Fullagar Family Summit for Imp's 50th

We recently had a wonderful week with the whole Fullagar family in town to celebrate Imp's 50th birthday. Felicity stayed with us, Fred stayed with Imp and Ed, and Chonk, Irma, Bea and Eric [the Swiss] stayed just down the hill at an Airbnb backing onto the rivulet.

Elf took the whole week off, while I took 2 days midweek which turned out to be perfect. We gathered most days at some stage either at our place or at Imp and Ed's at Kingston, and just ate and drank and talked. The Swiss went off and did some tourism at times, and Fred tinkered with things at Kingston and at our place too. He got the Wimshurst Machine back in working order [I have just realised the WM has not been mentioned here before so I will need to put that right soon and I'll add a link here).

Fred is Felicity's carer at home in Canberra so part of this week was separating those two to give him a break. Elf stepped in as frontline carer and cheerleader; trying to get her mum to be more active in finding solutions to her own health problems. Chiefly her feet; they are very sore and swollen and so she is unable to exercise much. Felicity won't take pills, which is a shame as some pills are very good. She thought she wouldn't come down for Imp's birthday, but all her kids her talked into it and she was extremely glad she did, by the end of the trip. As Marcus is off back to Hong Kong in March (I'll write more about this soon), this may have been the last opportunity to see her six grandkids together for a while.

Felicity asked for someone to organise a set of photos for her so she could pull them out to show friends. So I got these for her (I'm sending her prints) and reproduce them here as a time capsule; this is what we all look like in August 2022.

Before coming to Hobart, the Swiss had a week in far north Queensland, including a look around Townsville. Bea is very keen on studying marine biology and has her heart set on Townsville as the place to do it. Eric loves fishing and was lobbying hard for the whole family to move from Switzerland to Queensland.

Marcus and Michael always get on very easily and well with their cousins here, Karri and Miah, and it was just a love-in when all six of them were together. All lovely kids. 

The party went off really well. Imp booked the Kingston Community Hall which turned out to have a no-alcohol policy. This was quite funny as she had requested a gift of a large quantity of gin from Michael and Marcus which was to be shared out with guests at the party. We surreptitiously sipped some from paper cups and all in all, it added to the Jazz Age theme.

The boys present Imp with the gin

It was well-recieved

I put together the label, based on a previous birthday dress-up effort

Siblings assemble

I was able to go along to see all the visitors off at the airport in one go which was handy. We had one last big Fullagar scrum at Gate 3 then a smaller one at Gate 4. The Swiss flew off first and Felicity, who was in high spirits, got more exercise than in the rest of the trip combined with a lot of very hearty two-arms waving. Then Fred pushed Felicity in an airport wheelchair out to their plane and she waved the whole way, even while facing out into the open fields. It was a lovely note to end the visit, she was really delighted to have come and been at the centre of the family for a while.

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.

Rees family trip to Europe - part 1: Switzerland

A couple of weeks ago I started blogging about our October/November trip to Europe. I skipped this bit so now I will go back and cover Part 1.

We set off from Hobart at 1pm on Monday 3 October, carrying 2kg of Cadbury chocolate to Switzerland, for my Aussie brother-in-law Chonk. Chocolate to Switzerland. We were flying via Abu Dhabi – perhaps we should have brought those guys some sand as well? The chocolate was much appreciated though. We had two big backpacks borrowed from Imp and Ed, and a daypack each. Travelling reasonably light.

A security man at Hobart airport remarked on my Bones McGhie shirt, but called him Stewie, (maybe thinking of this guy)? We flew with Etihad, so our stopover was Abu Dhabi. It was a 14-hour flight by A-380 from Melbourne. The boys watched screens the whole way. I turned everything off and tried to sleep but to little avail, so I was a bug-eyed zombie in Abu Dhabi. I bought a Snickers and a nashi pear with A$10 and got 14 dirhams as change.

We had three hours there which mostly consisted of walking down corridors and watching people on TV talk in Arabic about suddenly-ex-England-manager Sam Allardyce. I got lost trying to get out of the bathroom and walked into a prayer room. Each toilet cubicle had its own little hose.

We had a practically empty 787 Dreamliner from Abu Dhabi to Zürich, so we all had room for a bit of a snooze. We landed about 6.30am on 4 October and were met by Elf's little brother Edwin, known by wife and friends as Eddie but among his wider family as Chonk. The airport was quite empty; we were all quite freaked out to see a policewoman with a black submachine gun.

Typical house in Oberwintherthur

The drive to Winterthur took about half an hour, and was the first look at Europe for the boys and I. The first thing I noticed was how houses and other buildings are piled up on a squarish footprint, without wings or extensions or setbacks, which is probably a more efficient shape to keep warm. (Many things in Swizterland are based on keeping warm).

Irma, Eric (7) and Bea (9) were very excited to see us and the next few hours were a big catch up. The weather was crisp but fine so I went down to the local soccer field and tested out Eric in goals. He is a very good goalkeeper. His mate Steve came out of the nearby flats to join in; Steve is Ugandan. There are a lot of refugees here, but I think that's pretty normal now in Central Europe. The kids are put in a special class at a normal school to accelerate their German, then integrated when they are ready.

St Arbogast's

Enlargement of the church over time.

The next day Irma took us for a walk up the hill nearby to the very old church of St Arbogast, where she and Chonk were married. It dates back to about 900AD, but was built over older Roman foundations which are still visible in the gardens. It has beautiful and unusual murals from the 1300s. They were very happy to find a house so close to it. They assured us that you eventually get used to the bells ringing on the hour through the night.

This area is Upper or Oberwinterthur, called Oberi for short. It's quite affluent, and very tidy. There is one untidy house and Irma told us it belongs to a quite wealthy man who owns a lot of property, but he just likes to keep this one very old house this way for some reason. It has original Swiss double glazing, with a couple of inches between the two panes.

The only shabby house in Winterthur

Graves in the yard at the church were well tended and often had little gardens.
People often move into apartments near to their loved one's graves.
The Oskar Kokoschka style type on this stone is the best.

Part of the mural that goes back to the 1300s. Its being restored now.

Looking back at my journal, we had a very busy time for our first full day in Switzerland. The kids had a half day at school, so when they got home we all took them to meet Chonk at Cosimo's Pizza. (I had a Falken lager from nearby Schaffhausen which reminded me of Boags White).

After lunch Chonk went back to work and Irma drove the rest of us to The Rheinfall; an amazing place where the big and powerful Rhine River comes crashing down a series of steps. We parked and entered through the grounds of a castle built on the edge of the cascade, then down a steep path to a cave where we could stand right by the torrent.

Both sides of the river here are Switzerland but the border is quite twisty - we briefly drove through Germany on our way here.

Elf gets up close. I think I took this from the mouth of the cave.

Cousins colonise a cow

We came back up to the entry level in a glass elevator. Until recently this was a private experience for the owner of the castle and their guests. It was a sensory thrill, so much more than I was expecting. On the way out we bought some roasted chestnuts from a vendor - this was my first attempt at speaking German and it was very halting. But we got the gear, in a special paper bag with a spare pocket for the shells. They were doughy.

Next we piled back into the car and Irma drove us on to Stein am Rhein, which sounded interesting; an old town of painted houses. Again it was so much more than we expected. Very old buildings with incredibly intricate paintings all over them, amazing type, really bizarre imagery and all in remarkably good condition.

The Sun Guesthouse

Through the gate into the old town of Stein am Rhein

Looking back at the gate. 

The town hall..

.. and the church beyond. There is another gate on the right here where traffic
comes into town, on a bridge over the Rhine from the 'real world'

Looking back towards where we came in. There is a castle on the hill in the distance.

We loved it so much that we resolved on the spot to go back again. On the drive home through the autumn countryside we saw a lot of corn, a lot of tractors, grape pickers, green grass being cut for hay, and fields of sugarbeet. We slowed down to pass some cows and heard their big clanky cowbells.

The next day we had planned to go into Zürich. We had an early flight out to Inverness in the morning so we postponed Zürich and had an easier day exploring downtown Winterthur. It is an industrial city that has a very separate identity but it is increasingly a dormitory for Zürich. Elf and I and the boys walked from Chonk and Irma's to the old town centre, which took about an hour. We were semi-lost most of that time but it all worked out. There are a lot of half-timbered buildings, and again everything is astonishingly neat.

We went into a cafe and I again tried my German to order coffee. I was terrible. So I asked if the young lady spoke English and she did - we found that just about everyone did. And just about everyone apologised for their English which was always excellent.

We went into the Stadt Kirche (City Church) for a look. Its bigger and fancier but not as old as St Arbogath's. 

An interactive bible

I pinched this pic of the City Church from Wikipedia because its a lot nicer than ours.

This is Eric. He is a mercurial engineer in the making. Handy with tools,
quite a goalkeeper and smart as a whip. He has particularly cottoned on to Marcus.

His older sister Bea latched onto Michael. They are both interested in languages and maps
and spent a lot of time together creating their own lands and alphabets.
Bea was very helpful in teaching me German.

 So the next day we were off to Scotland; this was our first of three stints in Switzerland.

Rees family trip to Europe - part 2: Scotland

If I had been blogging more regularly, then I would have told you about this trip already, but I don't think I have mentioned it here at all. About a year ago we started planning this swing through Europe, based around a visit to Elf's brother Chonk and his family in Switzerland - wife Irma, and kids Bea and Eric. We just got home on Sunday after seven weeks living in each other's pockets in amazing places like Venice, Florence, York and Inverness, finishing with ten days at their house in Winterthur near Zürich.

Here I'd like to send a special shout out to Irma, an incredibly loyal follower of this blog. At last there is a new post! I hope this makes your day!

You are probably wondering where Part 1 is. I am doing this post at work and I have access only to our photos from the UK, so I will double back later for a brief Part 1 about our first few days in Switzerland.

Our itinerary was: 

• fly to Switzerland
• 3 days later fly to Inverness
• 2 weeks travelling through the UK stopping in Edinburgh, Alnwick, York, Cambridge and London
• back to Switzerland for a few days
• to Italy via the Bernina Express train over (and under) the Alps
• 2 weeks travelling through Italy staying in Milan, Monterosso (Cinque Terre), Florence, Sorrento, and Venice
• back again to Switzerland for another 10 days, then home

So here are some pics in rough chronological order

We did the UK from the top down, starting at Inverness. It was surprisingly lovely weather when we arrived and held up throughout. We stayed in an Airbnb near the centre of town; just across the street was an old church which was built on a pre-Christian mound. This is the spot where Christianity came to Scotland. I think the spire on the right is the one. 

Our two planned Inverness activities were a) visiting the Culloden battlefield and b) taking a day tour to the Isle of Skye. 

We took a local bus out to the edge of town near the battlefield and walked from there, on a gorgeous morning, past horsey paddocks and a lovely field of dougals.

By long family tradition we call these round haybales dougals.

This was one of the days when Michael took a long time to get into the right holiday spirit.
I found a suitable role for him at the visitors centre as 'unfortunate corpse'.

The battlefield is a vast flat grassy plain. It is very peaceful today.
The highlanders of Bonnie Prince Charlie were routed by the redcoats.

Our day trip to Skye with WOW Scotland Tours was fantastic. The bus left Inverness around 8.30am and returned after dark about 12 hours later. The guide Gordon and driver Karen were both really great at their jobs. Marcus left our camera on the bus and Gordon very kindly posted it on for us.

Lobster traps at Kyle of Lochalsh, our first port of call on Skye. 

Portree, the very pretty major town.

We stopped at a fascinating place called Fairy Glen, where mysterious conical mounds rise from the plain.

This place is called The Quiraing, and it is also mysterious and beautiful.
Various films I have never seen (Prometheus and Stardust) were filmed here.

This spot is called Sligachan. The water was 2 metres higher just a week earlier.

On our last day in Inverness we were catching a train at lunchtime for Edinburgh. The night before we were chatting to a man in a souvenir shop who told us about the prehistoric Clava Cairns just near Culloden. So we decided to go back out there and have a look in the morning. Here we are on our way back, carrying ALL our bags because I hadn't worked out that there were lockers at the train station. Later our train went over that beautiful bridge.

This rock at Clava Cairns was worked like this about 4000 years ago.

The train to Edinburgh was very interesting. We went through some very forbidding moorland, delightful little towns, and past beaches with people walking dogs in the sun. Kirkcaldy, just over the water from Edinburgh in Fife, looked particularly nice.

Our 2nd Airbnb in Edinburgh was on the major road in the suburb of Corstorphine (pron. cuh STOR fin) and we agree now it was our least favourite of the six we stayed in.

Edinburgh has a very stern air. There are a lot of jagged steeples and countless chimneys. Everything is stone, and stained dark with centuries of smoke, although now wood and coal heaters are banned.

The slice of the old town viewed from the parade ground in front of Edinburgh castle.

Inside the castle walls.

We went in search of Scotland Street, famous from the serialised stories of Alexander McCall Smith.
We found it, and this basement cafe that could well be Big Lou's. Needed more books though.

We climbed the Scott Monument to get this view of Edinburgh. 287 steps.

Before the trip we were visiting Michael's buddy Jono one day when his parents Shona and Mike suggested we should see a couple of things at Falkirk while we were in Scotland. It was a little bit out of our way but well worth it.

This is the Falkirk Wheel - devised to connect two moribund canals
and now a tourist attraction in its own right.

This shows how it works.

Nearby are The Kelpies, largest equestrian sculptures in the world.
They represent the Celtic legend of horrible monsters who live in a loch,
but turn themselves into beautiful horses to lure men to their deaths.

Jonathan Jones doesn't like them.

From Falkirk we were headed to Alnwick in Northumberland, England. We had picked up a hire car in Edinburgh with that modern infestation, a GPS. They don't give you a map any more. We had a miserable day on the road and Elf insisted first thing the next morning that we buy a map before doing anything else. We tried in vain to get south from Falkirk without being dragged back into Edinburgh but the GPS would not have a bar of it. At one point it directed us into a dodgy -looking council housing estate carpark in Airdrie.

We loved Scotland and would very happily return to spend longer. The weather down south wasn't quite up to what it had been in Inverness but no-one would believe us.