Family day

Sunday was reserved for the family after Patricia and my morning walk along the beach at Coogee. We found another ‘Bath,’ which is an ocean swimming area created by a low wall build out from the rock cliffs. Seawater floods in over the wall of this protected area, and voila – an ocean swimming pool.

Ulli was kind enough to let us have her car, so we made our way out to the suburb of Cabramatta, where I had spent my first few weeks in 1971 when I arrived in Australia for the first time. It took us about an hour and some tense moments - driving on the right side of the road, but we finally arrived at my cousin Mark’s place.

Mark and his brother, Alan, were preparing some food, like sausage rolls (vegetarian style), deviled eggs and potato salad. Sometime later, Olga and the three girls came back from doing some shopping, and Neil and Pam arrived. It was great to see all of them, especially seeing how the girls have grown in the four years since we last saw them.

I took this opportunity to retrieve the 10 or so boxes of mainly books I had stored in their attic and realized in the process of climbing in and out of a tiny crawl hole that I need to lose some weight. It was much easier to get them in there more than 20 years ago. I am not quite sure how I am going to do this now while on vacation and so.

We got back to Ulli’s place at about 7:00 after taking a spin around Sydney and Bondi. I just had to do it.

Today, (Monday) we are on our way to our destination: Johns River south of Port Macquaurie. We decided to take the train and enjoy the scenery, and it gave Patricia a chance to catch up on some work for GENI. The trip takes 5 hours to Taree where Luke will pick us up. The scenery is great and everything is lush and green and very spacious.

Thanks to Patricia’s editing and contributions, my blog now looks a lot better.