The retreat adventures of Pi

Warning: Long rambling story telling below, so don't bother going any further if you can't be bothered reading about adventurous camping stories!

Several months ago our SG decided on this weekend of all wekends of the year to go on a group retreat. It made sense, being the Queen's Birthday long weekend and all. Nothing sounded better than a weekend of chilling, eating, and board games in a big holiday house up on the Central Coast. Only God knew what a test of wits and faith this would be! =)

I decided to take full advantage of this idea and decided to take the day off, take my time, drive up there by myself, arrive first, check the place out and take some time out myself before the rest of the group arrived. I never guessed that I would end up having an anything but a relaxed time out before the gang arrived! On the radio on the way up, I heard that up in Newcastle, a large tanker had grounded itself on the beach, and that a car had been swept away on the highway in Somersby with a family inside, now missing when the road collapsed from under them! So what happened to us? (Bearing in mind that it had been bucketing down since Thursday and the forecast was for the same over the whole weekend, and there were severe weather warnings (apparently) for the Central Coast before we left...).

I set off at around 2pm from Sydney, and as soon as I hit the freeway, we were crawling for several km at 30km/h

A trip that was meant to take 1hr 19min, I arrived on the street the house is on at 5pm only be met by a fire truck blocking my path to the house since it was clearing the road of a tree that had fallen into the middle of it. It was now almost completely dark.

After a phone call, letting others know about the blocked road, the fire truck left, I finally found the house, got out of the car in gale force winds, and with the light from my xda, dialled in the code to open the safe where the key was kept. I stumbled into the front door and tried to turn on some lights, only to find that nothing would work...

I found the second toilet, the staircase, and heard loud clattering noises upstairs. On exploring the upstairs by phone light, I followed the noise to one of the rooms only to find that the window was wide open, the carpet was wet, the bedside furniture was wet, the pillows, doona, and half the mattress was wet! I quickly shut the window and went back downstairs.

I then almost tripped and fell down a step leading onto the lounge room floor, then walked around to the other end of the room, and almost slipped on the smooth tiled floor. I turned around and shone the light from my phone onto the floor and found a pool of water! Looking directly up at the ceiling above the wet floor, there was a water stain; I'm guessing it was from the wet floor directly upstairs!

At the front door, I found mail for the owners, two envelopes from "Energy Australia". Two thoughts entered my head. 1. We were having a blackout from the storm, since the rest of the street did look quite dark; 2. The owners of the house forgot to pay the electricity bill and the company had cut the power!

(Earlier in the afternoon, as I was on my way in the car, Cristy smsd me to say that if the oven wasn't working or if there was a blackout, to let them know so they could bring me dinner. I had laughed it off and didn't think anything of it!) I rang Cristy to tell the group about the lack of power, the wet bed, the wet lounge room, and the mail from Energy Australia. Should I open the mail? Cristy was saying yes do, but then we decided I'd better not - it's illegal! I then opened the front door and saw lights on across the road and decided that I'd go across the road and knock on the neighbours' doors and sus out the situation and know conclusively one way or another whether it was indeed a blackout or an unpaid electricity bill!

I knocked on the door of Number 9 (I think) as I saw a light on upstairs. I heard someone come down the stairs, but then they didn't quite come to the door. I rang the doorbell again. This time someone came downstairs again, they came into the room that I could see into through the window, rummaged through a box, then again, didn't come to the door, so I deicided to try the next house. I rang the bell and a lady and two young boys, all in their pyjamas came to the door. There indeed was a blackout, the power, she was guessing would not be back until at least the morning, and did I have a torch? No? Here's one! Borrow this! I was so grateful for the torch. I thanked her and made my way back across the road and almost got blown away by the wind!

I got back into the house and decided to see if I could find some candles. I found the mop bucket and attempted to mop up the pool of water in the lounge by torch light while I was on the phone talking to another friend at the same time! I also discovered a pool of water along the marble benchtop, so I rummaged through the kitchen drawers, found a drawer with teatowels, mopped up the wet bench with two of those, found the BBQ drawer and found some matches. On further inspection, I then realised there was a box of long stick candles as well. In another cupboard, there was a small stack of paper plates with some serviettes on top. The plates felt slightly musty and soft like they had been sitting in a humid place before, so I decided to use them as candle holders. With about five candles lit throughout the ground floor, I unloaded the car and put all the food I had bought into the fridge, the freezer and pantry, and decided that I could probably cook myself some dinner after all since there was a gas stove top, matches, and I had brought food. I fried up some eggs, stirfried some broccoli and had that for dinner - I even had seasoning so the broccoli didn't taste all that bland! It was now 6:45pm and the others had not arrived, was getting a little concerned, so I rang Cristy who told me that they were shopping at Coles in Woy Woy.

At 7:30 they still hadn't arrived, but I felt like a shower, and was wondering how bad it would be if the rest of the group arrived and couldn't get in because I was in the shower! So I went outside again and put the key back in the safe after discovering that the hot water was working (It's off everyday between 4:30 and 7pm), and smsd them to let them know. I was expecting it to be not working as well, as almost everything else this day had gone pear shaped, but then assumed that the hot water tank should be powered by gas, since the kitchen had a gas stove top.

I took two candles, matches, the torch and shower stuff up to the bathroom, lit the candles and had a beautiful hot shower by candlelight! I even washed my hair! With all the clattering of windows and howling wind outside, I thought I heard the rest of the gang arriving, but when I got out of the bathroom, the rest of the house was still dark and quiet otherwise. I was wondering why they still hadn't arrived, so rang them, only to be told that they were still enjoying the warmth, light and comfort of McDonalds in Woy Woy! It was now after 8pm! I had my laptop with me, so with nothing else better to do, I turned it on, poured myself a glass of cranberry juice, and started watching an episode of Grey's Anatomy!

The first car finally arrived at around 8:45pm, C & M arrived only minutes after them! Then, of course, we had to unload their cars, and I had to give them the grand tour! We then had to work out who was sleeping where. The engineers in the group took the rest of the paper plates I found in the kitchen and used them to chock the windows to reduce the clattering, and there was also more mopping to do as there was a continuous drip from the kitchen ceiling! Everybody else was too scared to have a shower, so it was a game of scrabble by candlelight instead, and laughing about how this experience was like going camping and roughing it, but in a supposed house! We all ended up attempting to sleep way after midnight, with Daniel insisting on sleeping on the dry side of the wet bed in his sleeping bag!!!!!! Some of us had earplugs in and ignored the racket the wind and rain made while others were awake most of the night wondering if the windows were going to be blown in, (others got up at 2am and moved the bed to the other end of the room so that if the window did blow in, they wouldn't be covered in glass!)or whether a tree was going to fall through the roof!

In the morning we cooked up a scrumptious hot breakfast, surveyed the damaged balcony (there was glass everywhere from a smashed glass outdoor table) and discussed what we should do with all the meat meant for a BBQ the next day. We decided we should head out to the shops to buy more candles ready for us to bunk down another night with no power, and we were going to have a BBQ for lunch a day earlier instead. People who were meant to come up during the day to stay the night were dissuaded from doing so. As we all got into cars and headed off to the shops, the owners rang to offer us a full refund if we packed up and left to go home the same day, which was a very pleasant surprise, we were all bracing ourselves for a fight to get part of our money back!

We turned around, headed back to the house and played poker before paking up and heading home! We also decided to have a BBQ at C & M's house for dinner so that all the meat wouldn't go off since the fridge was obsolete overnight.

Part of the lounge/dining area and kitchen, taken where I almost slipped in the dark by the back door in a pool of water!

The smashed table and BBQ on the balcony

Pi back in light and warmth, at C & M's for a BBQ!