To the ACT (Australian Christmas Territory) - Part 2

We arrived on Christmas Eve, and quickly settled into a routine of cups of tea and Nescafe,  and Fred's home brew with whisky nightcaps. We all took it in turns to cook.

I didn't take any photos of Christmas Day and my recollections are vague, so thanks to Chonk and particularly Fred for the photos below. The kids opened their stockings before I got up – when I did there seemed to be gifts everywhere. There's a lot more juicy main-event stuff going into the stocking than used to be the case, it seems.

We all put on nice clothes and convoyed over to All Saints for the Christmas service. The nice thing about All Saints which I have probably mentioned before, is that it used to be a railway station! It was built as the receiving station for trains to Rookwood Cemetery, the main Sydney cemetery.

The sermon was odd and quite un-Christmassy. I sat next to Eric who was an unwilling participant in worship. He disappeared after a while, possibly impounded by the Christmas Police for the duration.

Chonk, Ed, Elf, Michael, me, Felicity, Karri, Imp, Marcus,
Miah, Bea, Fred (with Eric tucked in front of him) and Irma

After a wonderful lunch we had a flaming Christmas pudding. Eric had disobeyed instructions and left the table. When the pudding arrived he was was called back, to no avail. So we all started yelling "Quick Eric! Food on fire! Food on fire!'" He came barrelling down the hall calling "It's not my fault!".

Marcus tries to get to grip with pentatonic triads, or something.

A lot of man-hours went into jigsaws over the week in Canberra.

Someone received the famous game Twister for Christmas and kids, Imp and Irma spent a lot of time contorting themselves. The kids all enjoyed each other's company a lot.

Marcus and I spent a bit of time playing soccer with Eric, and one time Chonk, Eric and I were roped into an 8-a-side game with some a group of neighbourhood teens and another group of smaller kids and dads. It was quite fun and we all represented the family well.

One day we all went to Jamieson Water Park and the kids and fitter grown-ups spent the day plummeting down chutes. I was seized with the idea that all around us the diplomatic corps were enjoying the sun, the slides, the chips.

[Here comes the Chilean agriculture secretary down the corkscrew! The Uruguayan defence attaché is making a towel screen while the ambassador changes back into his underpants, wobbling on one leg. The Egyptian 3rd trade attaché (clearly a spy) is demanding to know what is in a Chiko roll.]

Felicity revealed that she is in the running for selection in the Australian Marmalade Squad to compete at the World Marmalade Festival in the England in March.

Her kitchen is a bit of a time capsule. Like many people in their seventies, she is happy to offer a good home to condiments and tinned food with use-by dates that go back several prime-ministers.

A lot of child-hours went into fiddling with the vapouriser attachment on the fan. A LOT.

The thug lyfe

The hug lyfe

I brought with me to Canberra a 2018 vacuum-packed Richmond members scarf to give Chonk,
who used to be a Tiger. (And surely will be again). He responded by fetching from his old bedroom
a 1983 scarf and beanie for me.

What I did on my holidays (3)

This is about 3 months in the past now, and still I haven’t got around to blogging all of it. I think I will just do these last chapters as photos with captions. Better for all of us really. We borrowed Phillip and Andrea’s car for the day to go to AQWA, and had a freeway adventure just getting there and back. The coastal highway is a little bit CHiPs if anyone else remembers that show.

This is my favourite letterbox I have ever seen anywhere.

This was at AQWA, the fabulous aquarium at Hillary's Boat Harbour, north of Perth. 
I was trying to get the classic ‘just cracked a joke’ expression moray eels have, and didn’t quite nail it.

Baby crocodile. Cute but fangy.

Toadfish, y’all.

Contractually obliged to call this a ‘denizen of the deep’. Sigh.

Sun setting into the sea -that’s worth travelling 3000km to witness. This was our local beach.

What I did on my holidays (2)

I should say a bit about the house we borrowed in Perth. Our first impression was it was dark and cool. All across the front were louvres that can be opened/closed independently, or swung back out of the way. We had most of them closed most of the time. The bedrooms and living room had those reverse cycle air con units - we tried to use them as little as possible, only when it got over about 40° in the day, and few of the hotter nights. There was a proper pool just by the back door, an entertainment area beside it, and beyond that a path/cricket pitch, a bit of lawn, and an amazing treehouse in a big tropical palm - it was completely invisible from down below. 

I enjoyed the cricket setup very much, especially because as right-handers we both had to play offside shots. Our cricket spot at home has the house hard up on the offside, and you can only score by hitting straight or hoiking legside across the line.

Elf planned our days out very well. While the tempertaures were low, about 27°-30°, we got through some of the “walking around outside” attractions, such as Perth Zoo. We caught the bus into the city, then walked about 4 or 5 blocks to the river, where we caught a ferry over to South perth where the giraffes, parrots and lizards were waiting. Our all-day bus ticket covered the ferry too. The zoo is a just a short walk from the jetty on the other side.

We thought it was a great zoo - and it catered for visitors well with lots of shade and water fountains. Highlights were the elephant, orangutans, the massive reticulated python and the nocturnal house.

On the ferry - emu outside, Michael inside.

Cassowary with lethal claws apparent. It does not like being called “bonehead’.

Does this need a caption? Not really.

Some kind of mutant leopard-horse.

These guys are not of sufficient rarity or zoological interest to have in the zoo.
Yet they too would like free food. It’s a bit of a dilemma. It’s hard to tell but they
are on the roof of the enclosure, about 10 metres up in the air.

On the way back we decided to have look at Perth Bells,
the spiky building in the centre.

The clock that is attached to the bells came from Ascot Racecouse in England.
It was time for it’s daily wnding and the boys were invited to help out.

Perth city from up in the spire. This re-developing area on the left is Elizabeth Pier, or “Betty’s Jetty”

What I did on my holidays (1)

We did our house-swap with a family in Perth, as mentioned a couple of posts ago. Then we were doing a major top-to-bottom clean of the house. It’s a bit of an unusual situation for people you don’t even know to be living for weeks in your fully furnished and clutter-laden house, while you are elsewhere. In fact, while you are doing the same in their house. We felt like we had to bag and bundle and stow a whole lot of stuff that had just been floating around, not for security but just to make life easier for our guests (and hosts), the Brandises.

So - we flew to Perth. I took Hattie down to the cattery the day before, but Winston stayed behind to welcome the visitors - he would be looking after them while we were away. My Mum was at the house when they arrived to explain the things that Winston could not.

I have some very good old friends, Phillip and Andrea, who happen to live 3 minutes walk from our swap house, in the suburb of Floreat. Phillip collected us at the airport and drove us “home”. It was pretty warm and very dry. It didn’t crack 30° in our first five days, so we had an easy introduction. Just lovely, blue skies all day, day after day. (Meanwhile Hobart was getting blown sideways by freezing winds, and after a white-knuckle landing the Brandises arrived at our house to find the power out for hours due to fallen trees).

In Perth we dumped our stuff in the house, had a bit of a reconnoitre and then walked up the road to have dinner with Phillip and Andrea and their kids, Isobel and Ronan, roughly the same age as ours. They were supposed to be going to Tasmania the next day, to see family and gad about for 2 weeks, but due to some non-serious medical misadventures they had to postpone leaving for a week. So we had neighbourhood buddies for that week, and then enjoyed the use of their car once they had gone.

We had a list of outings we wanted to make, starting with Scitech and Kings Park. We did all but one of our first week of outings by public transport. The bus stops for downtown were close, and the buses were on time, clean and pretty economical. We paid $11.60 for a family day ticket, only useable after 9am. We found our groove after a while, packing sandwiches, fruit and water to be as self-sufficient as possible, so then we felt like a pick-me-up we could spend our money on an ice-cream or coffee.


Our first trip was to Scitec, which was right by the bus route into town. It’s a science exploration centre, full of well thought-out and well-maintained activities. The boys have been to a few of these places, and they thought this one was great.

Michael generates around 2000 kilo-rads of science.

This is a trough of rubber crumbs, that is 3D-tracked in some way so as the kids push it 

and pile it up, the contour lines change, the colours change and water animates in the  

lower areas. If you shade an area with your hand "rain" falls on it and animated water 

gushes down the side of the real hill. Its ... incredible really.

Here are a few pics from Outing 2, to Kings Park. It’s a massive expanse of land on a hill overlooking the city and the broad waters of the Swan River.

Michael and Marcus make friends with a ficus.

In fact, a very large Port Jackson Fig.

Admiring the Swan. I have never been able to work out how Perth works from looking at maps.
I have a slightly better feel for it now.

This 750 year-old boab had to go when a highway up in the Kimberley region was being widened.
It was carefully removed and trucked 3200km to Perth.  

There is a water-play area where we found this vermillion-coloured dragonfly.

The old Swan Brewery has an amazing position on the water.
It’s now luxury apartments.

A view south, over to South Perth (centre) and down towards
the confluence of the Canning and Swan Rivers (right).

Family update

Marcus has been in 2 national maths competitions this year. He was given a distinction in the first one, and the other day we heard he pinged a High Distinction in the 2nd one! That puts him in the top 1% in the state for Grade 3. And he's the youngest kid in Grade 2. His teacher showed me a Grade 5 maths test she gave him this morning - he got 98%.

Down at the Gifted Association they say that a truly gifted child is not simply capable of managing at a higher level; give them work from a grade or two above and they will knock the ball out of the park.

So I have taken a few steps back, looked at Marcus with fresh eyes, and said to myself - he is gifted and we have to stay awake to this, and keep bringing him fresh challenges.

Michael said he would only get out of bed and come up to breakfast this morning if I carried him. I was happy to do this as I will take any chance I get to give him a good squeeze. Halfway up the stairs he said I also had to say our phone number. After I reeled it off, he repeated the last 4 numbers and said "that's the chorus".

My younger sister Sally is about to do something that the boys will never achieve - she's giving birth in April! It's really exciting news, we can still hardly believe it. Sal and Matt are dedicated contemporary artists (picture computers, latex, gravel and guitars - not so much the palette, easel and beret) and up to this point their total frugal dedication to the Big A has seemed incompatible with parenthood. But they have lots of friends who are artist/parent equally, so I know they can do it too.

Elf's 40th birthday is coming up. She is planning a cocktail party, and has been in touch with a Cocktails Contractor. This interesting older lady (who admits she likes to combine work and play) left this rather racy book with us, from which to choose a few recipes. At some point one of the nieces drifted off downstairs with it, studied it carefully and left this note nearby.


Obviously, apologies to all family members mentioned in the same post as this lurid though dated bit of soft porn.

Bunking up

Imp flew off to Sydney on Saturday to meet up with Ed and the girls, who drove up from Canberra. They spent the weekend there with relatives, and this evening Imp is flying back to Hobart with Karri and Miah. Ed will drive back to Canberra and continue to pack up their life there. He will join the rest of the family here in a couple of weeks I think.

As they are all staying with us until a decent home is found, we have had to re-configure the house a bit this weekend. Actually Elf has done the bulk of it, and when I came home today downstairs was looking completely different, and in fact looking really great.

We have put the boys' beds up into bunks, which has caused great excitement and romping (illustrated above). Karri and Miah will have the back bedroom and Imp and Ed will be in the piano room/front room/rumpus call it what you will. Elf put up some Tasmanian curtains (sheets) in there today, it looks quite homely and inviting.

Stay tuned for news of extended family communal living. It's all terribly South Hobart, if you know what I mean.

Suddenly Uncle Laurie

We gave Bill a bag of bourbon-filled chocolates for Christmas. I tried one yesterday, and suddenly travelled through time back to my great uncle Laurie's groovy pad in Sydney, in the 1980s. I don't consciously remember there being a lot of liqueur choc around, but the synapses dialled it up immediately, so there must have been. And it would certainly be consistent with his world.

Laurie was Poppa's younger brother, a tailor, and a jazz musician. I wish I could say I heard him play, but I never did. Poppa himself was an extremely dapper looking jazzman in his younger days - we have an photo of him playing a tenor sax that could be an ad for Brylcreem. I have just called Sally to co-opt her memories of Laurie, and she has got the impression from Mum that while Poppa was away at the war, Laurie borrowed his saxophone and ended up being the family musician.

Uncle Laurie was a bachelor for much of his life, then suddenly there was an Auntie Faye. She was a glamorous Mae West-ish lounge singer, who is famous in our family for her appearances on the Mike Walsh show. Poppa and Grandma were living in a 5th floor unit by the harbour at this stage, in an affluent street of similar residential blocks. Their block was called Wolsely, and Faye and Laurie were just up the street in Edgewater. Their unit was very stylish. I remember an exercise bike and a special fridge full of small bottles of strangely unsweet fizzy drink, which we assumed were laid on for us kids. We were not familiar with the term "mixers". Sally remembers much more, including a room full of stuffed animals, a chihuahua named Xavier Cugat, and a marble and brass old-timey style telephone with a little music box beside it, upon which you were supposed to rest the phone to provide 'hold music' while you fetched someone. Xavier Cugat was a popular fixture at Laurie's tailoring shop. He once appeared in aWomens Weekly article about Sydney's little-known tourist attractions.

Laurie and Faye later built a house at Elenora Heights, looking over the northern beaches. This place was even more swanky, all done in a very pervasive black and red theme, with a lot of allusions to bullfighting and haughty señoritas. There was a massive black coffee table like a low dining table for six, supporting a black marble sculpted bull, a vividly glazed red ceramic ashtray the size and weight of an olympic discus, and a black tabletop lighter like a housebrick. He had a bar of course - every male relative in Sydney seemed to have a bar, apart from Poppa, who was a man of the straight and narrow road.

So Mike Walsh's people stopped calling at some stage, and Faye started singing on cruise ships. She had an affair with someone she met aboard, and left Laurie, who was terribly heartbroken. That ended badly for her, and she reappeared basically destitute, so Laurie gave her a job in the shop. When he died he left everything to Faye.

I wish I knew exactly what to bite into to call up all the rest of the dear departed relations from my youth.