EPISODE 7 – GRANNY
MAKES HALF A CENTURY
The
Johnsons Jolly
For
the last three weeks of November 95 we acted as base camp for my brother- and
sister-in-law David & Ré’s Antipodean Audit; they shuttled to and fro between
Shepherd Road and Sydney, Tasmania, Bendigo and Ballarat, always bringing
laughter, good cheer and gallon jars of Strine Sherry back with them.
Australian liquor shares reached a short-lived high before crashing with the
news of their premature repatriation. There were a number of moist eyes and
lumps in throats when they left. At least the residual booze helped with the
latter!
Christmas 1995
The Christmas break was scheduled to
be a walking tour of the
We opened our Christmas presents in Buchan
Caves Reserve, the flora and fauna park about 400km 
east of Melbourne and nestling on the south
slopes of the Victorian Alps. The caves are a relatively un-commercialised
variation on Wooky Hole in
A move to Mallacoota, set on one of
the large East Gippsland inlets was not a good idea; it would 
have been fine for those with boats who knew how to fish, but those who
were doubly unqualified were left feeling somewhat out of it. The weather was
indifferent and got worse. A boat was hired for a day and we bought a hand
casting reel; a line was dangled in the water and we settled down to a cold
tinny and a spot of lunch in a quiet inlet. Then an enormous fisheries
protection vessel vroomed up on its twin Mercury outboards, demanding to know
whether we were fishing. Fortunately Peter had reeled in the line in time, so
we didn’t need to produce the licence we didn’t possess. But now I know how apprehended
drug smugglers must feel! We were glad to get back to
Granny Bashing
On arriving back at base the latest
news from Brummagem was that on 17th January 96, step-daughter-in-law Alison
had produced a bouncing baby boy, Ryan John, 7lbs 8ozs, enabling Christine to
dispatch all the tiny clothes she’d been knitting and to get used to being a
grandma. I was left wondering what step-granddads did and what harm sleeping
with a granny would do to my dynamic, executive image (Ha!).
Last
Nights at the Prom
Peter and I took backpacks and walking tent for an API
Bushwalking Club overnight hike in Wilson’s Promontory, from Tidal River to
Sealers 
Cove
via Windy Saddle, then back via Refuge Cove, Waterloo Bay and Oberon Bay. This
magnificent and memorable walk of some 50km encompasses some of the best
scenery in
What a
The Melbourne Grand Prix was
unfortunately scheduled on the same day as a long-standing commitment for a
family weekend camp at Korrumburra coinciding with my 57th birthday. So I
compromised by setting up the portable Telly next to an esky full of cold
tinnies under some alien English oak trees and watched the race wearing my
birthday Grand Prix T-shirt, with the race programme at hand. Gratifyingly the Williams team and Damon Hill showed
Ferrari what for. It felt very granddad-ish to realize that I was watching
Jacques Villeneuve’s promising racing style as I had watched that of his
father, Gilles Villeneuve.
Order of the Boot
A bombshell from our estate agent
told us that our landlord most unreasonably wanted to live in his house and
gave us the statutory 60 days notice to quit. Just what I would expect from one
who wouldn’t let us have a pussy cat. So after four and a half years of
relative permanence we were forced back into the round of weekend
house-hunting. This time Peter’s school commitments restricted our area of
choice and the short period of notice which encompassed our planned autumn holiday
concentrated the mind, so a nearby, acceptable house was soon found. However
the earliest lease date was just after our holiday departure date, so we had to
accept a month’s wait, a fortnight of paying double rent and a move during the
jet-lag recovery phase!
NURP (Pardon me)
As if we needed more disruption,
changes at work meant that Telstra no longer provided the company car, so the
old one had to be swopped for a new, GEC-provided beastie (hush, don’t tell Arnie!).
This meant that towbars had to be taken off the old car and organised for the
new so that Easter trips could be made and camper-trailers could be towed to
the new house. However when NRP647 (immediately christened an unimaginative
“Nurp”) arrived it turned out to be a smooth 3.8 litre Commodore toad-wagon in
a nice shade of metallic dark green, with a number of goodies that the old one
didn’t have. Oh Joy, Oh bliss, beep beep once more!
What a way to spend Easter!
For Easter we went on a Jayco Caravan
Club trip, over the Great Dividing Range and sunwards to Kerang, in
Our
journey to Kerang, a modest 300km, started on a wet and cloudy Good Friday;
however the weather soon improved as we crossed the Divide. A platinum blonde
plume streaming from the top of
The “Ibis” caravan park appeared at
the end of a mind-bogglingly flat and boring stretch of driving following
Murrabit is a small village on the
On Saturday afternoon Peter and I
repaired to a metropolis bearing the unlikely name of Quambatook, where a
“Tractor Pull” was being held. As a total newcomer to such events I found it fascinating;
competing tractors ranged from vintage chuggers to modern monsters with air
conditioned cabs and included extraordinary flights of fancy looking like top
fuel dragsters but with tractor tyres. Over-the-Top power plants included three
five-litre engines in tandem, a nine cylinder radial aero engine and a Mamba
gas turbine! All these competed, not with each other but with sleds that used
various devices to apply a progressively increasing load on the mud track until
the tractor ground to a halt.
The
Wetlands cruise was a highlight of the weekend; it ran along Gunbower Creek (an
anabranch of the
All in all a peaceful Autumn break.
We even had a bonus and unintentional tour of the suburbs of
It is ill-bred to reveal a lady’s
age, particularly when that lady is a new granny and when a significant age
such as a half-century is achieved. So I shan’t say whose birthday we chose to
celebrate by encompassing it with a holiday in 
17th
April. The plan was simply to fly to San
Francisco, rent a car and drive down Highway One to
We walked our feet off in ‘Frisco,
soaking up the atmosphere of the downtown and wharf areas. The weather started
warm but deteriorated into a cold and foggy rain; our first sight of the famous
bridge showed it arching into the cloud but with the far end hidden in the
mist. Fortunately the fog cleared, so later we were able to walk across it and
take all the obligatory photographs. Like the Taj Mahal it is one of those
sights which is not a disappointment - just the sheer size of the thing is
overpowering. The person whose birthday was imminent had vowed to stand on the
bridge on her birthday; we fulfilled the promise in Melbourne time since the
photographs and video times all show the 17th April; however we had crossed the
international date line so the local date was actually the16th.
No visit to the area would be
complete without a visit to the wine-growing areas of the Napa Valley, so we drove north and stayed
overnight in Santa Rosa. Someone who
shall be nameless left his new, 12th birthday watch under the pillow at the
hotel, fortunately it was located by the efficient staff of Day’s Inn and posted to
Driving south, we bypassed S-F and
drove through 
staying
in Marina Beach. As an erstwhile Steinbeck fan I was slightly miffed to find
that the Cannery Row which he so
vividly depicted was now full of twee boutiques, but felt it ironic that the
lasting contribution to the areas was not from the canning industry, which died
with the sardines of Monterey bay (due to over-fishing), but from tourists
tracing the path of the pen of the master.
Between (Mayor Clint Eastwood’s) Carmel and San Simeon is a
stretch of coastal State Highway 1 that rivals even the Great (Bloody) 
We
stayed at San Simeon and visited Hearst
Castle, an impressive ego trip by Wm Randolph Hearst which was good in
parts but vulgar and tasteless in others. I wonder what were the private
thoughts of some of the more discerning stars and starlets, who used to be
flown up from
I liked our last stop before the
smog of LA, at Santa Barbara. This
was a neat, tidy and busy little city, nestling between the sea and the Santa
Inez mountains and sufficiently far from the state capital to have a life of
its own. It had a cool and tranquil
LA
was LA-ish, it was hot and smoggy, we did
I wanted to see Howard Hughes’s Spruce Goose but someone had shipped it up
to
And so we returned to
Rostella Court
I’m still not sure what a rostella
is; I know a rosella is a pretty red bird - is the rostella an oven-ready
version? Anyway, six trips in a hired three-tonner were needed to transport the
accumulated junk of four and a half years in Oz over the couple of km to the
new house. Everyone worked very hard and each was commensurately knackered at
the end. We did it all ourselves, apart from a lift with the fridge and the
sofa from a workmate at lunchtime. Once again I vowed to get some men to do it
next time; I’m getting too old for this game! Peter was a marvellous driver’s
mate and put in much more effort than one would expect for his size.
The
house is actually a four-bedroom place but one room is devoted to storing
landlord’s junk; thus the reception rooms are somewhat larger than we had at
After a week or so I found myself
getting homesick - but for Shepherd Road not
11th Hour Reprieve
At my time
of life there is a distinctly limited number of summers to look forward to, so
I wasn’t too upset to get a contract extension which meant that I didn’t string
two winters together. However I was also pleased to have a firm end date; a
number of long-term emotions have been waging a war of attrition with the short
term pecuniary benefits. We have been too long away from our extended family;
five years without friends is hard to bear and it will be really nice to live
in my own house where I don’t have to ask a landlord before I hang a picture.
But our minds will ever be full of the sights and sounds of this big red
island; we have had a marvellous five years.