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Published: March 4th 2008
Sunshine Coast - Day 1
Blue sky but no swimmingAustralia
It is a lie - Australia is not a hot , dry dust bowl edged with sun baked golden beaches adorned by bronzed, muscle bound lifeguards - well not what we saw anyway. The beaches were akin to Bognor in the rain (Bridlington for our Northern readers!!) but with bigger waves, the Hinterland was green, lush and in flood from the constant rains that fell non-stop from Boxing Day until we left NSW in early January.
Take a look at the photographic evidence for this !!!!
That said we had great trip to Australia mostly visiting friends at Mullwillumbah in NSW, Noosa in Queensland, Sydney and Melbourne.
Mullwillumbah is about 30 miles inland from Byron Bay about half way up the West Coast of Australia. We spent an entertaining three weeks there with Tony and Tess Thompson (TNT long term friends from Colin's school boy days). We were joined by 18 of their family and friends for a typical OZ Christmas in the garden (more the size of a park). It was slightly tense as we watched the horizon for the promised rain which fortunately didn’t arrived until Boxing Day - so all was well and
great fun.
Christmas Eve night was highly entertaining. The early assembled guests which included Maurice and Chantelle (old friend from France) sat on the veranda tracking the headlights of Tony’s truck as he careered around the hills of Mullwillumbah scouring outlying farms looking to steal a gas cylinder - his had run out at 10 pm just as we loaded the oven with foods for pre-cooking ready for the Christmas meal. I am still in awe of Tess’s coolness in the face of serving 18 guests raw turkey and quails on Christmas day. Ever resourceful and cheery Tony would have undoubtedly found a solution that involved tree felling and wrestling with Hissing Sid, the family’s resident 30 foot cobra if he hadn’t been successful in purloining a fullish gas cylinder from a neighbour’s farm.
Madness, kindness and fun in Australia seems to be named Tony because our stay in Noosa with another Tony, (Maryann’s brother the vet) was also very entertaining. We were observers of the ‘born again’ surfing set - too scary for us to take part in but great to see from the beach. I shall purchase for Tony for use in his dotage a copy
Sunshine Coast - Day 3
Turns out there was a cyclone (Hurricane) sitting over the coast and it didn't want to move - I gather one of its siblings is still in the vicinity as the weather has been bad most of the season. At one stage campers had to be evacuated from Frazer Island - global weather chaos in action. of ‘How to convert your wheelchair into a Dune Buggy’ - age will not weary him!!!
For a bit of culture and sobriety we had to go to Sydney to meet up with Rebecca Crocker (daughter of Rob and Bridget Crocker from Freeland) one of the younger and more responsible emigrant to Oz. We had tea and cakes (so English) by the harbour and it was delightful is is she.
Sydney was a surprise and delight to us as we are not really fond of cities but this city on the sea is something quite special. This we had been told by many of you reading this blog who got there ahead of us. The highlight of our stay was a trip to the Opera to see Jose Carreras in concert.
From Sydney we travelled further south again to Melbourne so Colin could catch up with Betty a very special friend of his Mum, Clarice. In her 80s Clarice was still flying to Melbourne to have holidays with Betty who is a remarkable 91 year old. She is a bit creaky in her legs but her brain is sharp sharp sharp which she and we attributes to
Gold Coast (or Bognor)
That old British seaside problem - zipping up the windcheater in a rain storm her doing the daily crossword in the national paper. I’ve cancelled our subscription to ‘Tapdance your way to social ridicule’ in favour of the Daily Telegraph but as it takes me nearly a week to do the cryptic crossword I can see a big backlog building up quite rapidly.
New Zealand
In early January we flew from Australia to New Zealand where basically we just flopped. We spent six glorious weeks living in the flat we had built 2 years ago beneath the house we have on the island of Waiheke.
Waiheke is a 35 minute ferry ride from Auckland. It used to be just a holiday island for Aucklanders who went there and stayed in what they call bachs (small wooden beach huts). It is still a holiday island but it now also has many permanent residents many of whom commute to Auckland for work or schooling.
There is a population of about 9,000. Ferries run every hour until midnight from the city centre of Auckland to the island transporting commuters and day tripper. Our house is nicely placed with easy access to the main village, the ferry terminal and a small business estate with the
Gold Coast
...and still it rains only supermarket on the island so we are able to get around happily using bikes and public transport. We are extremely lucky to have 2 delightful tenants in our house (Lily and Gwyneth) who keep an eye on things generally and perform miracles in the garden and with the produce from the garden which includes peaches, tangerines, passion fruits, bananas, grapefruits. It’s a delightful place to live and we love going there and we were very sad to leave in mid February.
Here followeth a zillion photos mostly of our house in NZ.
Next stop USA and Canada.
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rosie
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We're home
We got home yesterday after 2 weeks in USA and Canada so will do a quick short (oh the relief) blog entry for Canada just so I can show off my skiiing photos and then - shock horror - some of you will actually have to talk to us now unless you are nimble enough to dodge into doorways when you spot our tanned , very tanned and youthless faces on teh horizon!!!!!