Australian Adventure 2013 - 11

Saturday was a catch-up day.  Nick left early for a full day of coast-guarding, Peter settled in to 18 hours of computer game-playing, Pam did lots of laundry and baking, and I played catch-up with my PC.  In the morning Pam and I went down to the Saturday morning market as this is the one weekend a month when the crafty people are not there and it becomes truly a Farmers Market.  Pam bought steaks, pasties, vegetables, etc. as well as an unusual plant for cousin Margery.

After a pass by the house to unload stuff Pam slipped off to the supermarket to fill in some gaps.  Once she was back we headed to the airport, parked, went through security to the gate and waited for Nannette’s plane to come in.  Nannette had been traveling for 24 hours back from Canada and was totally overloaded (and overwhelmed) by the amount of luggage she had insisted on taking with her, so we effectively (as planned) became her porters helping her get all her stuff over to the train station.  She still talks as much as she did 50 years ago!

After lunch I did a major sort-out of all my “stuff” including papers of various kinds.  My MasterCard bill had come in, staggeringly large, but I have effectively already paid my “share” of our combined adventures including those yet to come.  I was very happy for the physical sort-out and am now neat and organized again, and I was able to match all the charges, including every last separate “currency fee” of 3% on every charge which made the bill very lengthy.

Sunday morning was quiet and gentle until a little before noon we headed across Brisbane to the cousins’ side.  We picked up Hilary and Narawi from their small & extremely cluttered flat and went a few more blocks on over to my cousin Margery’s house, also very cluttered.  Margery put on an exceedingly nice cold lunch, followed by a home-made English Christmas pudding with a few fresh strawberries and thick English-style cream.  I nobly passed on dousing my pudding from the jug of sherry on the table!

I had taken my PC and was able to show them, not all at once, our pictures from both the Sydney trip and the Hamilton Islands trip in which they all expressed serious interest.  I was also able to pull up some ancient “Priddis” pictures for Margery and, to settle some queries, also pulled up my Priddis as well as my seriously old Priddis family trees in which Margery and Martin were interested.  Martin requested that when I got back that I email the two family charts to him.

We had a picture-taking session as it is unlikely we will all be together again.  After a lot of chatter and reminiscing about the deep past they also served us tea and pastries, so we were well and truly fed.  We eventually managed to leave gracefully with hugs all around and headed part way back stopping at the Goodyear’s.  We got the tour of their remodeled and largely reorganized house (after weeks on end of chaos), had a cup of tea and threw up my pictures of Sydney on their big TV.  Then we headed home for a quiet and relaxing evening.

Monday morning went gently, a light breakfast, an early lunch and general packing both individually and the car. We then embarked and headed northwards to the “Sunshine Coast”.  We arrived in Noosa Heads found our rental townhouse, very nicely equipped, and moved in.  After a bit of a rest we headed out again to a Woolworths and laid in our food supplies for the week, as we will be here until Friday morning.

As with our other trips, this is as much a holiday for Pam and Nick as it is for me.  We are located on a river, fairly close to the ocean but not directly on it.  We have had glimpses as we drove up of the endless shallow sandy beaches and the steady breaking waves of the Pacific Ocean thereupon.  However, by mutual agreement we are not rushing about but relaxing and reading this first day.

Tuesday morning we went into town fairly early, but only just in time to find a parking space and wandered about the shopping area a little.  I managed to find another small memento that will hang on my Christmas tree in one of the tourist shops.  By and large the shops are pricey – like any town that survives on tourists.  We took a quick peek at the beach, at high tide and still not very busy.  Then we went to the edge of town to a National Park (primarily an area protected from development) and took a nice long walk along a paved trail right above the, at that end, rocky shoreline.  On the opposite side of Noosa sandy beaches run continuously quite literally as far as the eye can see.

On our way back we checked the beach, now a little deeper but absolutely thick with humanity, so Pam & I elected to swim in one of the salt-water swimming pools located right outside our townhouse’s “garden”.  Later in the day we went the other way and took another walk, along the river bank this time, but by and large this has been a lovely restful day with all of us reading assorted books.

Wednesday’s primary activity was to go over to Eumundi to the huge market there.  Even though we arrived soon after 8:30 AM all free parking was gone so we contributed to Eumundi’s charities in order to park in a field.  We cruised and browsed for a good two hours.  Pam bought a great sun hat, Nick bought some pastries J, and both Pam and I bought from the glass fingernail file man, she for herself and me for my favorite manicurist.  In the afternoon Pam and I went down to the main riverside and took a long walk in the relatively high wind.  Otherwise our day was quiet and relaxing.

Thursday was touring day.  We went south for a while before turning inland (west) and then up, and up and up into the Blackall Range where a number of views were really impressive, but as usual the Australian haze meant that photographs came out poorly.  I’ve been here five weeks now, it has rained – briefly – maybe four times and the odd gray sky has passed over and despite almost endless sunny skies I have yet to have a truly “clear” day anywhere.

Our primary stop was Mountville up in the hills which has a really nice collection of “nice” tourist-type shops, most of which we “did” at our leisure.  I finally found a real Christmas tree ornament, in fact a whole lot of them making a selection difficult, but I finally settled on one that has significance to me.  When I showed Pam the shop (she had been unsuccessfully clothes shopping next door) she was also impressed and bought a whole set of similar ones for herself.  Before leaving we enjoyed a gelato.

We took the “scenic” way back that included a good few miles of unpaved road with steep drop offs and no safety barriers right through a largely forested area as we descended down and down.  Even when we were back on paved roads it was still pretty.  We finally got back for a very late lunch.  After another lazy, relaxing afternoon we went down to the riverside and upon advice from the doorman of a fully reserved restaurant went a few door down to a Thai restaurant.  Getting a server’s attention was a major difficulty but once our order was placed it came much more quickly than we expected and all three of us found our chosen dishes to be magnificent, large and very tasty.

Friday morning we rose, breakfasted, packed and before nine o’clock were on our way back to Wynnum.  This is a rare gray skies day and we even ran through a few light showers.  We are here for the weekend and are off to Melbourne for day or three next week.