Last Monday our long awaited and anticipated house guest arrived.
It was WALT (West Australian Lone Traveller), the travelling teddy!
Walt has been AWOL for coming up to two months, and we were all becoming seriously concerned for his health and welfare … and with good reason as it turns out.
He arrived without backpack, his t-shirt stained and bedraggled, and with terrible injuries, so we can only guess that he got mugged somewhere along the way. He wasn’t saying. (Well you probably wouldn’t either if you’d lost your head!)
That night he underwent emergency lifesaving surgery at the skilled hands of Dr Hubster (who can fix ANYTHING!).
Walt spent the next few days recovering in the ICU, being tenderly cared for by Miss 16, and all the other toys (you can meet Sophie and friends here. And yes, I am a grown up who talks to stuffed toys and they talk back – what of it?!). I washed his shirt, and he borrowed one from Bananas the Monkey in the meantime.
And then Walt made it known he would like to part-ay, if you please. Instead he had to settle for sightseeing, with myself and Miss 16 as his tour guides. Oh well. They don’t call the Redlands the Deadlands for nothing!
First stop was the famous Cleveland Lighthouse, which he tried to climb – even though we told him it was probably a bit soon after his surgery for such antics!
He got some of the ants out of his pants playing at the park at Cleveland Point (actually he doesn’t wear pants, but why let a minor technicality get in the way of a good story). Everywhere we went people (especially children) pointed and smiled at this madwoman carting a teddy bear around. Can’t think why.
We showed Walt the deck where the “Dawn Treader” ship was located and filmed for the Narnia movie, and he enjoyed the feeling of the sea breeze in his fur.
Next stop was the historic Court House restaurant, where the hubster and I had our wedding reception over 23 years ago.
But by then he was pretty pooped, as he is only a little bear after all, not to mention still recuperating from surgery.
Over the weekend we hosted a BBQ in Walt’s honour – so he did get to do a little bit of part-ay-ing after all.
And now it’s time for Walt to continue his journey, although we would have loved him to stay longer. Miss 16 in particular is going to be devastated to see him go, but the reality is he needs to keep moving or he won’t fulfil his ambition of being home for Christmas!
I heard he’s off to our nation’s capital next …
If you’d like to follow WALT on his adventures, here’s are some of the other places he has visited: