We had got it into our heads over the summer break that we needed to go whale watching. We got a great place, tickets for the boat, everything lined up beautifully. You couldn’t have told me we’d end up starring in our own custom designed and printed wallpaper.
Pre-trip, staff offered everyone on board seasick tablets. We all refused, except for Freya, who gets terrible motion sickness. She’d get sick riding a bike unless she looked straight ahead and well into the distance. We found that out the hard way when my partner decided to take her for a ride in his brand new ute. The car was never the same.
Little did I know at the time, that ignoring the value of seasickness tablets was going to lead to a photo worthy of self-adhesive wallpaper. Boarding the boat was exciting. We had no idea that conditions were so bad.
It wasn’t until we hit the wide open ocean that Rebecca and I started feeling queasy. Rebecca has terrible tolerance to discomfort. She’s a princess.
The boat rocked wildly, and looking around me, I noticed that although everyone had been enthusiastic when we boarded,they now looked like they were hanging on for dear life. Grey, sweaty and panicked, I turned around to see a little kid cry hurl into a paper bag.
It wasn’t long before everyone followed suit. Freya, however, was leaning out of her seat with a pair of binoculars. She’d spotted two humpbacks. But everyone was too sick to care, apart from the crew, who were focusing all their attention on her. One guy, Marc, offered to take her photo with the whales in the background. Pity he took it at my worst moment, with my head in a bag and Rebecca with tears streaming down her face. But Freya, with her rosy cheeks and windswept hair giving us the thumbs up, and a whale breaching in mid air right behind her.
Naturally we had the image made into wallpaper for our living room at home. I’d never considered wallpaper as a design choice for my home, but I simply couldn’t resist. Now whenever we have breakfast as a family we can admire the wallpaper and think back to wonderful day.