Australian Adventure 2013 - 8

Wednesday was a family day.  We all managed to find things to do for much of the morning after which Nick fetched the children for the rest of the day.  Sometime after lunch Pam & I took them to a sea front playground and a walk out along the jetty, renting a video on the way back to keep them entertained for the rest of the afternoon.  Faye & Christine (au pair) arrived for dinner, but Peter (G) was hung up in the operating theater with an emergency and couldn’t make it for dinner.  After dinner they all left and peace was again restored to the household!

Thursday morning started with yet another blood sugar number in the one-teens – Pam’s food must be very good for me as well as being tasty.  Before 6:00 AM Pam and I were walking briskly along the “people trail” beside the sea with the tide again high in the early morning.

This was “meet the cousins day”!  John’s eldest cousin is Margery Jacqueline Boscott, daughter of his father’s eldest sister by her first marriage (and half-sister to Michael Wells by her second marriage).  Margery and her husband came out to Australia, permanently, in 1968 and she is now widowed.  She has a daughter Hilary, who in turn has a daughter Narawi currently living with her mother in a small apartment.  Margery also has a son Martin, still living at home, effectively as a caregiver having not had any source of income beyond welfare for as long as Pam & Nick have known them.  Margery says we met sometime in the 1940’s at our grandparents’ home and claims to have a picture of the two of us taken on that occasion.  She hopes to find it before we meet again.  Next summer I will turn 75 and she will turn 90 within a month of each other.

We drove over to the far side of Brisbane, picked up Hilary & Narawi, went to a nearby golf course/restaurant where all but Nick disembarked so he could go and get Margery and Martin.  We all had a light lunch and a soft drink for a stunning $200 for the seven of us, which Nick & I split.  We then went, again in two car loads back to Margery’s house for more conversation and afternoon tea.  They devote a whole large room in their house to two cockatiels plus a formerly injured stray Indian parrot of some kind.  They also feed large quantities of wild birds largely of the generic “parrot” variety some of which arrived for their evening feeding allowing some photos to be taken before we left for home.

Friday was “white knuckle day”.  I woke early and saw that outside was officially only 57 degrees F.  Nevertheless before 6:00 AM Pam and I were again walking briskly along the sea front, in shirtsleeves, the exercise and bright sunshine compensating for the temperature and slight breeze.  After breakfast Pam headed into the city for a summer haircut and assorted shopping of the female variety.

Since it was clear that Nick wanted to go jet skiing after about 6 months hiatus of that activity I agreed to go with him.  In my naivety I assumed the sea would still be the glassy calm it had been when Pam & I were walking and that “up the river” would be similar to a trip across Lake Monroe.  WRONG!  Apart from maybe three minutes around the point at which we actually turned around on the river it was wet, cold, bumpy and scary making me clutch the small passenger strap with both hands white-knuckled!  Far from resenting the need for a life jacket I was happy to have it for wet protection and warmth.  On a list of activities to do for fun I would put jet skiing at the very bottom!  That is yet another thing my sister and I have in common.

I am also being very frustrated by Tara.  After nearly a year of being able to email Annie there I find that suddenly I am getting all my emails back marked undeliverable because Tara thinks they are "spam".  I have written to the generic "contact us" address from their web site and hope that my name will be removed from their spam list, otherwise Annie will not get to hear from me again until November, since her home email has proved unreliable and has been canceled.