Family Time in Sydney

We flew back to Sydney primarily for our daughter’s engagement party as Michael popped the question a few weeks after we left home for Tasmania.

I had made some cute swags for the party but most of the organizing was left to Michael and Camille.

Getting started on the swags.

They organized and outdoor picnic at the place they had their first date at Kirribilli Park. Kaye, Michael’s mothe, made a lovely job of the hanging bottles with purple and white flowers that were handing around the trees and such. I hung my swags in between. They looked gorgeous together.

Camille had a couple of large food tables and scattered picnic rugs with mini apple crates for coffee tables on most rugs.

The site and the weather were perfect though the morning's weather seemed a bit discouraging at first. It was a friendly happy party with most people mingling quite well.

Sunday meant church with Allan and his girls. Holly was coming down with a flu so she stayed home to recoup some energy. Camille & Michael picked us up for a leisurely lunch at a Thai restaurant where the four of us could just sit back and chat and catch up a bit with all their wonderful news.

It was great being at Allan’s in the evening s as we could spend some time with his family too. Monday was pretty full on. Rob was going to go back to Wollongong by train but with the Sydney Terrorist Seige going on in Martin Place, the trains were in complete dishevel and so he decided to stay at Allan’s and go home the next day.

Benita (Camille’s sister) and I were helping Camille to decide what wedding dress style she should be going for. Oh she is going to be such a beautiful bride! Lots of driving and lots of laughter and quite a few oohhs and aahhs and then finally a WOW. We had found THE dress... well actually it came down to two. Both had that something extra. Camille had to go away and think of which on she was going to go for. Both of them had that WOW factor!

This is NOT the dress but we certainly looked at many styles

On Tuesday, Camille and I were to sort through some invitation designs and spend the afternoon and evening designing & developing wedding card ideas. At least I had most of the tools in my craft room after many years of papercrafts.

It was great to catch up with Mathew, our ‘Clayton’ son, who came around for dinner. Benita came in late after work and we enjoyed a little more family time.

Just one such design we briefly considered for wedding invitations

Camille had to leave by lunchtime on Wednesday and I went ahead and made a few more card samples. So then it was back to packing and getting a bit of gardening done before we get up super early on Thursday morning for the flight back to Launceston to resume our trip around Tassie.

Back In Launceston

Thankfully the pain of the kidney stones is just an unpleasant memory. There is no point in going back to The Bay of Fires as we have to fly back to Sydney in 2 days time for our daughter’s engagement party.

Back At Old Macs Farm

So we thought we would get the washing caught up and meet & chat with our neighbours. We met Alan (Nomads4ever) and his wife as well as another couple who have to spend a couple of days in Launceston every week as Dorothy has to have chemo weekly (terminal breast cancer). They travel when she is feeling up to it and they do what they can while they can.

We leave the motorhome and car with people we know in Perth and they are willing to drive us in and pick us up when we came back.

Due to bad weather in Sydney and Melbourne – all flights were delayed at least half and hour. Our plane had some engineering trouble and we are delayed by 2 hours in the end.

Wings of a plane

Most importantly, we made it safely to Sydney and went straight to Allan’s by train, ready to catch up with our family in the short 6 days we have allocated for our time back in Sydney.

2 hospitals in one day

On the second full day at the Bay of Fires, I woke up early as is my habit, feeling fine. Well ... maybe ... I have just a ‘stitch’ in my side. Truly it was nothing. I had breakfast and did some reading whilst Rob enjoyed a sleep in. Within a couple of hours though things changed dramatically.

I had severe abdominal pain and continual vomiting though I did not have diarrhoea thankfully. I thought I must have food poisoning, what else could it be? Poor Rob is feeling helpless and I felt like a big sook. The pain was not going away, actually it was increasing if possible. Finally I tell Rob I need a doctor, so he drives me back to St Helens.

Rob sighted a hospital and took me in the emergency entrance. They had to fetch a wheelchair as I was in so much pain, I could hardly walk. We arrived about 11am. Though St Helen is fortunate enough to have a hospital, sadly the fact is that the government doesn’t allocate them a full time doctor and they have to wait for a doctor to come to get permission to give me pain relief. This took about 90 minutes. Gosh I have never moaned and groaned on the way that I did. I kept on apologizing but I couldn’t find a comfortable position and I couldn’t stop moaning. The staff were absolutely marvellous and even the receptionist ‘adopted’ me and spent a lot of time talking and reassuring Rob and I. Finally with a couple of shots, the pain became a dull ache and I am scheduled to go to Launceston for tests. They suspect kidney stones.

At 5pm, the air ambulance comes to pick me up and another lady who had chest pain. I was much too concerned to be excited about being in an Air Ambulance and seeing our son’s work from the inside. The flight is relatively short – maybe 20 minutes. On an aside, Tasmania has only one Air Ambulance to service the whole state. They are kept extremely busy 24/7

I am sitting up by now and as such I wasn’t allocated a bed until 10.30 that night in Launceston, and then finally they sent me in for tests. I had been asking unsuccessfully for more pain relief since 7.30pm. I also hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in case I have to have surgery, which is fair enough and I wasn’t really hungry though I was getting mighty thirsty. At 11pm, the nice intern who has been looking after me intermittently gets a surgeon to check out the results. The surgeon wanted to discharge me immediately! He was so rude and made me feel that I had been wasting everyone’s time and resources. I had to tell him, I have no phone, no money, no friends in Launceston and that even my husband was stuck back at the Bay of Fires and I couldn’t even contact him! If they did discharge me then I was going to spend the whole night in their emergency waiting room as I had literally nowhere to go.

I get to have a narrow hard bed with no pillows in the emergency department for the night – there wasn’t enough pillows to go around, so I had a folded blanket as my pillow! It is such a noisy place. It is one time I am very grateful that I am deaf and that I can take my hearing aid out to have a sleep in peace and quiet! The nursing staff were fantastic as was the registrar whom I met the next morning. She couldn’t believe that the surgeon would have kicked me out last night and that there was no way I was wasting the hospital’s time and resources. My scans showed I had two large stones 16mm and 5mm. I am to be discharged and advised to come back in 4 weeks to have the stones blasted. When we explain that we are travelling, she wrote it up that I could have them done in Hobart too!

Rob finally got back to Launceston with the motorhome and car towed on the back. He gets the car off and comes to pick me up from the hospital only to be told that I had been discharged hours ago and that I had left. He knew there was no way I could go anywhere as I had no money, no phone, no anything, so he had to fun and games of looking for me himself! He finally found me. 25 hours after I was admitted to St Helens hospital, I finally get to leave Launceston Hospital! Other than that one surgeon the staff at both hospitals were fantastic. Thank you to the staff at both hospitals and the Air Ambulance.

We bought some lunch and crashed out back in the motorhome. I am not in a hurry to go back to any hospital, even though I am grateful for discovering the cause and relieving my pain.

St Helens & The Bay Of Fires

We moved on to St Helen after visiting the glow worm tunnel at Derby. It continues to rain, well more of a drizzle but certainly miserable looking weather and no there's sunshine for charging the batteries. We thought it best to set up camp first and then when the weather is better then we could come back out to St Helen for some investigation, or at least that was our well intentioned plan.

We checked out a few campsites along the Bay of Fires and we decided we liked the smaller Jeaneret Beach Campsite at Binalong Bay better. We found one that gave us a lovely view of the beach and the track to it was just at our campsite. We can make our own camp fires and the drop toilet was nearby but no so close that we could smell it. We are set up to be completely self contained, but if there is a half decent toilet within walking distance then we are likely to use it during the day.

 

The Bay of Fires

On our first full day here, the rain stopped long enough for us to venture out to the beach and clamber all over. We also climbed the rocky outcrop to the top of the cliff and made our way back to the beach via another track. The sun tried hard to pop its head out but the clouds kept overpowering the sun today. So other than our beach walk and climb, we had a lovely lazy day.


The very fine white, white sandy ‘bays’ with multiple areas of huge rock outcrops like giant pebbles which are dotted with colourful red lichen make The Bay of Fires special and I can only imagine that in the sun they are spectacular.

Sadly we weren’t going to have the opportunity to find out as some drama is about to unfold in our lives.

Life After A Head Cancer

It is 12 months since my cancer diagnosis. I am well and truly on the road to better health though I will never be “in remission”.  Life is certainly unpredictable. You can read about my initial diagnosis here.  It is something I will live with for the rest of my life. Sadly with the passage of time, I found that the vast majority of people I had considered were my friends just didn’t have the time or space in their lives for me. It took 4 months to get my first visitor! It seemed to me that no one outside my family cared to know whether I lived or died. I had no idea that I was of so little regard. This hurt me so much more than finding out I have cancer. It has been a time of extreme loneliness and introspection. It has affected my self esteem.

Still, from the ashes rise the opportunity to make beautiful new friends. Who knows what the future holds! With God’s help I will try to be more considerate of others, to not talk so much and to listen to them and not voice my opinion so quickly. I also desire to be less selfish. There are quite likely other areas of my life that need work too. I used to joke about my desire to grow to be a nice old lady meant that I had to start practice now. Maybe that was not too far off the mark after all. Well I am going to have to do an awful lot of practicing so that I become a nice person for real. They say practice makes perfect. Some of us just need a whole lot more practice than others!
 

I am thankful that my husband has stood by me and the emotional traumas this past 12 months have brought in their wake. I also know that my children and my sister love me unconditionally.

The words of Psalm13 are an echo of the desolation I felt at times.

1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?

3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

I never stopped believing & trusting in God. I did not ‘feel’ that He was/is there or listening to me, but then why should He? Who am I that He would pay special attention to me?

Still I have His promises to me that He loves me regardless of whether I deserve it or not. The next part of Psalm 13 is something I need to remember...especially the rejoicing and praising God no matter what!

5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me. 


I pray that I will be able to praise God through these difficult times. It is easy to praise God when the sun is shining and life is without bumps and pits. Now that I am over the worst of the cancer for the time being, I just need to praise God more and be thankful for the people God has brought into my circle since the cancer. I hope that I can be someone that loves & cares for them in the same way that they have shown love and care for me.


Lord, make me a channel of your peace.
May I be able to praise your name once again, not just in my head but deep within my heart, no matter what the future holds.

Scottsdale

After Lilydale we only moved a short distance to camp at Scottsdale. We are surrounded by the lovely ducks. It certainly is he weather for the ducks since it was rain, rain and more rain

It is weather for the ducks and ducklings

We’ve really not seen many clear days since we’ve been here. The locals tell us that this wet is unseasonably late. It certainly makes it difficult to get a decent charge up on the batteries with so many overcast days. We can make do with about 7-8 days wet weather by being frugal and using the butane gas cooker for cooking. Joy and Bob from Lilydale’s campground follow us later in the day and so we invited them to join us for a cuppa and later for happy hour too since it was still raining.

Whilst in Scottsdale we tried to do some sightseeing. We went first to the information centre and from there we found out about the war memorial carvings in town just up the road from them literally. It is a great testimony to the memory of the men and woman who served in all branches in the war on our behalf in the language of wood which is so appropriate being a timber area. (Excuse the pun but it suits here perfectly). The carvings represent the machine gun carrying soldier typical of the Vietnam era, the nurse, the sailor, the pilot, the regular foot soldier, the helicopter, the spitfire aeroplane, the cannon and the flag. The carvings are very well thought out and executed.

Scottsdale War Memorial

 We tried to go the Eco centre but it was closed apparently due to some severe water damage. It is such a pity as it is a fairly recent building and makes one wonder why it wasn’t built to withstand heavy rain. On the way back we just had to take a photo of the Big Thumb which was carved by a local when a large tree fell across his gate. Rob wanted a photo of the thumb ‘picking’ his nose!

Rob's something big stuck up his nose!

We also looked in the local art gallery and craft centre which also doubles as a cafe and popped into some of the local shops including the bakery for which we had a voucher from the info centre for a free coffee/hot chocolate each. uprooted tree - note shallow root.

Eco Centre

Moving north towards the North East Tasmania

We finally left Launceston. It is only a short 30km trip to Lilydale where there is a very small free camp adjacent to a nice little waterfall. It was so short we decided to drive the car separately rather than hitch it up.

Lilydale Creek

We will need to be relatively close to Launceston, since we need to fly out of Launceston next week for a short trip back to Sydney for our daughter, Camille’s engagement party. We hadn’t intended to spend so long in Launceston if we weren’t working there, but there was so much to see and do that it was easy to use Launceston as a base from which to travel and Ian, the owner at Old Macs Farm was always around somewhere and one felt very secure in leaving the motorhome for long hours at a time.

Cheap Fuel

We were also surprised to see the cheapest fuel prices since we have arrived right here in town. $140.9 for ULP and $142.5 for diesel. It goes without saying that we filled up whilst here.

Meeting our neighbours... again

We rocked up at Lilydale after a late departure from Old Mac’s Farm (main reason is explained below) and lo & behold, Graham and his wife who were our neighbours at Old Mac’s were there ahead of us. I hadn’t met either of them until Lilydale but we sure made up for it here. She likes to knit booties, scarves etc and sells them on the road as they travel. She is like me in that she doesn’t get car sick (other than reading) and so she can knit whilst her hubby drives. We were the only campers there for a while.

Lilydale Waterfalls

After a chat getting to know them a bit, we went for the short walk to the waterfalls. They are not big, maybe 6m high nor are they deep but very pretty and natural. Though there is no sign either way, you could cool off in the shallow pools along the way and by bypassing the trail at the end you could even hop under the falls themselves which is always a lovely experience. .

Lilydale waterfalls

Camp ground full

By 6pm the camp ground was pretty full. 3 cars of back packers, a family of 5 in a caravan and an older couple, Joy and Bob, whom we invited to join us for happy hour. They were traveling in a small motorhome called Gypsy Spirit. We also met others such as Gypsy Barb who has well and truly nailed the solo travelling to an art. Her motorhome is a testimony to her bubbly, independent and individual personality. My gosh, she went to back to uni when she turned 60 to d her Masters just because she could! She is off to do some volunteer work amongst aboriginals next year! Way to go Barb!

Getting help with WikiCamps

Going back a tad, we were fortunate with helpful new friends at Old Macs Farm: First off we met Nigel and Kim Rutland with their 3 kids. (Rutlands on the Road)  Nigel volunteered his wife, Kim to show me how to download WikiCamps onto our Aldi bought tablet and though we had some hassles with the tablet dropping out, she succeeded. When we played with it that night though we just couldn’t get the WikiCamps to work unless we were onlilyine and even then we were frustrated with not being able to access some features. Then this morning, just as were sort of packing up, Rob met our new neighbour, Noel and he offered to teach Rob how to use WikiCamps some more. We finally understood that the fault lies with us (of course) and through one tiny little ‘key’ we were able to unlock the features and understand where we went wrong and now we should be able to use WikiCamps with no more hassles, well that’s the theory. Noel even had Rob use WikiCamps whilst he watched over his shoulder and made sure Rob knew what to do himself. This is just one more reason why we love this lifestyle. So many people are so friendly and willing to be helpful and share their experiences and expertise. So what was started some 3 weeks back in Tocumwal by Wayne (Morwenna) and then Kim getting it finally downloaded and then Noel teaching us, all added to an enriching time of learning.