Letter No. 241
Dear all,
JULY 2017 Term 3 started with the St Aidan’s Semi-Formal on the first
weekend, Sat 15th July. We had a “Pre” (drinks function) at our
house for Jessie’s group of friends and their parents. Jessica had invited Tom Trebilcock
to accompany her, the son of the friends we had recently gone to O’Reilly’s
with. His parents came to the Pre as well and helped take photos. The girls all
looked waaay older than 15 or 16 with their hair and make-up done and in very
grown up outfits and shoes. We had champagne and nibbles with the girls and
their partners for about an hour, then dropped them off at the semi-formal
venue, Hillstone Golf Club in St Lucia. About 40 parents then met for dinner at
a nearby Middle Eastern restaurant. After the event a whole hoard of the girls
and partners came back to our place to get changed. Katie marshalled the boys
into the Studio and the girls into Jessie’s bedroom. They all left their bags
and walked around to the “Post” which was about two blocks from our house.
There were two Posts – one in Brookfield and one in Graceville, so we were
quite pleased that Jessie and her friends chose to go to the Graceville one as
that meant we didn’t have to do late night driving all over the city. About
1.30am the whole group arrived back at our house and parents started picking up.
Jess was buzzing about what a good time she had and after everyone had gone she
and Katie chatted for hours before finally going to bed.
The next day Jess and I went to the Tertiary Studies Expo. It was a bit of
a slow start after such a late night. We had a look at the psychology, medical,
communications, journalism and arts stands. Jessica is really not sure what she
wants to do when she finishes school. We spent a few hours there. I went and
picked up the photos from the semi-formal and we pored over them for the rest
of the afternoon.
The following weekend was a big one for STAGE. The girls performed at a school event
MADD Night (Music Arts Drama & Dance) on Fri 21st July and then
their last dance comp of the year on the Saturday. They were very pleased to
get another third place for one of their dance routines.
I have been going up to my parents’ place every
weekend recently, helping with their relocation to their new smaller farm. They
had a clearing sale on 29th
July. I arrived before 7am and the first people started to arrive not long
afterwards. I was in charge of directing traffic. It was a little slow for the
first hour but by 8am there was a steady stream of trucks, cars, vans, trailers
and even a semi-trailer. Dad had to open another paddock for parking. By the
time the sale started at 10am I think there were around 250 cars and 400 people
there. There were over 300 lots spread out all over two paddocks and one shed.
There was even a hamburger catering van! The auctioneers were very clever and
managed to sell everything. If there were no bids on an item, they just lumped
it together with the next lot until a combination of things was sold. Mum and
Dad had an enormous amount of machinery that they didn’t want anymore – quad
bikes, tractors, bulldozers but also a lot of stuff that many might call junk.
Everything sold and was taken away. Rusty milk drums and old machinery seemed
to sell particularly well! The auction didn’t finish until about 1:30pm and
then Dad and I helped load machinery onto trailers with the bob-cat. By 4pm
most of the stuff was cleared up and everyone was gone. The semi-trailer driver
had waited around all day to transport the bulldozer for the winning bidder!
There were a few people who came back the next day to pick up the last few
things and only one lot was abandoned. A very successful and profitable day.
Dad was only sorry he hadn’t had time to sort more things out and get more stuff
in the sale.
We had a tennis
afternoon with our friends Tony and Wings Malins on 30th July.
We went back to their place for a drink to cool down afterwards. Tony is a terror
for sneakily topping up your glass and opening new bottles of wine. Before we
knew it, we had missed dinner, the kids had to fend for themselves again, and
we had to walk home!
AUGUST 2017 I went to Mackay and Airlie Beach
from 2-4 August, and then Darwin and
Townsville on 7-9 August. I have
been all over Queensland and the Northern Territory the last few months – a
trip every week or two. It is doing wonders for my frequent flyer points!
We went to the Lebanese restaurant Beirut as a family to celebrate Matthew
getting back from his trip around Europe. It was nice as we hadn’t been out all
together for ages. Matt is not working at Miku any more so it is nice to have a
few free weekend evenings with him while he looks for a new job. We also went
to have dinner at my sister Lisa and Andrew’s on 11 August. We had
missed Lisa’s birthday, Katie’s birthday and two of Lisa’s kids’ birthdays so it
was a bit of a present fest!
The following week Jessie had a return
invitation from her friend Tom to the BBC
Semi-Formal. It was the night before the Brisbane Show Holiday and was on a
boat cruising up and down the Brisbane River. It was a school day, but Katie
picked her up early for an “appointment” and raced her around with hair and
make-up appointments in order to get her ready in time for the usual Pre.
Naturally there was a Post afterwards as well and she was dropped home about
1:00pm. She had a wonderful time. However she had been fighting off a cold for
a couple of days and it hit her really hard the next day when she totally lost
her voice and then had to have a few days off school with laryngitis.
On Sat 19 August we went out to dinner with a
group of BBC parents. Afterwards the boys all went to watch the Bledisloe Cup in a pub in
Indooroopilly. Australia got thrashed so it was a disappointing end to a nice
evening. I was back in Darwin from 22-25 August. I have now eaten in every
restaurant in the city and have my regular barman and seat in the hotel I
always stay at!
The next weekend was very busy. On Saturday
night we had a Thai dinner with Tony and Wings. It was allegedly a planning
meeting for our upcoming trip to Birdsville but not a lot of planning got done!
The next night was Jessie’s Australian
Girls Choir Concert. She is in the top level of the choir and the
specialist dance troupe now so she gets lots of time in her favourite place on
stage (front and centre).
On 29 August our good friend David Sugg passed away. It was very
sudden. He was only 52 and leaves behind his wife Lisa, who is one of Katie’s
best friends here in Brisbane, and two teenage girls. It was an enormous shock
to everyone and it rocked our social group to the core. We had partied and
played tennis with David & Lisa many times this year and Lisa is Katie’s
regular tennis partner in her Tuesday tennis fixtures. David’s funeral was on Tuesday
5 September and his brother and sister both came out from the UK for the
service. There were at least 400 people there, with many standing or outside the
chapel who couldn’t fit inside. Lisa and Claudia (their eldest daughter) both gave
very moving eulogies and the shock within the crowd was very palpable. Even David’s
dog Barney came to the funeral and lay solemnly below the coffin throughout the
service. There was a wake back at their house afterwards which at least 200 people
attended and it kicked on until 2am. It was a great tribute to a kind, gentle,
thoughtful man who will be hugely missed.
BIRDSVILLE RACES I went to the Birdsville from 31 August to 3 September with my friend Tony Malins
and another two mates. We left on Thursday at lunch time in Tony’s plane from
Redcliffe aerodrome and landed in Yaraka in central Queensland (population 18) just
before 5pm. It is 22km south of Longreach. The local pub owner picked us up at
the airfield and asked if we would like to go for a sunset tour of Mount Slocombe Lookout. We stopped at the
pub on the way to dump our bags and get a few beers and drove up. It is a flat-topped
mountain with great views over the spinifex and desert. The pub owner told us
lots of stories about the local region. The most interesting one was about how
Australian farmers had been forced by the Greenies to reduce the potency of
poison used to bait wild dogs around 15 years ago. The wild dog population had
since exploded (as the baits are not as effective) and hence the whole region
around Yaraka has no sheep farming at all. The estimate of losses in Queensland
alone is over $100 million and in many areas, a complete loss of the whole
industry. The pub owner was excitedly telling us that one local station was dog
fencing their entire property (13 miles of 18 fenced so far) and would
reintroduce sheep to the region for the first time in many years.
We watched the sun go down and went back to the
pub for dinner. The wife of the pub owner was also the local school teacher and
principal. Unfortunately she had not had any pupils (or teaching pay) for four
years. She was really excited as there was supposedly a family with two primary
age children going to move into the district next year. I really hope they do.
They were lovely people. We had a great dinner and a few drinks before going to
bed. The cracks in the timber walls were plugged up with folded XXXX tins. It
certainly wasn’t five star but clean and nice.
The next morning I went for a walk around the town
to look at the sights. It only took ten minutes! The highlight was the end of
the railway line (literally) and a few rusty bits of machinery in the main
street. The local store had closed a few years ago but was also supposedly
re-opening next year.
We packed up and got dropped back at the plane and
took off. We flew to Windorah to refuel the plane as fuel is really really
expensive in Birdsville. We were away again quickly and landed in Birdsville
about 10:30am. There were about 300 planes lined up in rows on the side of the
runway, all with tents pitched under the wings. Once we had found our park, we
pitched our tents quickly and went into town for lunch. We stopped at the pub,
conveniently located right outside the airport, for a beer. We then walked on
to the Birdsville Bakery and had camel pies and beer for lunch. A quick look
around the town and visitor information centre and market stalls set up in the
centre of town and it was back to the pub for a beer. We had been there for a
few hours when Pauline Hanson showed up with an entourage of Federal Police
Security. Pauline was whisked away to a private area where she couldn’t
interact with the public but we chatted to her coppers for a while. They had
flown up from Brisbane to Mt Isa and then driven 12 hours to Birdsville to meet
her when she flew in. It turned out her plane was only a couple of rows from
ours and we ended up seeing her all weekend!
We went back to the plane for a little afternoon
nap before it was back to the pub. We had beer and pizza for dinner. We then
went to Fred Brophy’s Boxing Troupe (across the road from the pub). We had
tickets for the 7:30pm fight. About 7:00pm Fred came out and started banging a
drum and getting the crowd excited. He spent 30 minutes bigging up his boxers
before asking who wanted to fight them. We were absolutely amazed that he had
more takers than boxers. A few of the guys had even had brought mouth guards.
Fred asked who wanted to be the round girl (who walks around with a sign
showing what round it is). A young lady was selected and promptly ripped her
blouse off and paraded around in a sparkly bra all evening. After the
challengers went in to get gloved up the rest of us were let in. It was quite a
fun evening. There is not much mileage in the professionals completely smashing
the challengers so you got the impression they were just playing with them sometimes.
One of the amateurs had his nose broken with a huge spurt of blood which was
exciting. There was a young girl who was fighting a grizzled female
professional. Everyone had to do three one-minute rounds. Although this girl
seemed to get a few good hits in, she had no power in her punches. The
professional gave her a few good whacks towards the end and you could tell she
was quite glad when it was all over!
After the show we went back to the pub for a while
to watch the band before going back to our tents under the plane wing. The
weather prediction was 17 degrees overnight but it was much much colder. I woke
up shivering and had to put a few layers of clothes on to warm up. None of us
had much sleep.
The next day it was curry camel pie for breakfast
before heading off to the races. We were lucky we got there early and got one
of the few seats in the grandstand (which seated fewer than 50!). It was very
hot in the sun and generally quite dusty.
There was a hot wind blowing and lots of dust. It wouldn’t have been
much fun on the racecourse unless you were coming first as the rest of the
field would be eating dust. I didn’t make my fortune betting on the races but
we had a fun day before we went back to the plane and flew on to Thargomindah
that evening. Apparently the Birdsville airport is bedlam on Sunday with so
many planes trying to leave and we didn’t fancy another night in the tent.
Thargomindah was a fair-sized town but we were quite surprised to see emus
wandering down the main street. We had a nice pub meal and beers before bed
(rooms in the pub this time). We were off early the next day and back in
Brisbane in time for lunch on Father’s Day!
SEPTEMBER 2017 Jessica was 16 on 7th
September. She had a dinner for 16 friends a couple of days later at Saint
Lucy, which is a lovely Italian restaurant in St Lucia on the UQ Campus. She
had a lovely group of girls there and they had a table on one side of the
restaurant and ate wood-fired pizzas. Matt, Katie and I sat on the other side.
Katie took in a fabulous chocolate birthday cake decorated with sparklers.
On Friday 8 September Katie was a model at the BBC Fashion Parade. She had organised
that event for several years when Matt was at BBC and was quite pleased to be
asked to model although she was quite nervous about it. Katie’s friend Wings
was also a model; their son is in Y12. A few glasses of champagne gave her
Dutch courage and she quite enjoyed herself. There were some photos of her in
fabulous gowns! Tony and I came to pick the girls up around 5pm and enjoyed a
couple of drinks, then we headed back to Graceville and all had dinner at Miku.
On 10th September we went for a boy’s
wake for David at Tony’s house. We had sunset drinks with Alf, Tony, Jeremy and
Wayne to try and fathom the meaning of the universe. For some reason Katie came
as well, which probably explains why we decided the answer to life, the
universe and everything was 43.
Matt has got a new job at Tocco Italiano, a
local Italian restaurant (obviously). It is much better than Miku as the shifts
are longer, he gets paid more and he gets fed as well. It has turned out to be
a very good move for him. On Monday 11th September, Jessie had her
interview for school leadership positions. She is applying for School Captain,
Vice Captain, Sacristan and Prefect. She said her interview went well but would
be quite happy with Prefect. She has a nervous two-week wait before the
decision is announced.
On 13th September we went to the
Malins once again for a farewell dinner with David Sugg’s brother and sister
before they went back to the UK. It was a nice evening but tinged with sadness
as it was really our final farewell to David.
Love
Derek, Katie, Matthew, Jessica and Molly.
No comments:
Post a Comment