Our other main occupation was in visiting the local Farmers' Markets - places where you'll find any number of bargains. Pity that the luggage allowance upon airplanes is so small these days, unless, that is, you are one of the favoured upper class passengers, where width of passenger and weight of baggage seems immaterial. Had we had more space/weight available then perhaps we might have smuggled this not-so-friendly-as-he-looks-ferret aboard to make his mark on the rabbits, chipmunks and groundhogs back home. Ferrets seem desirable pets in Australia, given the number of hungry rabbits we saw.
Really, though, we were marking time before catching the first leg of the journey home. The wholer jouirney was to take us three calendar days. You must bear in mind that we were to cross the date line halfway, this adding the extra day......
That first leg was just an hour's trip to Sydney, where we were faced with a twelve hour stopover and so elected to check into one of the local sleazy hotels rather than try to crash in Sydney Airport, not one of the more comfortable places in the world and certainly one of the least attractive from the point of view of security checks. By contrast, Port Macquarie was a refreshing change - it's not often you get the chance to simply stroll out onto the airfield or even have a picnic on the grass while waiting for the aircrew to finish up their game of two-up. In Port Macquarie Airport you can also practise your morse code sending - they have a little display set up, complete with morse key. Here's a portion of that display together with a short message for you. It's very interesting isn't it, how difficult it is to read morse code visually when one has only dealt with it audially. I wonder if old-time Navy signalmen, used as they are to Aldis lamps, would have as much trouble. Interesting question.
Those are decorative windows, made of plexiglass, looking out over a tiny airfield suitable only for short take-off and -landing aircraft (eg the Dash)
If we can, then we travel Cathay Pacific. Certainly we would avoid any American airline if at all possible. But even Cathay Pacific can't do much to deaden the misery of a twenty-four hour transit, always cramped, always noisy and always subject to the whimsy of the so-called Security Staff (frighten people enough and you can do anything with them !). I think it was May 1 we arrived in Vancouver where we were to hole up for a week of obligatory family visits and make some attempt to get internal clocks fixed up again. Well, we actually went skiing ! Took a day off to go to Whistler. It was snowing, sort of. Mixed with rain. And fog. Average Whistler day at that time of the year they said, and anyway it was so nice to be able to slide down the hills - first time for almost a year. Another day we went for a cruise around Vancouver Harbour, one of the more busy seaports and certainly blessed with a wonderful backdrop of mountains.
It was fascinating to see the speed with which the container ships were unloaded - observing the way in which the ships rose rapidly as the crgo was taken off, one wonders just how stable these vessels are in rough seas. Containers of automobiles being taken off and the empty boxes being stacked in their place, the whole operation taking only a few hours.
And another intereting sight was the huge sulphur piles, residue from gas and petroleum refining - presumably going to make sulphuric acid somewhere or other. Or maybe bitumen filler ? Rubber vulcanising ?
We looked up a few friends in Vancouver - especially, it was good to say Hello to Bob and Elke after, what ? almost a half century.
And then it was time to say goodbye to Vancouver, friends and relations, squeeze back into another bloody airplane, last one for some time, hooray and get back home again. We're heading into our third summer in a row and the big jobs are to get the boat launched (done !) and then, very much in the background, put the garden into some sort of shape.
But first, something entirely different.......Here's a picture of The Man from the Snowy River, dressed to kill, so to speak, in his stockrider's coat and elastic-sided boots. In the background you may hear the gentle chortling of the Laughing Kookaburra as he gives his view of the situation.
Why are those birds laughing at me ?
Well, that's it for some time. It was great fun revisiting Australia - we travelled much less than on the previous occasion, about 12,000 km in all, mainly on the E. side of the continent. Gertie is still in Port Macquarie, waiting for a purchaser to come along, even though we regret having to say goodbye to her. Thanks to all the4 friends in Canada who came along with us. It was good to speak with so many back in Canada using IRLP and the courtesy of Australian radio amateurs. And of course it was great to meet so many old and new friends in Australia, too. If we can, we will be back there before too long......
All the best from Mike and Shirley-Anne