Mary and Frederik, Before they got Engaged
I have been unable to find such a thread anywhere, so here we go.
This is a story about Mary and Frederik on a private holiday, before their relationship let alone engagement, was known.
Billed Bladet #13, 2007-03-29.
Mary og Frederiks hemmelige paradis – Mary and Frederik’s secret paradise.
- “Your Crown Prince and his girlfriend were here before they were officially engaged”, says Buddy.
He is sitting under the sign with “Buddy’s rest”, wearing dark blue jeans, pink and newly-ironed shirt and a light cowboy-hat. The big square-built man is half aborigini (?) and an institution here – some would use the expression an attraction. Buddy Tyson was a rodeo-champion at El Questro in the 60’s, until the unlucky combination of accidents and too far to the hospital ended the fun. Later he worked as a cowboy and bull-catcher at El Questro, but he has also done his bit of turning the old cattle-station into a dazzling holiday hotel in the super-luxury-class.
We hang out at the end of the day each with a can of beer outside the store and bar The Swinging Arm at El Questro Station Township – a small blessed place in the vast outback of Western Australia.
- “Yep”, says the park-ranger Pete Brown.
- “I drove Fred and Mary from our little landing-strip out to the Homestead. None of us had any idea who they were – that happened only months later, when one saw a picture of them in a magazine. He signed himself in as Fred Jensen”, grins Buddy.
- “We were aware they were something special, because they constantly dragged two expressionless men around. The men clearly were uncomfortable the day Frederik and Mary went for a helicopter-ride and they couldn’t be in the same helicopter. They demanded a helicopter more at the disposal of the bodyguards, but we couldn’t get that….”.
- “That was in the last week of October 2002 and we were starting to shut down for the season…. On one of the days Fred and Mary were here, a thunderstorm swept across, a lightning ignited some shrubbery nearby and started a minor bushfire, which kept an eye on. Normally that sort of fires extinguish themselves, but after a couple of days it got closer to Homestead and we called them and warned them. When we got there ourselves the staff was in full swing – even the Crown Prince walked around with a garden-hose, from which only a measly squirt of water came out. But we managed to extinguish the fire….”.
The seed to El Questro was laid when a couple of men back in 1903 made a shed of boards and called it Spurling’s Pocket. Just three years later the handed over the humble cattle-station to others who again after three years couldn’t pay the mortgages. To breed cattle in the arid and sparsely vegetation of the wasteland was a tough and uncertain business and the cattle-station changed owners many times throughout the years. Neighbouring areas as Wild Dog and Moonlight Valley was added to Spurling’s Pocket.
Only in 1958 did the estate get the name El Questro. The Spanish-sounding name makes no sense, but it’s said that the owner – inspired by western-magazines – invented the name in a state of intoxication.
El Questro kept changing owners until a young enthusiastic married couple in 1991 took over the derelict buildings and began the creation of a dream of offering paying guests a comfortable oasis in the middle of the nature sceneries of the wilderness.
El Questro’s derelict main-building Homestead was located not near the cattle-station but three kilometres at the end of the dirt-road – on the outermost cliff-edge of Chamberlain Gorge with a picturesque view over the gorge where the rivers Pentecost and Chamberlain meet.
The new owners drew and build a new Homestead and a new wing was added with six suites, where excessive spoiling was part of the package for the guests.
Last but not least they made roads to the spectacular sceneries of nature. Tourists began to hear about El Questro Wilderness Park at one million acres. Some drove there, others flew.
In the spring of 2005 the sold their beloved El Questro to one of Australia’s largest tour and hotel-operators, Voyages, who specialises in remote luxurious holiday resorts.
Homestead is today the pearl of El Questro. On three sides surrounded by well-cared green lawns with exotic trees – the fourth lined by the gorge where Chamberlain River throughout millions of years have sanded it’s way down to the bedrock.
The prominent guests fly here – from Sydney, Melbourne, Darwin and Perth. Here they are received by the host-couple Laurie and Al, who with the help from eight employees nurse and spoil the guests.
The main-building is a big square communal-building without interior walls and with a network of visible rafts holding the roof. The huge room with panorama-windows have been divided into bar, library, dining, TV and rest-sections and with a lowered couch-area in front of the open fireplace. Giant terracotta-jars and Indonesian antiqueties divide and adorn the loveliness, from where there is access to a shady veranda.
The building-materials are primarily local nature, just as the earth-colours ochre, ginger and henna seems to make the surrounding landscape continue indoors.
The largest suite is with its roofed veranda built over the edge of the cliff. From the bathroom there is access to the veranda where a white enamel bathtub wit lions-feet offer a rare opportunity for an outdoor bath with a refined view over passing crocodiles in the river, deep down.
Alternatively there is, as an oasis in the oasis, a swimming pool circled by palms and jacuzzi in a corner of the park towards the cliffs edge – the perfect place to have your sparkling champagne served after a tennis-match.
All activities and guided tours on El Questro (minus the helicopter-based) are part of the basic price, and you can at dinner opt to dine with the other guests at Homestead or look your sweetheart in the eyes over a romantic dinner for two on the ledge of the cliff. The gorge is in the evening lit by spotlights and the park is lit by torches, while the sky is a hanging sea of stars. This is typically a place where men propose to their sweethearts. Was it here Frederik proposed to his Mary?
El Questro Wilderness Park measures 60 by 80 kilometres – that is nearly the size of Funen. Out here where size matters, there are more than one hundred kilometres to Kununurra, which is the nearest small town.
There is nothing more erroneous to believe that there is nothing to do in the vast outback. You can walk, drive, sail, ride and fly just for fun or for being transported to the many sceneries of the park.
Most at Station Township arrive here in their own off-roaders and can drive to the spectacular gorges – all have waterfalls or warm springs and a fantastic vegetation. Other routes that require off-road-experience goes to Cockburn Range, Pigeon Hole and Saddleback Ridge with breathless views and unforgettable sunsets.
“Must sees” are Champagne and Zebedee Springs – a series of natural, 32 degrees C warm springs of rainwater, which decades ago seeped down into the subterranean caves, where the heat of the ground now heats the water and under pressure send it back to the surface of the ground, The hot and mineral-rich water is basic of life for a lush tropical vegetation of palms, bamboo and ferns – a true Garden of Eden and the most beautiful bathroom in the world.
- “Miss Donaldson wasn’t very keen on jumping into the water, but I said she would regret it if she didn’t do it”, smiles the park-ranger, who was tasked to show the couple around.
- “She indeed looked like she enjoyed it, but the boyfriend didn’t want to – and no, I have no pictures”, ends Pete Brown with a big smile.
When saying goodbye he tells that the superstar Kylie Minoque is the next famous guest coming.
Very well written by Anders Nielsen, who I believe is freelance and perhaps a travel-writer.
To me Western Australia, of which I must confess I know next to nothing, is just as romantic, strange, exciting and adventurous as Greenland must be to many Australians.
I met myhusband by chance, just friends, we wrote eachtoehr for a year, after the letters arrive with rose petals inside, after phone calls, after presents, I was in southamerica, he in europe and aftr a year of letters i decide i would visit him in France 16 months later we were married in england in a castle! so without him being a prince, it was real fantasy romance like probably mary and fred!
