Letter No. 265
Dear all,
SEPTEMBER For Father’s Day I got to take everyone out for lunch at Massimo’s at Waterfront Place. We picked Matt up on the way and had a lovely Italian seafood lunch together. Then on 7th September it was Jessica’s 21st birthday. How time has flown. It seems like only yesterday she was learning to crawl!
Jess had a party at home for 70 of her closest friends on Friday 9th September. I took the day off work to set up while Katie was intending to ice Jessie’s birthday cupcakes. Sadly, we heard the news that the Queen had died when we woke up that morning. That threw a real spanner into the preparation works as it was at least an hour before Katie stopped crying and two hours before she could face doing anything. Meanwhile, I had been watching the weather forecast carefully as the predictions were for heavy rain all day and storms in the evening. I had borrowed some large tarps to string up in the garden, but I held off as long as possible as I didn’t want to set them up in the rain. Luckily, it stopped raining over lunch and by 12:30pm the forecast had changed to fine with no storms! It was a lovely warm evening and rain free.
The party went well. I made two cocktails – Lime Mojitos and Raspberry Gin Fizz. I made 40 litres and most of it went, although I did have to drink lime mojito leftovers for the next few weekends. Katie and her friend Thao cooked up a storm and fed everyone. Katie gave a speech followed by Jessie’s friends Lilly and Kyel. Jessie also said some words at the end and was a little giddy by that stage and was quite funny. There was quite a bit of dancing afterwards, mostly with a large group of girls dancing on the pool filter box. I was a bit concerned it might collapse but I obviously built it well! The party wound up about 1am. There was some talk about going clubbing in the Valley but Jess wasn’t really up to it thankfully. There was a long day of slowly cleaning up the next day, then on the Sunday we had a family 21st lunch for Jessie, with Mum & Dad and Lisa & Andrew and the girls. We went to a great little Italian restaurant in Paddington. It really was a party weekend.
On Monday 19th September Katie was glued to the TV watching Queen Elizabeth’s funeral. Katie wrote at the time: “A life well lived with a legacy of longevity, institutional stability, devotion and duty. An era of change is ahead; there will never be another like her.”
A few days later Katie and I went to see “Ticket to Paradise”. It was a fairly predictable rom-com which had been filmed in Brisbane and the Great Barrier Reef. It was funny to see bits of Brisbane Airport which was supposed to be Los Angeles.
OCTOBER On 8th October we went to a 50th Birthday party for our friend Sigrid. She had a nine course Degustation Dinner at home for 40 people and did all the catering herself (with a little help from friends)! It was really amazing. They had a long trestle table next to their pool. We sat down to the first course at 6pm and didn’t finish eating until 11:30pm. Their teenage kids (plus partners) were waiters / waitresses. Each course had a matching wine! Nine glasses of wine was quite a big effort, and then there was dancing around the pool until about 1am. It was a great party and a fantastic event by Sigrid and Nathan!
Our 26th wedding anniversary was on 12th October. We celebrated with a nice dinner at home as we seemed to have been out quite a lot! It was our Winosaurs (Wine Club) on the 14th, and on the following night we went to a new gin distillery Nosferatu for its opening night with a group of friends. On Sunday 16th we went for a mystery picnic to Burleigh Heads. It was organised by Amazing Co as a wedding anniversary present from Katie. We had to download an app on Saturday night with a puzzle to solve that guided us to our first destination, which was the Bam Bam Bakery in Burleigh Heads, where we stopped for coffee and pastries. Our next clue led us to a nearby national park for an hour-long walk. We had to find and solve the next clue during the walk. We then went on solving clues and picking up nice food packs from lovely boutique foods stores before solving the final clue and ending up at our picnic destination. It was a really fun day. After our picnic we went and had an hour on the beach before heading home.
I had a quick trip to Darwin from 24-27th October for a new project we have picked up there. I haven’t been to Darwin for a few years but it was still the same. Luckily the Oyster Bar where I eat most of my dinners survived Covid and was still serving delicious oysters!
We celebrated our friend Sue’s 60th birthday twice – on the weekend before and after I was in Darwin. The week before with a small group of ex-BBC parents at Amphora, a Greek restaurant in St Lucia, and then again the weekend after at a party at her house in Moggill. The party was nice and her daughter (who is 22) did almost all the catering. It was quite impressive.
Meanwhile, Katie had spent September and October intensively drafting chapters of her 12,000-word Masters thesis, focusing on Australian street libraries and their impact on the Australian publishing industry. She did a hyperlocal case study using our own street library, conducted an inventory, three different surveys and three interviews with industry experts, and then analysed all the data. The appendices alone stretched over 30 pages and looked quite impressive. The deadline was actually 7th November but in the end she submitted it a week early.
NOVEMBER It was Melbourne Cup day on 1st November and we went trackside again with Thao. It was a much wetter day than last time and we didn’t manage to back any winners, so it wasn’t our best cup day. The next week I had to go to Mulwala, on the New South Wales / Victorian Border, for another project. It is about a 1.5 hour drive from Albury along the Murray River. It was quite concerning how high the floodwaters were in the Murray River area. The water was lapping at the edges of the road in many places. We decided that if it rained we would make a beeline back to Albury so we didn’t get flooded in. Mulwala was a lovely little place next to a large lake on the river. There was a weir was just downstream of our hotel. Each morning I ran out of NSW, over the weir into Victoria and around and back into NSW via the road bridge. The roar of water going over the weir was spectacular. Apparently, only a few weeks earlier the lake had been completely dry.
While I was in Mulwala, Katie was overseeing the delivery of a piano we had decided to buy from our friend Wings who is moving to Melbourne. We had intended for the piano to be placed in our upstairs living room, but when the movers got the piano to our house, they refused to move it upstairs. They said the front stairs were not sturdy enough to hold the 380kg piano and two men each about 100kg! Katie had to decide quickly what to do (I was on a plane at the time) and the piano ended up downstairs. The piano movers were quite specific about what strengthening works needed to occur on the steps, so I spent the next three weekends rebuilding and repainting the front stairs. Actually, they were correct. The more I looked at the stairs the more rotten timber I found on the top and ends of joists and treads. They were fine for just one person walking up them but not the combined weight of the piano and movers! I am happy to report we can now have elephants over to visit! Now we just need to get the piano movers back.
We went to see Crowded House at Sirromet Winery on 5 November. It was a great night. There seem to be more and more band concerts coming up, mostly playing old hits from the 80s and 90s. We have tickets to several more rock concerts next year. We are going to be away over Christmas again this year, so we had an early Christmas celebration with my parents and sisters’ family. We had to have it on 20th November which felt ridiculously early, but Jessie was going to Indonesia the next week and it was the only free weekend. We had a really lovely family BBQ around the pool.
The next Friday was the AECOM Christmas party at the W-Hotel, a cool new venue in the city. The band was really excellent, so we had a big evening of dancing. Despite my best efforts to get Katie to have something to eat, she didn’t feel hungry until after all the food was finished, so she felt a little worse for wear on Saturday morning and didn’t make it to Pilates. However, we did have a great game of tennis on the Sunday morning. Matt and his housemate came along as well and played on an adjacent court. We all went for coffee afterwards which was nice. That weekend Jessie headed off to Indonesia. It is a UQ study trip on Intercultural Communication and Conflict Management, which involves a week’s intensive study in Bandung on West Java followed by visits and field work on a sustainability project with several local NGOs.
I went to Alice Springs for work from 29th November to 1st December. It was really sad to see how many places had closed and never reopened after Covid. The main street was a ghost town! Katie got her UQ grades 30th November. She got a 7 for her thesis and another Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence! She also did the sing-along Messiah on 3 December at the Albert Street Uniting Church. She loved it so much that she says she’ll go every year.
DECEMBER On 8th December it was Matthew’s 24th Birthday. Jessica was still in Indonesia so the three of us went to the Boatshed at the Regatta Hotel for a steak. Surprisingly, Jessica had actually planned ahead and bought Matthew a present as well! She was out of communication range in a remote homestay village on West Java so we couldn’t talk to her. We had a lovely booth table overlooking the river and had a great catch up with Matt.
It was the Mortlake Road Street Christmas party on Sunday 11th December. Almost everyone on the street turns up, wearing festive colours and bringing food to share. It only goes for a few hours but is such a lovely opportunity to catch up with all of our friendly neighbours.
The next day was Katie’s Graduation Day. She now has a Masters in Writing, Editing and Publishing. She had a ridiculously high GPA, with straight 7’s for her entire course! We picked up her gown at 9am and took photos with her cohort on the lovely sandstone steps of the Comm-Arts building. There was a long wait before her ceremony at 11:00am. Matthew arrived about 10:30am; however, Jessie had flown back from Indonesia overnight and messaged us from Sydney at 5:30am. She’d had very little sleep, and her plane landed in Brisbane at 8:35am but amazingly she managed to race home from the airport, showered, scrubbed up and got to the UQ hall with 5 minutes to spare! Katie was delighted that Jessie had made it. The ceremony was nice but long and didn’t finish until nearly 1pm. We had a quick round of photos in the Great Court before heading to lunch at Patina for a long leisurely lunch. By 3pm Jessie was almost falling asleep in her dessert, so she went home, fell into bed and slept for 17 hours. Matt had to go back to work so Katie and I returned her gown and called it a day. It was a fitting end to Katie’s UQ experience.
It was my birthday on 16th December, but we didn’t do much as we seem to have been so busy these last few weeks. We did have our big Christmas party on Saturday 17th December though. It is the first proper one we have had for a few years because of Covid. The party went well and it felt like we had so much to celebrate. Katie did fantastic canapes and lovely baked ham and mince pies as usual, and I served a Raspberry Gin Fizz for this year’s Christmas Cocktail, which really kept everyone humming. It was a slow day on Sunday and I had to pack as well as clean up.
We are heading off on Wednesday for a very big trip -- to Singapore for Christmas, then Amsterdam for New Year and then a week’s skiing in Meribel in France. We wish you and your families a Merry Christmas and a great 2023. We will see you on the other side.
Cheers from Derek, Katie, Matthew, Jessica & Molly
