Last month

Happy New Year. I'm updating the website & Julie's snoring.

The day turned out to be our down day, just sitting around playing on laptops, with the occasional burst of activity to get a suitcase packed, bearing in mind the weight limit for each one of 25 Kg. We came here with about 55 Kg & are returning with over 75 Kg. I ended up with 2 of them right to the limit & we chuck the rest into the last one. The day ended with a message from Christine, a friend I have met online when she found this site via the webcams, noticed the references to Seattle & wrote to me.

We met her & her partner Anne for lunch at Red Robin (yep, ticked off another "wanna go there" for Julie) on the way out & they invited us to have a look at the house. It's a huge place on 3 levels overlooking the waterway in the University district. Julie was supremely jealous, but is still very happy with our little place back in Canberra. Then it was on down the I-5 through Tacoma & Gig Harbor to stay overnight with former Boeing colleague Frank & his wife Paula.

We arrived mid-afternoon & it was a case of "cue the deer". Standing joke for them, their wildlife seems to appear at just the right time! A little orphan turned up for his feed of apples & provided a superb photo opportunity. And I caught sight (very briefly) of my first hummingbird too. Makes a noise like a giant dragonfly. I have to say a huge thank you to Frank & Paula for a wonderfully relaxing evening. I slept like a log for my eight hours & I'm now sitting in a quiet house writing this & watching the daylight appear. I'd like to say watching the sun come up, but it looks like we won't see it again until Australia. And yes, they are real needles on the real Douglas Fir tree, cut from their own property.

I used their (very accurate) bathroom scales to repack the suitcases to be exactly 25 Kg each, with the remainder in an old small one that they gave us. Perfect. All the heavy (dense) stuff, like bread mix, is in the small one. OK. The rest of the day spent catching up & saying goodbyes, a 60 minute wait at the border, to then get waved through, & get ourselves to the airport. The bag limit is 23 Kg each! So we hunkered down at a spare check-in counter & proceeded to repack the bloody things all over again, with each one sitting on the check-in scales as we added & subtracted to get it just right. The small one, which would normally be used as a carry-on with wheels, was over 17 Kg! That's nearly 40 pounds. Now that the mad scramble is over, we're relaxing in the bar - Julie is reading while I write this. We'll be home tomorrow, I mean Saturday.

OK, we're back in our own time zone now. Years ago, all planes arriving in Australia had a Quarantine person come through & spray the plane for insects. I remember it happening back in the early 90's coming in from Singapore & the Philippines, but not since then. Well, it seems the practice is now back in vogue. We had to sit there for about 10 minutes after engine shut-down, with all of the overhead lockers open for the spraying & then a visual inspection, before we could offload. We now sit around in a bar in Sydney airport for a few hours waiting for the Canberra connection. BTW, for future reference, the best way to check the status of a flight is to put the airline code & flight number (such as AC33 or QF12) into Google. The result is at the top of the list.

We're home. And Lily has worked wonders on Datsun. He looks slim! Apparently she has taken them on lots of walks. And it's HOT! Actually not really hot, just feels like it to us. The tomato plants have GROWN. They're up to the top of the stakes already, & bearing masses of tomatoes. Can't wait for them to ripen. And following on in the process of allowing the garden 12 months to show us what it's got, the spiky plants at the front have burst into bloom with "red hot poker" spikes. No shortage of surprises here.

Another 2 weeks into the year & we are in Brisbane. The property in Queanbeyan settled on Thursday, which relieved a bit of the pressure on the credit cards. This trip was booked over a month ago, so we just went ahead. The primary purpose was to visit the Health Resort & check out our purchases there. But first we went down to the top end of the Gold Coast to check out Swagman motor homes. Mmmmm, nice! Mmmmm, expensive! Also did some quick comparisons up the road with Winnebago. And as for the Health Resort, we are both VERY pleased with our purchases. Each one will be cash positive even without tax deductions, & will also give us a week for two at the resort each year. That's a 2-week $10,000 holiday every year.

At lunch, we returned to the club where we had dinner last night, & worked on their seafood sensation. Julie was surprised by the calamari, which we figured out was the first time that she had eaten it fresh, not frozen. She still hasn't shut up about it! Then on to catch up with Dorothy & Pete at Kate's place, where we spent quite some time discussing motor homes of various sizes. Theirs is somewhat smaller than what we're dreaming of.

Of course the puppies were very pleased to see us home, as always. Taking them for a walk the other day, I noticed a very stark reminder of the fires here 5 years ago. Right next to a brand new electricity pole, was the burnt out stump of the original pole. This is about 200 metres from home. Now that's scary. One of our neighbours was telling us a bit more about the fires recently. Apparently several people elected not to evacuate & each one went around the complex with a big wheelie bin full of water & a bucket - whenever you see an ember starting to flare, you grab a bucket of water from the bin & douse it. Probably the only thing that saved several of these houses. And there are still blocks just up the street that are empty - one of them is just now rebuilding.

Stop press. The Cook family portraits are now available here.

This being the long weekend for Australia Day, we've done some cleaning up in the garden - me doing most of the bending work & Julie doing the sweeping that she can do standing up (her back is still pretty bad). Just great that we can do it together & discuss what we want to do with various sections of the place. For example, I've been thinking for some time about putting a rainwater tank near the "front" door, which is actually at the back of the property near the driveway entrance (confused yet? Yep. so am I). She suggested that we could put one on the street end of the house, which turned out to be a brilliant idea, as it would drain the other half of the roof & supply water for the apple tree & other stuff at that end. Anyway, we have this very healthy looking plant growing under the bird feeder. As we also have numerous heads of barley & oats that have self sown from the bird food, I figured we should just leave it to grow & see what develops. Turns out that I just didn't recognise a corn plant when I saw one, as it has all of its leaves directly opposed, instead of scattered at angles around the main stem. So now we have our very own corn plantation as well.

We've just had another summer storm go through here. As it was brewing, the galahs were out on the wires, rolling under the wire to get their feathers wet. I remember Doris telling me about it ages ago, but I've never seen it myself. Getting to appreciate this camera more & more - I'm able to zoom right in for a movie.

And speaking of cameras, no sooner had I got the new PuppyCam (aka Julie's old camera) up & running, when it got rained on & now it's offline to dry out. Ugh! Fortunately, it dried out OK & after a couple of false starts, came good. Yay!