Thursday, 13 December 2018

Term 3 - Maleny and Sri Lanka


Letter No. 247

Dear all,

Jessica danced in another Eisteddfod on Friday 1st June. The girls were ecstatic to get another 3rd place (3 out of 22), this time for the Mamma Mia dance routine which Jessie and Gemma had choreographed and taught to the girls. Jessie had also chosen and sourced the costumes so it was a real triumph for her.

The next night was the St Aidan’s Rowing Cocktail Party. Jessica stopped rowing in Grade 8, but Katie’s friend Kylie organises it and we know lots of people so we just go every year for fun and to boost numbers. It is at a different parents’ house each year and is always nice to see their lovely houses. It was a cool night for an outdoor party but they had lots of patio burners and a fire pit and we danced a lot to keep warm.

The next weekend on 10th June, we went to Montezuma’s for dinner on Sunday night to celebrate my brother-in-law Andrew’s birthday. It was nice to see Lisa and Andrew and the kids and we had a lovely evening. The next weekend it was the Australian Girls’ Choir Winter concert. There are only three concerts every year and this was the first. It was at St Peter’s College in Indooroopilly. It is Jessie’s final year with the choir so the senior girls get all the best parts and are front and centre in all the numbers. We took a couple of friends to see it and they were very impressed with the girls’ ability to sing and dance energetically at the same time.

We had a Garage Sale in the school holidays. I have been clearing out stuff we didn’t want for over a year and storing it in my shed. It was a great relief to get everything out and get my shed back. The sale was on Saturday morning and people started showing up at 6:15am before the sun was even up! We sold a lot of stuff and closed up shop about 1pm having made more than $500. Anything that didn’t sell went either in the bin or to a local charity shop and I put a few bigger things on GumTree. By the time I had got rid of everything we didn’t want I had made over $1000. Not bad for junk!

The next day we went for walk at Mt Coot-tha. The kids were too busy with study so it was just Katie and I with Molly! That night we had a family dinner at our local Thai restaurant Siam Sunset, as a farewell to Matt who was leaving two days later on a three-week trip to Thailand and Sri Lanka.  We all took him to the airport and saw him off. He really loves his overland adventures and went with a group of five people this time, mainly BBC school friends.

The next Saturday, Katie, Jess and I went for a Weekend in Maleny. Katie had booked us into the Maleny Lodge which was a lovely country hotel with big rooms, lounge with huge fireplace and comfy sofas etc so it felt quite a luxurious county getaway. Jess drove up (for driving practice) and then we went for a walk in the rainforest at Mary Cairncross Park. There was a nice little visitor centre and lovely 45-minute walk and we made it back to the car just before it started to rain. In the afternoon we did a tour of the Maleny Dairy, showing its dairy and milk production facility, which was surprisingly interesting. We sampled lots of flavoured milks and custard after the tour and then went back to enjoy the lovely roaring fire at our lodge and the Indian restaurant across the road.

The next day we went for a hike to Mapleton Falls and then drove on to Montville for a spot of shopping and a nice relaxing lunch with a fantastic view. In the evening we headed to a nearby pub where they had live music. The next morning we had a lovely breakfast in a nearby cafĂ© before driving down to the Wildlife HQ Zoo. It is a twee little zoo attached to the abandoned Big Pineapple on the Sunshine coast. There was a surprisingly good collection of animals for such a small zoo. We had a really nice morning before braving the motorway (and Jessie’s driving) back to Brisbane.    

It was Katie’s birthday on 12th July. It was a bit quiet as Matt was still away in Sri Lanka. He had been quite organised though and had left her a lovely present, much to our surprise. The next two weekends were the final two dance Eisteddfods of the year for Jessie’s dance troupe. Both competitions were not without a bit of drama. Two girls had left the school unexpectedly the day before one of the Eisteddfods so they had to frantically re-plan the dance at the last minute. The school had asked them to leave for a lengthy non-payment of school fees. It was a bit sad and a little heartless that they didn’t let the girls dance one day later! For the other competition there was also a no-show from one girl due to a death in the family and so the routines had to be re-spaced at short notice once again. The girls performed really well considering these dramas but did not get a place. We always enjoy going along and supporting the group however and Katie is possibly one of the loudest members of the STAGE cheer squad. J

Katie talked me into giving a presentation to the Brisbane Boys’ College Careers Conference on 19th July. She has organised this conference every year for the last five years and the usual Engineering presenter had bailed out. I had to do a 45-minute talk about my life as an engineer and the types of projects I have worked on and all the different countries that my engineering career has taken me to. I did it a bit reluctantly, mainly because I was too busy at work to prepare the presentation. There was one teacher supervising and he said afterwards that my talk was really interesting. I also got lots of questions from the students. Katie said there are usually no questions so I must have hit the mark. I think I may have got myself a task for life! It was actually quite fun and the Careers Counsellor is quite keen for me to come back next year.

On 24th July Jessica received an Academic Award for being in the top 10% of her cohort. Usually I go to all these assemblies but I was super busy at work and didn’t make it. Luckily Katie was able to attend and videoed it. Matthew arrived back from Sri Lanka later that day. He had had a fantastic trip and made a heap of backpacker friends who have all been invited to come and stay with us at some point in the future J. It was really interesting hearing about where he had been and seeing his photos. He had been to almost all the same places we had gone to on our trip there in 1995 and it didn’t sound as though anything had changed.

Jessica helped organise the St Aidan’s MADD Night (Music, Art, Dance & Drama) on Friday 27 July. It is a kind of student talent competition. She had spent the previous two weeks holding auditions to whittle the competition down to twelve acts, which comprised singing, dancing, drama and music performance. She also had to arrange the run sheet, prizes, judges and MC the evening. She is clearly taking after her mother on the event organisation side of things. STAGE also did two dances on the evening although they were just entertainment, not part of the actual competition and the teachers’ band played at the end. Everything went really well and the school was pleased with how well organised it was.

A few nights later there was a Stage Parent Dinner which Katie had organised at a local restaurant. About twenty parents came along -- the ones who have showed up at every Eisteddfod all the way through the year -- so we have all become quite friendly. The next night we went to Phil Latham’s 40th birthday. Phil is an e-AECOM colleague who I still see regularly. We all met at a bar on the river and had a few drinks before going to Sub-Urbane for dinner. It was in the private basement below the restaurant Urbane, hence the name. It was a pretty fancy meal and there was a lot to drink. There were about 30 people there; Phil paid for the meals and we all paid for drinks.  There were a few ex- and current AECOM people so we had a good evening.

It was a fairly slow morning the next day and I had to take Jessie to the University of Queensland Open Day. I snoozed through the lectures and then we wandered around the campus in the warm winter’s day. It was a nice relaxed morning but the downside is that Jess still has no idea what she wants to study at Uni next year!

The next weekend we went for dinner at Little Beirut with our friends Wings and Tony. There was another couple who were meant to be coming as well but they had stuffed up and thought it was a different night! Consequently we had over-ordered but the food was lovely. It was a Middle Eastern restaurant and they had a Belly Dancer after dinner. She managed to get Wings up to belly dance which was quite funny. We went to Lisa & Andrew’s for dinner on Sunday 12th August. Three of the kids have birthdays in a short period of time and we hadn’t seen them since Katie’s birthday so it was a quadruple celebration. Lisa rustled up a fab dinner for ten as usual. We also got to admire Andrew’s latest mint green classic ute. He loves doing up classic cars in his spare time.

Matt had a little drinks party on 19th August, with a group of about 25 of his friends over on a Sunday afternoon. He wanted to have it on our upstairs veranda so I went and spent the afternoon in the shed and snuck up every once and a while and commandeered some snacks and a drink. He has a really nice group of friends. The party was a great success and they all piled into Ubers about 6pm to go to a club in the city. Katie and I cleaned up and finished off all the leftover food.

It was the second AGC choir concert of the year on 26th August. Jessie has been in the choir for seven years, almost as long as we have been in Australia, so it is a bit sad that this is her final year. Matt came with us this time, but I had managed to stuff up the tickets somehow and had two tickets in the front row and one in the row behind. Luckily they were right behind each other so we could chat in the interval. Jessica is the Dance Captain in the choir so gets lots of centre positions in the front row and we can always see her very clearly. There is only one choir concert left now at the end of the year.

I took the afternoon off work to go to IKEA on 28th August. A bit sad I guess but we were getting a new dressing table for Jessica’s bedroom as a birthday present. She currently sits on the floor to do makeup and uses her wardrobe mirror. Hopefully a dressing table will be a bit more civilised and will stop her from getting makeup all over the carpet.

Matt had a friend Graham coming to stay on 1st August. Graham is a chef from the UK and Matthew really got on with him well when they were on their Sri Lanka tour a few weeks earlier. He was only going to stay one night but rather liked our studio and ended up staying for about a week before going up to Cairns to work picking Bananas. He is a nice young lad, about 25, and ate with us most nights and cooked us a meal one evening. He and Matt went out a few times too. Graham is planning to move to Melbourne and work as a chef so we might see him again some time.

It was Jessica’s Sweet 17 Birthday on Friday 7 September. She decided to have an outdoor cinema party. I hung some white sheets on the external wall of the house to make a screen about 6m x 4m and got a projector to play the movie. We arranged a heap of bean bags and picnic rugs and sofas on the back lawn and strung fairy lights all over the garden so it looked very pretty. Jessie had 17 of her friends around and they ate pizza and popcorn and then curled up on the sofas and watched the movie. There had been great debate in the lead up over which movie to watch, with options ranging from The Bee Movie to Sharknado. In the end Jessie chose an obscure teen movie but the girls all seemed to love it. I set up a fire pit as well so they could toast marshmallows at the end.

The next day was our friend Pip McGlinn’s 50th birthday. She had arranged a bike ride and breakfast picnic in the Gap Creek Reservoir country park. Her guests had a choice of a hike in the bush, a mountain bike ride and a road bike ride before breakfast. I was planning to do the road ride and Katie would get there for the breakfast if Jessie’s school volleyball game finished in time. I met all the road cyclists at 7am. It had been raining on and off all night but wasn’t raining when we started off with a nice ride through Upper Brookfield. Unfortunately it started lightly raining after about 20 minutes. We rode for about 1½ hours and after about an hour it was tipping it down. We all got very wet. It stopped raining just as we finished the ride. About 300 metres before the end of the ride, Pip’s brother-in-law went round a corner a little too fast, hit a guard rail and went over the edge of the embankment. It appeared that he had broken his leg so got taken off to hospital in an ambulance. This put a bit of a damper on the festivities. I found out a few days later that he only had bad bruising so was OK. We had a nice bacon and egg breakfast though with heaps of other yummy food. Pip’s mother was there organising the food. I hadn’t seen her since 1996 when she was in Hong Kong and went on Katie’s hen’s night. Katie didn’t make it as the volleyball match overran (as usual), but I had a nice if wet morning.

That evening I went to watch the Wallabies vs Springboks at Suncorp Stadium. Jessica was singing the National Anthem with the Australian Girls’ Choir before the game. As usual, the TV coverage showed the players singing but not the girls! Amazingly the coverage must have been using different camera angles in the UK. It was live and before the anthem had even finished, my brother-in-law Chris had texted us a picture of Jessica from the UK TV coverage. It is amazing what technology can do! Australia won to top the night off.

The following week was the BBC Fashion Parade on Friday 14 September. Katie doesn’t organise this event any more but somehow she always seems to get an invitation/involvement of some kind and this year she was modelling again. It is quite a big event with nearly 400 ladies attending and a full catwalk fashion show, so it’s quite a tough gig to get up on the catwalk. She didn’t love her outfits as much this year but made the best of it anyway and had a fun day having hair and makeup done. The lunch finishes at 3pm but all the ladies hit the Hundred Acre Bar afterwards and most years I have to go after work and peel Katie off her barstool. This year she left early though, because she needed a rest before going out for dinner in the city with her WAGS friends that evening. A very long day for her!

The next night I went to Helios Brewing with a group of mates. It is a small local brewery in Yeerongpilly where they have food trucks and a band on Friday and Saturday nights. We had a really nice evening working our way through the beer tasting plates. We didn’t manage to get through them all. We got an Uber home and decided to go for Ice Cream at Lick. Perhaps a bit childish for a group of 50-year-old men but we were past caring!    

That’s all for now. Cheers, Derek, Katie, Matthew and Jessica.










Jessica and Prince Edward.




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