Nobody was up in a hurry except for Jonah. When I came out of the shower at around 8am, he was sitting at the table in the loungeroom (where I was sleeping) with the cards already dealt. Phase 10 was the order of the morning obviously! Jonah patiently waited for me to pack away my bed then we got stuck into a new game, trying to keep our voices down in the excitement of a loss or a win. Everyone slowly emerged from their sleeping quarters and seemed chipper. Everyone, including me, seemed to have avoided a hangover but I know I had a seedy feeling.

After sitting around the living room for a while, I decided it was time for action and handed the Astro keys over to Ash. It was time for them to move in. I gave them the official tour of the van, explaining what was where and the little things that didn’t work per the manual. I was outlining the character of the Astro and the charms that make her who she is. We started at the front and working our way back, I tried to think of all the things that had just become natural to me over time but might seem weird to someone new. There were plenty of smirks and laughs during the process. The van was already empty of the stuff I was taking with me, so now they just had to fill the Astro with their gear.

While Jayne and Ash were busy working away, Ross, Jonah, Jen and I went for a walk to a nearby waterfall. It was a favourite short hike of theirs, only a few hundred meters from their house. When we got to the water, there were plenty of flies but this wasn’t Australia so none of them bothered us. The waterfall was flowing but not very fast so we figured we could climb up further. Me and the boys climbed to the left of the falls, then crossed over to the right and went higher. When it got too slippery we could go no further but we were high enough up that we’d lost sight of Jen sitting in the clearing below. Jonah had some sweet climbing skills and he displayed them on the way down, listening to advice from his Dad. Back down at the base of the falls, Ross and Jonah got to work building a dam while Jen and I talked. It was nice to get to know her better, we already seemed like close friends having just met a few days ago.

We walked back and found that Jayne and Ash had made significant progress, with most things packed into the van. After lunch, we hooked a makeshift trailer up to Ross’s car and drove down to the beach, another feature of Paradise Park that is only meters away from the front door. The trailer contained Ross’s waterslide that he’d built using a spa pump, a bunch of PVC pipe and a huge advertising banner. The kids were buzzed when they saw us arrive, knowing what the trailer meant. The slide is a project of Ross’s that he selflessly shares with the park but he’d previously explained how many people don’t appreciate what went into and goes into it in setting it up. It was all hands on deck connecting the pipes, carving out the channel for the slide and sandbagging the start and the end. Half an hour later, Ross was pumping water up to the top of the slide and we were ready for the maiden slide.

It was slide after slide after slide then. We all had a go, trying sitting down, then lying on our fronts, but we found the quickest was to lie on a kid’s boogie board. I nearly took out a kid who’d jumped onto the slide halfway down on my last run and I grazed my arse big time trying to stop myself. That was the end of my sliding career, but I went to the top of the slide and sprayed the kids’ boogie boards with silicon spray to make them go faster. They were all loving it, going faster and faster every time.

We chilled out in the only patch of shade by the river the rest of the day, chatting and people watching the dozens of people lining the small beach. We all hopped in the murky water at one point in an attempt to find a lost GoPro but since it was black and the water was being stirred up, we didn’t like our chances. After a decent hour of searching, we called it off, unsuccessful. It was nearly 5pm by the time we starting packing it up. Jayne and I were disgusted when a man brought his granddaughter to the top of the slide only to find we were taking it down so he said, “Let’s go then, they’ve ruined our fun”. Jayne and I both replied to him in unison, “Who do you think set this up? Who paid for this?” Ungrateful terd, some people just don’t see further than three feet in front of their face.

We had a trailer malfunction on the way back to base when the front wheel fell off and after a temporary fix, the wheel was unattached by the time we got back to the house. I had just the thing! I got four carriage bolts, nuts and washers out of the Astro’s toolbox and we drilled through the floor of the trail to re-attach the wheel. It wasn’t going anywhere now. I had a quick shower, washing myself with detergent incase I’d had a brush with poison oak on the morning’s hike, then we were off to Tom’s house (Jen’s Dad).

It was a last minute plan to have a BBQ at Tom’s place, but like most things in Paradise Park, the house was populated before too long. By the time we sat down to east, there were about a dozen people sitting around the table on the patio. I was tired so didn’t contribute to the conversation much, instead I was attending to the tiny blind dog that had made itself comfortable in my lap. After dinner, I took Ross up on his offer to clean the kitchen floor with the liquid nitrogen we had left over. I tipped the big container up over the floor and we watched as the liquid cold washed all the grime and loose bits away. It also lifted the lino up off the floor but I assume it went back down. Before we left, Tom gave me a copy of a book written about him called “Once Upon a Tom” and signed it calling me a “curious woman”. I look forward to reading about all of his adventures.

By the time we got home, I was keen for bed, but before I knew it, 100 glowsticks had been cracked and connected and we were on our way to the dance. We’d walked past the lights and music to get home and now we were going to join the chaos. There was never a dull moment in Paradise Park, especially not on Labour Day weekend! We all tried to convince Jonah to get out on the dance floor but he wasn’t having any of it, instead he asked if I would run around the playground with him. That was the next hour occupied. Lit up by our glowsticks, we did the swings, monkey bars, the slide and ran around in the dark jumping off trees and over picnic tables. I just made sure he went slow enough so he didn’t face plant. Back to Mum & Dad, it was his bedtime so they took him home. Me, Jayne and Ash hung out a bit longer but didn’t make it to the dancefloor since the quality of the music had decreased from when we’d originally got there.

We all walked home together along the dark streets and had ourselves a relatively early night.