When his parents' marriage was breaking up, our grandson spent a lot of time with us at our house in Melbourne. On each of his visits, we would measure his height in black texta on the back of our bedroom door. The measurements started when he was three feet tall and finished when he reached six feet four inches. One day, when he was about twelve and I was measuring his increasing height, he said to me ‘I want this door', and I replied airily ‘When you turn twenty-one you may have the door.' The time passed rapidly and this year on the 29 th May he turned twenty-one – but in distant Darwin. A promise to a child is sacred so fortunately for us, as luggage is limited these days, there is a marvellous firm called Pack & Send. Helpful Derrick from the Camberwell branch in Victoria came and collected our bedroom door, advising us to remove the handles and coat hooks to reduce the width to reduce shipping costs. For the reasonable amount of $234 the door was transported from Melbourne to Darwin within three weeks, to be on hand when we arrived there for the birthday celebrations. The guests were very amused – ‘We've heard of people getting the key of the door –‘ they said ‘but never the whole door!'
But the feel-good story doesn't end there. Recently, when we were in South Australia, I was telling our friends in Mt Gambier our plans for the birthday and bemoaning the difficulty of finding a matching replacement door. When they said ‘Come with us, ' and there in their garage, were three spare Edwardian doors left over from their renovations. ‘Pick one' they offered. So the South Australian door will fill the gap in our bedroom wall before this winter sets in. A happy ending for us all.
Sincere thanks to Camberwell's Derrick and the Darwin branch of Pack & Send for the wonderful Australia-wide ‘door-to-door' service.
__________________