JON DOUST: Visitors seem to believe that we have done nothing all year but wait for them

We love this time of year. We hate this time of year.

To be fair, the year started well, because of the failure of the wind that normally howls and growls — the easterly.

As those of us who inhabit Binalup in the early morning know well, it normally blows madly, disrupting both our outer and inner worlds.

So far, we have seen it sparingly, not had to tie down the loose sheets over the deck, swim into the crazed surf, or tidy up the backyard after it.

As I say to any visitor praising the weather: “Sure, today is glorious, but just wait for the vengeful easterly. It will be in tomorrow, and then you’ll wish you’d headed back north.”

Which brings me to the other nightmare — the visitors.

Old school buddies, university, workplace and neighbourhood friends and people we met once on a trip to Guatemala, and, of course, family, drive the long road and then expect us to drop everything.

They seem to believe that we have done nothing all year but wait for them.

Sat slumped in our pretty little settings, longing for the phone call, the text, the knock on the door to alert us to their arrival and a break from our fog of boredom and inactivity.

They think we have had nothing to do. No forests to save. No cultural practises to preserve. No landscapes to renovate. No other friends to drink coffee with, books to read, roads to build, rebuild, or roundabouts to round off.

And then they want us to take them to the newest, finest, bestest, restaurant or cafe and sit while they regale us with their glorious lives in that northern city full of heat, grime, roadworks, fly-ins and fly-outs and temples of extravagance.

When we give in, we have to sit and listen while they praise our landscape, our environment, our beaches, our willingness to give way on Lockyer Avenue, to pedestrians on York Street, and our glorious, temperate weather.

Some years it is too much to take.

Then we leave town and rent out our house to the highest bidder.

Jon Doust is an author and tour guide based in Albany.