My Journal:

November 2009

I left to drive to Sydney late on Friday 30th October. My plan was to drive to Armadale and stop the night there. All went well until I crossed the border, when I ran into some heavy rain and gusty wind. It was just on dark so visibilty was low. It was getting on to 8.30pm when I neared the turn off to Armadale and saw a sign for a motel. It was not lit up but I pulled in anyway and was surprised to see that they had the 'vacancy' sign out but no sign of life - no bell to push even. So on I drove in the rain. A little further on I came to another motel come caravan park, but in the dark and the rain I couldn't see where the office might be. As I drove further south, I thought that perhaps I might have to sleep in the car. Then a light appeared, a brightly lit neon, a motel with a vacancy sign lit up. Finally! As I was checking in, I quizzed the man behind the desk about closing times in the area. I couldn't understand why the previous motels had been closed up. He shrugged. 'We work such long hours, 7 days a week, that sometimes we've had enough and shut up shop early,' he said. I got settled into my room, saw that it was just 8.40 and remembered that "Midsommer Murders" was on the ABC - I would only have missed 10 minutes of it. I turned the TV on. After a few minutes, I realised that the show was wrapping up and that's when it hit me - daylight saving. NSW is an hour ahead of Qld from October to March. No wonder all the motels had been shut!

I arrived in Sydney around lunchtime on Saturday 1st November. Spent a lovely week there, catching up with friends and family, and collecting the computer my brother had built for me, along with another for my sister, Vicki, who lives 40 minutes away from me. While in Sydney, I got to use a GPS for the first time. What a laugh. My first trip with it was a disaster, and I arrived at my son's place an hour and a half late. The route the device took me was the same I'd always taken, until we got to one point where it sent me in a different direction. Sydney's streets are forever changing and it had been a couple of years, so I thought nothing of it, until some time later, when I thought I should be nearing my destination, I saw a sign for 'Hurstville'. Hurstville! I should have been nearing Thornleigh! Later, after I'd got myself turned around and on the right path, I realised I must have hit the wrong button. The GPS was taking me to the address I had set into the memory for my next day's visit! After that disaster though, the GPS was fun and I got to see places and travelled down streets I never would have known existed. (I set the GPS to avoid all toll roads of course!)

One of my visits while in Sydney was up to Umina Beach, a lovely spot on the north coast, near Woy Woy that used to be quite isolated but is now a bustling busy suburb. The drive in is still beautiful, down out of the mountains to the sea, the road following the ocean around the curve of the land. The jacarandas were out and it was a picture.

I left Sydney on 6th, stopped for the night at Guyra, and arrived home on Saturday 7th, after calling into my sisters and delivering her new computer. After that, it was hectic for a week or so as I caught up with mail and all the stuff that tends to accumulate when one takes a week or so off. There were Italian lessons to catch up on, a book to read for Book Club, the launch of the Recipe book I'd typset for U3A to get ready for, and so on.

The book launch was held on 21st November, at a Q150 lunch in Toowoomba. It was a lovely event, although it kept us busy. We had 130 plus people to feed and entertain for 4 hours, but our day began early for the setting up, and ended late with the clearing up. We sold quite a few books so it was worth the effort.

On Monday 23rd, with a dozen or so members of the local Neighbouhood Centre, I visited Das Neumann Haus in Laidley. A lovely place. Mr Neumann came to Australia from Germany in the late 1800's. He married the woman who taught him English and they had 3 or 4 children. Mr Neumann was a furniture builder and he settled in Ipswich, later taking up land in Laidley. He built the house for his wife and family, and ran his business from a large shed. The house and land was deeded to the local shire council and it's now fitted out as it was more than a century ago, with a lovely coffee shop attached where we indulged in apple strudel and coffee.

Actually, this time of the year is when all the groups I belong to have their last meetings, which in each case include a lunch, or a breakfast or dinner. It's a contant round of social outings and I know that I will spend the month after Christmas trying to get rid of the extra inches I will acquire, no matter how careful I try to be. Even our Italian class had a lunch - pizza and caprese salad, with wine and biscuits, then coffee - held picnic style in the courtyard at the Art Society in Toowoomba.