Letter No. 263
Dear all,
MARCH. We had our Winosaurs evening on 4th March (Wine club for the street). The theme was to bring a bottle of a wine which had a special memory for you. I had been saving a couple of bottles of Maclaren Vale 1993 Black Opal Cabernet Merlot, left over from our wedding in Hong Kong in 1996. I had been lugging it around the world ever since. Katie had been telling me for years that I was crazy and it would be vinegar! Our neighbour, who was hosting, has a special tool for removing aged corks and we decanted it to remove all the sediment, left it to breathe, washed the bottle and then decanted it back into the bottle. Our bottle was the oldest out of 15 so it was the last bottle to be sampled. Each person had to give a little talk about why the wine was special to them. I told the crowd how well-travelled the wine was – it had gone from Australia to Hong Kong, then to England and then back to Australia – at least twice in shipping containers with wild temperature fluctuations, hence Katie’s thoughts on it being vinegar. Anyway, my story was voted the best of the night and the wine was actually not at all bad either – a double win! I have one bottle left but might wait a few more years to open it.
Katie was back at Uni after a week’s delay due to the flooding. This is her third semester out of four. She did her internship over the summer and is now doing an intense course on Advanced Grammar and a Fiction writing class. She also has a thesis to complete by the end of the year. Jessie is in her fourth year, with another year to go. Molly is eleven now, so is in her middle years. She has no current plans for Dogversity or to learn any new skills or tricks.
On 10th March, Jessica hosted a Sip & Paint evening for Girl Up (a girl-centred leadership initiative part of the United Nations Foundation, uniting girls to change the world). Girl Up | Who We Are), Jessie is the social media coordinator for the Asia-Pacific region. They thought that it might only be the committee and friends but were pleased that a group of about 30 people showed up at our house to paint (and sip). They were all very well organised, with food platters and Youtube painting instruction videos on a large screen, and short speeches about GirlUp. We went down at the end of the evening to have a look at some of the art works; they were all good and several were fantastic. I think Jess was very pleased at how the evening went.
We had dinner in the city at Otto for our friend Leona’s birthday on 12th March with a group of eight friends. It’s a waterfront restaurant at Southbank, with a fantastic night view of the city lights. The river looked peaceful again, but there is still a lot of debris and damage along the banks due to the catastrophic flooding in February. Another major (and very expensive) clean-up operation for the city. It will be months before all the CityCat services are running again.
In July 2021 we were interviewed by Channel 7 about the Street Library that we have in front of our house. This library is in the form of a red British telephone box that I made a few years ago. Channel 7 broadcast the story on the Sunday evening news, and we received quite a lot of positive feedback afterwards. The most interesting was from the owners of Spicers Resorts, who contacted us to see if I would be interested in making them a blue police box (aka the TARDIS from Dr Who). I started construction in August 2021, and now – after a lot of hard work – the Tardis has materialized in our front yard. It is getting a lot of local attention.
On 17th March, Katie and I went to meet with the Spicers contact and view the potential new sites (they still haven’t decided). Spicers is a very upmarket resort chain, with about eight different locations. We drove up to Spicers Peak, which is located on the top of the Great Dividing Range on the way to Warwick, a 90-minute drive from home. After the meeting they shouted us a very delicious 5- course degustation lunch with matching wines. I arranged a boys’ night out on 25th March and a group of us went to the Milton Common Brewery. We had pizza and beer (obviously) and it absolutely tipped it down rain. It seems to be the theme for this year. The next week our friend David Price was back in Australia after more than a year out of the country. It was really nice to see him again. We went out for a Chinese meal followed by cocktails at Death and Taxes in the city.
APRIL I had promised to make Matt a cocktail bar as his Christmas present and had spent the last five weeks constructing it out of timber. He sent me a photo which I had to copy, working out all the correct dimensions and timber sizes, which was the hardest bit. I was quite pleased with it in the end. I had to get a friend around to help me lift it up onto the roof racks and we drove it to Matt’s place on Saturday 2nd April. Matt’s flatmates enthusiastically helped us put it in place and Matt immediately whipped up a round of cocktails. More and more of his friends showed up over the next hour and it was quite the party by the time we left.
On 7th April, Diane Powers was in Brisbane, a good friend from our Hong Kong days. She lives in Sydney now and was in town for a family wedding. Katie met her on Thursday afternoon and did touristy things and I picked them up at 5pm and we went home for cocktails at our bar and dinner. It was really nice to catch up. Her husband Paul Hart has been in Hong Kong all the time that Australia’s borders were closed; they were apart for at least 18 months during COVID lockdowns, which must have been a tough time for them. On Sunday afternoon we went to River Quay. They have free live bands on the grass bank of the river every Sunday for an afternoon “chill” and there are restaurants overlooking the riverbank. Katie was planning a picnic there in a few weeks with her Uni friends, so it was just a recce. We had dinner and drinks watching the sun go down and listening to the band.
On Wednesday 13th April, I was invited to the Opening of the Andrew N. Liveris Building, which is the new Chemical Engineering Building at the University of Queensland. AECOM did all of the engineering design for the building (and I signed it off structurally). Jessie is also in the Liveris Academy, which gives her a UQ scholarship and she had been selected to attend the event as one of the five student representatives. It was really nice to see her there and introduce her to my colleagues who worked on the building. There were speeches and a drinks reception from 3pm to 5pm. As soon as the event finished I had to rush back into the city where I met my friend John, so we could see Midnight Oil at the Riverstage. It was the 12th that I have seen them time (as far as I can remember) and it is apparently the last time they will tour. It was a really fantastic show!
We hosted a family lunch on Easter Sunday. It is both my parents’ birthdays around that time. We don’t seem to have had the whole family together for such a long time. Everyone came over to our house and we had a nice BBQ lunch. We all did RAT tests before we met up to make sure we didn’t infect each other!
On 19th April, I was interviewed by the Courier Mail about the TARDIS and the forthcoming Open Day. They sent a photographer over at around 4pm and he arrived with a huge amount of cameras and lights. Katie had to help hold the lighting tripods to get the perfect angle. The photographer was at our house for over an hour and took about 300 photos. He made me do heaps of dopey poses, peering out of the door until he got the shot he wanted. Luckily, when it was printed, the photo was quite small so you couldn’t see how silly I looked. I was also interviewed about the Tardis by Craig Zonka on ABC Radio Brisbane on 29th April. It was very early in the morning, just before 6am, and we thought it unlikely that anyone would hear it. Surprisingly, when I got to work that morning, the first person I ran into had heard it!
The Courier Mail article made it into the paper on Saturday 30th April, and the same article was published in lots of regional papers all over Australia. I had people sending me clippings from Adelaide and Townsville. That same day was our Tardis Open Afternoon. We had put a notice on our local community Facebook group, inviting anyone who was interested to come and have a look at it before it moved to Spicers. Quite a few people had come around regularly over the last few months to look at my progress as the Tardis has materialised, so I wanted to give them the chance to see it properly before it disappeared. The Open Afternoon went from 1pm to 3pm, and about 50 fans came, some wearing Dr Who T-shirts. One guy even brought his own Sonic Screwdriver. Everyone wanted a photo with the Tardis and to see if it is bigger on the inside (and it is - via the mirrors on all internal walls!). Some people had come up to 30km to see it, having heard about the open day on the radio or in the paper. One lady brought her very disabled daughter, who was a big Dr Who fan; they had driven a long way and it was heart-warming to see how excited she was.
After the Open Afternoon finished, we then had a Tardis Opening party for our neighbours and a few close friends, starting at 4pm. We had invited about 60 people, mostly from our street, and nearly everyone came along bringing bottles and nibbles. I gave a speech, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and spent a lot of time checking out the Tardis! We expected to finish up about 7pm but were still sitting around the fire at 10:30pm. It was a fun day and a great evening, but the next day was a little slow.
MAY The next week saw Katie working at the Brisbane Writers Festival from 3rd to 8th May. She spent most of the week working on the signing desk, training volunteers and working on the promotional video. She got to meet lots of famous authors including Isaac Asimov, J K Rowling, J R R Tolkien and Stephen Hawking. (ED Hahaha no, but I did meet Thomas Keneally, Clementine Ford, Trent Dalton, Morris Gleitzman & Peter Greste). She seemed to have a really fun week.
On Friday 6th May, I went to see an INXS cover band at the Chardon’s Corner Hotel. The hotel was pretty rough, and the decor was straight out of the 80s. We had planned to eat at the pub before the show, but the barman advised us not to as the food wasn’t that good. He suggested ordering a take-away pizza from a shop up the road and bringing it back to the pub! Luckily, as more and more patrons for the show started showing up it didn’t seem quite as threatening, as they were all in their 50s and early 60s. The stage had a huge metal barrier between the band and the audience, so they obviously have rowdy crowds! The INXS cover band was fantastic though, so we had a great evening.
The next weekend we were meant to be going to the Gold Coast. We had tickets for a Race Day event at the GC Turf Club with a group of friends on Saturday 14 May. Katie had been feeling a bit under the weather but had been testing negative for COVID for a few days. She did a final test about an hour before we were going to leave for the Gold Coast, and unfortunately she tested positive, so we had to cancel. Luckily we got a full refund for the hotel, but the event tickets went to waste. Under COVID rules, I could have gone but would have had to wear a mask and I decided that would not be much fun. Our Tardis delivery trip was also postponed due to the recent heavy rain damaging the road up to the Peak.
Matthew was having his annual Eurovision Party for his friends on Sunday night using our Studio, so Katie had to isolate in our bedroom, and I had to do all the catering this time. It was hard work! Jessie assisted and we had quite a good night. There were some very creative costumes as always. Jess sent Katie photos of each of them, and after dinner Katie announced the winner of the best dressed costume competition via FaceTime. She said it was hard to choose between the top two – a giant piece of Lego (Denmark) and a giant yellow and blue Chicken Kiev (Ukraine). In the end, the winner was Ukraine. For the next 10 days Katie isolated in our bedroom and the study, while I stayed downstairs in Matthew’s old room and just came upstairs to cook. Thankfully, Jessie and I didn’t catch Covid and a week later Katie tested negative and could rejoin society. She had a nasty lingering cough for a few weeks though.
On Sunday 29 May we went to see an exhibition that Jessie has been working on called My Little Sunshine. The project is a compilation of an audio documentary, interactive art exhibition, virtual exhibition, and photo book, collected over four years of working with families and staff from Hummingbird House, Queensland’s only children’s hospice. Hummingbird House provides care and support for babies, children and young people with life-limiting conditions and their families. The exhibition tells personal audio narratives of two families, documenting their strength and resilience through their journeys and experiences with grief, joy and loss. Jess is the social media coordinator for My Little Sunshine, writing and promoting media releases. The stories and messages were very sad but also incredibly moving.
Cheers, from Derek,
Katie, Matt, Jessie & Molly
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