Letter No. 276

Dear all,

APRIL  On 4^th April it was our friend Helen Hill’s 60^th birthday party – the first of many 60^th events this year. The girls went for a long lunch at 1pm and men were invited to join for drinks and more food from 6pm. One of my close friends at AECOM was also invited and turned out to be a good friend of Helen as well. We were at an AECOM meeting that morning and worked out that we were going to the same party that night. It was quite funny. The party was lovely, and Katie was quite merry by the time I arrived.

The next day we went to the Brisbane Gin Festival at the RNA Showgrounds with a group of 15 friends. It was a three-hour gin tasting from about 60 boutique gin distilleries. We were a little more restrained as a group than last year, and our purchasing capacity went down to about four bottles per couple, as opposed to an average of six last year. Afterwards, we went to Soko, a lively Latin American rooftop bar and restaurant. The food is an unusual Japanese-Peruvian combo, which is apparently quite a thing and was delicious. Someone played bongo drums for a couple of hours, and there was a huge blue macaw on a lead which everyone posed for photos with. There was also a stunning sunset while we had dinner.

Katie has signed up for a course of French lessons at the Alliance Francaise to brush up her French language skills. She hasn’t studied French since her schooldays several decades ago, so was a bit nervous about her French knowledge. After the initial test she was placed directly into Elementary 4, skipping the first 3 levels. It is two hours every Thursday night for ten weeks. Hopefully she will be fluent by the time we go to France in September.

We went to our friend Gavin Lee’s 60^th birthday party at Slipstream Brewery on 12^th April. Katie had gone to a Girl Up event with Jess in the afternoon and was coming separately, while I caught an Uber with some friends in the street. We arrived dead on time but were surprised to see no sign of the party whatsoever and the hosts standing at the bar by themselves with another event in the party space. It turned out that the hosts had accidentally printed their invitations with a 5pm start time (and forgotten this fact), then told everyone verbally that the start time was 5:30pm but booked the venue for a start time of 6pm! The other party guests started arriving shortly after us and we all stood around at the bar waiting for the 50^th birthday guests to vacate the party space. It was a fun evening after all the initial confusion.

We spent the Easter long weekend at Stradbroke Island. Katie had booked a huge party house for a group of 11 of us. We all travelled on the same ferry on Good Friday, squished into three cars between us, and arrived at the house at 2pm. The house was amazing, definitely the best holiday house on Straddie. There was a minor BedroomGate issue at first, but it was instantly resolved as soon as the girls hit the gin. Everything went swimmingly after that. We had a fun afternoon drinking our GinFest bottles and then all had to have a little lie down before dinner. Katie had planned the weekend with food and dress themes for each night and two couples rostered each night to host the dinners, which worked out well. I also made themed sundowners cocktails each night. Friday night was Italian white night. We looked pretty good dressed all in white. I made Peach Bellinis, and the meal was a spectacular Italian fish dish for Good Friday. On Saturday we hiked to the Blue Lake on the far side of the island for a swim, before hitting the beach in the afternoon. Saturday night was Mexican night with colourful dresses, sombreros, Margaritas, chorizo, patatas bravas and a delicious paella cooked on the BBQ.

On Easter Sunday we were all treated to a fabulous day sailing in Moreton Bay on Paul’s yacht Solace. This is the yacht that he had raced in the Sydney to Hobart just a few months earlier. She is a beautiful little yacht, but hard to imagine eight people racing on her for four days straight. Paul sailed us to Moreton Island for an afternoon at the beach. The weather was glorious, and it was a picture perfect day with champagne flowing and delicious prawn rolls for lunch. The only issue was that one of our friends stepped on a stingray when we were getting out of the dinghy in knee deep water. She got a huge fright and fell over fully clothed. We had only just been talking about Steve Irwin being killed by a stingray. It was funny in retrospect.

There was a stunning sunset as we left the boat, but we didn’t get back to the house until 6:30pm. Katie and I were hosts for the final Pirate Night and had decided that pirates eat lamb and drink rum. Katie did a sterling effort to produce a dinner of BBQ’d lamb, roast potatoes and grilled veggies and salads by 8pm, with me BBQing and making Rum Daiquiris. There were rum truffles to follow. To our surprise, everyone had made a spectacular effort with their pirate costumes, which was hilarious, and we polished off the remaining wine, cheese and chocolate easter eggs. On Easter Monday we had the final morning at the beach before grabbing prawn and avocado rolls before the ferry home. It was a great weekend, and we were so lucky with the weather. It started raining the next day and rained all week.

Next weekend Katie and I went to Queens Wharf. We had planned for sunset drinks at the newly opened SkyDeck bar on level 23. We walked across the new pedestrian bridge linking Southbank to Queens Wharf but then discovered that the whole of Level 23 (a huge bar and two restaurants) had been booked out for a private party. That would have been a massive party! We had dinner on the 4^th floor instead just next to the waterfront. It then turned out that the private party event had arranged fireworks from a boat in the river, so we had front row seats for those, which was spectacular. The next day, 27^th April we had my parents and sister and family over for a BBQ lunch to celebrate Mum and Dad’s birthdays.

MAY Next weekend Katie attended yet another 60^th birthday Long Lunch, this one for our friend Mary-Anne. The girls appeared to have a very fun afternoon of cocktails, lunch, speeches and dancing while the boys were on pick up and drop off duty only. The next weekend was Australian Mother’s Day. Sadly, Jessie had just broken up with Kyel, her boyfriend of three years, so she was very sad. She decided to move back home for a few days while she came to terms with the breakup. It was lovely to have her back though. Katie and Jess went to Libertine Vietnamese restaurant for a nice lunch banquet for Mother’s Day and had a good time despite Jessie being a little weepy.

May was pretty quiet actually. We only had one other event, which was our Winosaurs wine club night. It was at our next-door neighbours, so it was an easy night for us with a short stagger home afterwards.

JUNE On 1^st June I went on Ivory’s Rock hike with my walking friend Derek. The walk took us to a stunning volcanic plug with steep cliffs jutting out of the countryside. The peak is actually on land owned by a supposed cult and access is usually restricted so we were pleased to be able to hike there. The guide was planning to take ten of us, but unfortunately, one of the group members could not find the starting spot despite us waiting for over an hour! The hike was excellent and somewhat challenging. We got back to the cars at about 4:00pm and I was knackered. The start was only about 5km from Mum and Dad’s farm, and I had been planning to surprise them with a visit in the afternoon, but the combination of the late start and difficulty of the hike meant I decided to go straight home instead. I did discover that one of Mum and Dad’s neighbours, who knows them quite well, was on the hike with me though.

We went for Sunday lunch with Ian and Cathy Muir on 8^th June. They moved back from Hong Kong in September last year and have been renovating their house in Jindalee since then. We had a lovely lunch and went back to their house afterwards. Multiple builders had let them down so the huge deck that they are putting on the back of their house still hasn’t started. It seemed like there was still several months to go, and it can’t be fun living on a building site, even if it is mostly outdoors!

On 14^th June I participated in the Canungra Combat Challenge 2025 with three of my AECOM colleagues. It was a fundraising event for Legacy Australia, an important charity which supports the families of Australian veterans and fallen service members. The challenge itself was extremely demanding. We had a 7:30am start and the temperature was only 5⁰C, so it was a bit brisk. It was a 7km course, starting with a 4km trek through the jungle warfare training course at Kokoda Barracks, each carrying a burdensome load—an ammunition crate, weighted sack, iron bar or large water jerry can, all weighing between 20-30kg. The uneven terrain made the weight even more challenging, especially uphill. Relief came when we finally set them down, but only for the next test: carrying a stretcher with a 90kg dummy for another kilometre.

The gruelling obstacles continued. We endured 100m carrying water jerry cans, punctuated by burpees every 10m, followed by crawling the same distance while pushing the jerry can ahead. Then came a 1km run with a large wooden log. It took two to carry so we did get a little rest while alternating turns carrying it. Next was the obstacle course - 25 challenges packed into just 800m, involving climbing, crawling, balancing on single wire rope bridges, and attempting monkey bars, which none of us managed to finish!

The final challenges were the swimming, the most nerve-wracking being the submerged culvert swim. The frigid water surged through a narrow pipe, leaving only a small air pocket above the surface. By the time I reached the tight end, where there was barely 5cm of free space, panic set in, and I cracked my head on the culvert as I emerged. I saw stars for the next five minutes. The last trial was a swim through the icy Canungra River. The 50m crossing was so numbing that it was hard to climb out up the steep, muddy riverbank on the far side. We had to haul each other out and then gather our energy for the final sprint to the finish. It took us just over two hours to complete the course.

Looking back, I’m glad to have done it, but don’t think I’ll be signing up again! I was very proud to be the second-highest fundraiser overall though, raising $3,351, while our AECOM team secured third place in overall fundraising efforts. Thanks for all friends who sponsored me and contributed to the fundraising total.

On Saturday 21 June we went to a Winter Solstice Long Lunch at our friends Jeremy and Leona Tod. Queensland weather in June is usually beautiful dry and sunny winter days, so they had a table set for 25 people on their tennis court. At 11:30am it started to rain just as all the guests were arriving, so we all helped them to dry and reset the tables and chairs indoors. We had a lovely lunch and got home at 10:30pm after a few hours of dancing at the end. Everyone had taken a salad or dessert, and Katie had made a spectacular three-tier pavlova. It was a great afternoon and astonishingly we even managed to play tennis the next day.

Talking of weather, Queensland has had an exceptionally cold winter, with the coldest June for 40 years. We have a few heaters, but the continued single-digit morning temperatures make our house feel cold and Katie finds it hard to get out of bed in the mornings. Due to the cold weather and general lack of central heating, everyone we know is sick, with flu and Covid epidemics and offices operating on skeleton staff. I spent nearly two weeks of June working from home which is very unlike me.

On 27^th June we went to the Powerhouse to see Jimeoin who is a Northern-Irish Australian comedian. His comedic style is characterized by his observational humour and witty insights into everyday life. We met our friend Mel and Bernie for dinner before the show. We had never seen a comedian live before and it was a hilarious night. His first joke was that it was really good to hear people coughing and sneezing in the audience again – and it was. I was just getting over my lingering cough, and it was hard not to cough after laughing so much. 

Our neighbours, the Goulds, have just got back from a six-week tour of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales encompassing Lands’ End, John O’Groats, the Channel Islands, Isle of Man, Isle of Skye, Islay and the Shetland Isles. We had them, and our neighbours on the other side, the Poulsens, over for drinks and a light dinner on the Sunday night so we could hear all about their trip. They had some entertaining travel stories and seemed to have particularly enjoyed the Manx Classic TT, the fish & chips, and visiting multiple Scottish whisky distilleries.

JULY On Wednesday 2^nd July I went to see the British Lions play The Reds, the local Brisbane Rubgy Union team at Suncorp. We had fantastic seats, but sadly the scoreline was not so fantastic, with the Lions beating the Reds 52-12.

Jessie has just been on holiday in Southeast Asia, going to Hong Kong and then on tour through Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. She and Matt met up in Hong Kong, which was so lovely as they hadn’t seen each other for nearly a year. They spent a day at Ocean Park, which they both loved, and Matt recreated a photo of himself there over 20 years ago. By a total unplanned coincidence Matt then travelled to Thailand, so he and Jessie met again in Bangkok. Jessie is now home, and Matt is back in China, temporarily teaching English at the Omeida Academy summer camp in Yangshuo, and making plans for the next phase of his life.

Cheers from Derek, Katie, Matt, Jessie, Molly & Pippa