Holiday Drama - 1. Chapter 1

It has been a tough eighteen months since the passing of my dear wife, Joanna Margaret, who had passed away just five months after being diagnosed with Leukemia. She had known from the very beginning that I was bisexual. We had started dating when we were both attending university in Adelaide, and she had always accepted the occasional hookups that I had for my occasional male company needs. We had been married for eighteen years, and we have a sixteen-year-old son, Grant Lenox, who was devastated at the loss of his mother, and we had struggled together to cope with her not being around us anymore.

My name is Myles Valentine Paton Fleming. Thanks to my parents, Christopher and Susanna, for that generous gift for me, even though they are now divorced. My mother is a second-generation Australian from the highlands of Scotland, hence the mouthful of Scottish names, but I didn’t inflict the same on my son, just a first and middle name and our surname of Fleming. I am a consulting Computer Engineer, having shifted from working full-time for a large Computer software company, as well as share in becoming a consultant, when we learned that Joanna had Leukemia, so I could look after Joanna during her illness and take care of our son and household duties, which was a full-time job on its own.

My father, Christopher Gregson, has not been a part of my life since I was 3 years old, when my parents separated and divorced a year later. I have virtually no memory of him, and I have reverted to my mother’s maiden name since I was four years old. When I last spoke to my mother about him, when I was 14 years old, I was informed that my father was living and working in South Africa, and that he had a new wife now. Meanwhile, my mother is currently in full-time care, due to several strokes that she has suffered over the past ten years. Our family home is a fully paid-up four-bedroom, four-bathroom stone house located in the suburb of New Haven, just 550 metres from the beach and 850 metres via the road to the marina. It was perfect for our family's needs while my wife was alive.

More recently, two months after Joanna passed, I purchased a double-sized block of land located within a residential marina at Wallaroo, which is on the West side of Yorke Peninsula in the Spencer Gulf, and I already had a design for a new home in mind, and I put into motion plans to have the new home built. The new house would be huge, it would have a two-entry driveway, with landscaped gardens, which has two single garages and an enclosed entry courtyard, that leads to an entry portico, with cloak cupboards on one side and storage cupboards opposite, with a long hallway. At the front to the left is my large main office, where I would do much of my work, and it includes a small ensuite bathroom, while opposite is a conference & lounge area.

Further down the hallway, there are two bedrooms on both sides of the hallway with a semi-en-suite between every two rooms. Beyond that, there is a laundry room with linen cupboards and a storeroom. Opposite, there is a set of stairs, up to the first floor, plus a utility room and a small passage to a side external door, which is adjoining the kitchen and pantry, and beyond that is the breakfast meal area on one side of the hallway is a large billiards room, and at the rear is a large living room, with a balcony at each side, all which overlook the patio, the lap pool and the marina canal.

On the upstairs landing, to the right, there is a small passageway with a door to the balcony at the end. A door on the left is the master suite, with a large bathroom and a walk-in robe, plus a wide balcony overlooking the canal. On the right is a similar 2^nd suite, also with the balcony overlooking the canal, with a smaller bathroom and walk-in robe, and behind the second suite and the stairs, there is a study, and opposite, behind the master suite, is a small private lounge. Beyond is a full house-width recreation lounge, which has a balcony that overlooks the garden and entry courtyard. On either side of the front balcony, there is a music room on one side and a library on the other side.

Downstairs from the side external door, there is a wide walkway that leads to the rear balcony, which sits over the stonewall of the canal. From the balcony, there is a set of stairs leading down to the floating boat platform. On the opposite end of the balcony, there is an access ramp also leading down to the boat platform. With it being a double-sized block, the house sits in the centre of the property, and I had planted fast-growing native shrubs along both sides of the property, and a mixture of native plants and winding foot paths.

I have had a long-term interest in sailing, and we owned a 32-metre catamaran, which is now berthed at the private berth at the back of the house instead of at New Haven Marina. The yacht, which I have owned since Grant was 12 years old, has a master cabin, a queen cabin, and two twin cabins for guests, plus a double and a twin bunk cabin for crew, and Grant and I often go out sailing along with my good mates, Alistair and Hugh Armstrong-Parkes.

Although in the twelve months since we moved into our new home, Grant still has times when he struggles without his mother, and I do my very best to look after him, having abandoned all my own needs to prioritise Grant’s needs first. We often go sailing out into the Spencer Gulf to relax and forget, which helps us both greatly. One Saturday evening after Grant had gone to bed, I was just looking at nothing online, just skimming the news that is happening around the world, when a small post caught my attention, and I stopped on the post to read it in more detail. “Do you need a Holiday? Consider doing a home swap holiday with someone from overseas”. I had heard of this somewhere, and I had not bothered to consider it until now, as I began to do some research on this, as I really did need a holiday, and taking Grant away from South Australia on an adventure, maybe the best thing for him.

Firstly, I needed a checklist of things that I would need to do before deciding where it is that we would be going, and that included updating my passport and getting a passport for Grant. Thankfully, the school annual photos were done recently, so I had some decent passport-size shots of him that I could use for the passport application. The next day, while I attended Grant’s weekly tennis coaching sessions down the road, I had brought my laptop computer with me to do some additional research. I had narrowed down places to go to just two places, those being Scotland and Canada, and I was now looking at house swap options in both locations, after signing up to an International Holiday House Swap website.

After we moved into our new home, just after all the redecorating was completed. I took lots of photos of the old house as it was currently vacant, as I have it on short-term rentals for extra income, and used them to create a file for the holiday home swap application. I included a side-on photo of myself in the foreground, and the shadow of Grant’s back as he looked out at the sunset over the Gulf in the background, which Joanna had taken when we were on the beach watching the sunset, before she became too ill to do special small trips like that. After Grant had finished his tennis lessons, we went down to the local jetty, where a café provides excellent lunch meals, and while we ate, I asked Grant if he would like to go on an overseas holiday.

Grant smiled and asked where we were going, and I informed him that I had not decided, but had narrowed the options down to Scotland via the UK and Canada via Tokyo, Japan or Auckland, New Zealand. Grant said he liked the second option best at either stop, asking when we would be going. I suggested that we go either in the Autumn holidays in six weeks in mid-April, if I can get organised that quickly or in the winter holidays in early July, when it will not be so cold in the northern hemisphere. Grant agreed that the Northern summer would be the best option, even though he had never seen snow before. Over the next week, with my busy work schedule, I conducted further research. I made inquiries about trips to Canada while also establishing a work timetable so I could take two weeks off to spend time with my son.

The first thing I did was to renew my passport and to apply for a new passport for Grant, making sure that I had his Birth Certificate and his Medicare Card as forms of ID for him. Once that was completed, I enquired about the visa requirements for visiting Canada and learnt that all I needed was an ETA - Electronic Travel Authorisation. After some research online, I worked out that the Autumn holidays in under six weeks would not be possible, as it was too close, so I began planning for a mid-year holiday to Canada, adjusting my work commitments so that I had time during the day to do what I needed to do, to begin arrangements.

A week after my announcement that we were going overseas on holiday, Grant was jumping with excitement, saying he wished we could go during the Autumn holidays. After a night of thinking about this comment, I decided that we could take a short one week holiday during the Autumn holidays, just so that we were away from home, and putting the main holiday on hold, I began looking at locations for a one week holiday, and I did consider New Zealand, but thought that staying in Australia would be a better option, and began organising a luxury trip to Tasmania. I made airline bookings for two business class seats for Friday, the 17^th of April, from Melbourne to Hobart, departing at 12.30 pm, and arriving at 1.55 pm, plus I booked two premium seats on the Overland Train from Adelaide to Melbourne, departing on Thursday, the 16^th of April, departing at 6.55 am and arriving at 6.50 pm, and I made a booking for a two bed suite hotel near the airport for the Thursday night.

Once I had all of that confirmed, I looked at accommodation and things to do in Tasmania, and I selected a hotel that has wonderful views of both the River Derwent and Mount Wellington on the southwest edge of the state capital city. After some searching, I found and booked several activities, including a bus tour up to the top of Mount Wellington and an all-day trip to Bruny Island, which includes a 30-minute bus trip down to Kettering and a short 15-minute ferry trip over to the island. After three days in the Hobart region, I had booked a private ultimate helicopter charter flight from Hobart that would take us over some spectacular areas of Southern Tasmania, including Cradle Mountain and the National Park surrounding it, over half a dozen lakes and mountains, ranges and gorges, including Lake St Clair, The Wall of Jerusalem, plus the Franklin and Gordon Rivers National Parks, that had been a hot topic in the 1970’s which the failed planning of the construction of a dam in the wilderness.