Letter 240
Dear all,
APRIL 2017 On Easter Sunday we had the family around for Mum and Dad’s combined
birthday and an Easter lunch. We had a seafood BBQ again and cheated a little
bit by reusing the same menu from when Mo and Dave were here the previous week.
It was a nice afternoon. Jessica organised an Easter-themed treasure hunt for
the cousins. Each person had a different route to follow and she was very
pleased with herself when it worked out brilliantly.
The next day was a public holiday so we decided
to have a family day out. It doesn’t happen very often these days, as Matt and
Jessie are either too busy with assessment or too cool to go out with us. We
had a great day out at the Darling Downs
Zoo, which is a small zoo about halfway between Toowoomba and Warwick with
a great selection of African and Australian animals, including the Sumatran
tiger, Brazilian tapir and the African lion. The lion enclosure was one of the
best I have seen. They also had a number of white lions (like Kimba) that I had
never seen before. There was a series of feedings and talks about the animals
and we just moved from talk to talk and then had a picnic lunch. The next day
Jessie went back to school for another busy term, with all of her usual dance
and choir commitments, as well as the Duke of Edinburgh Silver award.
It was Anzac
Day on 25th April. Jessica had to go to the Graceville Memorial
Service representing her school and Katie and I went down as well. It was the
first year that we haven’t had to be whizzing in different directions with Matt
playing French Horn in a marching band or the parade in the City.
I have been working nights recently doing another
round of inspections for Coles
supermarket renovations. We have six inspectors working most weeknights for 14
weeks all over Queensland and Northern New South Wales. We then have time off
in lieu for the night work. We cannot start inspections until the store closes
at 9pm and can be there quite late, depending on home much work there is to
inspect. I had a day off on 27th April and Katie and I had a lovely
morning together playing tennis. That afternoon Jessica was at Ipswich Dance Eisteddfod with the
school dance group STAGE, so we went to watch her dance. Katie had to go on the
school bus with the team to supervise the girls and I drove up in time for the
first dance.
On 30th April Katie and I went
hiking around Mt Coot-tha. The kids
are always studying so we decided to do a walk without them. Molly, our third
child, had no study so was happy to come with us and did not complain about the
length of the walk. The next day we went to see a movie called “Their Finest”;
the kids were studying again so Katie and I went on Sunday afternoon. It was a
movie about British film makers making propaganda films during WWII trying to
entice America into the war. We met the kids for dinner at Miku after the
movie. Matt had to restrain himself from assisting all the wait staff that he
has trained. He is only working there a couple of nights per week now.
MAY 2017 The next weekend Matt went to his
first BBC Old Boys’ event. He talked a group of his friends to go with him and
they had a great time having drinks and nibbles at Wests Rugby Club. Afterwards
they went on to Caxton Street and he rolled in at around 1am, so it was clearly
a good night.
The following week Matthew had an interview at
the Gold Coast. He has applied to be a volunteer for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in April next year. It is quite an
exciting opportunity. He thought the interview went well but it will be a while
before he finds out if he has been successful.
Katie had one of her BBC events on the 12 May.
It was a morning tea event for new mothers. Very similar to the ones she used
to run as a volunteer, but she now gets paid to do it. It is working out well.
That weekend, Matt went to compete in the “Roc
Race” with a big group of his friends. It was a 5km race at the RNA
Showgrounds which involved about 18 “Total Wipeout” style water obstacles. I
went along to watch him. I saw him go through the first few obstacles and get
drenched but then I lost him in the crowd so I went home again. There were
thousands of people doing it setting off in waves of around 100. It looked so
much fun, I think I will do it myself next year.
The next night Matthew had a Eurovision Party in our Studio. About
twelve friends came over to watch the Eurovision Song Contest final. They are
all Eurovision tragics. We moved the large TV down there for them and Katie produced
a platter of food from as many different European countries as she could
manage, with Hungarian salami, French & Dutch cheeses, German sausage,
Greek tzatziki, etc followed by Portuguese egg custard tarts, Spanish churros
and Belgian waffles with Swiss chocolate sauce. They all seemed to have a great
night.
The next weekend Jessica was a big song and
dance weekend for Jessie with a dance eisteddfod and the St Aidan’s annual
Music Concert. After that it was the Rowing
Cocktail Party that evening. One of Katie’s friends organises the event and
we get roped into going each year. Actually it is really a fun event and a big
group of our friends go along, many of whom are not rowing or even St Aidan’s
parents. I won one of the raffle prizes which was a lovely food hamper. Drinks
finished about 10:30pm and we stayed on for a while before going home. Katie
had made me promise not to get her any drinks all evening (learning lessons
from last year’s event), so I didn’t, but she managed to get quite a few by
herself anyway and we still had a slow day on Sunday.
We went to the Africa National Day celebrations on 27th May. It was
advertised in the Brisbane City Council newsletter at a park near where we
live. When we showed up there was no sign of it, so we looked it up online and
discovered it had been moved to a park on the other side of the city. We went
anyway for a couple of hours; there were market stalls selling African crafts
and food and African bands singing and dancing. There can’t be many Africans
living in Brisbane as it was fairly small.
JUNE 2017 Friday 2 June was the St Aidan’s Foundation Lunch at
Gambaro’s Seafood. Katie went along with some of her friends. The speaker was Laura
Geitz who is one of the Queensland Firebirds & Australian Diamonds (netball
teams) and she spoke very well. It must
have been a good event as lunch was still going at 6:30pm. I realised the
chances of getting any dinner was slim so picked up some takeaway on the way
home for everyone.
On 16th June our friends Graeme & Yurie Tiltman came to stay
for a night from Christchurch. They came at short notice as it was for the
funeral of a good friend of theirs, but it was good to see them. They arrived
at our place about 5pm after the wake. We had a quick drink and then went to the
Hundred Acre Bar for dinner. We had a lovely evening catching up and finding
out about old Hong Kong friends and how the kids were all doing. They stayed
the night in our Studio. We had a leisurely breakfast the next day before they
set off for a day of sightseeing in Brisbane. They had a late flight home.
Brisbane to Christchurch is not a high volume route!
The next day we went to a tennis party at the Tods. Our tennis is improving, but is always
better after a couple of drinks. It was a lovely warm evening for mid-winter
and we played two to three sets each.
Katie did a First Aid course for her work at BBC so she is now qualified to administer
first aid, give CPR and use a defibrillator. These skills may be useful as we
get older!
Jessica went to sing with the AGC at the opening
of the Wallabies vs Italy Rugby
match at Suncorp Stadium on 24th June. We watched it on TV but as
usual the cameras focus on the players singing the national anthem rather than
the girls’ choir, so we could hear them but not see them. Jessie says they
always get to meet the players though.
On 28 June was the start of Matt’s solo trip to Europe. After a lot
of saving up and planning, Matt went for a four-week trip travelling via
Shanghai. He really likes Shanghai
and had one night there on the way, which gave him just enough time to go up
the Pearl Tower and see the Bund. When he arrived in London he had one night with Katie’s friend Eleanor, before taking
the train up to Yorkshire to stay
with Katie’s brother Chris and family for a few days. Chris and Julie showed
him a great time, taking him to the York Dungeon, a riverboat Cruise on the
Ouse followed by afternoon tea at Betty’s, plus the Harewood Hill Climb with a
picnic and a couple of nice evenings out. Matt really enjoyed seeing his cousin
Edward again (who is now in the RAF) and catching up with Julie’s daughter
Gabriella (who is doing Japanese Studies at York University and heads off to
Tokyo later in the year). It doesn’t seem too long since we were all having
lovely family summer holidays together in Dorset and Cornwall and they were all
playing on the beach together and now they are all grown up and independent. J
Next stop was Hale where we used to live, and Matt stayed at the home of some
good friends of ours in Hale (Sarah and Millie Rose) just around the corner from our old house. He saw
all of his old school friends, visited his old school, tried out all the new
local restaurants in Hale and Altrincham and even went clubbing in Manchester. He
had a great time and was very grateful to Sarah for letting him stay and Kate
for driving him around.
After that Matt flew to Berlin for one night before meeting up with the group for his
BusAbout tour of north-eastern Europe. BusAbout is an Australian company that
mainly caters for students, but even so he was quite surprised that the first
person he ran into in the Berlin Youth Hostel was a girl from Brisbane who he
knew as she worked in the Ice Cream shop in Graceville next door to Miku where
Matt works. Small world. The BusAbout tour was a two-week guided circular trip
through Denmark, Norway, Sweden,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and back to Germany. He had a fabulous time and did some wildly varied
activities including visiting the Abba Museum in Stockholm, swimming in the
Baltic Sea in Norway, a cruise from Stockholm to Tallin, making Polish pastries
in Warsaw, a bicycle tour in Berlin and a ride on an Olympic bobsled run in
Latvia. He particularly loved Copenhagen and Riga, tried out the nightlife in
various European cities and made loads of new friends.
Matt flew back to London to stay with Eleanor and family for a few more nights, and
had a great time with them visiting the Natural History Museum, a modern
production of Macbeth in the centre of London and also caught up with Katie’s
friend Julia and family. He headed back to Brisbane having had a fantastic trip
and is a convert to “Bus About” Tours -- he is already planning the next one.
While Matt was away Katie, Jessie and I went up
to O’Reilly’s up in the hills in the
Lamington rainforest with our friends Mel and Derek Trebilcock and their two
boys. Jessie invited her friend Gabby along with us and the Trebilcock’s also
brought a friend, so there was a nice group of kids with us. We stopped at a
winery for a Cellar Door wine tasting on the way. We arrived at 2:00pm which
was the earliest available check in time. Unfortunately our room was not ready
and they told us to go for a short walk in the rainforest and it would be ready
in 30 minutes. After coming back and being asked to wait for half an hour
another three times I started to get a bit short tempered. To appease us the
manager gave us a 24-hour free pass for all activities at the resort! This was
in fact quite a good deal, so I immediately booked us into lots of activities
including a glow worm tour that evening at 6pm, bird of prey show and
zip-lining (flying fox) the next afternoon.
The next morning we did the 5km walk to Moran’s
Falls waterfall. The kids all loved the ziplining activity next day which was
quite high up, and both Mel and I joined in while Katie and Derek T were on
photo duty. We had everyone over to our apartment for dinner that night which
was hilarious. The next day we did a full day 16km hike to Bithongabel and
back. The walk goes along the top of the cliffs which separate Queensland and
New South Wales and has spectacular views. The kids were all so busy chatting
that they barely noticed the distance. We were all quite tired when we got back
though, so we tried out the spa bath on the veranda watching the sun go down,
then had drinks at Mel and Derek’s villa this time and to the O’Reilly’s
restaurant for dinner.
On the final morning we did a 5km hike to
Python Rock which had more spectacular views of waterfalls. We drove down the
mountain and had lunch in Canungra before going back to Brisbane. It was a
great mini-break but our legs were a bit sore afterwards.
JULY 2017 Our friends Ian and Cathy Muir were in town on 8th July. We went
over to John and Karen Haughton’s for a BBQ dinner that evening. It was really
great to catch up. Once again, it was quite a shock to see how much the kids
had all grown up.
I went to Mackay
for work on 11th July and then on to Airlie beach the next night so
I missed Katie’s birthday. She was OK about it as she was super-busy with work.
I was working two nights again with free days, so spent the day at Whitehaven
beach snorkelling. I saw the largest fish I have ever seen – a Humphead Wrasse which was about 1.4m long.
It was enormous and very friendly and came so close I could have touched it if
I had wanted to. Amazing! I also saw turtles, whales, dolphins and sharks, so
it was a good day on the wildlife front.
Katie did the BBC
Careers Conference on 13 July. This is a huge annual event and it is the
fourth year she has organized it. Consequently her birthday passed as a
non-event on the 12 July, with her doing a long day at work and Matt and I both
away. We celebrated belatedly
the following day and she had a couple of dinners with girlfriends the following
week.
Love
Derek, Katie, Matthew, Jessica and Molly
Derek, Katie, Matthew, Jessica and Molly
Our old house in Manchester
No comments:
Post a Comment