November 17th 2015

My goodness me,
Time has flown by over the past few months and it comes as a shock to realize it has been 4 months since my last post.  My humblest apologies to all.
So what has been happening????  At the beginning of August Darryl and I travelled to Taree to see his family.  On the way we met up with Jenny and Peter and their friends at Kew.  They were all travelling north for their yearly break together.  We spent a lovely hour or so in their company before heading the rest of the way to Taree. From Taree we headed down to Wallerawang and had a short stay with Trevor and Karen.  Whilst there the Sydney City2Surf was on and Trev, Karen, Andrew, Julie, Ian and Holly were all taking part.  We stayed at Wallerawang and did a trip to Orange to visit our dear friend Sandie Smith and her lovely family Jenny and William.  What a lovely day we had.  It was great hearing their plans for moving closer to Sydney later this year.
The 'runners' arrived home on Sunday and some were a little wearier then others but in all they said that they had a great time.  It is always a pleasure to visit and very sad when we leave.
When we left we traveled to Wagga through Cowra and Cootamundra, Junee and on to Wagga.  We had not been that way for a few years and it was lovely.  We arrived in Wagga on the 11th August.  And it was great to wish Miss Pauline a very Happy Birthday.  Jenny and Peter arrived home the following afternoon and during the next couple of weeks we got to spend time with family and do some weaving with my lovely friend Gail.

 A Coolamon

 a big basket with the handle on the inside

 on left a fruit bowl using inflorescence from a palm tree and then a basket with the handle on the outside

It was lovely seeing my Uncle Jack and seeing him so well and happy.
We left Wagga for Condobolin and spent a few days with Wendy, Ian and Holly.  A very Lovely weekend with the family and sad to leave.
Because we did not have as long with the family in Taree as what we had originally planned - we left Condobolin and headed across through Parkes to Maitland and up to Taree again.  We spent another 5 nights there before leaving to head home.  We even managed to get Neville out of the house and down to the van park for a full day of fishing.

 Nev with a  dolphin in the background

 dolphin in the water

 Darryl and Shirley fishing

 It was great to have a pod of Dolphins and calves go up the river whilst all were fishing.  I also found the Cundletown Bakery does gluten free bread.  So ordered the minimum amount (3 loaves) and it was LOVELY.  Very soft and light and so enjoyable.
We left Taree and headed to Gumma Reserve at Macksville.

 the creek at  Gumma Reserve

 arty-farty Old Man in the tree

A great low-cost camp and we had two very enjoyable nights there before heading up to Evans Head where we had two more nights before  getting home.
My next week at Ladies Group was BUSY as there was the postponed NAIDOC day celebrations for Wynnum coming up the following Wednesday so we were busy making sure that we had plenty of craft items ready.

 part of the stall at Wynnum

The day dawned with some quite dark clouds and quite wintry, but in the end it was a lovely day and all the grandchildren had a ball.

 The grandchildren with their version of face-painting

We had the grandchildren for almost three weeks and returned them to their dad just before school went back from the holidays.  We then went home and prepared our van for a week long camp at Beaudesert with the Australian Caravan Club for their National Muster.  240 vans descended on Beaudesert and injected about $200,000.00 into the community for the week that we were all there.

 There were visits to the Robotic Dairy, some wineries, Tamborine Mountain, Kerry, Rathdowney and Boonah.  On the Wednesday I held a weaving workshop using material

There was a members market on the Thursday morning and that was also a lovely day, where I managed to sell some of my basket weaving.  I now have a couple of orders that I am working on. On the Friday night we were invited to Beaudesert High School for a Mocktails night where Bradley was doing some of the cooking.

 Darryl, Brad and I at the end of the night

 some of the vans at the Showground

We were no sooner home from our week at Beaudesert when we travelled to Coolum for a X-RAAF Catering reunion.

 Darryl with Wayne Vollmost and Adrian Gard

Apparently this is held every two years and I was glad that I managed to talk Darryl into going.  He had a great time catching up with some of his old service friends and I met a distant cousin.

Myself and my cousin

Apparently there is to be another reunion next year but in ----- WAGGA.  Will be interesting to find out the dates of that one :D
We were only home three nights when we travelled to Benarkin State Forest up near Blackbutt out from Caboolture for a memorial weekend for a friend who was killed in August.  It was a great weekend with  lots of friends reminiscing for an absent friend.  We had four storms roll through on Friday afternoon and some showers on Sunday, but it was a wonderful time.

part of the road into Benarkin

On our way home we dropped the van off for a service and to get some work done on our water tanks - which hopefully have now been fixed.   We will try it out soon.
This coming weekend I am participating in a Garage Sale for the Jajari Jimbaljin Women's group and hopefully we will make some money for the Women's group to make more craft for their stalls.
We have a trip to Grafton in the first part of December for a memorial weekend for my dear friend Valerie Mawhinney - on what would have been her 60th birthday.  Darryl and I are looking forward to catching up with Val's family that weekend.
We have been working in the shed these past two days and it is amazing the amount of stuff that we have got.  So we will be having a garage sale or two to get some of it to new homes.
So that is all for now.