A long drive through the pounding rain

We drove up to Mum and Dad's at Turners Beach on Friday evening. We did it in about 4 hours, although we had to slow down to 80 at times due to the rain. It really thumped down. I am always nervous about someone ploughing into us from the other direction when they decide to drive through a small lake and lose control.

Mum and Dad were in good form and looking very well. The garden at TB is actually bigger than the quite big garden I grew up with in Burnie, so they have given themselves a lot to do. Mum likes to plant things and nurture them to find out what they are, and then decide whether to keep them or not.

Everything was looking great. The colours are so refreshing up on the north west coast. You want to open your eyes wider and wider and save it all up in your mind for when yoiu are back in the dull brown of the drier parts of the state. The pyrethrum fields are creamy pale yellow-green, poppies pale pink, spuds vibrant green, the soil looks like anything would grow in it. In honour of the NW coast I think I can pop in a few Patrick Grieve paintings can't I?


We had two outings. We went to Imaginarium in Devonport, a kind of mini-Questacon in a large shed. (Science discovery thing for kids, for those who don't know Questacon). The current display has a road safety focus. Most of the displays were good but the interactive computer stuff was no better than we put together at work. There was an up-to-date map of the world on one wall with the flags of all nations - a few had changed since our flag book at home was printed. Michael gave it the once over - and said "Georgia - that's not the flag of Georgia!" He's memorised our book pretty thoroughly.

Our other outing was a long walk to the pick-your-own strawberry farm yesterday morning. The sun came out and it was quite intense. After toiling long and hard in the fields (about ten minutes if that) - I made for the shade. As usual we picked enough fruit for a family of twelve who really like strawberries.