Term 2

 Letter No. 235

Dear all,

Katie worked at Brisbane Boys’ College for three weeks in April, organising the annual Careers Conference. This is the third year she has worked on this project. She had not fully recovered from her hernia surgery and couldn’t actually drive during her first week at work, so had to get lifts or taxis. The conference went well however and afterwards there were a lot of hints about a more permanent position at BBC. We will see what happens.

We had a great dinner at Three Girls Skipping in Graceville on 21 April to say goodbye to our friend Alf who was finally going back to work in Hong Kong after an extended period back in Australia. He had been recuperating after a knee operation following a skiing accident. Actually it was more of a walking accident as he had slipped in the snow at Whistler and tore all the muscles off his knee cap!

Matt and Jessie were both busy on Anzac Day as usual. Matthew had been asked back to play in the BBC band as they are a little short of French horns now he has left. He marched with them in the ceremony at Jindalee then marched in the main Brisbane parade in the city again with the Pipe Band. At the same time Jessica was at the Graceville memorial service representing her school.

Term two is the STAGE Dance competition season and the first Eisteddfod was at Ipswich on 28 April. Katie went on the bus with the girls and I left work slightly early and went to watch. They got a Highly Commended award for one of the dances which was pleasing.

At the weekend Jessie had a stall selling candles at a Twilight Market at Moggill State School. It was a nice market with lovely people running it but there were not very many people there to buy things so sales were a little disappointing. However, they have invited Jessie back to their next market in August and offered her a free stall, so that is some compensation. Jessie is still raising money for her Antipodeans trip and is only half way to her target, so she has to keep at it.

On 2 May we had a fabulous seafood lunch with our friends the Malins at their house on the river. There were six couples there, and they had set up gazebos right on the riverbank. We all chipped in for a huge seafood lunch with heaps of oysters, prawns, calamari, salmon etc. Lunch finished about 7:30pm when the kids all started ringing their parents asking what was for dinner. As we had been drinking wine since midday the answer was sadly (for the kids), not much!

The next weekend was Mother’s Day. Katie announced that she wanted to see the movie Eddie the Eagle in the afternoon and then have dinner out in Graceville. The movie was really great and very uplifting and featured Hugh Jackman (who Jessie has met and sang on stage with). We had a great dinner afterwards at the Italian restaurant just down the road.

For the following weekend we had been invited to a Day at the Doomben Races for Ian Busch’s 50^th birthday party. We caught the train to the city and then a taxi out to the racetrack. Ian had invited everyone to join him for the day in a fully catered trackside marquee and he picked up the bar tab. It was a really great day and a very nice idea for a party. We caught up with lots of Uni friends I hadn’t seen for a few years, had a lovely lunch, Katie had lots of champagne and we didn’t lose much money on the races. Actually I had made a $6 profit by the end of the afternoon. I was not betting big!

That Sunday Jessie and her friend Elise did another market together. This time it was the Milton Market and they shared a stall, with Elise selling cupcakes and Jessica candles. I went and set them up at 6am and picked them up again at midday. I think Jessie had more fun doing it with her friend than by herself, but sadly she didn’t sell too many candles this time either.

That afternoon two backpackers arrived from the UK to stay with us. It was Tori Rose (the daughter of our UK friends Sarah & Jonathan Rose) and her friend India. Katie and Matt took them up to Mt Coot-tha for views of the city and drinks before coming home for a home-cooked lasagne. After dinner we all ended up watching the Eurovision Song contest Finals (Matt is a Eurovision tragic)! The girls were on a three-month backpacking trip, working their way from New Zealand, up the west coast of Australia and then Indonesia, Bali, Singapore and Malaysia. We had thought up an itinerary for them for the five days they were with us, to show them the best sights of Brisbane and introduce them to our favourite haunts. The girls were very sweet and stuck to the itinerary religiously. They seemed to enjoy staying in our Studio and having some home comforts. It was so nice having them with us; it brought back a lot of Hale memories and we caught up on the latest news.

While the girls were staying Matthew had his driving test. Luckily he passed on his first attempt! We went out to Miku to celebrate with Tori and India. We met them at the Regatta Hotel for a drink and then drove back to Graceville. Afterwards Matt drove the girls home while Katie and I walked. We were a little concerned when we made it home before them. He had taken them for a little drive down to the river to look at the view. His first drive as a P-plater!

The next night was the UQ Law Society presentation where Matthew was being officially presented with his Merit Scholarship. There was a cocktail reception beforehand and canapes and drinks afterwards. The ceremony was only about an hour or so, a nice length. Afterwards I had a good chat with the Vice-Chancellor of the University about a project I had bid on a few weeks ago. It was good to get the low-down on when it would be proceeding. Meanwhile Katie took Tori & India to the Hundred Acre Bar for a few drinks to celebrate their last night with us.

Matt and a couple of friends entered the University of Queensland Mooting Competition and were pleased to make it through the preliminary rounds and into the semi-finals on 20 May! Mooting is like legal debating in a courtroom setting in teams of three. They have been competing for a number of weeks on weekends and evenings and spent lots of time researching legal issues on their nights off. The finals were going to be in the Brisbane Law Courts but sadly they did not get through. They were beaten by some of their friends so it wasn’t too bad. There are over 200 law students in Matt’s year so it was not bad getting into the final twelve.

We went to a party in Mortlake Road on 21 May for our friend Nat Dawes’s birthday. Her husband Tom used to work at AECOM with me but left late last year to work elsewhere. It was a nice party and it was good to catch up with them as we hadn’t seen them for six months or so. Always handy to go to a party in our street so it is only a short stagger home.

The next day Katie and I went to the Greek Paniyiri Festival in Musgrave Park. We had been talking about going for years but it had always clashed with something. Unfortunately the kids both decided they were far too busy studying to come so it was just the two of us. We had a nice time watching the Greek dancing and eating far too much Greek food.

The time had finally come to order a new car. The new car will be Katie’s and Matt will be driving her old one for a while, until it is time for Jessie to get her L-plates. Katie spent a lot of time looking at SUVs but eventually ordered a new Toyota RAV4 on 2 June. She really wanted a manual and we were astounded to learn that more than 90% of new cars in Australia are automatic. New manual cars are actually quite hard to find and usually only come in the most basic models here because everyone wants automatics. Apparently lots of new learners now only get an automatic license (Matt got a manual one), which we also found surprising, as so many cars in Europe and the UK are manuals.  Katie was in a real dilemma as she wanted a manual but not a basic model. Toyota was the only one that made manuals in more than the base model so it was a no-brainer. The car is on order and will arrive in the middle of July.

We went to a St Aidan’s Rowing Cocktail Party on Sat 4 June, which was being hosted at the house of our friends Kylie and Alf Graham. It was a fundraiser for St Aidan’s rowing support group. Unfortunately the weather prediction was dire all week before. They were predicting huge rains with 100mm of rain the day before the party. The party was intended to be under the stars but Kylie had to hire a marquee and it was lucky they did because the weather bureau got it exactly right. There was torrential rain all Friday and Saturday morning. The rain eased in the afternoon and evening but fortunately the marquee was amazingly waterproof and it was beautifully decorated with flower garlands and countless strings of fairy lights. The party raised nearly $30,000 towards a new boat for the rowing crews, both through the ticket price and an impressive live auction towards the end of the evening. Alf had perhaps had a little too much to drink by then and bought an oar. We had a really great night. I lost Katie at one point during the evening but I decided that she would most likely be chatting to the local celebrity and trying to get him to come to one of her events or donate something. Of course I was right! I found her introducing herself to celebrity chef (Ben O’Donoghue) and suggesting that he did a themed British food night at one of his restaurants! Wait to my next letter to see the outcome of that discussion.J

The next weekend was very busy for Jessica. She had a STAGE Dance Eisteddfod on the Friday night (one of their dances came third). I drove out after work and Katie took the car home and straight off to her friend Tee Tait’s 50^th birthday drinks. I stayed to the end of the competition and came home with Jessie with our friend Helen Brodie and a few other girls. The next morning I dropped Jessie at Australian Girls’ Choir at 7:45am for all day rehearsals and then two Winter Showcase concerts later that day. They had a matinee in the afternoon and an evening performance at 7pm which we went to.

On the Sunday morning Jessie headed off to a Travel Simulation Day for her Antipodeans Abroad trip. She was out all day with her group of girls racing around the city completing various challenges. Sadly her group only managed to properly finish one of the four tasks, which doesn’t bode well for their organisation during their trip to Vietnam in December! That evening we had Gary and Helen and another couple Gary and Shelly over for dinner with kids. Katie did a delicious pulled pork early doors dinner and a cheesecake, which all went down well.

Gary and Helen have a Chinese exchange student living with them and they are going to Europe for three weeks over the school holidays. Candice is staying with us for ten of those days. She is not allowed to stay longer than ten days as only Katie has a Blue card approving her to work with children. I do not have one, although I do have elevated Defence Security Clearance which includes far far more checks than the Blue card does! Term two was over on Friday 17 June and Candice came to stay. We had a nice weekend with a spot of shopping, out to dinner on Saturday night and went ice skating on Sunday. Matt couldn’t join us as he had Uni exams all week and was studying. We had another weekend of torrential rain. On Sunday afternoon our rain gauge said 115mm (just that day). I suspect we had more, as when it rains really hard the rain gauge can’t keep up. The pool overflowed again and the whole backyard was underwater as the drains kept clogging up with leaves. There was over a foot of water in the gully at the end of the road.

On 22^nd June Katie went for a job interview as Events Coordinator at Brisbane Boys’ College. Katie knew the two people who interviewed her very well as she has spent the last four years organising events at BBC either as a volunteer or as a contract staff member! Apparently they had over sixty applicants and they were planning a second round of interviews after which Katie would have to meet the Headmaster (who she already knows well)! The following week Katie was called back for second interview but was told that she was the preferred candidate and offered the job right away. She starts on 19 July.

That Saturday night my sister Lisa and her girls came for dinner for Andrew’s birthday. Andrew got caught up at work in Northern NSW and didn’t actually make it, but we had a nice dinner in his honour and gave Lisa his present to take home. The next day we went to Manly Markets to sell candles again. Jessie had a great day and made over $200 to add to her fundraising total.

During the school holidays we went for a long weekend in Byron Bay with a group of past BBC parents and kids. We had a great house with three separate self-contained apartments which slept 16 people. The kids had one apartment and the adults had two. We had a lovely attic bedroom on the second floor. We did lots of long walks along the beach. Jessica was a little confronted though when we walked through an unofficial nudist beach one day! Over the next two days we walked up to the lighthouse (the most easterly point of the Australian mainland), spent a morning at the Byron craft markets (a huge hippie enclave), hit the Byron Bay shops and had evening barbeques at the apartments and watched DVDs. On the last night we went for dinner in town – the kids went to one restaurant and the adults went to another. Matt and I even had a swim at Wategos beach. It was a little brisk but not too bad for the middle of winter! We drove back stopping for lunch at Cabarita Beach on the way.

Cheers

Derek, Katie, Matthew, Jessica and Molly.