Diary continued on Palm Sunday 2019

As a said we bought something for breakfast at Woolies in Gundagai. If I remember right, among other things we did buy a few bananas as well. And as I said we had a very good salad lunch when we arrived at our son’s place in Benalla.

I mentioned in this post what we did on our first afternoon in Benalla:

https://auntyuta.com/2019/04/13/diary-a-few-days-away-from-home-in-april-2019/

There were Peter’s pictures to go with it.

At our son’s place we had some afternoon tea in the backyard. Of course it was a sunny afternoon. Benalla has not had any good rain for many, many months. Everyone is worried, the place will soon be running out of water for the residents, if they do not get some good rain very soon.

This is the lunch we had on Sunday, the 7th of April, at Benalla’s Bowling Club. Peter had roast pork and vegies and I had a ‘stack’ of vegies.

DSCN5189 — This was served for breakfast while we were at Martin’s.

I think for another breakfast we had baked beans on toast. Martin is always out to please us when we stay at his place.

On Monday, the 8th of April, was Martin’s birthday. He turned 59. We arrived in Australia by boat from Germany in 1959. So our 60th Anniversary is coming up! We gave Martin a globe for his birthday that he liked very much.

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DSCN5195 — This is where we went for lunch on Martin’s birthday.

Back in Gundagai on Tuesday we had a lovely lunch at the Bistro of the Gundagai Hotel. This is the picture that Peter took of our lunch. I had plain vegies with some delicious mashed potatoes and a small beer. Peter had all the vegies and mashed potatoes as well plus a huge piece of chicken Schnitzel.And naturally a beer too.

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On Wednesday morning the bakery was open for business by the time we got there. We had coffee there and some toasted sandwhiches. Then we were off to Gunning. I already published a few pictures of Peter’s about Gunning in that other blog. Here now are some more pictures that I took with my camera:

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DSCN5227 — The Post Office Lady was on her own. When I bought some overseas stamps from her, she asked me for how long I would still be in Australia. Apparently she thought I was a tourist.

The Post Office woman was indeed very friendly and had quite a long conversation with me. When I mentioned that I had resided in Australia since 1959,she was indeed surprised. I told her about our trip and how tiring it was for Peter to have to do all this driving and that we liked Australia and how many children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren we had here, but that we still had brother and sister in Germany.

The next rest stop for us was at Belmore Park in Goulburn where I only took this picture:

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The Park is as beautiful as ever. Also there are some very good public toilets there!

We had another rest stop at the Robertson Pie Shop. I think the Robertson pies are still very good. I had a beef curry pie as usual and with tomato sauce of course. Very tasty! Peter had a beef mushroom pie as usual. We also took some fruit pies home: As usual!

The drive down Macquarie Pass went very well. And soon we were home, home, home!

Nearly one Week away from Home (in November 2018)

We have just come back from a great few days away from home. I found our trip was very relaxing, and we did quite a few things that are worth remembering. It is always good to be able to go away for a little while. This creates memories.

Both Peter and I are in our eighties. That we still enjoy doing a bit of travelling, I find remarkable. Peter is battling to maintain some normality to his life while old age and sickness diminish his fitness. The one thing he is still pretty good at, is driving a car. He says driving a car on good roads for certain distances he finds relaxing. Our old Audi goes well on highways. In towns where there are a lot of traffic lights, Peter has to stop the car too often. This is when the car uses a lot of petrol pro km. However on freeways and highways the car uses much, much less petrol, and this makes Peter very happy and joyful to not have to stop all the time. However, Peter being 83 and having a few health issues that can make him feel perhaps too tired after a longer drive, he agreed not to drive the 650 km to Benalla in one day, but rather to stay overnight somewhere, that is at about the halfway point. This time we came up with the idea to stop at Gundagai for our overnight stays. This worked out very well. I wrote here that we stayed at the “Gundagai Motel”:

https://auntielive.wordpress.com/

http://gundagaimotel.com.au/

After our one night’s stay at Gundagai we stayed at our son’s place at Benalla for three nights. And on the way back we stayed again for one night at Gundagai. This means we left home on a Friday morning and arrived back home on a Wednesday afternoon. So this makes it close to one week! I reckon we did very well, considering our age and Peter’s health problems. And of course I too have sometimes a few minor health problems related to old age!

Peter is booked in for some more treatment in the hospital. We hope the result of these treatments is going to be as good as possible so that perhaps in future we are still going to be able to do similar beautiful trips!

The last Part of my September 2017 Diary?

I hope, this is going to be the last part now. I think, our stay at BIG4 Nambucca Holiday Park I have pretty well covered by now, except for one outing, that is, we stopped one morning at Nambucca Heads Railway Station just to have a look. I assume it would have been on that day when we went to the Honey Place at Urunga:

https://auntyuta.com/?s=honey+place%2Cat+Urunga&submit=Search

When we stopped at that Honey Place, we were really on our way to Coffs Harbour. So we stopped at Nambucca Head Railway Station first.

nambucca heads railway station phone number

We went around the station for quite a while. It was early morning. The station master was not there yet. His shift started a bit later. While we looked around taking some photos, time passed quickly. And before we started leaving the station master already appeared for his shift and Peter could talk to him. It has been a while since Peter worked at a station. During the conversation with the Nambucca Heads station master, Peter mentioned that he used to work at Albion Park Station. However, this was a long, long time ago. It really has been a long time that Peter retired from his job.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macksville_railway_station

South of Nambucca Heads is Macksville Railway Station. We did not have a look at that one. But coming back from Coffs Harbour in the afternoon we went as far as Macksville. We had a pleasant stay there near the river and sat in a cafe having some tea.

http://www.aussietowns.com.au/town/macksville-nsw

Now to Coffs Harbour. I have no pictures of it, that is we stayed there only in a shopping centre for the toilet facilities and a bit of lunch. A lot of building work was going on in the centre of town. Somehow Peter never found his way out to the coastal areas. After lunch we turned straight back onto the Highway going back in a southerly direction until we ended up in Macksville where we liked it very much.

It is a pity we did not take time to see a bit more of Coffs Harbour. I am sure near the sea there are some beautiful spots as you can see here:

https://www.visitnsw.com/destinations/north-coast/coffs-harbour-area/coffs-harbour/beaches

On Thursday, the 21st of September, we were on our way back home. We stopped at Taree for lunch.

WP_20170921_12_24_26_Pro (3) — This was an excellent lunch near the Manning River.

Towards evening we arrived in Newcastle where we stayed at the Ibis Budget Hotel. Our granddaughter Lauren picked us up from our hotel to take us to a Pizza place for dinner. We were happy that we could see our granddaughter for a bit who was enormously busy at the time preparing for a competition.

We left very early the next morning and had a very good run home. We arrived home on Friday, the 22nd, at around midday. That was really a very fast drive home!

On Sunday we had at the club a belated birthday lunch with some friends and also some family.

After lunch we enjoyed Coffee and cake and later on some wine. WP_20170927_18_13_29_Pro

few days later it was the 3rd Birthday of Alexander.