Thanks and goodbye
Trip Start
Jan 25, 2009
1
38
Trip End
Mar 03, 2009
Danbury, United Kingdom
Thursday, March 5, 2009
We made a good start on the unpacking and washing - 5 weeks plus of dirty underwear! We also opened the post (mainly bills and junk mail) and rang the immediate family to catch up on all the gossip while we had been away.
We have learnt from past trips that it works best for us not to go to bed too early, so we made it through to the evening before we crashed out and we both slept for more or less 12 hours.
I went to Laura's yesterday, while Barbara carried on with the unpacking and it was really great to see Beth, Sophie and Klara who had of course all grown and developed much more than I had expected since we last saw them, nearly six weeks ago.
Barb has gone over to Laura's today, while I have tried to catch up with correspondence and work out whether we are still solvent and, after checking on our modest investments, I am not sure.
We are pretty well back into the routine now and already the days are getting longer and when the clocks go forward in a couple of weeks to BST (daylight saving to our Aussi reliies and friends) we will feel like we have got through to Spring, even if the weather doesn't support the theory.
The next big event on our calendar, apart from Easter, is Barb's third, twentieth birthday party, on 18th April, so we need to finalise the arrangements for that during the next few weeks.
So that's our news and nearly the end of our travel blog. Barb and I have both been talking about our fantastic trip during the last few days, and agreed that it was just about perfect. We appreciated it all the more for being in real doubt up to a few weeks before we left, as Barb had been so ill, and only got the final diagnosis of a duodenal ulcer in time for her to get the proper, and incredibly effective treatment at the beginning of January.
We managed to do nearly everything that we had planned on our trip, in great company, and our only regret, apart from the rain in Sydney, was that we didn't have a little more time in Perth to spend as much time as we would have liked with our Aussie family.
The high spots were so many that it is difficult to single them out. Apart from the great laughs that we had with Dave and Barb in NZ and the pleasure of seeing Mike and Hazel in Brisbane and catching up with Kate and Alex, it really was terrific to see everyone in Perth.
In NZ, the Franz Josef Glacier, Milford Sound and jetboating at Queenstown particularly stand out, as does the wonderful house which we stayed in in Nelson (if only we could have stayed there for more than one night). I won't mention the speeding ticket nor Dave cleaning the screen and completely changing the set up of the home theater system in the apartment in Dunedin, if he doesn't mention the number of times that I mentioned food and Barb doesn't say anything about the number of times I insisted that they all posed for photos.
The Brisbane high spots definitely included meeting Bryce and Sam, dinner at the Boatshed, my Mud Crab and the visit to the Aussie Zoo. Again I will make no mention whatever of the amount of time that Hazel spent in bookshops and the time that she and Barb spent shopping, as long as my fixation with planning the next day's events, before we had finished what we were doing that day, is also overlooked.
Finally in Perth, it was great at last to see Prowse Mansion for ourselves and it certainly lived up to expectations. We were as always overawed by the way in which Dave and Barb are able to keep all the balls (family, business, social life) in the air at the same time, but were exhausted just watching them do it. It was great to catch up with the inlaws and the outlaws at the cousin's night, and to spend time with Lynne and Ian and their family, but the absolute highlight has to be the visit to the Perth Motaplex for the drag racing and the opportunity to be deafened and eviscerated, from the comfort of Dave's special chairs, and all in great company.
So until the next time, back in Australia or here in the UK, thanks to everyone we travelled with or met over the last few weeks.
