Christchurch 2

We saw THE SUN on Monday! We took the opportunity to return to the Botanic Gardens so that John could take some more photos. I think we now own the largest selection of photographs of the Christchurch Botanic Gardens - I am sure he took at least one picture of each bloom in the gardens! There is a magnificent rose garden where we spent a lot of time, as well as the dahlias and the herbaceous flower bed. My dad was a great gardener and we had a lovely rose garden in the home I grew up in. He also spent hours in his “herby border” which had lots of different dahlias which he painstakingly used to dig up every autumn to bury over the winter. So there were lots of memories for me in the lovely gardens here. Joking apart, John has got some lovely shots and it was a gorgeous day to just meander around and enjoy the sunshine. We also finished off the Museum which we had started a few days ago. We were most impressed with it - our latest visit took us through the Maori, and European immigration sections - lots of amazing wood and jade carvings and beautiful dioramas.
Monday was a pretty busy tourist day for us. Besides the gardens and the museum, we visited Rutherford’s Den which is where Ernest Rutherford started out his scientific life. Neither of us actually heard of him before (tsk tsk) but he was the father of atomic research and had links to both England and Canada, so it was an interesting visit (especially as it was literally right across the road from the hostel, opposite the Museum!)
In the evening, we went to a live performance of the Cole Porter classic “Anything Goes”. We both really enjoy his music. The play is a really silly farce with lots of mistaken identities etc. but it was lots of fun and all the lead players had really good voices and the dancing was great to watch. It was still light when we got out, so we went wandering a bit and came across a hotel that had the Australian Open Tennis playing on the big screen TV! There is a TV at the hostel, but it is usually taken by a bevy of German girls watching chick flicks, and there doesn’t seem to be a sports channel, so we have been a bit tennis-starved lately. We have got desperate enough to listen to the games on the radio which is very good exercise for our imaginations! However, at the hotel, we saw Federer dispatch Hewitt in 3 easy sets while we washed down the victory with a glass of wine.
I am slowly learning the language here and now ask for a “flat white” when I want a nice frothy coffee. I started out asking for “coffee” and that’s exactly what I got - a cup of black coffee unadorned by anything. We have had some really good meals (and I’ve done quite a bit of cooking here at the hostel as the kitchen is a lot more conducive to home cooking than the last one).
On Tuesday, the sun had gone back into hibernation, so we jumped on a bus and went to Lyttleton which is the port for Christchurch. The harbour was formed by a volcanic eruption so it’s pretty much circular. Not a lot going on there, but we had some really good fish and chips served up in grease-proof paper (I guess no-one uses newspaper any more) and John was thrilled to see a huge Spanish yacht in the dry dock. More photographs ……
On Wednesday, we hired a car and drove to the Banks Peninsula (just south east of Christchurch) to a town called Akaroa. Like Lyttleton, the bay was formed by volcanic action so the scenery is spectacular - and the sun was shining! We stopped at quite a few places along the way for “photographic opportunities“ - my favourite was the one where the clouds were pouring across the mountains like a blanket.. We had a wonderful lunch at a little town on the way called Little River - it looked like a complete dump but I had read (the benefits of doing homework!) that it was worth stopping for a meal - and it really was. We had a fantastic lunch surrounded by gorgeous art work - most unexpected given the general ambience! Akaroa itself is the only French settlement in the area and was a very pretty little town. We didn’t have a lot of time to spend there (see next paragraph!) but it was very pretty and worth the visit. We walked along the shore and dabbled our fingers in the southern ocean for the first time! On the way home we stopped at a beach called Birdlings Flat where I had read that you can find gemstones, particularly agates, on the beach. It was a pretty desolate, pebbly beach with a huge undertow which you could see with every wave. I wouldn’t know an agate if it jumped up and bit me, but I found some pretty green, yellow and brown stones. We met another couple “fossicking” and the wife showed me her agates - colourless and translucent!
When we picked up the car, we went searching for a camping store so John could buy some supplies for our van trip. The vans don’t come with any kind of awning, so you can’t get out of rain or sun except by sitting in the van (which is pretty tiny). So in Australia, we bought some extendable tent supports and a tarp so he could rig up an awning for us. We had to leave the tent supports behind (don’t think the airline would have approved of long, hard, pointy things) so we had to buy more of them plus another tarp (we’ve learned about the weather here!), a hammer to bash to tent pegs in with plus all kinds of other “stuff” (which we will have to donate to our bed and breakfast hosts in Auckland at the end of our journey - I’m sure they will be thrilled!) So that took quite a while, but I know I will appreciate it when I have a place to hide from the elements!
My friends and family who know about my “oddity” of visualizing parking spaces will be glad to know that my ability has traveled with me! We wanted to park the rental car right outside the hostel so that it would be easy to load up, but the buskers festival is still on and we are right in the middle of the action, so parking spaces are definitely at a premium. I had told John on the way home to visualise a parking space for us and he did the usual eye-rolling thing which I am quite accustomed to. We arrived home from Akaroa just before 6 last night (when parking meters are no longer in action) and as we turned the corner into our street, a car pulled out from RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR HOSTEL! So there - it works!!!
We are packing up today and loading our tiny little rental car with all our camping gear plus all our luggage which seems to expand exponentially. I don’t understand how we can have sent home 3 parcels of stuff, not bought a whole lot more and yet still have

Christchurch 1

Well, here we are in New Zealand, and we could be forgiven for thinking we were in England. Chestnut trees, the River Avon, punts on the river under the willows (with “genuine Edwardian punters” wearing straw boaters [hats]), roses in the front gardens --- and RAIN!! It’s also cold. We’ve been told that this has been the worst summer in years, and I actually got my long underwear out today, bought a pair of gloves at the market and we have made good use of our umbrellas. Christchurch is a lovely small town - we are staying at a Youth Hostel very close to the centre of town (the photo with the tram was taken just outside our hostel. The building you can see is part of what used to be the University and is now the most incredible arts centre). We have discovered that Youth Hostels tend to attract a rather different crowd than plain “hostels”. There has been a different, more pleasant, atmosphere at the Youth Hostels we have stayed at, they tend to be cleaner and quieter and the staff are more helpful. Getting around town is easy as Christchurch is fairly small and we can walk to pretty much everything. There is a tourist tram that runs in a circle through the main attractions - nothing like the trams that we rode in Melbourne which were genuine transport vehicles. There is also a free bus that does a figure 8 through the city and takes me to the grocery store. We’re planning to take a bus out of town so that we can go tramping (hiking) but will wait until the rain stops! We discovered when we arrived that the World Busking Festival was taking place all week, but we haven’t seen much due to the really dreadful weather.
Our first night here, we happened across a wonderful Irish pub called The Bog where there was a fantastic blues duo playing. They were incredibly talented - so much so that we stayed until they closed the pub!
We spent some of our second day here sorting out our communication technology! We had been assured in Australia that our cell phone and internet stick would work just fine in NZ. However, when we tried them, nothing happened and the NZ communication people told us that we needed to buy their stuff. So we are now on our third cell phone (remember the lost one in Queensland?) and our second internet stick. However, we are in contact with the outside world again.
We retreated to the Canterbury Museum on Friday to avoid the rain and I could see that John wasn’t that excited (especially given that all the children who were hoping to see the buskers had also been dragged to the Museum!) However, it really is a lovely place with an incredible range of exhibits - Japanese artifacts, a really good Antarctic exhibition, news reporters’ photographs, Maori weaving. In fact, we only “did” about ½ the Museum and intend to go back next week - an easy feat as it is almost next door to the Hostel. We are also very close to the Botanic Gardens (another outing for John to get excited about!)
We “did” the Botanic Gardens on Sunday and it was a great success (although, of course, it rained). They have a little electric train called The Caterpillar with a very entertaining and interesting driver who told us all about the trees and plants as well as the history of the gardens. It is a huge place and we were very happy to be driven around it - I’m quite OK with being a “senior” and taking advantage of all that that descriptor entails! The other riders on the Caterpillar were certainly closer to the geriatric condition than either John or me!
We also went to a few of the busking venues, but think we are probably getting old and grumpy (see above) - there were an awful lot of extremely enthusiastic young things juggling with swords and standing on each others’ heads, and maybe it was the weather and maybe it was just us, but we don’t think we’ll go to any more. You have to admire that they keep going under all kinds of circumstances and the crowds are huge, so they certainly won’t miss us.

Goodbye Australia

I guess this is it for Australia.
We spent a day at the beach on Saturday, but it was very windy and we didn’t stay long - too cold for swimming. It wasn’t far out of Melbourne on the tram, so it was easy enough to get there and home again in pretty short order. We dropped into the Royal Melbourne Yachting Squadron for a drink which was pretty spiffy. We waved our Lake Diefenbaker Yacht Club cards and that opened the door for us! We went down to Chinatown for supper and had a pretty good meal - much better than the absolutely dreadful Chinese meal we had in Chinatown in Sydney - almost the worst meal, Chinese or anything else, that either of us has ever had! Melbourne is absolutely crammed with restaurants and we have had some amazing meals. You can get almost anything you want here - we saw sushi burgers the other day!
It was tennis day on Monday - we lined up to get tickets and then lined up again to get inside and then lined up again to get onto one of the show courts - and it rained a lot! We watched a bit of Mardy Fish playing some guy from Europe with an “-ov” name! Mardy lost the first set and they had just started the second when the heavens opened. We sat under our umbrellas for a while, but it looked pretty set it, so we gave up and came home where we could watch the match at the Rod Laver Arena on TV! We didn’t feel too bad about the lost day as we had seen such amazing tennis on Sunday at the Hit for Haiti event (see previous blog).
Today is Tuesday and the weather is much better, but we didn’t want to do the wait-in-line thing again, so we went up to the Queen Victoria Market which is the most amazing place. It covers a couple of city blocks and is mainly food stalls - lots and lots of food - but also almost anything you could imagine - scanty lingerie, “opals”, leather jackets, back scratchers and on and on. I had warned John that he wasn’t to buy ANYTHING as we are packing up to leave and we already have too much stuff, and then it was me that kept seeing things that I just couldn’t do without! We hauled all our booty down to the Royal Botanic Gardens for lunch - a lovely, tranquil place with (amazingly!) lots of gorgeous trees and flowers, lake, birds and little unexpected treats like a tiny cottage we came upon where a group of artists make paper, baskets etc out of natural fibres.
Since we are at the end of the Australian leg of our trip, I thought I would do a top ten list of the good and the bad. As I started making the list, there were so many good things that I could easily have doubled the list, but here we go …
Top 10 good things , not necessarily in this order -
1. The weather! This is why we came - and I have to admit that we have felt rather smug sometimes when we see what the temperature is back in Saskatoon! (However, when the mercury hit 44 the day we arrived in Melbourne and there was no air conditioning in our hostel, we did begin to wonder what we had wished for ….)
2. Reg and Ruby’s hospitality over Christmas when John was sick as a dog. They were such good hosts under rather trying circumstances (sitting in the doctor’s office rather than driving us to the mountains!). In fact, Reg and Ruby, you were SUCH amazing hosts that we will pass on your phone number and address to ALL our friends and relatives …. (just joking!)
3. The Thai Tanic restaurant in Sydney (and the owner, Nicky). He was very friendly and served the most amazing, cheap, delicious curries.
4. Hit for Haiti - the tennis fund raiser spear-headed by Roger Federer which was organized in 24 hours - fantastic tennis from some of the top names in the game (see previous blog).
5. Desert Park in Alice Springs - I wrote about it when we were there, but it really was one of the highlights of our Australian stay.
6. Sleeping under the stars on our trip to Uluru.,
7. Waking up to the kookaburras laughing all the way down the east coast.
8. Boogie boarding at Hawk’s Nest beach.
9. Christmas carols at the Sydney Opera House.
10. “Jersey Boys” musical in Melbourne - the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons story.
Top 10 bad things - again, not necessarily in this order -
1. John being really knocked sideways by a vicious sinus infection (he’s almost better now after nearly a month, but still has a really dry, hacking cough which is driving us both crazy).
2. The flies ……..
3. Telstra - Australia’s telecommunications network is NOT world class!
4. Not being able to swim in the ocean because of the jelly fish (those of you who read John’s blog about our snorkeling trip can substitute that for #4!)
5. The road south from Cairns which we assumed would be good, being the major southern access route - but it was dreadful - roadworks every few miles, and only one lane each way which made the truckers REALLY growly so they would sit on your back bumper as you toddled along at the speed limit.
6. Sydney toll roads. I never wrote the full story of our drama with the toll roads, but we were seriously mis-led about how to go about paying the tolls and ended up with a $75 fine. I took it up with the campervan company as it was their information that had led us astray and they did take care of the fine, but it was extremely irritating.
7. Burning a perfect iron-print on the front of my new pants (trousers, for my British readers!). I didn’t have my glasses on and turned the heat knobby-thing the wrong way, with the above result - just as we were about to leave for the theatre.
8. The dreadful Chinese meal in Chinatown in Sydney - it shouldn’t have been allowed!
9. Learning the hard way that if you put dryer sheets in the same drawer as your tea bags, your tea will taste like dryer sheets …..
10. Sharing hostel kitchens and bathrooms with people who believe that their mothers are going to clean up after them.
So that was Australia. We really enjoyed our time here, but we’re ready to taste New Zealand …….

Hit for Haiti

Wow - what a special afternoon!
We got home last night and turned on the TV just in time to see Roger Federer announce that he had spear-headed a fund-raiser for the Haitian earthquake victims - Hit for Haiti. In 24 hours, he (and the Melbourne tennis community) managed to put together a demonstration tennis match which was played this afternoon, the day before the opening day of the Australian Open Tennis Tournament. For $10 a head, we got some really good tennis entertainment - very light-hearted and enjoyable. Eight players donated their time to play a “match” - but it was fun, not competition. I just don’t know how they managed to organize it in such short order, but we got to the Rod Laver Stadium about 1 ½ hours before it was due to start, bought our tickets and were through the door within about 45 minutes. I’m not sure how many people the stadium seats, but it was packed which is pretty incredible when you consider the short time line. Apart from Federer, Nadal, Roddick, Hewitt, Djokovich, Serena Williams, Kim Cleisters and Sam Stosur donated their time and put on some very entertaining tennis. In case you can’t recognize them in the pictures, Roddick is wearing black, Rafa had white shorts and a blue shirt, Hewitt was in a yellow shirt, Federer was turquoise, Djokovic was grey, Serena was yellow, Kim was white and Sam was orange. The picture of Rafa and Djokovich bumping chests came after a particularly fast point! They were all wearing microphones and there was a lot of good natured bantering and teasing going on between them the whole time. At one point, there were 6 players on court at once! It was all so relaxed and SUCH good entertainment! Some of the tennis at net was quite incredible. The weather was pretty iffy, so they had the roof closed, so we were cosy and warm, and we managed to get pretty good seats. They raised about $200,000 which included some individual donations from players (Maria Sharapova threw in $10,000) as well as some of the tennis organizations, and many of the players have agreed to donate their rackets for auction to raise more money. We have grounds tickets for opening day tomorrow, but this afternoon was so unexpected and enjoyable, I thought it deserved its own blog entry!

Melbourne 1

Man, was it hot when we got here on Monday! We arrived at lunch time and by 3 pm it was 44 degrees - burning hot. We are staying in a delightful old place called The Nunnery (history in a minute) which has no air conditioning (those nuns were tough) but at least our window opens and we have a ceiling fan (the guy next door can’t open his window!) We retreated to the pub next door which was air conditioned, served cold cider and was showing tennis on the TV! We stayed there for quite a long time. It wasn’t a very pleasant night, but it has cooled down significantly now and we are much happier. Also John is at last feeling a bit better but he’s still not 100% - still coughing (barking, actually) and feeling stuffed up. He has a few more days to go on the latest antibiotic and we are keeping our fingers crossed that that will be IT!
The Nunnery - it’s a hostel in two parts and I had originally booked us into the hostel rather than the guesthouse, but something made me call and up-grade before we arrived and it’s a very good thing we did. The hostel part is very hostely and the guesthouse is lovely (although we have to share the bathroom), There are only 6 rooms in the guesthouse and it is much more civilized! We even have TV in our room. It was built about 100 years ago and has been a nunnery, home for young women and now a hostel. There is a lovely little courtyard with a fountain and palm trees which is very restful (see picture). The Nunnery is in an area of Melbourne called Fitzroy which is another “edgy” neighbourhood (like Newtown where we stayed in Sydney). This means that there are some very interesting characters around as well has hundreds of little restaurants and cafes and weird shops, all within walking distance. Our first night here, we walked down the main drag and were drawn to a little Chinese restaurant by the incredibly cool jazz coming from inside - rather strange combination, but it worked! We’ve bought tram passes to get around - the tram system is very well organized and we are quite close to the city centre so it’s easy to get around. There is no way we are considering renting a car here -they have the strangest right-turn rule at major traffic lights - if you want to turn right, you have to sit in the LEFT lane until it’s safe to go. I’m sure you get used to it if you live here, but it looks pretty scary!
Melbourne is a really pretty city with an amazing mix of architectural styles - classical Greek, modern high-rises in all kinds of shapes and sizes and everything in between (and John has taken photos of almost all or them)! The streets are very wide (to allow for all those ox carts) and are lined with trees. The tallest building is 88 stories high and has an observation platform with a GLASS FLOOR that extends 3 metres out over the city - one tourist attraction we won’t be doing!
Now that John is feeling a bit more human, we’ve been able to do a few touristy things (although we have been taking it very slowly and often come home in the afternoon so he can have a “nanny nap”! We visited the Australian Centre for the Moving Image on Wednesday, an amazing look at how movies began and where they are headed with lots of examples of all the old stuff like magic lanterns etc. It was rather overwhelming with lots of noises and voices all around, but extremely interesting.
On Thursday, we rode the tram down to the Docklands which is an emerging area of Melbourne down on the water. At the moment, it’s basically a huge shopping area with lots of restaurants - not many boats to be seen. As people know, we are not shoppers, but John did buy a pair of Ugg slippers (Uggs are sheepskin boots and shoes made here in Melbourne which are known world-wide for their warmth). We went to an exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci’s work in the afternoon - again very well done but rather overwhelming with lots of examples of his art, inventions, ideas etc.
In the evening we went to the Princess Theatre (which is absolutely gorgeous with beautiful decorations and paintings -see picture) to see Jersey Boys. It’s the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and it was brilliant! The guys who played Frankie and the 4 seasons were quite amazing - they could all play and sing just like the real thing - and they even looked exactly like the originals! Of course, the music is from “our” era and is SO catchy - almost everyone in the audience was singing and bouncing along with it. The play was about how the band started and evolved, and was funny, sad and thoughtful - and of course, there was the music which was GREAT! So that was a huge success.
Today we went to see the cottage where Captain Cook was born which was dismantled and brought over from England some time ago. Then on to the Shrine of Remembrance which was very moving. The Australians take the honoring of their war dead very seriously - all the major cities have huge memorials.
We have another 4 days here and then we’re off to New Zealand which is likely to be a little less frantic and a little cooler.

Great OceanRoad

Half way through our trip …
John’s new antibiotics seem to be doing the trick better than the last lot but he’s still pretty wobbly. We are taking things VERY slowly and some days we just stay in the van and let him sleep. Other days he feels a bit more sprightly - the other day we “did” some of the amazing sights along the Great Ocean Road - the Twelve Apostles, London Bridge and Loch Ard Gorge. The Great Ocean Road runs along a stretch of the South Australia/Victoria coast and was begun to provide work for soldiers returning from World War I. Parts of it run right along the coast and at other times, it runs inland. We stayed at a small town called Peterborough for 3 days which turned out to be one of the best places to see the icons of the Road - the amazing limestone “stacks” in the ocean which have been sculpted by the sea and the wind. We are here at the height of tourist season, so each place we went to, we were accompanied by masses of other eager tourists. One of the Apostles bit the dust a while ago, dissolving into the sea, (and I don’t think there ever were actually 12), but they are pretty spectacular. They are a lovely, warm golden colour, and with the waves breaking round them and the blue sky behind them, they really take your breath away. London Bridge likewise lost an arch to the sea a few years ago. Loch Ard Gorge is where a British ship, the Loch Ard, went down and the only two people to survive washed up in the Gorge. You have to walk some way to see all these things, and it’s very hot and the flies are terrible. They just don’t LEARN that when you swat them, you don’t want them back! They love to land round your mouth and eyes and although they don’t bite, they are REALLY annoying! We bought a couple of fly swatters for 69c and took them with us, waving them in front of us like windshield wipers which kept most of the flies at least out of our faces. No-one else seems to have figured out this solution, and we got lots of comments and offers (no Zoe, they weren’t commenting about the hat!) A lady from South Africa asked if she could take a photo of us, fly swatters at the ready!
While John has been sick, we have both been reading for lack of much else to do while waiting for the drugs to take effect. We have taken to getting the fattest books we can to keep us going - what we will do with them before we leave Australia, I’m not sure! We both HATE getting rid of books. We’ve both read Dan Brown’s latest “The Lost Symbol”, and John is nearly finished Andre Agassi’s autobiography which I can’t wait to get into. I also read a huge fat book called the Children’s Book - I think we will have to be strong and leave all these gems at the hostel in Melbourne.
We are now in Apollo Bay and I have rented a sun tent so we can at least sit on the beach a bit and John can keep out of the sun. The sea is FREEZING and almost everyone wears wet suits to go swimming. We drive to Melbourne tomorrow along what is apparently the most lovely part of the Great Ocean Road - hope John is feeling well enough to enjoy it. In Melbourne, we are staying at a hostel called The Nunnery which should be interesting. At least we’ll be in one place for a while and hope to get his health back to where it should be.

In sickness and in health ...

In sickness and in health ….. Poor John is still feeling pretty under the weather and I‘m doing my best to be a nurse on wheels. The antibiotics didn’t touch his infection and he’s still coughing up a storm. We tried a couple of times to get in to see a doctor in the past day or so, but didn’t have any luck, and he kept saying he felt he was getting better. We’re now back on the road again, so we are taking things very gently and taking lots of “nanny naps”. I haven’t been feeling that great either, but I’m in much better ‘nick’ than the old guy. He is slowly coming around - we have been able to go for short walks and we bought some cider today to see if alcohol will help!
Not much to report since New Year due to the “lurgy” - we picked up the latest campervan in Adelaide and said goodbye to Reg and Ruby who have to get a medal for being model hosts. We really didn’t know them well at all when we landed on their doorstep to stay for 2 weeks - and there’s nothing like sitting in a doctor’s office for 2 hours to cement the bonds of friendship! They were truly amazing hosts and I can’t imagine how we would have got through John’s illness without them.
As I said, we have been moving very slowly since picking up the campervan - we only drove about 50 km the first day before I decided that I had had enough! We have taken 2 days (and about 600 km) to get to the Great Ocean Road proper - we stopped at the Bay of Islands today and saw our first real chunk of Southern Ocean real estate. (Goes to show how bad John has been feeling - he’s hardly taken any photographs for the past week or so!) We’re doing lots of positive thinking and hope to be able to do some touristy things tomorrow - we are very close to the Twelve Apostles (which are apparently only 8 now due to erosion) and the London Bridge (which is now the London Arch - also due to erosion.)
We arrive in Melbourne in 5 days, so I hope I can put a more positive blog up then.

Christmas

It’s very strange (and people will get sick of me saying this - but it’s very strange!) to have Christmas in hot weather with everyone wearing shorts and T shirts. We were at the mall the other day, and there was Santa all dressed up in his beard and red suit, Jingle Bells playing in the background and you go outside and there are palm trees … It’s VERY STRANGE! We had a lovely Christmas day with Reg and Ruby and their family. They have made us feel so welcome and have been really hospitable. There were 4 kids in the mix, so lots of excitement and gift wrap ripping! Reg dug out some of the kid’s birthday candles (John’s birthday is on Christmas Day) and we found two 6s and a 5 - 66 + 5 = 71 which is John’s age, so that went down well stuck on top of the Christmas cake! We talked to Zoe, Andy and Shelly so at least we were in touch with family back at home.
One of the highlights of the day was that we were adopted by a magpie (looks a little like our Canadian crow in magpie uniform without the long tail). He came hopping up to the screen door so Ruby put some food out for him and he wasn’t scared of her at all. As the day went on and kids and dogs roared round the yard, he/she stayed put and became tamer and tamer, to the point where he was sitting on peoples’ shoulders (and pooping on them!) and eating out of their hands. We reckon he must be someone’s pet which has either escaped or been set free. Other magpies have been bombing him, so he’s obviously something of a freak. We wondered if he would still be around today (Boxing Day) and he was waiting for us all to get up - running up and down on the ground outside asking to be let in. He started singing today which he didn’t do yesterday. Magpies here have a curious warbling call, and his is very quiet and the more he went on, the more he added other sounds which weren’t magpie at all - as if someone had been trying to teach him to talk. John was convinced he heard “G’day”!
December 30 - We have been house-bound for the past 3 days as John picked up some kind of nasty cold/flu and has looked and sounded like death warmed over. He really has been unwell so we trundled off to the doctor yesterday and he’s now on antibiotics - 24 hours after taking the first one, he’s back to giving everyone a hard time, so we think he’s better! Before he got sick, we went to the Australian Motor Museum where, as you can imagine, many photographs were taken (the total for the trip is now over 8,000 I’m told!) There was one car which was actually a huge mobile phone, complete with push buttons and receiver, and was rigged up so that people could make phone calls on it, but for some unknown reason, that is not one of the 8,000 photographs! The Museum is quite near the Barossa Valley which is a famous wine-producing area, so we tasted our way through a few vineyards! On the way home, we stopped at the Whispering Wall which is a large concave dam. After building it, they discovered that it has the same acoustic properties as the dome at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London - you can whisper to people who are at the other end of the dam and they can hear you plainly - so of course we had to do that!
Ndw Year - We did manage to get John vertical and awake enough to come out on New Year’s Eve. His throat was still incredibly sore and he didn’t feel great, but he made it to midnight and even managed to dance a bit! This “bug” has really knocked him sideways - we’ve been very boring guests for Reg and Ruby who had all kinds of interesting plans for our stay with them, and we ended up not moving out of the house for 4 days straight. We really have appreciated being at their house while John has been sick - he’s been able to stay in bed and be looked after by Ruby-mom who gave him ice cream for his sore throat. They were so understanding - Reg sat with us for 2 hours while we waited to be seen by the doctor and they both did everything to help us get him on the road to recovery. We are just hoping that they don’t get whatever it was. John’s definitely on the mend now, but we have constructed a “Recovery Scale” and have decided that he is now higher than “comatose” and a little better than “awake“, but “enthusiastic” is still to come and “vibrant” is a distant dream! We leave Adelaide tomorrow to pick up our campervan to drive to Melbourne, so hope he will manage the trip OK.
Comments - we have heard that people are still having trouble leaving comments on the blog. If you pick the “Anonymous” option, you can leave a comment and just put your name at the end so we will know who it’s from. The alternative is to leave it Anonymous - particularly if you leave a comment about The Hat, which SOME PEOPLE have chosen to do!!!
Happy New Year to everyone - good health and happiness.