Saying it quietly in case any child or husband takes umbrage, but perhaps the most fabulous year of my life was when my BFF Pies and I went to Europe with open return tickets from the city Flight Centre.
It was 1988. Pies was 19, I was 21. We had 15 grand between us in traveller’s cheques and a copy of Frommer’s Europe on $25 a Day. Every morning we’d say, “What does Frommer think?” and if he said Madrid was good or we should try Scotland, we did.
Which is why I feel both jealous and admiring of the little girls’ getaway unfolding this week at a luxury resort in Sicily.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has taken some downtime from her UK speaking tour to hang with her benefactor, billionaire Gina Rinehart, at Taormina’s Grand Hotel San Pietro.
Yep, it’s the town where the second season of White Lotus was filmed. And yep, this time of year, standard rooms at the Grand Hotel range from $2028 to $6329. Per night. It looks stonkingly gorgeous. Like the sort of place where you’d speak in your restaurant voice and worry about having the wrong linen shift. Luxury? Absolutely. Fun? Nah, I’m not convinced.
Things were different for Pies and me those 40 years ago. But I still miss powering along with our twin purple backpacks, ready for anything. Anything! A sea snake bite off Naxos, hitching a ride in a Turkish army truck (and posing for photos with soldiers holding rifles and bayonets), charcuterie picnics in parks, laughing ourselves to sleep a lot.
Truth is, almost nothing beats going on holiday with another woman. Better still, a posse of them. Having someone to properly sunscreen your back. Sharing clothes. Nobody saying, “I’ll just wait outside” at shops. People who actively want to dance to Bros.
Day drinking. Minimal snoring. The luxury of a break from organising everyone else’s shit. Heaven. It’s especially good in bougie middle-age. No flea bites at scuzzy pensiones or being freaked out by hair in the sinks of shared bathrooms or tossing up between buying the suede jacket at the Florence market and not eating for five days.
Instead, there are pool villas in Bali where everyone keeps things tidy and quietly slips out to the gym in the morning. But even if it’s just a roadie to Mollymook, it’s about liberation from real life, the priceless freedom of lolling around with a book and a woman friend who’ll happily gossip about the strangers on neighbouring lounges.
Gina and Pauline have been spotted doing something similar poolside, with Gina’s resort fashion courtesy of a kicky flower in the hair and Pauline getting around in a capri pant, as per photos posted to Instagram and first revealed in The Australian Financial Review.
How much would you have enjoyed eavesdropping on the chitty chat? Perhaps they were workshopping policy under one of the blue-and-white umbrellas while murdering a few €25 longnecks.
Pauline might not have volunteered to chop out for the drinks. I mean, she told the National Press Club women on maternity leave shouldn’t be paid because “they’re not at work”. It’s a principle she might be road testing since parliament rose a fortnight ago. And who better to workshop with than Gina?
She once counselled Australians jealous of millionaires to spend less time drinking and socialising and more time working. Different story, apparently, if the socialising overlooks the Ionian Sea and you have a hair hibiscus.
There’s a big fat whiff of Marie Antoinette drifting across the terrazzo. Or perhaps Joe Hockey and Mathias Cormann puffing cigars before the harsh 2014 budget. Let them eat cannoli!
The Sicilian sojourn hasn’t made Pauline’s socials, which have been railing against supermarkets squeezing farmers. Curious. It’s not like someone hailed by anti-Islam grub Tommy Robinson as “one of the bravest lady’s [sic] on the planet” would normally be shy about public scrutiny.
Stop, does even Pauline know luxury holidays don’t sit especially well beside lectures about women in maternity bras tightening their belts?
Still, I get it. Everyone deserves a girls’ trip. I hope Pauline and Gina had a ball with the happy hour confessions and I sure as hell hope they went nuts at the local disco to When Will I Be Famous?
Pies, let’s go again. Doesn’t need to be the Grand. Let’s find somewhere with good beds and no need to whisper to waiters, where we feel like babies again, with the world spread out in front of us.
Kate Halfpenny is an author and the founder of Bad Mother Media.
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