Great Western - 3. GW Chap 3

“I am bringing you here, because this is very close to our new home, once we get the train unloaded and stored away, we will arrange for a removalist company to bring our furniture to the property, as you remember, we had it shipped in containers, so I hope it is all in one piece, I wanted to divert the taxi driver away from our new home” dad said to me and suddenly a shocking thought came to mind.

“You… don’t mean that monstrosity that we passed a few doors down do you?” I asked in shock, as I had seen the grand house on the hill, less than a block away, and my father smiled and nodded his head. “That must have cost millions, and can we afford it with all the costs we will have with the railway project” I asked my father.

“Yes, it did, $4.5 million Australian dollars to be exact” my Dad said and I stumbled when I heard the price, “Dad, do we really need such a big place, the one we were standing outside of a moment ago looks big enough” I said as I followed him down the street, stopping outside the pedestrian gate, and he pressed the intercom button.

“Yes, how can I help you” came a stern ladies voice, “Mr Christopher and Master Vern Ashburton to see the housekeeper” Dad responded, “Please come in sir, we were not expecting you for another week at least” came the ladies reply as a buzzer sounded, followed by a click. “Good Security” I commented, as we passed through the gate and closed it behind us.

“There is a good reason why we need a big place… your mother is pregnant with twins” dad announced, and I almost fainted at this unexpected news, and Dad grabbed me and had me sit down on the lawn. “Oh, are you alright Master Vern?” we heard a woman’s voice say in a hurried manner, and she was soon gathered around us, now looking concerned.

“I am Mrs Anita Frazier, the housekeeper, is there anything I can do to help” the lady said, “No thankyou Mrs Frazier, my son has just been given some unexpected news, and it has caught him well off guard” my father explained, “Unexpected, is a big understatement Father” I said to him as I struggled to stand up.

“How long have you known?” I asked, “Oh about 9 weeks now, we wanted to wait till we passed the first two months, to be sure that everything was going well since it is twins” dad said.

“You are having twins, oh that will be wonderful to have children in the Rocks again” Mrs Frazier said excitedly, and she set off in front of us, as we made our way towards the front of the house.

I stopped and looked back towards the road, and saw the large tennis court and a garden gazebo to the side, the well-maintained garden and lawns. “I hope you don’t expect me to mow all of this lawn all the time” said to dad as we approached the house.

I was about to knock, when the door opened, and Mrs Frazier smiled broadly and indicated for us to enter, and I decided to kick off my shoes, since there are nicely polished floors in the hallway. We spent the next twenty minutes going through every room in the house, and I was amazed at how huge each room is, and the billiards room was incredible.

As we returned to the front sitting room, Dad stopped and looked at me. “That is not all; I am in the process of buying the next-door property of 180 Grey street West, plus 11, 13 and 23 View Street, which are the two houses either side of our rear car park” Dad announced, “What?” I said a bit too loudly, and Dad ushered me outside onto the verandah so we wouldn’t be heard, and switched to German, just in case Mrs Frazier was listening.

“I learnt that Mrs Frazier is a widow, with 4 grown children, of which her youngest Adam, has severe epilepsy, and is permanently in a care home. They had to sell the house and most of their belongings, to pay for her son’s medical bills. She said to me over the phone, when the purchase was finalised, that she is so grateful to be allowed to stay in the staff quarters and keep her job.

Her oldest son – Dominic is the grounds keeper, and her youngest daughter – Marie, assists with house keeping and cooking, when the place was a five-star bed and breakfast until we bought it, I’m not sure about her other child” dad informed me.

“So, what do you plan to do dad?” I asked switching back to English, “I want to retain the house next door at number 180, as a home for Mrs Frazier and her two children.

I’ve been told, that the house behind it on View street is quite run down, so I want to carefully demolish it, as it has some nice mature gardens around it, and extend the boundary wall, to include the three blocks on View street, then Dominic can start establishing new gardens” Dad informed me.

“Wow, that is quite a big project, do you think he can handle it?” I asked, “Well once we have moved in, we can ask him, and see what he thinks” Dad answered, and we stopped talking, when we heard Mrs Frazier approaching.

“Do you have a place to stay, and do you want to have dinner here” our house keeper asked us, “We are staying at the La Grand Motel, and we will eat there thank you, as we have a few meetings this evening, and we will be heading back to Perth tomorrow” Dad replied. Mrs Frazier turned and headed back towards the kitchen, without responding, and we followed her.

“Thankyou for the tour of this grand old house, I look forward to the day that we move in” Dad said as we reached the kitchen, “Please sit, I have boiled the kettle, afternoon tea will be ready in a jiffy” Mrs Frazier replied, and not wanting to offend her, we both sat down at the kitchen table.

“I hope you won’t be spoiling us to much Mrs Frazier, although I am fairly wealthy from my patent design and some good investments, we prefer to have a fairly simple life, we only bought this place because the family is still growing.

Vern here is the oldest, he is 16 this coming year, and he has two brothers, Oscar is 14 and Tomas is 12, and as you know we are expecting twins, but we have decided to not know what sex they are until they are born” Dad announced.

“Why not Rocks and Frazier” I suggested, and dad stopped himself from laughing as Mrs Frazier scorned me at my suggestion, before returning to her duties of serving afternoon tea, along with sandwiches and freshly baked scones.

“Oh, I am going to love living here, with Mrs Frazier as the cook” I commented after demolishing a scone in just 15 seconds.

“You do that again Master Vern and I will wash your mouth out with detergent” Mrs Frazier said to me, and a squeaked out a “Sorry” to her, and made sure I had my best manners from then on. After a delightful afternoon tea, we thanked Mrs Frazier for her kind hospitality, and we exited the house from the back, and walked back into town along View Street.

Once in the centre of town, we had a bit of a look at some of the shops, before going to a taxi rank, and making our way back to the motel, to shower and change, and relaxed for an hour, before heading to the restaurant for some dinner.

We arrived back at the wharf, just after dark, and with hard hats on our heads, we supervised the unloading of the six train cars, which we carefully placed onto the railway line, and connected together. Once all of the cars were on the line, a train engine arrived to tow them around to the large shed just a few kilometres down the line, with it all completed before midnight.

Once the shed was locked up, we headed back to the motel to get some sleep, waking up shortly after nine am, once packed, we checked out of the motel, and headed into town to find a café to get some breakfast, before catching a taxi out to the suburb of Kalgan, to visit the Grammar School, as Dad had made an appointment for us to take a tour of the school, and to finalise my subjects for next year.

“What about languages? Do you want to lean Japanese or Indonesian?” the deputy headmaster asked me, as we were completing the subject selections. “No thankyou sir, as you are aware, I have spent a good amount of my life in Europe so I already know German and French fluently” I responded, and I saw dad look at me, because I hadn’t given all of the information, and I frowned at him, to indicate that I didn’t want them to know any more than that.

“I see, well the languages that we do teach here are mostly Asian languages, but we also teach Italian and French” the deputy headmaster informed us, “As I said before sir, I would rather concentrate on Business Studies & Information Technology” I replied. “Very well, if that is what you want” the deputy Headmaster responded.

After visiting the school, we headed back to town, and collected our luggage, before heading to a restaurant for a quick lunch, before heading to the airport, to catch our flight back to Perth, which surprisingly was a lot smoother than the trip down.

By the time we arrived back at the hotel in Fremantle, it was late afternoon, and my brothers were in the lounge watching cartoons, when we walked into the suite. “How was the trip dear? Did everything go smoothly?” my mum asked as we entered.

“Yes, all went very smoothly, the package is safely tucked away, and we checked out our new home and the school” my father replied.

The house is a mansion mum, it has 7 bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, and a huge billiards room on the 1^st floor, and Mrs Frazier, the house keeper is nice and great cook” I added, “What did you think of the school?” mum asked me.

“Oh, it was ok I guess, just like any other private school” I replied, before heading to my shared room, to change and rest. After an early dinner, we went to the cinemas to watch the latest Star Wars movie, and my brothers and I enjoyed every moment of the movie.

The following day, we travelled over to Rottnest Island, and my brothers, were excited about seeing Quokkas for the first time, as was I, as they are so cute. During the day we visited a number of beaches, explored the WW2 Battery and tunnels, and looked around the small village of Thompson Bay, before boarding a ferry to return to the mainland.

Dad informed us that we had a very early start in the morning, as the whole family was travelling up to Geraldton for the day, with the flight leaving at 7am, arriving in Geraldton an hour later, with a return flight leaving at 6.10pm.

Mum said that she and the boys would do some sightseeing while we are doing business, then in the afternoon, we can take a 3-hour return flight to the Abrolhos Islands, to see what it is like out there, with 1¾ hours spent exploring the islands, which I was looking forward to, and I reminded mum to pack my set of snorkel and fins, so I can use them tomorrow.

The flight to Geraldton the next morning was a smooth flight, apart from my younger brothers being restless and not stops moving around, which frustrated Mum to an end, and when we stepped out of the plane, the sky was clear and it was already starting to get quite warm.

Taking separate taxis, Mum and my brothers headed to the main shopping area of the city, while Dad and I headed to the first of two appointments, the first with the railway freight company that leases the railway network, to check out their depot, which is located 14 kilometres east of town.

We received a rather cool welcome from the management at the depot, as they were not very keen on sharing their facilities with another company, so Dad made the meeting as short as possible, without it looking like that we were not interested in the project of having a passenger line from Perth to Geraldton again.

It has been since the mid 1970’s, when the passenger service had been cancelled, along time for the freight service to take hold of all of the facilities, and Dad and I were hoping to change that, and change it real soon.

Our next appointment was with Mr Peter Vaughan, the Infrastructure Manager of the City of Greater Geraldton, at the council offices, and we were directed to a small conference room, near the reception foyer, were two other people were waiting, and they were introduced to us as the Infrastructure personal assistant, and the council’s CEO’s personal assistant.

“Well, I am Christopher Ashburton of Ashburton Engineering, and this is my personal assistant, and my 16-year old son, Vern Ashburton,” Dad said smiling, “Yea right” we heard one of the assistants say softly, but not soft enough for both Dad and I to hear her.

I looked at my dad and he nodded yes, and I stood up. “Sir, and executive assistants, lets get directly to the point of our meeting today, we have a 6-car train, that was designed and built in Europe, that has just very recently arrived in Western Australia.