Friday, 13th May …..

Our flight home was delayed by two hours but Marilyn and I both slept on the plane so it was relatively painless. It was great to be home, even though the cruise was enjoyable and seeing Mungo and Jan again after 37 years was a delight. I've appended some photographs of our time in Perth here because there was no room for them in the previous post.

We arrived home to share in Jamie’s excitement about his new property at Dilston. Settlement date is May 27th and so he is starting to make plans about what he will need to do once he has taken over. Of course, Marilyn and I will move in to the existing unit for the first couple of years until Jamie is ready to build a new house. The land is 2 acres in area and has not been developed to any great extent. The current owner has the grass slashed occasionally but there are areas of scrub which need to be cleaned out and some dead trees which should be removed. We have been looking at chainsaws and whipper-snippers because we will certainly need the right tools if we are going to tackle such a big job. Marilyn’s also talking about new carpet, and a new fridge and washing machine. When we packed up our wordly goods last year, we decided to divest ourselves of our old fridge (bought in 1984) and washing machine (acquired second-hand in about 2003). They’ve both gone to good homes and we will appreciate new appliances anyway.

It’s an exciting time and, coupled with my decision to direct the Tasmanian Craft Fair in 2012 and 2013, will have an enormous impact on our future. It looks like Tasmania will be our home for longer than we might have thought.

Our plans for the next few weeks have been changed a bit and we have decided to make two trips to the mainland instead of one, and come back to Tasmania for a couple of weeks in the middle to move ourselves in to the new house. We’ve also decided not to take the caravan to the mainland as we worked out we would stay in it for a maximum of ten nights; it’s a lot of effort and expense to take the caravan over and back on the Spirit, and tow it all the way to Mudgee and back to Melbourne, for the sake of ten nights. So, we will now take our car on the boat on June 1st, return to Tasmania on June 20th, back on the boat on July 5th and final trip back on August 13th. During that time, we will have two weeks at resorts at Lake Macquarie and Hallidays Point, three weeks in Mudgee and time in Wollongong as well.