Advertisement
Published: November 11th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Before our visitors arrived we both had to make an unexpected quick trip down to Melbourne for a meeting with Brett's work, who are also one of my clients so it meant a bit of a whirlwind Thursday night flight from Port Macquarie, via Sydney then to Melbourne. We spent all day Friday in a meeting and then luckily had a chance to meet up with TP for dinner at our usual spot on Lygon Street – Papa Gino's. We hadn't seen her since June so was great to catch up, even if only for a couple hours. Saturday meant I was back off to Port Macquarie and Brett was staying an extra day to help a friend out with some coping for his backyard halfpipe, and he would fly back on Sunday night.
There are no direct flights from Melbourne to Port Macquarie, so it meant I had to go to through Sydney which was just fine because it actually meant I met up with our 2 visitors from Canada (my parents!) at the airport and got on the same flight back up to Port Macquarie as them. I was going to try and surprise them at the airport
but figured with all the delays and strikes going on with Qantas at the moment I better not risk it! It was really good to see them since it's been a year since we were back there, and the flight was a quick hour back up to Port Mac and into some warmer weather and time to get the shorts back on. It didn't take them long to settle into things around here and we are all thinking it might be tough to leave. We seem to be saying that alot lately with some of the places we have been!
The weather has been great – sunny most days and mid 20's and cooler at night so easier to sleep. I took my parents on a bit of a tour around the area, and even a few humpback whales popped out to say hi. Brett flew back in that next night and we picked him up at the airport and he was travelling a bit lighter since Qantas had managed to lose his bags. Good thing he has to work in the morning and all his work stuff is in his bag! Qantas hasn't been getting a good rep lately....But
he did get a very nice Qantas kit of stuff with matching tshirt and shorts with the Qantas logo, which somehow got passed onto Edder so I am sure he will be sporting them in Palm Springs this winter!
The first week my parents were here, we got a call from Brett's aunt Shelly that Brett's grandpa passed away down in Wollongong. It was very sad to hear but he was almost 94 and had a really good life and was healthy and with it almost right til the end. Nobody thought he was 93! We all went down to Wollongong which is about a 6 hour drive south of here for the service on the Thursday and stayed an extra few nights. Although we were all getting together because of Pop's service, it was really nice to see everyone and Brett's cousins had come down from Queensland and Brett's sister Megan came up from Melbourne. And it was also nice for my parents as they had met all of Brett's family when they were here 4 years ago. Only people missing were Brett's parents, but it was a bit hard to come from Canada on such short notice,
and thankfully Brett's dad had just come over to spend 3 weeks with his dad a couple months back. We all got together after the service at Merry and Jim's, (Brett's other aunt and uncle) for a few bevvies and way to much food as usual put on by Shelly and Merry.
The 4 of us stayed in our usual caravan park in Shellharbour but we didn't bother pulling our caravan out for the couple days since it was a bit of an effort and would be a bit tight with 4 people, so we rented a cabin which was $115 a night. They have different levels of cabins and this was one of the cheaper ones but was just fine – it has a queen bedroom, bunks kind of in a hallway, a bathroom and kitchen and living area – although I think the bunks are definitely made for young kids and maybe we aren't quite young kids anymore since it was a bit of a struggle for Brett and I to get out of them the next morning – good thing we have been doing yoga! The third night the caravan park was fully booked so we stayed
at the Salt apartments right in Wollongong which were really nice and spacious with a great rooftop deck with a bbq, although we didn't use it. Would be a nice spot to stay for a couple days.
On our drive back up to Port Macquarie we decided to go through Sydney instead of bypassing it and make a quick stop by Costco which has only been open a few months in Sydney and the the 2nd one in Australia. We had to see how it compared to Costco back in North America! Most things were the same just a few dollars more, and they even had pumpkin pie (which is something you don't get in Australia, since pumpkin pie here would be like a savory pie and made with the pumpkins here which are more like a squash). They also had orange cheddar cheese which was really strange to see since there is no orange cheese here. Not sure how the Australians will take to that! And still not really sure of the point of making cheddar cheese bright orange.... Anyways, we bought a few things (and yes a pumpkin pie that we somehow managed to keep my dad
from digging into) and then got back on the road for our journey back to Port Macquarie.
So we all seemed to settle in to our little routines quite easily – although Brett and my routine's seem to revolve a bit to much around our laptops at the moment. We both have a tonne of work going on and still seem to be working 6 1/2 days a week, while my parents have a good routine of a morning walk along the paths they have built all along the coast here in town, coffee, some beach time, some reading and cooking and cleaning up for us – funny how that happens! But it is nice to have them around, and not just for those reasons!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.08s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 6; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0526s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb