10 August, 2024

By the time morning dawns I’m totally wiped out. I take an Imodium but it doesn’t work. In the meantime, Lynn walks to HCF office to resume her health insurance, does some basic grocery shopping for the week, fetches me glasses of OJ and water, repeatedly cleans the bathroom after I make a mess of it, puts on 4 loads of washing, drying, does the ironing and organises a soup supper, for both of us. What an angel…

It’s now evening. As I haven’t improved much and can barely walk, Lynn suggests I might want to take the antibiotics she has in her suitcase – azithromycin tablets under the Pfizer brand name of Zithromax – the ones we were issued with by the Travel Doctor prior to our trip to Asia in 2016/17, specifically for incidences of horrendous diarrhea.

11 August, 2024

As a result I have a better night and by morning I’m feeling slightly better. Enough to shower, have some fruit and yoghurt, get dressed and doze on the couch.

As I still need to be within a short sprinting distance to a loo, I contact my youngest daughter to let her know we won’t be visiting her, her husband and the 2 grandkids today, as planned, and will need to re-schedule. Lynn gets a phone call from her sister welcoming her/us home.

Later, I spend a frustrating time trying to cancel Lynn’s ASDA UK mobile account online but get nowhere so I send them a note and Lynn will Skype their customer support number provided on their website tonight. It’s annoying it’s proving difficult to cancel. I upgraded her ‘Pay as you Go’ account to a ‘Bundle’ once when she kept using up her allowance every few days due to the number of calls we had to make with all the issues we had when we first arrived in the UK. The Bundle also allowed us unlimited phone calls and texts in Europe too, just as if we were phoning/texting in the UK. This was invaluable given the number of times we had to contact accommodation hosts and order cars. All for a GBP5 monthly fee.

I take another antibiotic at 3:30 pm so by 6:30 I’m sitting on the sofa watching TV. Hopefully, the 3rd and final tablet tomorrow will have me back on my feet and mobile once again.

It’s 7 pm. Time to Skype ASDA’s customer support line which Lynn does and gets an error message. She resorts to Googling ‘how to contact ASDA mobile customer support from abroad’ and lo and behold, a different number is offered which can be phoned from her ASDA mobile free of charge. No queue, an authentication code and a brief conversation with a pleasant young lady later, Lynn is assured that her UK mobile number and account will expire on 16 August – end of story. Touch wood!

12 August, 2024

This morning Lynn heads off to attend the funeral of Janine’s husband, Jack, taking the train from Chatswood to Town Hall, the 442 bus from the Queen Victoria Building to Balmain then a 10-minute walk to the church. I don’t dare accompany her as that’s a lot of distance without a loo in sight!

A chilly and damp morning with about 40 attendees. Readings are given by each of Jack’s 2 sons – extracts from Jack’s body of work reflecting their relationship with him. Janine delivers the Eulogy which completely encapsulates the life, work and essence of Jack.

The heavens open as the group walks the 200m to the Royal Oak Hotel for the Wake. Here Lynn catches up with Janine, Mim (wife of Jack’s Best Man at their wedding in 1987 which Lynn also attended), Caroline (1987 wedding guest) Ron (Janine’s brother), his wife, Jill and their son, Josh. Hopefully, we’ll see more of Janine in the future and as early as May next year on our road trip south.

Soup supper again tonight.

13 August, 2024

First thing this morning we go gift shopping for the grandkids in the nearby Westfield shopping centre. A digger for Xavier which he needs to construct himself with a screwdriver and a set of walkie-talkies for Louis and Hamish. We had already posted a pair of shoes to Zara from the UK. Followed by a viewing of “Deadpool and Wolverine” at the Hoyts cinema to cheer me up after being ill.

A dramatic departure from soup suppers, we take the train to North Sydney and call into the Treehouse Hotel, which has a bit of an Irish ambience going on, where we catch up with Pat, Morna and their daughter Julie for a scrumptious steak dinner and chat about travel plans, stories and adventures.

Originally we were planning on dining with them at the Kirribilli Club on Lavendar Bay which has a magnificient view of the Harbour Bridge from its balcony. Unfortunately, and inexplicably, the Club is in administration so the Treehouse became (an excellent) Plan B.

So, we had to make do with a glimpse of “The Coathanger” from North Sydney instead.

14 August, 2024

This morning we are catching the 160X bus from Chatswood to Dee Why to meet up with my eldest daughter, Vanessa, husband Rod and their 2 kids Xavier and, to meet for our 1st time, the ‘newly’ minted Zara who was born 10 months ago.

As Xavier is at day care we spend the afternoon with Vanessa and Zara once she has had her nap.

Then we all bundle into the SUV and collect Xavier from day care where he very proudly shows us around his class room, various pictures, and to say hi to his friends and their parents.

When Rod gets home from work he gives Xavier a hand with constructing the digger. Then it’s bath and bed time for the kids while we enjoy a delish Italian deli takeaway with a 2017 Hunter Valley tempranillo.

Time to catch the bus back to the apartment after a lovely day and with a promise that they will visit us in Brisbane soon.

15 August, 2024

A lie-in this morning to be greeted by fog when we finally part the curtains.

Finally, we arrange to literally drop in to see my youngest daughter, Eliza, her husband Matt and their 2 boys, Louis and Hamish.

We were supposed to spend Sunday with them but had to cancel because of my illness.

Unfortunately, for the past couple of days all of them except for Hamish have also been struck down with the dreaded vomiting bug.

Hence the brief window this evening to see them. We catch the train to Pymble, walk 20 minutes to their house and around 5 pm we knock on their door.

Fortunately, we are able to spend about an hour catching up with them. The boys are quite taken with the set of walkie-talkies we’ve given them and keep themselves entertained while we catch up with Matt and Eliza. And we may get to see them in Brisbane soon, too.

Eliza gives us a lift to Gordon station where we get the train back to Chatswood where we pack up ready for our flight tomorrow.

16 August, 2024

Check out at the Meriton, Chatswood is at 10 this morning but our flight from Sydney to Brisbane doesn’t depart until 2:05 this afternoon. Since we are in no hurry to get to the airport we take the train.

Around 45 minutes later we drop off the bags, waltz through security and have a leisurely coffee in one of the terminal’s cafes before we walk opposite to Gate 3.

As our original flight had been cancelled and we were moved to this flight, the plane is full. We push back 10 minutes late but arrive in Brisbane on time at around 3:30 pm.

It seems that nothing has changed at Brisbane Airport’s Domestic Terminal since I flew in and out of here to Sydney every week in 2013. One bag arrives on the carousel, then nothing for about 15 minutes. This action is to ensure that the baggage handlers achieve their KPI (Key Performance Indicator) of getting baggage to the carousel within 10 minutes of a plane landing.

Bags collected we quickly get a cab and 20 minutes later and $66 lighter we are being dropped off at Aurora Tower.

Warmly welcomed by the Oaks Hotel receptionists, they issue us with keys and fobs, instruct us on how to use the new lifts (same as those we just left at the Meriton Suites in Chatswood) and a short time later we are walking back into our apartment, 5 weeks short of 2 years away.

Here we quickly unpack, throw on a load of laundry and walk down to Woolies at MacArthur Central for a basic grocery shop, checking out the changes to this part of the city that have occurred while we’ve been away.

A relaxing dinner of BBQ’d chook, potato salad and coleslaw before we hit the very comfortable king bed in a very dark room. Home at last!

17-18 August, 2024

Over this weekend we begin the task of emptying over 80 storage boxes from the cage in the garage and processing their contents. Some of these boxes haven’t moved since we put them there in November 2013, just before our 1st trip.

19 August, 2024

As with all our previous extended trips, the first thing we do when we return is set up a raft of medical appointments. My first one this morning is the dentist to repair that broken back molar.

Lynn’s appointments today include the chiropractor, the doctor to set up a blood test but also gets a COVID jab while she’s there, CitiScan for a bone density test and lastly SpecSavers for an eye test and new prescription.

20 August, 2024

La Mama Theatre is a not-for-profit theatre in Carlton, a suburb of Melbourne. It has been putting on contemporary theatre since 1967. La Mama produces work by theatre makers of all backgrounds.

The theatre, an initiative of founder Betty Burstall, was inspired by the “off-off-Broadway” theatre scene in New York City. Betty and her husband, film maker Tim Burstall, had returned from a trip to New York in the 60s and wanted to re-create the vibrancy and immediacy of the small theatres there. La Mama was modelled after the similarly-named New York venue La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club [wikipedia].

This year’s La Mama Explorations 2024 programme extends from 16 July – 22 September. Tonight, and for the next 2 nights the play, ‘The Artist’ is showing. It was written by Portia-Ann Forrest (Porsche), a hometown friend of Lynn’s for some 40 years. As we’d just arrived home in Brisbane it wasn’t feasible for Lynn to then fly down to Melbourne to see the show but, as both a congratulatory and birthday gift, Lynn instead supported Porsche by paying for her accommodation while she is in Melbourne for the play.

We’re looking forward to hearing all about it when Porsche returns to Albury in a few days’ time.

21 August, 2024

Lynn’s up bright and early this morning for her blood test at 7 am. En route she notices the mist blowing from the river through the gap in front of the newly-completed residential tower opposite Aurora. This building was still being completed when we left in September 2022.

On her return she photographs the extent of this morning’s fog which stretches along the valley with Mount Coot-tha in the background.

This is the last entry of our Blog for some time. Now that we are back home in Brisbane we will focus on setting up home and start planning the renovations that will take all our focus for the next year or so. We have now completed our 8 years of extended world travel which took us nearly 11 years to complete due to the interruptions from the Chinese Covid pandemic.

Travel will still take place going forward but our time away from Brisbane will be limited to maximum periods of up to 6 months. We still have some places we want to visit and some places we want to revisit. In fact, we are already planning to head to Victoria, possibly Tasmania, Adelaide and Broken Hill next May.

As for this Blog, it will be suspended for the near future but will probably be restarted for our shorter travels next year. I am sure that nobody wants to read about our mundane activities here at home, so Yogi and Boo Boo signing off – “HEY, HEY, HEY!”

We have traveled this past 11 years, not to escape life but so that life doesn’t escape us. Some of the things that we have learned is that Australia has better food, mostly nice folk, logical approaches to accommodation and efficiency of process than anywhere we have experienced in the world. Maybe it is true. There is no place like home.

“Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a 100 years of quiet.” – Patrick Rothfuss.