Regrets

....I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention....la, la la.

Has to be sung in a Frank Sinatra voice, of course. But seriously,  thinking about it I want to "mention" a regret that I have and that is the fact that I didn't keep a diary when the kids were little. Now when I have all the time in the world to sit and think back I don't really remember too much, unless I look at photos of special events. But all those little funny things and cute expressions that they came out with, I don't remember them so well or not at all. And if I remember something I still don't always remember who said it or did it. Oh, well, that's the way it is, I guess, and no use crying over spilled milk.

Another huge regret, more recent, is that I started playing Candy Crush Saga on Fb and can't get anywhere. I see friends reaching 200 and more and I am still down there on 30 and can't budge, it is so annoying, but I refuse to buy "stuff" to get further. Thank goodness I never got into serious gambling!

I promised to tell you about White Cliffs. Well, it all started many years ago when I read in a Swedish magazine about a family from a small town in Sweden who packed up and went to live their dream, opal digging in Coober Pedy, living underground. When I told people in my art group that I wanted to go there and see it, but that it was too far for just a long week end, someone told me that you could always go to White Cliffs. It is closer and can be done in a long week-end (with a lot of driving!).

White Cliffs is also an opal mining town, but smaller than Coober Pedy with just over 100 permanent residents but more including tourists and occasional fossickers of course. It has a primary school and a pub and even a golf course (it cost two dollars for members and five for non members to play and there was a little box where you could put the money) and a motel ...underground... where we stayed.  I was very anxious about that since I suffer a bit from claustrophobia but in fact it all went very well. We stayed two nights even though I had made preparations to sleep in the car if I panicked.

Twinkle-toes?

Here I am descending to our bedroom from the star-gazing area, you should have seen the stars - breath-taking! Turned out my shoes shone in the dark which I had never noticed before, but it came in handy when going to the toilet in the night. There were no en-suite bathrooms, so you had to roam the corridors until you found the communal bathroom and toilet. For some reason I ran into a woman my age every time I was up to go to the toilet!! We became good friends in the end.


We met and talked to many friendly and interesting people who had come to White Cliffs as tourists and liked it so much that they had moved up there with their families. They had all the mod cons there underground, and the kids went to the primary school and then they went to boarding school when they were older, subsidized of course by the state since they lived in the Outback. I asked one woman about shopping and she said she was "the" expert on-line shopper in White Cliffs. She would place an order and the merchandise would arrive by postal truck once a week from the nearest bigger town about 100 kilometres away. They had four small children so I guess she needed quite a lot of stuff. 

The Dish

On the way back to Sydney we stopped in a place called Parkes, famous for the big dish. For you who have seen the movie, this is the dish! We had some fun there, me in the gift shop and hubby reading all the info in great detail and also watching a 3-D film. It was very advantageous to weigh yourself, I think hubby weighed 32 kilos on Mars.

We went to the cinema yesterday and saw The Grand Budapest Hotel; hubby liked it and I didn't dislike it. Thank God we had free tickets from our lovely neighbour. We were almost the only ones in that theatre because everybody else was there to celebrate the 4th of May, Star Wars Day. 

It is getting cold here now at night and the house is only heated in the kitchen and the bedroom, the rest of the house was 15 degrees when I came down this morning. Outside is glorious sunshine so I am going out now to warm up. 

May the Fourth be with you!