I like hosting a great variety of people with a great variety of reasons for coming here. I take pride in what I do, and satisfaction from providing a good experience. People come here with their personal items, and good food and wine. They leave with their personal items and without the food and wine. My product is intangible, it does not exist in the physical world, it only exits in the mind.
I have many guests who have been here many times. Some 20 times. Of my early ‘frequent flyers’, I remember a family of 4 who lived in Cairns and spent virtually all their holiday time at Possum Valley. 4 or even 6 weeks of the year. Their 2 children under 10, a boy and girl (the elder), used to like to come down to my house and spend time with me in the workshop which is a rambling tip of a place crammed with tools and shelves of odd bits of stuff I keep because it ‘may come in handy’. I would help them make things out of the junk and bits of wood. A little plaque with “love you Mum” or something. Sometimes I would let them use a power tool. You can’t go too far wrong with an orbital sander. Then paint them with the last remnants at the bottom of a can. I was surrogate grandpa. They were great and intelligent kids who argued, but always seemed to be able to work it out fairly in some sort of compromise. They should have been running the UN.
Then the father’s job took him to Brisbane. On their last visit I was talking to the kids and saying to them they could take a bit of Possum Valley with them in their minds. And all they had to do was think of it to be able to go back to a beautiful place. I had in mind the ‘meditation hut’ deep in the forest with a little creek flowing underneath. A magic spot for me. Think ‘Fern Gulley’. Bliss, serenity, Tao, harmony. What the kids thought of was my tip of a workshop. Their father was there and gave me a look and a nod. He knew what I meant.
Five years later they were traveling with other friends and came back to stay at Possum Valley. I was delighted, but worried that the kids, now sophisticated teenagers, would be disappointed, that Possum Valley would seem so much smaller and not be so magic. On the first day they came down to the homestead and immediately went to look for the walking sticks they had deliberately left there 5 years before. They were still there. They were so delighted. I had no recollection of them placing the sticks there, but because of my neglect, they found these tangible links to their childhood. Nothing is lost from the past, we just add new layers to become the people we are.
This was a precious moment for me, and one of the reasons I love to provide accommodation, services and experiences.
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