australia - Stories

After a few months of cruises around the Strahan area, I decided that I needed a change, but with my responsibilities in Tasmania, I was very reluctant to just fly off to Scotland and spend some time there. Instead, I decided on having an extended holiday onboard my new yacht, with just the crew on board

It is January 2004 and the United States and its “allies” have just completed the successful invasion of Iraq and Saddam Hussein has been captured. US Presidential Elections are on the horizon. Howard Dean is the frontrunner to be the Democratic candidate to take on George W. Bush.

These events weigh lightly on the mind of Will Schluter. He just graduated from high school a semester early and is looking forward to spending the next eight months in the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure and mind broadening experiences.

Neither Will nor his country had any idea about the challenges that lurked ahead.

Life has been very hard for me these past few months, with the Covid Virus quickly spreading around the world, which had resulted in the shutting down of a lot of businesses due to quarantine restrictions, and which resulted in me loosing me job and soon after my rental home of the past four years. Although I was single, gay and have no close family, with my parents killed in a train crash while on holidays when I was seventeen, and my two older siblings, Melissa and Trenton, not wanting to know me because of my sexuality, but I had managed to complete my high school education with high grades.

Ever wanted to own your own resort, play host and meet the many guests who come to stay. Here is your chance.

This story stands alone, but most of the characters you may have previously met in the Appetites series, also known as Catering With Benefits. It is not necessary to have read the previous books but is recommended.

We start with the characters resident at the property known as Crystalline. Along the way new characters are introduced and eventually they open a resort at the property. Many people come to stay at the resort and tell their own stories.

Kit is just an average Aussie country Kid, who at the age of twelve, was suddenly kicked out of home, and sent to live with his widower uncle in the city, over 200 kilometres to the southwest of his hometown. Along his journey towards adulthood, he gets to travel extensively overseas, and eventually attends a private school in Milan Italy, where he become best friends with another Aussie kid from Melbourne, who is related to European Royalty.

“What about you Zackary? Do you have any plans to keep you busy during the holidays?” Mum asked me. I so hated that name, but it is the name I was given at birth, and my middle name was just as bad, and I refused to use it, and regularly reminded my parents and brother to never speak that name.

As I considered the question, I wondered if the casual summer job that I have for the past few years was still available, which I had really enjoyed, and began just two days after Boxing Day. “I don’t know, nothing until after Christmas, and after that I am hoping that I will have my usual old job,” I replied.

This is a collection of very short stories, that I had written over thirty years ago, when I first started to write, and they are recollections of real events that took place on the farm where I grew up in Western Australia…

Only four chapters for now, unless I recall a few other events in the mean time...

Q

Born in the small town of Maydena in Tasmania, Australia, from the age of just two years, my home is over 6,000 kilometres away where I have grown up, in the Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan. My full name, is Dechen Christopher Yeshe Hamilton. We have our main home in the capital of Thimbu, where we live for seven months from in the late autumn, winter and early spring, and for the rest of the time, for five months, we live in the northern Himalayan mountains, where my parents work to provide medical care and assist with education of the children in the remote of villages of Bhutan.

Jexon and Marcus are now married, and return home to meet two new staff members, so building alterations to the upstairs area of the Vet Hospital and a brand new aircraft waiting on the tarmac, a wedding gift from the family. It isn't long before both Marcus and Jexon are in full swing with work, been called out to the new Quarantine Station just East of the border, with them landing on the new airfield on the west side of the border.

Although born in Australia, Carson has lived and been educated in Eastern Canada for most of his life, with the family making a trip back to Australia before his younger brother - Kit was born. Now having completed his high school education, Carson was in his third year of University studies, in Environmental Studies, specialising in Geophysics and Volcanology.

We follow Carson through his first few years of adulthood, which includes been caught up in a Volcano eruption in the Yukon Territory, just a few months after returning from a holiday to Australia, staying with his Aunty Jos in Alice Springs.