Bonnie Doon
Our first excursion was to Bonnie Doon and the wedding of the daughter of an old friend of my wife's. Bonnie Doon is a village of about 500 or so, about 2.5 hours north-east of Melbourne in bush country. The drought had been severe and Lake Eildon was pretty much gone. Nobody was irrigating anything. The whole country-side was extremely parched and at very high risk for bush fires. Although everyone was tense as a result, the wedding was a whole lot of fun. It was conducted out of doors in 50C / 120F heat but the humidity was so low that the temperature didn't feel all that bad. For me the high point of the whole thing was the five-year-old ring-bearer. He started with a discrete sneeze onto the ring. Then there was another. And another. Pretty soon it was continuous. Finally things halted while his mom helped him energetically blow his nose. Then the ceremony resumed. The reception was held in the local footy hall. Instead of a wedding cake, there was a rack full of cupcakes. My wife told me that the locale was the norm whereas the cupcake tree was not. The Australian accent is so strong out in the boonies, so to speak, that I had a hard time understanding everything that was going, but everyone seemed to be having a fine old time.
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