Thursday, September 1st …..

Well, it’s Day 2 of my convalescence and I’m getting institutionalized to bedpans, bed-baths, meals on trays and a tiny TV high on the wall. At least I have been given a room to myself, so I don’t have to be sociable. Marilyn and Jamie have visited a couple of times, and five flipino friends came in on Wednesday evening with tulips and chocolates.

When I finish this note I will have another round of physiotherapy to do. Apparently it’s the key to getting fit quickly so that we can enjoy the cruise in less than 6 weeks’ time.

I have my computer with me so I can check emails and keep in touch with the world, so it’s not all bad news. It’s the sitting up in bed I hate and I’m not mobile enough to wriggle around looking for a comfortable spot.

The staff here are terrific. I have a male nurse looking after me today, camp as a row of rents. He flutters around the place like an extra in Carry On Nurse. Last night Marilyn was here and the nurse on duty recognised her from Grammar, and regaled us with the woes of having an 18-old daughter dealing with teenage angst. The night nurse caught me reading at 5.30 this morning and was very interested in my Sony Reader. It looks like her mother will be getting one for Christmas.

I thought I might overhear some gossip to fill the spaces in the blog but I seem to be in a quiet corner and miss out on a lot of what’s going on. It’s the story of my life, really.

Wedneday, 31st August …..

It’s 11 o’clock the morning after my operation and I seem to have survived. My first visitor this morning was Jamie, just before7. He’s having his elbow op today in the same hospital and the same surgeon. When the surgeon came by to see me at about 10, he said Jamie’s op. had gone well and he was in recovery.
The lead-up to my operation was uneventful but when I awoke in the recovery room, someone had discovered that they fitted the wrong cap to my prosthesis. No worries, said the surgeon, we can fix that in 10 minutes – so another shot of anaesthetic and back into the theatre.
I was waiting for someone to say, Has anybody seen my iphone? but thank goodness, no-one did.
It wasn’t easy sleeping last night but I’m feeling fine this morning. I can’t wait for a decent meal, it’s been liquids and snacks until now.

Tuesday, August 30th ….

I knew I shouldn’t have gone to the doctors. It’s always better to ignore the pain and hope it will go away. But, no, I had to go and spoil it all by admitting that I wasn’t 100%.

The surgeon manipulated my hip a little bit, said Hmmm! and looked wise. Ýou’d better get an x-ray’, he said, ánd then come back.’ Which I did.

Now, I’m up early so I can have my breakfast before 7am because I’m off to hospital this afternoon for a full hip replacement. I’ve read all the bumph about the operation and the possible side-effects, and filled in the Consent Form, and I’m to be the first cab off the rank on his afternoon list today.

How did I get in so quickly, you might ask. People wait for years for a hip replacement. But, then, I had Marilyn with me who never lost sight of the fact that we are booked on a cruise leaving in 6 weeks. And surprisingly, 6 weeks is just the anticipated recovery time of this op. I would have allowed myself to be fobbed off to an operation after the cruise but Marilyn cut right to the chase and asked the surgeon whether he had any available slots this week. Theoretically, he said, I have a cancellation for tomorrow afternoon. We’ll take it, says Marilyn, without hesitation.

So here I am, about to have my shower and due at the hospital by 11am.

I’ll try to keep the blog up-to-date while I’m convalescing but I’m not sure how St Luke’s feels about wireless modems.

Monday, August 29th …..

I’m off to the doctor this afternoon to have my hip checked. It’s really no better than it was when I first complained three weeks ago so it’s time to have it looked at. It’s held me back a bit and I haven’t been able to do some of the things I had on my list. This morning I moved some stuff from the back verandah into the shed and then I had to sit down to recover. Not much fun!

Because of this, we’ve seen quite a bit of TV. We watched a three-part series called Above Suspicion, based on some Lynda La Plante novels and it was fantastic. We always like Silent Witness and this was in the same league. Now we’re watching the second series of Ashes to Ashes and becoming very involved in that. It’s a bit over the top but that’s OK.

The rugby match on Saturday night was magic. I like Rugby, especially when Australia plays the All Blacks, but to see such a good Australian win is out of this world.

Yesterday we were invited to a barbecue to welcome our friend Siaren’s husband to Australia. Siaren is the Filipina Occupational Therapist we brought to Tasmania in 2005. She was married in the Philippines in September last year (we were at their wedding) and it has taken her this long to get his visa to join her in Tasmania. We decided I would put together a platter of good Australian fruit as our contribution to the meal. It looked terrific but the grapes came from the US, the dates from Mexico, the apricots from Turkey, and the kiwi fruit from New Zealand. Oh well, at least the macadamia nuts were Australian.

Siaren had invited some of their Filipino friends who all arrived with their Australian husbands, which I thought was good, until the men all left to go to the football! So I sat there, the only man in the house apart from the guest-of-honour. Only in Australia! Our other Filipina Occupational Therapist, Shiela, was there and she is very pregnant. Of the 5 specialists we brought out to Australia, three are living in Tasmania, one is in Singapore, and only one has returned to Manila. And that’s how it is in the modern Philippines. Their best and brightest are living elsewhere. A bit like Tasmania, in fact!

Wednesday, August 24th (Part 2) …..

Well the die is cast, the decision has been made, we are on our way. We’ve booked today for an 11-night cruise, leaving Sydney on October 9th and travelling to Vanuatu and New Caledonia. It’s on the Pacific Pearl, the latest ship to join P&O Australia. We’ve not sailed P&O before but our friend, Robyn, sailed on the Pacific Jewel this year and highly recommended it.

We never managed to sail on the old Sitmar Line which plied the Pacific many years ago. The Fairstar, the Fairsea and the Fairsky were notorious for the wild shenanigans of their passengers. This ship was built for Sitmar and was to be named the Fairmajesty. However, Sitmar was bought out by Princess Cruises and she was delivered as the Star Princess. Later she became the Arcadia and then was transferred to a Princess subsidiary, Ocean Village. When Ocean Village was wound up last year, the ship was totally rebuilt and brought to Australia as Pacific Pearl. It is rated 4-star, which sounds OK.

The only outside cabin we were able to get was smaller than others and obscured by lifeboats so we’re inside on Deck 5, at the sharp end. When you get this close to the cruise leaving, you have to take what you can get.

Wednesday, August 24th …..

I’ve stopped buying the local paper. It caters for the lowest common denominator with big pictures and simply explained stories. I’ve read somewhere that most newspapers can be understood by 12-year olds; The Examiner must be written for children of 8. One particular gripe I have is that there are always more pages devoted to football than to real news. How can football reporters find enough stuff to write about, day after day, about the same handful of teams in the AFL league? Certainly, the big pictures help to fill the space but the words don’t add much to the sum of human knowledge.

The other thing which offends me is the parochial and self-congratulatory nature of the stories. Obviously local people like to read about themselves but a newspaper devoted to positive stories about Tasmanians is not much fun.

However, I always glance through the paper when Marilyn and I stop for coffee or lunch. Yesterday, I noted a tiny story at the bottom of a page which admitted that Tasmanians are Australia’s biggest litterers. What? Can this be true? Are the residents of God’s Own Country prone to throw their rubbish around?

There wasn’t much detail in the story but I gather the researchers marked out an area on the ground, perhaps 100 m2 or 1000m2. Then they carefully gathered and counted all the waste: plastic, paper, cigarette butts, etc. Tasmanians scored the highest in each of these areas, particularly in the case of cigarette butts – 53 butts in Tasmania compared to around 40 in the next most grubby state. The researchers also commented that Tasmania’s score might be artificially low as there had been a lot of rain before the count and many butts might have been washed away.

When we had finished lunch yesterday, Marilyn left me to carry out some Secret Women’s Business so I thought I would carry out my own survey. From where I was standing, without moving my feet, I counted 13 discarded cigarette butts, plus this nice little cluster in the flower bed I was standing beside. It makes you proud, doesn’t it!

The afternoon presenter on ABC TV picked up the story and encouraged people to ring in. Most callers were people who wanted to say that, of course, they weren’t litterers but they had seen lots of people discarding their rubbish. Several things were agreed; most throwaway rubbish comes from Macdonalds, many people don’t see cigarette butts as litter, blame the schools who don’t teach anti-littering, litterers are bogans, and if we had penalties like Singapore, we wouldn’t have a problem. Simple, isn’t it?

When Marilyn and I were in Nepal, we were shocked at the amount of litter but, in reality, we would be the same here if the councils didn’t provide people to pick up after us.

Tuesday, August 23rd …..

It seems that Spring has sprung in Tasmania. The wattle is in full bloom and we noticed that a couple of daffodils had raised their heads while we were out yesterday. It’s certainly warmer and we don’t need any heating on in the house during the day.

Last week, when it was so cold, we looked deeply into available cruises to see whether we could arrange a few days in the sun. We had always had in mind that, in retirement, we would grab any last-minute cruises which came up, expecting that they would be cheaper. And, there they were: a 7-night cruise out of Brisbane, and an 8-day cruise out of Sydney, both to Pacific Islands. Of course, they were last-minute: the first leaving on August 27th and the second on August 29th, but the prices were great: less than $800 each! A quick ‘phone call to Best Cruises, full of anticipation, just to find they were both now fully-booked. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

September is out so we are now looking at October. We are very interested in a 16-day cruise following the tracks of the Bounty mutineers, calling in to several ports in Tonga, Fiji and Norfolk Island but the dates are not suitable. The best option is a cruise to Vanuatu and New Caledonia, leaving on October 9th and arriving back in Sydney on October 20th, just in time for us to get to Canberra for our Nepal Reunion on the 22nd. It all looks good but we’ll let it mull around in our heads for a couple of days before we make a decision.

There’s a surgeon here in Launceston who could have a world cruise on what he will make from the Christie family this year. Marilyn has been putting off having her shoulder done but it’s becoming more urgent; I’ve been putting off an operation on my knee but, with the pain I’ve been having with my hip, I suspect that will have to be done sooner rather than later, and Jamie is going in to hospital at the end of the month for an operation on his right elbow. I’m not sure what the problem is but it looks like a bursitis and might be a repetitive strain injury. Anyway, he’ll have at least two months recuperation. It’s just as well we have medical insurance.


I’ve started reading a book by a Scottish author, Grace Munroe. She dedicates it to what I assume are her grand-children, whose names are Gordon, Caitlin, Patrick, Brogan and ….. Keanu! With all the glorious Scottish names to choose from: Hamish, Duncan, Angus, etc, the poor child gets Keanu. I can’t imagine a Prime Minister called Keanu Munroe.

Having said all that, I now discover that Grace Munroe is not a person at all. In fact, it’s the name of a writing team whose real names are Maria Thomson and Linda Watson-Brown. Maria has four children, I imagine called Gordon, Caitlin, Brogan and Patrick. There’s no mention of whether Linda has any children at all. God knows who Keanu is. It might be Linda’s cat!

Saturday, 20th August …..

I thought I’d be over my sore hip by now so, when one of the Rotarians pleaded for some help in moving some boxes of books, I put up my hand. He said he had 85 boxes, culled from the Devonport Library and he wanted to put them in a storage container until they could be sent overseas. The plan was to do it on Thursday but the weather was foul so we postponed until the first sunny day, which turned out to be Friday.

The boxes were in a Rotary shed in Deloraine. Not all of them were packed well; some were in manageable sizes, others were just thrown into loose boxes of all odd sizes, so packing them neatly was a problem. Someone had carefully marked the weight on the heavier ones and I was surprised to see how many were over 25Kg. Surely librarians shouldn’t be asked to move boxes as heavy as that. And neither should elderly Rotarians.

Anyway, we had two station wagon-type vehicles and a small enclosed trailer. We had to move the books to a spot about 30Km away so one trip was our goal. We packed the wagons until we thought the springs were sagging just enough and started on the little trailer. We had enough volume to get in all the remaining boxes but weight was always going to be the problem, especially as we noticed half-way through that the trailer had a flat tyre. By this stage, we were beyond unloading what was already in place so off we went to collect a compressor.

The trailer did take all the books and there was enough clearance to get our fingers between the wheels and the arches and Steen, who was pulling the thing was happy. He must have been worried all the way because he never got over 80 Km per hour and the other drivers on the highway were not pleased.

The container was half-full of old school furniture which will eventually end up in the Philippines but there was enough room for our books as well. I did my sums: 85 boxes at an average of 20Kg per box is 1700 Kg and only two people to move it. No wonder my leg is just as sore today as it was last week.

We’re still perusing available cruises. The Asian cruise I wanted to do on November 11th turned out to have one or two problems. Although it was listed as sailing from Beijing, the port is actually at Tientjin, 180 Km from Beijing airport. To join the ship we would have to fly into an airport we had never visited before and meet up with a limousine driver booked via the internet, and then find our ship in one of the busiest ports in Asia. What could possibly go wrong? We decided that there must be an easier way to go on a cruise. We’re now looking again at cruises leaving from Sydney, and sooner rather than later.

Wednesday, 17th August …..

It was our Rotary meeting last night. I’ve been quite slack recently and have missed a few meetings through a combination of a car which was not in peak condition and an unwillingness to make the one-hour drive to Deloraine. Because we were expecting to be away until this week, I had applied for Leave of Absence so was under no obligation to attend. The rules of Rotary state that members should attend 50% of meetings at their own club in any 6-month period, unless they have approved Leave. Why are people so ready to accept rules which limit their freedom of movement? It’s almost as if we realise we need an imposed discipline or we’ll become lazy.

Anyway, I was Chairman last night so I had an obligation to make every effort to be there. The business of the meeting was to discuss various questions regarding the running of the Club. It’s called Club Assembly and happens every month or so. There were just two items for discussion last night: requirements of membership (attendance, etc); and views on home-hosting visitors.

Like most Rotary Clubs, we have a number of members who ignore the rule I mentioned before and just don’t turn up regularly. We should get rid of them, of course, but nobody wants to give up members if we can help it. After twenty minutes of going around in circles, we once again handed the matter off to the Membership Committee to sort out. That’s what we normally do when this concern comes up for discussion.

The second issue is an interesting one. In the next few months, we will have visitors from a Sydney club who have offered to help out at the Craft Fair, young people on an exchange from somewhere in the US, Rotarian from New Zealand, and members of our two sister-clubs in the Philippines. Each group will stay for 2 to 3 days and will require home-hosting. Unfortunately, Marilyn and I can’t take more than one small visitor at a time; our little one-bedroom cottage isn’t set up for that. When sister-in-law Janet comes down in November, she will stay in our little visitor’s nook, but it’s too cosy for sharing and Rotary visitors usually come in pairs.

On the way home in the car, I listened to the local ABC station. Annie Warburton has a quiz each night from about 8 oçlock. The questions aren’t particularly hard but I find it so frustrating to hear some of the people who ring in. They seem to be immune to embarrassment and are quite prepared to show their ignorance to everyone who is listening. I would have thought that the best thing to do when you don’t know the answer is to hang up and let someone else have a go. But no, callers beg for a clue, ask anyone who is in the same room as they are and generally parade their lack of knowledge. Nobody can know everything and it is better to admit it and not draw attention to it.

Sunday, August 14th …..

Friday was a beautiful day. I had an appointment in Burnie which is about 165Km away so we decided Marilyn would come with me for the drive and we would have lunch out.

Our friend Greg Leong is Director of the Burnie Art Gallery and I wanted to ask him to be a judge in the Hoffman Challenge Quilting Competition which has now become part of the Craft Fair. Greg has a long involvement with the Arts and is an internationally-recognised Textile Artist. He’s been involved with the Craft Fair, on and off, for years but the first time I met Greg was in 2007 when I arranged for him to have a retrospective display of some of his extraordinary Chinese-inspired and Australian-influenced costumes and quilts. If you look more closely at a seemingly-Chinese dress, you will see tiny embroidered kangaroos. The attached picture is a Carmen dress made of flannelette.

Burnie is a funny town. When we first lived in Tasmania in the 1970s and 80s, Burnie was the wild west. It was most famous for The Pulp, a dirty, smelly pulp mill. The pollution around the town, especially on the foreshore was appalling and in the 1990s, I think, there was a real push to clean up their act. By 2000, the Pulp was essentially closed down and the environmental cleanup was completed. Burnie still thrives although there is very little industry now. Woodchip is exported from the wharf and it is still a major container port, but you are just as likely to see a cruise ship tied up than a cargo ship.

Marilyn and I sailed in there on the Volendam in January 2008. Hordes of people got off the ship to have rushed trips to Cradle Mountain, local wineries, Gunns Plains Zoo, or just to wander down the main street. The big tourist attraction of the town is Creative Paper, a paper-making concern famous for its Roo Paper, made from Kangaroo droppings. Another friend, Joanna Gair, developed this when she was Director of Creative Paper but I prefer the Whisky paper she made for a Scottish Distillery. Apparently you can make paper from any old fibre.

Nowadays, paper-making workshops are held in the new Visitors’Centre. For lunch we went to Fish Frenzy, which is right on the waterfront. Being such a beautiful day, we bought takeaway – two flake fillets and large chips, beautifully cooked and served in paper pokes (heavy paper cones).

It was a great day out. Greg agreed to be a judge and it was worth the drive just to enjoy the lunch.

Wednesday, 10th August …..

Les and I had a very busy day yesterday trying to finish the back verandah enclosure before the rain set in again. We’ve had lots of rain over the past few days and it’s great to have a break in the weather to finish off this project.

We tried on Tuesday but didn’t get much done before we were forced inside by a heavy shower. I had discovered that we needed a bit more Hardiplank so we decided to take our tape measure and saw into the local hardware to cut what we needed inside their big shed. The stuff comes in 4.2m lengths and that’s a bit long for a little trailer. We needed lengths of about 2m and I can fit that in the back of the Territory so off we went. The rain was still teeming down when we got back to Dilston so work was abandoned for the day.

Wednesday morning was clearer although the ground was a mess. Our house is built on clay (what does the bible say about the man who built his house on clay?) and the area around our work site was a quagmire (lovely word!). Wellies were the order of the day. I couldn’t get the music of Billy Connelly’s song about wellies out of my mind all day.

If you didnae hae yir wellies
Where wid ye be
Ye’d be in the hospital
Or the infir-ma-ry.

It’s a joy working in soft clay. The legs of the ladders kept sinking, climbing clay-covered rungs was dangerous and we were delighted to attach the last piece of Hardiplank and call it a day. I’ve attached a picture or two of the work in progress.

Good management(or good luck) meant that we had very little left over and almost no waste. There’s one more window to put in but it’s still attached to Les’s house. When he comes back from his holiday in Bathurst he will remove it, replace it with a heavier model more able to withstand the occasional flood he experiences, and deliver it to us. However, for the time being he has departed and it’s over to Jamie and me to finish the job – painting, tidying up the approach to the verandah, etc.

Tomorrow’s job is to clean up the tools, pressure-clean the verandah floor and start planning for the paths, etc.

In the meantime, Simon and Trevor are erecting the shed. We left them this morning just as they were starting and expected it to be complete when we arrived home. Not so! There is a rectangular piece of framework on the slab, one portal seems to be complete but there’s a long way to go before we can move in. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day. I’m sure even the pharaohs had to deal with days of little progress when they were watching the pyramids being built.

Friday, 5th August …..

The weather was a bit miserable yesterday but Damo turned up as expected to get on with hacking away at the long grass and blackberries to try and tidy up the front part of the block. The previous owners had let the maintenance get away from them and the most that would be done would be an annual slashing of the grass by Graeme’s dad. We were promised that the dad would slash the grass before we moved in but, when we asked when he would come, were told that he had decided to leave it until after the winter. Huh!

We couldn’t live with it any longer and Marilyn rang a young man who used to work as a groundsman at Grammar. He has now set up his own business and, like all people in this situation, he is having trouble making ends meet. Not our problem, of course, but it will be a help if he can get rid of the worst of it and leave Jamie and me to keep up the momentum.

He arrived on Wednesday with all the gear and immediately started with the brush-cutter. I thought he would be limiting the brush cutting to small patches but he used it as a lawnmower to clear most of the area. Once the long grass was lopped, he raked it up and started up his ride-on mower and tidied up what he could.

He worked hard for two days and what a difference he has made. It’s not a lawn by any means. It’s far from level and tussocks don’t lend themselves to bowling greens, but certainly the basis for a long-term project. Marilyn had asked Damo to make a special effort with a patch of blackberries right at the front of the yard which was entangling a nice little cluster of shrubs. Even after a couple of reminders, he still hadn’t got to it. What is it about tradesmen that they ignore what you ask for and do their own thing? Damo didn’t get around to the blackberries until after dark, so he had to use the headlights of his mower to see what he was doing. It rained on and off for most of the day but that didn’t deter him for an instant.

He was a bit disappointed that we didn’t invite him back today but we’ve got some other expenses coming up and want to watch the budget.

Now that the grass is tidier, a couple of plovers have moved in to set up a territory. They prefer short grass for their nesting sites and we now fit the bill.

Jamie has already started in another part of the garden, with his new whipper-snipper and the mandatory helmet. Of course, not being silly, he has chosen a fine day, and we've had lots of those.

We had a great meal last night. We’ve been watching Masterchef and I’ve been inspired to tackle some of their dishes. Most of them are too fussy and have too many ingredients but now and then there is an exception which is within my capacity. So I had a go at Osso Bucco. I didn’t have celery or fresh thyme so I just ignored that bit, and the result was spectacularly good – a very rich, delicious winter dish which was very satisfying.

Wednesday, 3rd August …..

Jamie received an interesting invitation on his Facebook page this morning, encouraging him to be part of an event organised by a couple who had sadly lost their little girl who was still-born a year ago today.

He was asked to acknowledge the loss of this baby by carrying out a random act of kindness in her memory. He has no idea where the invitation originated but it has been passed on by hordes of other Facebook users and ultimately reached Jamie via a friend in Launceston. Apparently, 25901 people have accepted the invitation to take part in the event, 5186 may attend, and 115494 people are yet to respond.

It’s wonderful that people today, struggling to cope with the loss of a child are able to reach out, through the internet, to tens of thousands of others who can express their sympathy in a tangible way. Forty years ago, you had to look for support from your immediate family and close friends; even the family doctor just expected you to get on with your life, and didn’t even offer counselling unless it was demanded. Times have certainly changed, and for the better.

If you want to check out the event, the link is: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=238436836167242

We’re having a break from builders today, although there is still work being done in clearing the block. Damo, a friend of Marilyn’s from Grammar, has brought his whipper-snipper and ride-on mower to have a go at the thick grass at the front of the block. He’s fast and is making a real impression.

We won’t see Les again until Saturday when his brother will deliver the windows for the verandah enclosure and we can get stuck in to finishing off the job.

We’ve been in the new house for 7 weeks and Marilyn is starting to murmur about how nice it might be to go on a cruise. We’re certainly not the type of people who can be content to sit in our little cottage and watch the days pass by. We need to have a goal to look forward to. There’s talk of a trip to Borneo next year in April/May and we’re certainly keen on that but something between now and then might be nice.

There are some attractive Christmas cruises: the Diamond Princess sails from Sydney on December 16th, the Volendam leaves on the 19th, and the Celebrity Century on the 24th. But we’ve sailed to New Zealand before. There are a couple of possibilities to the South Pacific islands, on the Zaandam and the Rhapsody of the Seas but is summer the best time to be in the South Pacific? I have to say my preference is for an Asian cruise in mid-November. We would fly to Beijing to join the Diamond Princess on November 11th, and sail to ports in Korea, Japan, China and Vietnam before arriving in Singapore. The cruise is 16 days, a good duration, with some very interesting ports and not overly expensive. We’ve sailed on the Diamond Princess before and it suits us well. The only drawback is that it is very soon after the Craft Fair which doesn’t finish until November 7th but we could have our bags packed and be ready to go. Our sister-in-law, Janet, will be staying with us until November 10th but we could fly back to Sydney with her to get our connection to Beijing.

Oh, well! It’s easy to dream