Letter No. 228
Dear all,
12 July 2015. We
had an informal dinner at home for Katie’s
birthday. There were 14 adults and about 16 kids for an Indian Banquet by
the pool. It was the middle of winter and unfortunately there was a cold front
coming up from Antarctica so it was cold (for Queensland). We had a fire and a
patio heater to keep everyone warm, along with plenty of red wine. The girls
had arranged a surprise birthday cake for Katie for dessert with little
figurines of the Queen & Prince Charles on top. It was a fun evening. Katie
has been telling everyone here that it was her 49th birthday but I
think a few of them guessed the truth.
BACK TO SCHOOL for
Term 3. On the 18th July Matthew went to the St Aidan’s Semi-Formal with his friend Candice.
Candice is a Chinese exchange student who is on a homestay program with one of
Matt’s other friends Siobhan. We all went to their house for drinks first. We
are good friends with her parents as well and frequently play tennis together
on Sunday afternoons, and Matt practices his Chinese on Candice. We stayed for
a few drinks and the kids went off to the semi-formal and we went for dinner at
a local Indonesian restaurant with some of the other parents. Matt had a great
time but he had a cold so he rang about midnight asking me to pick him up.
Meanwhile Jessica was at Suncorp Stadium singing the
national anthem with Australian Girls’
Choir at the Rugby – it was South Africa vs Australia. We watched it on TV afterwards
but once again the coverage showed the players being interviewed and not the
girls singing. Talk about wrong priorities.
On 20th July Mum and Dad came down to Brisbane
and took Katie and I out for lunch at Gambaro’s
to celebrate Katie’s birthday. Gambaro’s is a very posh seafood restaurant in
Caxton Street and we all had a lovely lunch. Afterwards Katie and Mum and Dad
went back to our house but unfortunately I had to go back to work.
The next day Katie and I went to St Aidan’s for the Academic Awards Assembly. Jessica was
one of eight girls in her grade who received an Academic award. The year
coordinator told us later she had actually been the third in the grade of over
100 girls. A few days later we went to
the St Aidan’s Twilight Fair and MADD Night (Music, Arts, Dance & Drama). Jessie
was dancing with the school dance troupe (Stage) which was performing two
dances and was also selling home-made candles in the Twilight Fair.
Unfortunately the whole event is organised by the school seniors who did not
advertise it to the school community very well. Last year there were around 60
stalls at the fair and lots of customers. This year there were only eight
stalls and almost no customers. Jessica still managed to sell over $200 worth
of her candles and did the best out of all the stalls there. One of Jessica’s
friends only made $4 in sales (she sold something to Jessica) and the stall fee
was $10!
Matthew was on the BBC
Music Camp that weekend. He is in three bands this year – Symphonic Band, Brass
Band and the BBC Orchestra – so he has four hours of band rehearsals a week not
even including his own lessons and practice. It is a big commitment. On the
Sunday morning we went to Matt’s band camp closing performance and then I took
Matt straight to QUT (Queensland University of Technology) Open Day. We went to
see all the law facilities and the details of scholarships on offer.
The next day, Monday 27th July Jessica started
her week long School Camp. It was
mainly hiking and activities but as she is doing the Duke of Edinburgh award her
group had a slightly tougher camp planned. It actually turned out to be very
hard. Their instructors were quite unhelpful (as the girls were supposed to
work it out themselves) and they got lost quite a few times. They ended up doing
more hiking than any other group and missed most of the fun activities as they
got into the camps too late. Jess didn’t really have a fun time but we
encouraged her to look at it as an opportunity for personal growth. She didn’t
really see the humour in this!
On Wednesday 29th Cathy Muir and kids came to visit. Ian had used all his annual
leave so could not come to Australia this year. They arrived quite a bit later
than expected as someone ploughed in to the back of their car (actually
Carmen’s car) on the way to our house and caved the boot almost totally in! We
all went down to a new Greek restaurant that has opened in Graceville and had a
nice evening. It was good to catch up and find out all the Hong Kong gossip.
August 2015 Matthew
and I went to the University of
Queensland Open Day on 2nd August. However in the morning I
helped Mum and Dad set up their exhibition at the Animal Nursery for the Royal
Brisbane Exhibition (aka the Ekka). They show their Damara sheep and Mum stays
at the show for the whole 10 days. I helped with most of the heavy lifting
before I had to go but Mum found it fairly hard work this year so they have
decided it is the last year they will do it. I then met Matthew at the
University. We went to the Law, Arts sessions and the scholarship sessions as
that’s what Matthew is interested in doing. UQ has been reducing its Law intake
over the last few years. It was 450 per year a few years ago and now they only take
about 220 students per year. Consequently it is much harder to get in. Matthew
will need to get an OP1 or OP2 (top 4% of the state) to get in so we have some
fall back options just in case.
I had a busy day on Friday 7 August. I was invited to the BBC Old Collegians Long lunch. The Business Development Director
invited me as I have been giving BBC free advice on some structural issues at
the school. The lunch started at midday and was just a short walk from my
office. It was a very boozy lunch. Unfortunately I had to get a fee proposal
out that afternoon before 5pm. Others were helping pull it together but I had
to get back to the office to issue it. I screamed in at 4:58pm and managed to
compose a brief covering email and press “send” in two minutes. It was a very
good lunch with great speakers and later I heard that it finished at 3am!
We went to the Ekka
on the Sun 9 August. Matthew announced half an hour before we were to leave
that he had too much homework and would come later and, as soon as we arrived,
Jessica baled on us to find some of her friends so Katie and I were left to
wander around by ourselves. Not quite how we had intended it but it was a nice
change. We all met up later to have dinner and watch the evening show and spectacular
fireworks in the main ring.
We went to a tennis
party at our friends the Suggs on 12th August. It was the first
time they had got their grass court in order to play on. They still hadn’t got
the big roller out though so there were quite a few lumps and bumps on the
court which made for interesting games with erratic ball bounces. We all had
fun though and then had pulled pork and salad for dinner afterwards, which was
yummy.
On 14th August I went to Melbourne for the weekend for a conference. I flew down on Friday
afternoon. It was a bit weird having a whole weekend in Melbourne by myself.
The conference went all day both Saturday and Sunday but I had a nice time
wandering along the Yarra and all the nice restaurants each evening. I didn’t
arrive home until late Sunday evening.
There were lots of school
functions in August. Jessica went to the St Aidan’s School Dance on the 22nd
followed by an Australian Girls’ Choir concert on the 23rd. Matthew
had the BBC Music Showcase on the 21st with one of his bands and the
Grand Concert on the 28th with the other two. All of the kids’
concerts were fantastic; it is really astounding how professional the
performance standards are.
Matt was quite poorly with bronchitis for about a fortnight and
nearly didn’t make it to the music concerts at all. It was a worry, as he was
on the brink of his major exam block and was determined not to miss anything. Fortunately
he made it to everything, with Katie driving him in and out for exams and
rehearsals. He said afterwards that the Grand Concert was one of the highlights
of his time at BBC.
On 30th August we all did the Bridge to Brisbane 5km run. I had a
hamstring injury and was quite worried that Matthew might beat me this year
despite his lingering cough and total lack of training. We arrived about 8:30am
and the race started at 9:00am. I managed to hold Matthew off until the 3km
mark. I saw him in the crowd and was not sure he had seen me so I tried to hide
from him and put on a burst of speed. Unfortunately I couldn’t maintain the
pace and I ran close behind him for another kilometre of so before he started
to slowly pull away. He beat me by about
a minute. Katie came in only a shortly after me and Jessica about 3 minutes
later. So we can still beat Jessie, for now at least, but I guess it won’t be
long before Katie and I are fighting it out for last place. Darn kids!
The following week was Matt’s
Queensland Core Skills Test which is a very intense set of exams over two long
days. This was followed by his major exam block plus the 40-hour famine which
he has done every year for the last four years. Matt still wasn’t 100% so Katie
went into overdrive with vitamins, immunity boost tablets, favourite dinners
and driving him around everywhere and he got through it.
September 2015 It was the BBC Fashion Parade on 11th September. It was the first
year that Katie wasn’t running the event and could have a relaxed time with her
friends. There were 380 ladies at the event which sold out in about 20 minutes
when the tickets went on sale. Katie spent the previous day having her nails
and hair done and enjoyed herself at the event enormously. In past years I have
gone at 6pm for dinner with Katie and the die-hards, but this year I had to
pick Matt up from something so Katie stayed by herself and caught a taxi home.
I quite enjoy going and seeing all the Mums falling out of the bar so it was a
shame to miss that.
We went for Sundowners
drinks at our friends Tony and Wings Malins on 13th September.
They live on the river in Graceville and he had drinks and nibbles around a
bonfire on the riverbank. Quite a few people took their dogs and many of them
went into the river and came out very muddy. They were a bit of a hazard. It
was a very pleasant evening.
It was Jessie’s
birthday party on Friday 18th September, which was the last day
of term. Her 14th birthday was actually on 7 September but we had
waited until the holidays for her party. She had 14 girls for a swimming party
with henna. They all had a nice evening and we just supplied food and kept out
of the way. We had booked a nice Indian lady to do henna on their hands while
they watched a movie. The girls were thrilled with their henna. It lasts for
about 2 weeks and isn’t allowed at school, which is why we couldn’t do it in
term time. The girls were all picked up around 10pm which made it a lot easier.
There seemed to be an explosion of M&Ms during the evening in the studio,
around the pool and the downstairs table though as we were finding them for
weeks afterwards.
The next day we were heading off to O’Reilly’s in Lamington National Park. We were there with five
other families for three nights. We went with five other families for three
nights. We had booked three villas so we put all the boys in one villa and the parents
and girls in the other two. It was fantastic as we barely saw the kids all
weekend! The villas were lovely. They were all on stilts with one side of the
house on the ground and the other on stilts up to 15m tall, the mountain was so
steep! Every villa had a lovely veranda with a Jacuzzi overlooking the valley. It
was a fabulous view over the rainforest. We spent the afternoon unpacking,
having drinks on the verandah watching the sun go down and feeding the parrots.
On the first day we had a slowish start and did a 6km hike
to Moran Falls and had a late lunch. We then had a two-hour session on a flying
fox. It was really great. You needed to wear a full harness and the flying fox
was about 500m long and about 50m in the air over a creek. It was a long walk
up the hill and a very fast ride down. We got about five goes each. It was
really great. We did our cooking in the main apartment; one night was a
barbeque with salads and the other was a curry night.
The next day we all did varying lengths of walks. The
shortest about 3km, then 8km and the longest 16km. We all started together and
peeled off depending on how energetic we felt. Most of the kids did 8km but
five of us did the 16km walk. It took about 5½ hours and went up and down about
450m in elevation. We were quite knackered when we made it back. I kicked the
kids out of the Jacuzzi and slumped in it until I recovered. That night we went
for dinner at the restaurant rather than eating in. The next morning we packed the
cars and went on a rainforest canopy walk. It was only about 1km of boardwalk
through the rainforest and then up into suspended rope bridges about 40m high
in the tree tops. There was one tree where you could climb a ladder up to a
platform right at the top. Only three people could go up at one time and the
platform was very small, very high and very scary! When we got back to the
reception to check out there were lots of police walking around and I joked that
they must have found a body. When we got home, Matthew checked the internet and
discovered that a body had been found in fact, on the Moran Falls hike we had
done on the first day only about an hour after we had gone through! It was an
apparent suicide. Very sad. A great holiday for us though.
That’s all for this letter.
Cheers,
Derek, Katie, Jessica,
Molly and Matthew.
Jessica's Academic award ceremony.
Katie's Birthday.
Matthew and Candice go to the Semi-formal.
On the wheel of Brisbane.
Jessica's Birthday.
Hollow tree at O'Reilly's
Flying fox.
Hiking in the Rainforest.
