Long absence

Dear readers,

Sorry I have been so quiet lately but I am just now able to crawl out from under the big rock where I have been hiding. Lots of things have been happening, both good and bad.

Amongst the good things would be our neighbours from Montbonnot visiting, which was great and also our Swedish friends, back for their second visit, and before that our Spanish and Japanese friends staying with us while working with hubby. There was also hubby's end-of-year party which was held in a Spanish restaurant with tapas and flamenco dancing, good fun but thank goodness we didn't have to do the flamenco dancing; it is pretty intense!

We also had a nice wedding to go to in Hepburn Springs which was lovely.  As the name indicates there were natural springs there and we had a good soak the day after the wedding. They also had mineral water that was good for different things, that you could collect yourself in bottles and take home. One man told me he had bad arthritis before, but since he started drinking this water he was cured! I tried the mineral water, of course, but I was not a great fan, unlike hubby who has strong pleasant memories of it from when he was very young.

Here is a sight you do not see so often!
Do you like the formal silver thongs?

Testing the waters of Hepburn Springs today ...

... and a scant 60 years earlier

Near Hepburn Springs is the cute town of Trentham, which
plays on its nearness to the Wombat State Forest.  When did
you last visit an Emporium?

Then on to Melbourne and a very quick visit with family, finishing off with Christmas lunch at the eldest niece and her husband; we were over 20 people I think and it went very well.  It was great to see everybody but unfortunately the host became very ill with some sort of tummy bug and had to be taken to hospital later on.

No visit to Victoria would be complete without seeing the
12 Apostles (make that nine thanks to erosion).

Continuing with the bad side, was that we hit a kangaroo driving back from Melbourne to Sydney in the night. It was quite upsetting. He died right away so we just pulled him of the road and we were able to continue driving even though the front was pretty badly smashed up. It took almost two weeks to be repaired.

Oh, almost forgot, we also had a flat tyre driving down to Victoria, fortunately hubby was able to change it so we could continue and have it fixed properly later on.  It was my fault, I thought I was just driving over a piece of paper. Instead of swerving to avoid it I drove right over what turned out to be some very hard cardboard with nails in it.

To continue with unpleasant things, I also managed to get a very long lasting flu which already started on Christmas Day and I am still coughing. I guess I was due since I have not been sick since we came to Australia four years ago.  So there you have it, my life in a nutshell, since last time I wrote here.

I have to continue mentioning bad and sad things, because we can't forget the terrorist attacks. The one in Sydney in a coffee shop in Martin Place where three people died and the one in Paris where many more people were killed. There have also been other terrorist attacks and sometimes it is increasingly difficult "looking on the bright side of things" as they sing in Life of Brian, but I guess you have to try, right!