any function since our diet changed.
The usual is to get just boiled vege's for dinner and fruit for dessert (often this is after fruit for morning and afternoon tea at conventions - come on, people, if I keep eating that much fruit, I'll never leave the toilet!). At this affair we had cottage pie (to which we could add some of the vege's provided for the regular mains if we wished) and chocolate cake for desert. Mmmm, yumm! Oh, AND Nuttelex was provided for spreading on our breadrolls.
Afterwards we played pool before giving a lift to three other girls who were also staying at the same place we were. The accommodation was Dangar Falls Lodge, which can sleep up to 12 people; all you have to provide is your food. The Lodge, as we all called it, used to be part of the nurses' quarters for the base hospital.
It's called Dangar Falls Lodge because it's right beside the entrance to the walkway to the Dangar Falls. On the other side is farmland used for cattle. Being Dorrigo, most cows one sees are dairy stock.
Today we walked to the Dangar Falls where we saw a couple of blokes from New Zealand swimming at the bottom! It was rather cool for us so we thought they were a bit game. We also checked out the Skywalk at the other end of town, as well as the Never Never Picnic Grounds about 10km further on.
We got take away for lunch, which we had back at the Lodge. One of the girls we had given a lift to last night was glad to see us as she had been left to wait for the laundry to finish while her sister had gone to help with the clean-up. She had been rather bored for 2 hours. Just as we were about to leave, Tracey and Tracey's mum came to pick her up. We were glad that we weren't leaving her to be bored waiting any longer.
On the way back we stopped in Bellingen again (we had stopped briefly on the way up) to do some shopping at the galleries. Then it was on to Nadine's, where we arrived around 5pm.
