Alpine Therapy

On hands and knees and with my head under the bedside table I grappled with trying to plug in a timer switch into a power point. My tech-savvy father had accumulated a draw full of electronic gadgetry necessary to illuminate Sydney if needed, and in process switch on enough lights to deter thieves when one was away.

With the job done and whilst rising from the floor, I came face to face with a sticker on the bottom of a blue plastic container. 'Rosemary Dean, date of cremation: 5 December,' it read. There she was, reduced to ashes, just five centimetres from my nose.

Up until this point, I was in total control. My bag was packed and I was ready to head overseas.

Cradling the container I squeezed it tightly against my chest. My stomach muscles tensed and a swell of emotion began to flow from Balmoral Beach. It rose quickly up Coronation Avenue, flooded down Frascatti lane, ran up the driveway and hit me fair in the face.

My fingers dug into the sides of the lifeless flask. I was desperate to feel something. Swaying from side to side, I wanted to hear the sound of ashes swish back and forth. Totally macabre. If mum was alive she'd tell me to "get a grip". Well, I certainly had hold of her.

With the tears capped and guttural howl silenced, I popped her in my socks and undies draw. There she would remain until my return in a few weeks' time.

24 hours later and there's nothing like a bit of Switzerland to grab one by the balls and retain focus. The first of many Germanic straight-up-and-down moments produced without a creased lip or a flicker in the eyes occurred at breakfast in Zurich's airport hotel. Surrounded by guests sporting name badges on their lapels, obviously unaware that they were a travelling herd, I tucked into a continental breaky. "Are you viv Trafalgar Tours?" the waiter asked over my right shoulder. Definitely not I thought, at least 10 years shy. "Nein danka" I replied, and with that he waived me on to another area to eat within the hotel.

At Andermatt, two hours south of Zurich, a humourless chap from the local Garda hit me with a 30 franc fine for riding my bike up a road closed to bike traffic. I wanted to say "g'day mate, I love Roger Federer and my mum's just died" but I could see by his tarmac straight lips that the Suisse was not for turning.

Whether you're tackling the local constabulary, holding onto handlebars as you descend an alpine pass or are chomping into a 1kg slab of Toblerone, getting a grip on Switzerland is an enormous task.

In the Alps, the hills are covered in red Alpen Rose in full bloom and subsidised cows saddled with big bonging bells happily graze. Underfoot, there's enough salad mix to keep Harris Farm in business; all kinds of primroses, heathers, gentians, daisies, bellflowers, buttercups and more. Big-bottomed bees bumble along drunk with pollen collected from a frieze of kaleidoscopic-coloured flora.  

Alpine lakes lie still, almost frozen in time. Big rocks and vertiginous drops envelop your body's perimeter and settled snow on higher peaks lies dormant all summer long.

Every canton offers a level of beauty as luscious as Lindt. There's not a snake or a spider in sight. In verdant valleys, farmers swing scythes and slash the grass while their families follow and flick the fresh cut into the air with forks to help it dry. The process is performed with military precision. It's all too perfect for words.

Even Swiss cheese is flawles, except for a few holes in it. This staple food, along with lengths of coronary-inducing sausage and yoghurt infused with summer berries tumbles down your throat as effortlessly as a mountain stream finds a valley.

Everything tastes great but Swiss poo stinks. Collected by farmers in the winter – when their cosseted cows take shelter in barns – manure is mixed with water in tanks and turned into slurry called Mist which is sprayed from the back of a tractor and onto pasture in summer. The resultant aroma that fills the air is Bovine No5 to farmers and keen gardeners but to an uninitiated olfactory organ, the pong leaves dynamic lifter in the shade, burns nasal hair to a cinder and clears the head better than a jar of Vicks.

Time to leave the heady cocktail and Swiss perfection behind. With the train on time and time on show in passing shop windows full of Longines and Hublot, I traveled south in search of flaws.