December 30th .....

When we came to stay with our friend, Robyn, on the evening of December 21st, she was showing us details of a cruise she is taking in May next year. She is very excited and is looking forward to the experience.


Something must have triggered in Marilyn’s brain because less than a week later she announced, ‘I feel a cruise coming on.’ Half an hour on the Best Cruises website and we’ve decided on a Sydney to Fremantle cruise on the Sun Princess leaving on April 16th, stopping at Brisbane, Townsville, Port Douglas, Darwin, Broome, Bali, and Geraldton. We’ll be able to visit friends in Brisbane, Townsville and Perth as well as see some parts of Australia we haven’t yet visited.

We left Mudgee on Boxing Day just after 7am, hoping to be in time for lunch at Sharon and David’s home in Pennant Hills. Sharon is Marilyn’s niece and is just about the same age as Jamie. They have two small children.

There were more than a dozen adults and half a dozen children and it was great to be part of a large-ish family gathering after too many years of spending Christmas on our own. Sharon and David were generous, with wonderful food and outstanding wines. The desserts were a particular triumph. Of course, the guests contributed to the feast and that’s how it should be.

We stayed there overnight and left early to meet other old friends for lunch. Marilyn has known Barry since he was a child and his wife, Lynne, is her cousin. They were both in our wedding party and it is too long since we caught up with them. Our resolution this year is to make every effort to see the friends we have neglected over the years and at least we have started the process.

Our GPS, Dorothy, decided we should travel back to Wollongong via Campbelltown and the Picton Road. This is not the way I might have chosen but Sydney traffic has developed significantly since we moved to Tasmania and Dorothy chose a route which had no hold-ups and was fast all the way.

We’re now back in Wollongong, again staying with Robyn and seeing Mum and Uncle Archie when we can. I saw them this morning and we’ll take morning tea in to them tomorrow to celebrate the New Year.

Yesterday, Marilyn and Robyn decided we should go to see the new movie, The King’s Speech. It’s just been released and hasn’t got to Wollongong so we had to travel to Cronulla to see it. We caught a train at Oak Flats at 11.20, changed at Sutherland and were in plenty of time in Cronulla to catch the 1.50pm showing. After a nice afternoon tea we caught a train at 5.27 and were home by 7.30. A great day out!

The King’s Speech is a wonderful film. The audience clapped at the end, and rightly so. The story was fabulous and the acting superb. Jeffrey Rush never ceases to amaze and Colin Firth was a very believable Duke of York. I was surprised to see Guy Pierce as Edward VIII but he did the accent very well. I can never think of him without remembering Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but he has had a more varied career than that.
All of us thoroughly recommend the film.

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. Sandy and Janet are meeting us in the evening and we’re going to the Oak Flat Bowls Club for dinner. We’ll probably come home in time to watch the fireworks on television. Last year, we celebrated Christmas and New Year on the Diamond Princess but this years’ celebration will be a little more low-key in comparison. However, that can only be a good thing.

December 25th .....

This time of the year brings out the best and the worst in people. The last fortnight has shown us just how pleasant and helpful people can be, but also how rude and offensive others are. No doubt, the stresses of Christmas: the expense, the busyness, the expectations, all make it a difficult time, but it will be great to get past January 1st and get on with a more realistic life.

We flew to Sydney on the 21st, picked up a hire car and drove down to Wollongong. Our original plan was to drive straight up to Mudgee but it’s a good five-hour drive and we didn’t get the car until 6pm so it put on too much pressure. Instead, we decided to have a night in Wollongong and drive to Mudgee in daylight. We hired the car from Redspot this time; I’m fed up with trying to compare the prices from the major companies and there is always some item I don’t know about until the final bill comes in. Redspot quote an all-inclusive price, with no insurance excess so you know what the final cost will be before you start.

We picked up a nearly-new Commodore which gave Marilyn plenty of room for her leg and headed for Sandy and Janet’s for dinner, before driving to Warilla to stay with our friend, Robyn. She had been at a Christmas Party and didn’t get home until about 9.30 so it all fitted in very well.

Next morning, Marilyn wanted to go to the crematorium to put flowers on her mother’s plaque. It’s been a family tradition to visit the placements on Christmas Day so it was good that she was able to represent the family on this task. My father and niece are there too, and Marilyn’s grandparents, aunts and uncles, and her brother-in-law’s family as well, so there were quite a number of small bunches needed.


This task completed, we called into Macdonald’s for coffee and cakes to take to Mum and Uncle Archie at the nursing home. It’s too difficult to take them both out for morning tea (we can’t get both the wheelchair and walking frame in the car) so we bring in the little delights which they miss.

Sadly, Mum was very sleepy and kept dropping off so she didn’t get to enjoy the occasion. Uncle Archie, though, was in good form and really got stuck in to the sweet treats. I suspect he doesn’t always go to breakfast so he was probably hungry.

We got away before lunch and headed up the road. The section between Wollongong and Penrith is pretty quick but once we hit the Blue Mountains, the traffic slowed down. There’s a lot of roadworks going on, which will be terrific in the long run, but keeps the traffic to a crawl in the meantime.

After Lithgow, we get on to the narrow road to Mudgee. It’s quite a reasonable road but slow in parts. However, we arrived in plenty of time to visit Bill’s nursing home and pick up the keys to Anne and Alan’s house.

Bill seemed fine and was very pleased to see us. The difference between The Links in Wollongong and the Mudgee Nursing Home is very marked. At the Links, the staff are few and far-between and often there is no-one on the floor. In Mudgee, there are always many staff around. Even on Christmas Day, the ‘skeleton staff’ was six people plus the cleaner and laundry lady who were on for four hours in the morning.

Mudgee is very green; they’ve had a lot of rain and it shows. The sheep on Alan’s property are healthy and very heavy with wool. Apparently, they’re due for shearing but it probably won’t happen until the new year. The sheep are in the habit of sleeping outside the gate to the house enclosure so the ground there is covered with sheep manure and the smell is appalling. I think we’re city people at heart.

The property, Saxby Downs, is about 20 minutes out of town. When Marilyn decided we would bring Bill out for a visit, we rang the local Maxi Taxi who picked him up and brought him out. The driver, Amy, said it wasn’t worth her while driving back to town so stayed and had afternoon tea with us and then took Bill home, with no extra charge. It could only happen in the country.

The house is beautiful with stunning views. It has been renovated to accommodate three families and guests so there is plenty of room.


Christmas Lunch at the nursing home was great. They set Bill and Marilyn and I in a separate room with another resident, Heather, and her mother. The five of us were served separately. The meal was very tasty: ham and turkey, roast vegetables, and Christmas pudding and custard for dessert. We missed the wine but you can’t have everything.

It was an unusual Christmas but enjoyable, none-the-less.

December 15th .....

I think my last comment before I took a break from writing was that we had no plans and would wait to see what unfolded. The short answer to what unfolded is ‘not much’.

It’s been four weeks now since Marilyn’s operation and she is recovering very well. She had optimistically allowed herself five weeks for recovery before we head off to Mudgee and she is well on track to be ready for that. Of course, she has the right attitude and that makes all the difference.

We’ve found the caravan a particularly good place for Marilyn to recuperate. Everything is within easy reach: the shower and toilet is just a few steps away as is the kitchen. It’s great, also, to be free to move around from town to town if we feel like it. We’re in Latrobe at the moment, free-camping. The caravan is pretty self-contained and the solar panel on the roof gives us regular 12v power for the water pump, TV, and so on. We do miss the microwave which can only be used when we have access to 240v but that’s a small price to pay for the independence.

I had an appointment with the radiation oncologist who supervised my treatment for prostate cancer. A blood test showed that my PSA count is too low to measure so that’s the best news I could wish for. We can now put that behind us and get on with life.

There has been one little sad moment recently. I carelessly dropped my Bebook which I use for my electronic book collection. I think I’ve had it for more than 3 years and it’s already had a new screen following a crash on to concrete and a replacement mother board and battery. I won’t bother having it repaired again. New models have many more features and they have become much more sophisticated so I’ve ordered a new Sony with a touch screen and in-built dictionaries. It’s more elegant than the bebook and I hope will last me for many years – if I can avoid dropping it.

I was asked to talk to my Rotary club last night about our recent trip to the Philippines. It was a good chance to re-visit some of the interesting times we had. I focused on the parts of the trip which related to our club’s involvement in projects there and said a little about possible future projects. Of course, I could have talked for hours about the beautiful new places we saw and people we met but if you talk for more than half an hour, the members get very toe-ey. Is that how you spell it?

We’re heading back to Launceston tomorrow for a Christmas party on Friday night and to get organized for our trip to Mudgee on Tuesday. There probably won’t be much to report until the middle of next week