Christmas: home and away

Warning: lots of words, no pictures!

As Christmas approaches, my sewing time has diminished to next to nothing. The reason for that is this:

Yesterday (Tuesday), I got some knitting and some reading (three quilting magazines) done as I travelled for nearly ten hours by train to Coffs Harbour where I was met by DD who took me home to her place. I arrived after the boys were in bed so they had a lovely surprise when they awoke this morning. Around mid-morning, the four of us left for my home. Unfortunately, SIL was not able to join us due to work commitments; which is why I had to make the trip; 591 km – 370 miles is a long trip for one adult with two active toddlers! We arrived home at 7:45pm, just over nine hours after we left Woolgoolga.

Tomorrow evening, my mother arrives by bus and train from her home town of Bingara – a ten-hour trip. I am sure she will be very tired and very hungry (she never eats or drinks on the trip; Dad would be so cross if he knew) but pleased to see her great-grandsons.

On Friday, apart from entertaining my guests, I have an appointment for a  haircut and have to take Mum shopping for some personal items. I also need to do the last of my grocery shopping and cook the turkey for Christmas lunch (we have it cold – it’s summer here).

On Saturday, my uncle (my father’s brother), my aunt, my brother, DSIL and four-year-old niece, will join mum, DD, the Grandboys, WM and I to celebrate Christmas. Saturday evening we will spend in front of the television watching the Carols in the Domain.

On Sunday, after church, we will join WM’s extended family at the retirement village where his mother lives. It is next to a school and there is a large fenced sports oval for the little ones to run around in (and not escape). Some members of the family will bring gazebos for some shade. Lunch is basically a bring-your-own-meat for the barbecue and a standardised pot-luck (in the sense that the women tend to bring the same thing every year – I always being a cheesecake for dessert; apparently if I didn’t, I would be told to go home and make one!). It will either be served in the “rec room” which MIL has booked for the day or on the oval. All very Australian, isn’t it?

My niece will arrive on Monday to take Mum home and DD, the Grandboys and I will spend a quiet 

day before making the return trip to Woolgoolga on Tuesday. WW will follow by train on Christmas Eve (after work). It will be a long day for him: he gets up at 5:45am and the train arrives in Coffs Harbour at midnight! At least he can sleep on the train.

We will stay in Coffs Harbour that night but join DD and the family early on Christmas morning. Christmas lunch will be held at SIL’s parents place, which is nearby. J&A, SIL’s parents, are kindly giving us the use a car while we’re in Woolgoolga, so we will have some freedom to come and go as we please.

We plan to spend the Friday and the Saturday with DD and family and, hopefully, some of that time will be spent on the beach (10 minutes from DD’s home). On Sunday we will catch the train home so that WM can return to work on Monday!

Then, with Christmas behind me, and most other commitments on a summer hiatus, I plan to sew and sew and sew and sew! There will also be more ironing, cutting, sorting and storing of scraps since I am nowhere near done and I’m obviously not going to get much done in the next ten days!

How about you?
Will your Christmas be as hectic as mine?
Or do you plan on a quiet celebration?

vacation photo journal

“A picture paints a thousand words” so I hope this gives a small indication of our time away from home (in Australia, we call this ‘holidays’). Warning: as the title suggests, this is a photo heavy post.

We spent a weekend catching up with friends that we haven’t seen in seven years, except for DD’s wedding and my dad’s funeral. They live in a small town called Bellbrook, a community of 360 people. We spent most of our time talking but WM got up early and took some photos. Here is a photo of their house and part of their 18 acres. The second photo is taken over their dam as seen from their back patio.

We spent a few days with my mother – she spends most of her time reading.

WM did a few small jobs while there; including getting up on the roof and turning on the evaporative air cooler. Can you see him up there?

From mum’s, we drove east to the coast, passing through the town of Grafton the weekend they celebrated the Jacaranda Festival. I took these photos out the front window while WM was driving. Jacarandas are an imported species; the tree with gold flowers in the first photo is Grevillea Robusta ( common name: “Silky Oak”) which is an Australian native.

 

Our ‘real’ vacation began when we took possession of a beachside cabin at Woolgoolga, just a few minutes drive from DD’s home.

 

This was the view from our front veranda early one morning:

We had lots of walks on the beach.

Both grandsons were fascinated with these little balls made as the sand-crabs made little holes for themselves.

The seagulls didn’t take any notice of us – unless they thought there might be some food on offer! WM took a great photo; I love the reflection.

We went whale spotting up on the headland and were rewarded with seeing whales every day. The whales were travelling south; returning to the cold waters of the Antarctic Ocean after going north for a few months to while away the winter in warmer water. The return journey is usually slower and more in-shore, given that there are calves to be taken care of, and therefore better for whale spotting.

They were much further out than WM’s camera could capture so don’t expect professional photos.

The first indication that there is a whale is the sight of a spout as they surface to breathe.

 

Sometimes you catch a glimpse of some body part out of the water, like this faraway tail!

And sometimes, they jump out of the water. We saw several whales breach but they were always too far away to get a clear photo. This was WM’s best shot of a humpback breaching.

Our best experience was when a mother humpback and her calf came in relatively close to the shore. They were close enough that, with the onshore wind, we could hear the mother slapping the water.

On our final day in Woolgoolga, we made Christmas puddings. Both boys love to cook so they were very excited when we arrived at their house. “Did you bring the ‘gredients?” was our greeting!

Our Christmas puddings have threepences in them; an old English tradition from my mum’s family. Threepences are part of Australia’s pre-decimal currency – they contain a large amount of silver so don’t harm the food as modern coins would. These photos show some members of the family throwing their threepences in (and making a ‘wish’). Next year we’re going to add the threepences to the dry ingredients to make it easier for the boys to stir.

SIL came home from work just in time. We ended our holiday/vacation with a family lunch at a popular tavern nearby which has a great play area for the kids – it was much more crowded than we expected; we forgot it was Halloween (a ‘tradition’ that is only just taking on in Australia) and celebrated here mostly for fun and dressing up in ghoulish costumes!

WM and I had a good trip home. With the boys, the trip is nine hours; we did it in seven and a half!

I’ll leave you with one of my favourite photos from our holiday – Younger Grandson doesn’t usually wear his hair like that; we’d just come in from the beach and Grandad had towel-dried it!

the saga of the floods in Moree

warning: very long post!

The optometrist that mum has been seeing in her local town (Bingara) visits about once every couple of months but is based in Moree, which is a smallish town in north-western NSW. It seems that Ross is the only optometrist in the area!

A specialist eye surgeon from Queensland's Gold Coast visits Moree two or three times a year to do cataract (and other eye) surgery at the small hospital for patients who would otherwise have to travel 1000 kilometres (625 miles) or more to get the appropriate treatment.

Mum had to see the specialist on Thursday morning before her scheduled surgery on Friday. She had to see him again on Saturday morning to have the bandages removed and to get the prescriptions and instructions for the various eye drops that she would have to use for the next four weeks!

I travelled to Bingara on Wednesday. Due to track maintenance, the train wasn't running, so I had to go to Tamworth by coach, then change to another coach to Bingara. Due to the torrential rain that fell non-stop on Wednesday, we were more than an hour late getting into Tamworth and, of course, more than an hour late getting into Bingara, finally arriving at 7:35pm! I had left home at 7:55am so it was a very long day!

Thursday morning was warm and overcast.

taken from mum's front yard looking towards Moree

We drove the 119 kilometres (75 miles) to Moree in dry conditions but this photo shows that the rain was on its way!

Behold! The rain comes! Notice how flat the Moree Plains are.

We arrived in Moree, had morning tea, and then saw the specialist as required. We booked into our motel, visited the tourist information centre (across the road) and had some lunch at the indigenous art gallery in town. By then it had started to rain.

The rain got steadily worse; so much that, on Friday, I had to drive mum to the hospital which was only 200metres from our motel! Mum's surgery was scheduled for 9am and they assured me she would be ready in less than an hour. I didn't see her until after 11am by which time it was bucketing down! We spent the afternoon quietly in the motel room. Unfortunately for mum, she had left her hearing aids at home so she was unable to follow the audio book I had specifically organised for her for this occasion! She tried to knit but ended up just watching television for most of the afternoon.

That evening we got a phone call from the hospital telling us we could go back to Bingara if we wanted to avoid being flooded in, and speak to the specialist by phone the next morning! But mum wouldn't budge! She didn't want me to drive in the rain and the dusk (that hour before dark is always a difficult time for driving, particularly in the country where native animals, usually kangaroos, are likely to appear in the middle of the road quite unexpectedly!)

And so we stayed -- probably not one of my greatest decisions (but my mother had spoken so what could I do?)!

It continued to rain heavily; during the night it got worse. At 3am on Saturday, the rain woke mum up (no hearing aids remember) - the water was literally coming down in sheets. I have never seen anything like it except during brief thunderstorms; but this wasn't a thunderstorm and it wasn't brief!

The next morning we drove into town to see the specialist as scheduled and heard the news that the road to Bingara had been cut off during the night! Nothing we could do now but wait (and go for short walks between showers). At first we were told that we'd probably get out on Monday. But the river continued to rise and a major flood was declared.

The showers eased on Saturday and by mid-afternoon the sun was out. But flooding has nothing to do with current weather conditions!

Water in the hospital grounds - from rainfall not flooding!

Edward Street bridge; Saturday afternoon

We tried to go to church on Sunday morning but the street was partially flooded and I couldn't find anywhere to park the car. Even if I had, how we were supposed to get from the road to the church?

the street outside the Catholic church - doesn't look like much, does it?

now see it in context - it's too wide to jump across - about 3 metres (10 feet)

I turned left 90° to take this photo; the church is now on my right; the cars give you an idea of the extent of the flooding;
this is not from the river, this is stormwater that can't get away!

I was glad we didn't attend church; there was water over the road leading into town when we went towards the church; later the road was closed and we may have been trapped on the wrong side of the river from our motel!

Drivers and pedestrians come into town over a bridge which joins Balo Street (the main street)  here;
this is what the foot of the bridge looked like and the reason why the bridge was closed!

The river peaked on Sunday at 10.20 metres: just six centimetres (4 1/2 inches) less than the highest flood on record! The bridge separating us from the main part of town was closed due to flooding on the other side.

The police woman I spoke to later on Sunday (a hot, bright, cloudless day) told me it would be unlikely if we got out by the Gwydir Highway (the shortest route to Bingara) by Thursday and if the predicted rain returned on Tuesday, it would be at least a week!

We were paying normal rates for our motel room (about $100 per night) -- no discount for surgery or for being stranded! We had to eat take-away food or in a restaurant for dinner. (We had bought cereal, milk, plastic bowls, paper plates, bread and fillings form the supermarket after we arrived). We had to buy clothes because mum had arrived in Moree with only the clothes she was wearing plus some clean underwear, so she wore one of my lightweight skirts. I had planned to be away from home for a minimum of five days and had two lightweight skirts, three short sleeved tee shirts, plus a long denim skirt, two long sleeved tee-shirts, a tracksuit and jeans in case the weather was cool.

By Monday I'd had enough. So I made a decision (which mum didn't like but I had the car keys!!) We were leaving via the Narrabri Road. I was told I could get through to Tamworth that way! By the time I reached Narrabri, I found out that one of the roads I had planned to use had been closed since we had left Moree and we would have to go an even longer way via Coonabarabran! That story is all in a previous post so I wont bore you with it again except to say, praise the Lord, the road from Narrabri to Bingara reopened within half an hour of us leaving town!

And so, we arrived in Bingara at 4:20pm on Monday (instead of the estimated 9:30pm if I had been forced to take the longer route). Mum got to her other specialist appointment in Tamworth on Tuesday (this specialist came up from Sydney and she had had the appointment for nine months so there was no way I was letting her miss it!).

I got the coach to Tamworth and the train to Strathfield (inner west Sydney) on Wednesday, arriving only twenty minutes late! WM picked me up and drive home in the horrendous peak hour traffic with light rain falling. I closed my eyes and thought about something else entirely!!

Next year, when mum has the other eye done, we will take changes of clothes, hearing aids, a picnic set and I will make the urgent decisions!! And, because I don't think it will flood again, I will take photos of what the river should look like!

More flood photos tomorrow (I think this post is long enough!)

We're off!

DD and I are leaving soon for beautiful Bingara on the north-west slopes and plains of NSW [where my parents live]. Thursday night we'll be staying with my sister in Tamworth and on Friday we'll take a detour to Nundle Woollen Mill on the way home.

Behave yourselves while I'm away!! LOL