‘Ready!’ Lucy yelled. She was in the change room next door to mine with a load of dresses to try on. We had given ourselves a budget of $30 to spend on clothes today, so we were in the St Vinnies Op shop (a.k.a. thrift shop) searching for bargains. Browsing the racks of clothes we had found a multitude of weird and wonderful outfits; and had even found some clothes in more of our typical fashions.
Each dressed in one of these marvellous creations, we came out to show one another. I was in a creamy yellow 80s housedress, complete with shoulder pads. It looked awful! Lucy was wearing a bluey/purple loose fitting dress with white polka dots – she looked fabulous. It hung off her slim frame in a sexy casual way. She would look great in it once summer arrives.
We changed our outfits and when Lucy called, ‘Ready!’ again we came back out of the change rooms. This time she was dressed in a very sparkly sequinned mini dress. Again, she looked remarkable! It was a completely different look to the last dress – really flashy! But it suited her. And my outfit looked surprisingly good as well. We had picked it out as a joke! The material it was made from almost looked like carpet. It seemed pretty hideous on the hanger, but somehow it looked really cute on. And then I tossed my brown leather jacket over the top; it made the outfit! Even another shopper stopped us to say, ‘That looks amazing on you! You should buy it.’… Sold! We tried on the rest of our ensembles, laughing and making fun. We called out to each other about sizing and shape as we pulled dresses over our heads, pulled up zippers, and did up buttons. Some looked atrocious! But before long we had both almost reached our $30 limit. With two dollars left in the bank, we departed the change rooms and had a final look through the store. The problem was, we hadn’t even looked at the second-hand books yet. Being that I’m a book worm, the book section is much more dangerous for my wallet than the clothes section. It only took a few seconds for me to collect way too many books! I had to start putting them back. At least Lucy and I agreed that books came under a separate budget, which meant I was allowed to buy more than one. In the end, I spent $43; that consisted of three dresses, three books, a belt and a bag. I was convinced to buy the bag by the sales woman. She mentioned it would go well with my carpet dress because it was also made of a carpet-like material, however, it had a teddy bear pattern on it. It was too dorky cute to resist for only four dollars. www.vinnies.org.au/shops
We spent the next half of the day driving through the Dandenong Mountains to Healesville. We were visiting Hedgend Maze. Every maze is exciting to me. It brings out my creativity, inspires my imagination, and has an inherent ability to make me feel young and adventurous. And there is something particularly romantic about Hedge Mazes. I immediately felt alive as I walked between the lush green foliage of the maze walls.
‘Which way now?’ ‘We’ve been this way before.’ ‘We saw that already.’ ‘Dead end!’ ‘Is this the start again?!’ ‘I don’t think we’ve been in this section yet.’ We ran about the maze, left right, and around in circles. The goal was to not only find the exit, but also find clues along the way to solve a puzzle. Each clue would correlate to a letter, which, once solved, would spell out a word or phrase. Lucy led the way to begin with. We decided the leader would swap if they came to a dead-end or a clue. So once Lucy hit a dead-end I would take the lead. Again and again we found our way back to the beginning, but we were struggling to find the exit and the remaining clues. Occasionally, we ran into other people, there were a few kids, a man and woman, the kid’s mothers; and we could hear them calling out to each other. There was such merriment in the air. Eventually, we found the exit. However, we still hadn’t found all the clues, so we re-entered the maze and kept looking. I was in the lead, and I started running. I noticed that we had just gone around in a loop, but I kept running around the loop, laughing like a lunatic. Lucy just followed laughing too. I think we were getting a little delirious from all the twisting and turning. When I stopped running, Lucy caught up to me and said, ‘You’re a dork!’ We never did find all the clues, but we were able to solve the puzzle from the clues we had found. It said, ‘Proud 2 B Aussie’, which is funny because Lucy is from New Zealand. We found the exit easily the second time around, which was a relief because we were both a bit tired by that point. Leaving the maze we walked along the estate. It was beautiful. Sumptuous lawns stretch out beyond the green hedges. And the Mountains stood vigilant in the distance. The sky was overcast, but it gave the grounds an even more mysterious appeal in the grey light. I felt gratified and content. www.hedgend.com.au
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Photo used under Creative Commons from Thomas James Caldwell