We left our hotel in Glen Waverley where we spent 4 days eating at local restaurants and enjoying dumplings (as per the photo) and many other Asian dishes. Internet at the hotel was amazing with speeds double what I get here at home. At times it was up to 40MB/sec.
It was great to catch up with Kate, Arj and the grandchildren James and Charli at the next stop. Thanks heavens for Kate's evaporative cooling because Melbourne's weather was at its unpredictable best. The photo below shows what greeted me upon arrival at the 3rd day of the Melbourne Cricket Test against Pakistan. It was showery, overcast and the start of play was delayed by rain.
As I hustled off to catch the train home later the same day it was around 37° under a blazing sun and stinking hot. Such is Melbourne!
Christmas Day was spent with Arj's family but this time it was a lunch. The Sri Lankan curries were fantastic and so tasty. However the 36° outside made it yet another hot day.
We spent Boxing Day as usual with Barry, Rainy and friends at Drouin. We remain good friends with them and had a lovely day down there where we stayed overnight. The food, the drinks, the company were all just wonderful.
I also managed to catch up with ex colleague Gordon and his wife Anne. Anne and I taught together in neighboring classrooms for more years than I care to remember so it was another special day.
And we got to Malaysia Garden Restaurant as well as our favorite Springvale Vietnamese eatery. A couple of jars of their wonderful chilli Oil found their way into the Waeco to be brought back to the Sunshine Coast!
Regretfully I picked up some sort of a tummy complaint late in the trip which made for an uncomfortable night just before we were due to head off to stay with friends Eddie and Patsy. I was quite washed out after the event the next day so we cancelled out of our two night stay there to begin the long drive home.
We have now learnt something about booking motels on line and what is meant by "Free Cancellation". We spent a night at a motel in West Wyalong. It was quite inexpensive and had all the mod cons we ever needed. That night we booked at Goondiwindi for the next night, around 750k's away and just over the border into Queensland.
When we set off the next morning, the GPS said we would arrive there at 3pm, giving us around 3 hours to fill in before heading off somewhere to eat. We could cover an extra 200k's in two hours in that time so we decided to exercise our "Free Cancellation" and book a little further along the way at Warwick. A motel in Warwick was booked and then I rang the Goondiwindi Motel to 'cancel'.
We have learnt "Free Cancellation" does not apply on the day of the booking. Anytime the previous day or so is no problem, but on the day itself it isn't an option. So there we were with 2 bookings for the same night's accommodation! We got to Warwick after it was 42° during the day and over 36° upon our arrival. We failed to see the arrival of the New Year!
We arrived home the next mid morning the following day! By midday we had unpacked, the pool had been cleaned and the air conditioner on. It was a typical hot Sunshine Coast Day, around 33° with quite high humidity.
I was on my bike again yesterday (Monday) and we watched some tennis during the day. The pool was 31.5°. Today is overcast, sticky but we now have a cooler south easterly. It is showery as well.
Things have gotten back to normal fairly quickly, a brew went on this morning and the Third Test from Sydney on TV is under two hours away!
My PC has updated, video files transferred across and things are slowly settling back to normal.
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