Category: Diary

EASTER MONDAY 2012

Easter Monday was our last day in Melbourne. Not far from where our son lives in Essendon there’s a nursery, called the POYTONS NURSERY. Martin drove us there. This really made my day. It is such a lovely place. It has a NURSERY, A CAFE and a GARDEN ROOM.

First of all we made it to the cafe. Afterwards Martin selected a huge blueberry plant from the outside nursery.

www.poyntonsofessendon.com.au

At the cafe I had a pot of tea and a wonderfully fresh fruit salad with a selction of about seven different fruits. I shared it with Peter and Martin since it was more than enough for the three of us. P and M had some cake and coffee. The display of cakes looked heavenly.

Here are the names of some of the cakes that were available: Mixed Berry Cheesecake, Gluten Free Orange Clementine, Gluten Free Chocolate Addiction, Heaven Sent Nougat Fudge . . . .

I felt I would have loved to take lots of photos of the place. However none of us had thought of bringing a camera along. Looking up the above website you get a very good impression what the place looks like. We talked about it how Tristan, Steph and the girls would love the place. At the cafe you can also have a very good lunch.

Easter Monday was the day for Peter and me to go back on the nighttrain. Martin dropped us off at Southern Cross Station. Our train was due to leave at 8 pm. It should have arrived from Sydney at 7 pm. But it wasn’t there! They announced a delay. Then they announced another delay and another one.

It was a cold night. However we found room in a heated waiting room. Finally the train arrived at a quarter past 9 pm and was ready for departure back to Sydney at 10 pm. We got off at Moss Vale. By that time it had lost another one and a half hours because of speed restrictions on the way. Long before Moss Vale we could see from the train already some morning light. It looked very beautiful. I tried to capture it with my camera. However it didn’t turn out to look as good.

Our railway coach, that was supposed to take us down from Moss Vale to Dapto, had long gone of course. But another smaller bus had been organised and straight away took all the passengers along who wanted to travel to Albion Park, Dapto or Wollongong.From Dapto Station we went home by taxi.

We arrived home at 10 am. Just three and a half hours later than we thought we would arrive. It was good to be back home!

Easter Sunday 2012

I have here now some of the pictures we took on Easter Sunday.

Last night we heard about the earthquake near Aceh. This certainly terrified a lot of people. What a relief that this time it didn’t result in a huge tsunami.

Yesterday the selection and insertion of the pictures for this blog was a bit exhausting. Today I think I ought to write a bit more about our visit. So I am about to do some editing now

Stephanie offered cups of tea as soon as we arrived. I chose flavoured green tea. Peter had black tea with goats milk. Tristan’s family have goats milk for every day consumption. They have their own goats on the property. The girls always drink goats milk and love it.

Everyone went with their cups of tea down the block to where the barbecue was set up. I prefered to stay on the verandah watching from the top the going ons from up there. I enjoyed my green tea out of the stainless steel cup. It was the perfect drink to have outside on this fresh sunny morning. The two girls were a pleasure to watch roaming about in their fairy dresses. Tristan and Martin went about getting the fire going in the barbecue dish. Peter took photos walking here, there and everywhere. Steph was inside. She had taken it upon herself to assemble the blackboard we had brought along for the girls. We had also brought along some books for the girls. A couple of these books Tristan took to reading to the girls soon after our arrival. Tristan is an excellent reader and the girls are excellent listeners!

Here now a few of the goats pictures that Peter took.

For more information about Easter Sunday go to Berlioz1935

On the Way to Whoop Whoop

Easter Sunday, 8th April 2012

This is our son’s birthday. We are with him on our way to his son’s place in Whoop Whoop. Martin is 52 today and he drives us all the way to Whoop Whoop. On the way we stop at a cafe. We have home-made scones with home-made jam and fresh cream. Instead of tea we have filtered coffee. It’s still early and we are the only customers.

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Some time later we arrive at our grandson’s place. Tristan, his wife Stephanie and their children Kia and Jaki are already expecting us. We are lucky with the weather. It’s still a bit chilly, but there’s sunshine and it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain as has been forecast.

We bring our son’s birthday cake along which Peter baked the previous day. It’s a ‘Baum-Kuchen’, that is a ‘Tree trunk cake’ because when you cut it, it looks like the inside of a tree trunk. Peter found the recipe in one of our very old German cookbooks. Steph and Kia watch how Great-Granddad carries the cake up the escarpment.

Tristan’s family, they live high up. Very steep property. The cars have to be parked at the bottom. The family only moved there very recently. A little while ago they lived on their property in Tasmania, which they sold. So now they live in the vicinity of Melbourne.

We love being able to visit them. Towards the end of the year we’ll probably book a cabin nearby. Then we can visit them again. It is such a beautiful area. I am very much looking forward to go there for a visit in our Australian summer.

In one of my next blogs I am going to publish some more photos of our visit with the family. We had a lovely barbecue with them. And there are going to be pictures of the cake too with a sparkler and the little girls in their fairy dresses enjoying holding sparklers in their hands.

For today I have only the pictures of Peter carrying the cake and Steph and Kia watching.

PORT KEMBLA POOL

Port Kembla Pool was first established in the 1930s. I took yesterday a picture of an old photo of Port Kembla Pool. My picture didn’t turn out very well, however I publish it anyway so you may perhaps get a bit of an impression how much things have changed over the years. But the beach and the ocean are still the same!

I love Judi Dench

BEST EXOTIC
MARIGOLD HOTEL

Judi Dench in the above movie is superb!
Peter and I saw the movie yesterday. We thoroughly enjoyed it. There were an enormous amount of laughs in it. They showed how elderly people can still have great entertainment value.
The story depicts British pensioners who want to move to the above hotel in India for their retirement. Hilarious to watch what happens to them in India. Makes me think that there are really endless possibilities where one could go to for retirement. Apart from Judi Dench there were a great number of other brilliant actors in it, British and Indian. I liked the Indian actors very much too. And to see how people live in Jaipur, that’s quite amazing!

Here’s a link to the movie:

Judi Dench talked to one of our reporters on Thursday. Does she feel she’s old? No, she says, ‘I’m not old!’ I just love her.

Today we had a lovely sunny day again, rather autumnly already with a bit of wind and not getting very warm. I finally got around to taking some more pictures around the house to show the immense growth which is taking place in every corner of our property. When we moved here in 1994 hardly anything grew here yet. Now look at it!

This is how much lemon balm grows within an instant

This sort of vegetation can be seen from the bedroom at the back.

The last two pictures I took from the outside looking into the living-room. (Peter looks at some photo-books.)

Diary

Last week on that ‘Sunny Sunday in Sydney’ we met Angie and Roy. Yesterday they arrived in Cairns and sent us from there a photo of the two of them in front of ULURU. It’s a beautiful photo. Makes me want very much to see ULURU. Peter and I so far never yet made it to the centre of Australia. We should really go there one day.

In Cairns Angie and Roy are going on a Snorkeling Cruise. I admire them for their fitness. They’re retired in their sixties and still fit enough to go snorkeling! Peter wrote them to watch out that they wont be left behind somewhere on the Great Barrier Reef.

After six days with sunshine and no rain we are back now to some more precipitation. It’s still warm enough. Seems to me our climate becomes more and more subtropical. Our bushes and trees around the house grow spectacularly. Peter took the other day some pictures of the vegetation around our house. Doesn’t this look very lush?

On the first picture you can see the ‘jungle’ behind our fence!

A Sunny Sunday in Sydney

We arrived at 10,30 am at Martin Place station to meet Angie and Roy at 11 am. We walked along Macquarie Street to their hotel and Peter took some pictures along the way. When we arrived at the hotel they offered us refreshments straightaway. And we soon got into talking amiably.

Later on we had Japanese lunch with them at the Opera House. The sky had cleared for the day. In beautiful sunshine we walked up to the Opera House. Peter took some pictures. When my lunch arrived Peter took a picture of that too. I had ordered a vegetarian roll. It looked beautiful with the avocado on top and cut up in small pieces. Somehow I managed to eat all this with chopsticks! I spiced every piece with soy sauce, horseradish and ginger. Delicious! The others had ordered something with fish. They all commented that my dish looked much more colourful.

After lunch we walked through the Botanical Gardens and Peter took some more pictures. By 2 pm we were back in Macquarie Street where Angie and Roy were staying at the InterContinental.They had tickets for a concert for later in the afternoon at the Opera House. So it worked out well that they could have a little rest before going out again. Peter and I wanted to catch our train back home from Martin Place. We had had a lovely day with two people we had never met before. But some of Angie’s family are known to us. They all were emailed some photos of yesterday’s meeting. One of Angie’s sisters, who lives in England, already emailed back saying she and her husband were planning to travel to Melbourne next year to see their two sons there and meet other family members. It’s such a small world! Peter worked out that a lot of the descendents of his paternal grandparents already live in Australia.

Angie and Roy travel today, Monday, to South Australia and to the Barossa Valley. They stay in Australia for two weeks only. During this time they also plan to fly to Alice Springs (to see ULURU), as well as to Cairns and from there back home to America. I think in Sydney they had had only three days.

My Friend Eva

My Friend Eva

I did get to know her when I was forty and Eva was sixty-three. She died thirty years later. I was able to keep in touch with her right to the end. When Eva was nearly eighty, she moved to a hostel. Before that she had lived at home with her estranged husband and had frequent bouts of depression. She had wanted to separate from her husband for a long time. Her husband didn’t want to let her go. He also prevented her from getting an age pension. For years and years she was stranded not being able to buy anything for herself.

Finally, through the intervention of a caring social worker, she was able to get her age pension. Another caring person, namely a Catholic sister, who lived in the neighborhood, saw to it that she could move into the hostel. She was nearly eighty at the time.

For many years I visited Eva in her home. Whenever I visited we played several games of Scrabble. Even when Eva was in a depressive state, she always loved to play Scrabble! Once she had some pension money, she developed an interest in shopping again. When I took her out for a bit of shopping, she also liked to have a cup of coffee with me in a shopping center. Sometimes I took her to my place for some games of Scrabble and to have lunch with me and Peter.

After having moved to the hostel, Eva liked to be taken for visits to a hairdresser. She also started choosing with great care what to wear for the day. It was really important to her to look good! Sometimes I took her with me to visit some friends of mine. They were all fond of Eva. I was her confidante. I think I was probably the only person she liked to open up to. I saw her only about once a week or once a fortnight. She always liked to spend a few minutes to let me know what had been going on with her since I last saw her. She also never forgot to inquire about me and my family.

The hostel provided for outings in their community bus. In the beginning Eva had been keen on going to all these outings. However, as she got older she lost interest in it. There came a time when she just didn’t want to go out anymore. Even with me she wanted to go out less and less. She still liked playing Scrabble though whenever I visited her. I think it was when Eva was about ninety when she started losing interest in playing Scrabble. However right to the end she was always looking forward to my visits.

Eva died in 2005. I was seventy at the time. In 2007 I wrote an imaaginary story about my being in a hostel as an eighty-two year old. In five years from now I will be eighty-two! Hopefully my husband is still going to be alive by then and I won’t have the need for a place in a hostel. But what if? I plan on publishing this imaginary story that I wrote five years ago. I also have some photos of Eva. Maybe a couple of these I can soon publish as well.