My Journal:

December 2010

Each month of this year has seemed to go faster than the one before and December was no exception. And the older I get, the quicker the years are flying by.

As ever, December was a month of ‘end of year’ lunches, morning teas and dinners. By the time Christmas arrived I was over the food. However, I had a lovely Christmas weekend because I had both daughters to myself for a couple of days. Because the weather was cool we did an old fashioned lunch – turkey, ham, pork and roast vegetables. We’re not lovers of pudding so we did a pavlova instead.

Mid month I went along to the Gatton Cultural Centre, where I’d been invited to attend their first ever movie night. A young girl from the shire had apparently written to the local council, asking why there wasn’t a movie theatre in the area. As well as a library, art gallery, truck museum and café, the centre has a couple of convention rooms, with a large screen. There is also small bar area that looks out over Lake Apex. It's a great concept short of a 'proper' cinema. And the small theatrette attached to the truck museum is apparently going to be used for intimate theatre sessions, where up to a maximum of 20 people can relax on lounge chairs and enjoy a meal (ordered previously from the cafe) while they watch a movie.

Holidays regardless, my work with the Community Literacy Programme continued. It's proving to be very interesting, although slow as far as participants go because without exception all those I judged eligible for the programme don't want to start until the New Year. I also spent a few weeks working on the U3A Course booklet, which had to be ready for the printer before Christmas Day. A major project, considering that we didn't have a template from previous years.

The weather here continues to be wet...wet...wet! The ground is so waterlogged now that every rain event results in inches of water and puddles all over the yard. The plants are over it - they all have wet feet and some are on the edge of dying. The vegetable garden has suffered, with those we planted in spring rotting before they ripen because there has not been enough sun. The grapes - there are more bunches of grapes than I've ever seen on the vine before - are much the same as the tomotoes, the corn, capsicum and so on. The pool eats up the chemicals - acid and chlorine - and we've put 4 bags of salt in it since November. It has to have inches emptied out of it every day.

Many of the roads around here have been almost destroyed, and Murphys Creek Road has been closed a couple of times because of landslides or trees coming down, and there are a couple of trouble spots that always have water inches deep over the road. Rocky Creek has been up over the bridges a few times and when my daughters left here to return home at the end of the month, they just made it out to the Warrego Highway, and even then had problems at Laidley. I think that it will be many years before the damage these rains have done is fixed. But that's the nature of Australia - everything in extremes. We can only hope that 2011 will be a better year, with less water and no drought.

A Happy, Prosperous, Healthy and Safe New Year to all.