Feb 1

Cruising around home! Now we're finally in. All the work begins.

Some awesome murals around here; stops the graffiti, looks terrific.

Next door's street garden. Hear no evil, see some lovely shrubs.

Keep left; no problem with this in the Inner West.

Out for dinner near home, on Canterbury Road

That's a definite no to Coal. The kids are fully into protesting about it as well. There was a turnout of thousands.

Do these cops look a bit like the Beetles Abbey Road album cover?

On the new metro train to work. It comes every four minutes except for when I turn up.

Plenty of demand for public transport; this is where the money needs to get spent!

The great day in 1855. Greatness peaked around 1920-1930, then cars started taking over in the 1950s.

On the way home from work: shopping around Olympic Park / Homebush.

Jan

The January long weekend, bbq at Peter's.

Some of the stuff from Mum's place is amazing; chicken shears that are about 50 years old still in the packet, linen table cloth made in Ireland.

We dropped in on an escape room in Newtown, only just did it in time, needed a few clues since the ones there were too cryptic.

Rafy and Finn and the scare crow bros.

At Peters

The old gang from France Hugues, new guy, Gabriella, Sylvie, Jean Louis, Carol, Alina; front row: Tristan, Liviu and the new bub.

Amazing the things that are still packed up unused since Mum's wedding day, about 60 years ago.

More building crap

Left: note of a practical completion. No-one stayed around to actually give us the note. They tried to hand it over on the 24th of December.

On the 18th of Jan, they tried again. The manager of the building company has a very curly eyebrow.

The original build came with a gaping hole open to the weather.

Then they put in a chunk of wood with less of a hole.

After further complaints from us, they put a plastic bag on the wood, which simply guides the water into the hole without being soaked up.

More choice work; ducting hanging from an electrical wire. Unsafe; what building standard?

Electrical wire not in a conduit - simply poking up through the concrete.

January 2020

Our stuff is still in storage! Waiting for a place to live...

And while we wait, there's always stuff to do, eg do some sketches at the art gallery. The McCabe kids enjoy it, ours not so much.

I should keep notes because I can't remember where we were going to this day. The tram ride was clearly fun.

Guests when we could have them; Raffy and  Finn.

3 of the fab 4; Cookie, Dixie and the other one. They are now producing a heap of eggs.

After Christmas

Paige's birthday - too much chocolate cake.

Some racing around at the water park, then some more chocolate cake.

Nice to catch up with some old uni buddies; Scot, Andy and Pete.Everyone's pretty much the same old.

Bill and Chap were down from Brisbane to visit family, so we all had a few in the afternoon at the Oaks - Bill, Johnno, Chap, Sharnie, Jeanie, and us two. Really good to see them.

The builders had 6 months on the contract to finish, we gave them an extra 8 months, but they screwed it up so much that even that was not enough time: a bad case of the measles at our house due to paint problems, problems with the doors shutting.

 This duct is an unwelcome sight in the middle of the living room. Nice touch from the experts. They could have routed it in the stairs, or up the ceiling.

Laundry completely unfinished. This was a deal breaker - we shouldn't be expected to live without one for who knows how long. We decided not to move in, so spent a few extra weeks with bags on the floor at the in laws.

Several months was not enough to make any progress on kitchen extraction. Still not, at the time of writing in June 2020. What a joke.

The duct at the other end is held on by sticky tape, no joke. This is their idea of a suitable fixing material? The duct tape has failed, and we didn't understand at the time, but this whole piece is simply laying on the bottom, no longer connected.

All doors did not close properly. The powder room door did not have the striker piece installed and could not be closed at all. This door is free floating since it lacks the bottom guide. Numerous problems are due to things simple not being finished.

Needless to say, living in a spare room at the in laws, living out of suitcases, not knowing when anything might get fixed was a major stress. Late, overpriced, poor quality finish: we would never use these guys again and don't recommend them for anything.

Christmas!

2019 was a good Christmas. I think the boys were pretty happy to be home again, sitting in a house and not having to set up a tent again.

 Our excellent hostess.

Me and the girls tried to make a house using brownie bricks, coconut snow, chocolate stick door, and sugar strap paths. It was all going well until a wall collapsed. Not sure who ate it, hopefully it got some takers.

 Present unwrapping, Ollie is pretty stoked, a new computer, but he needed it for school as well. I think he gets more games use out of it than educational use. I guess games can show people how to use these things.





The KK gift opening. The room was all activity.

Bendigo, Yack, Home, The End of The Trip!

We keep going until we hit Bendigo. It's been a massive drive today. This city looks positively European with all of it's old buildings, and tram down the middle.

Got up, went to the local pool. The hotel has a pool membership. Gary the owner says that it's a lot cheaper than building and maintaining their own one. Louis went on the slippery slide. That was awesome. We went into town for some Japanese. The boys stayed in the room, while me and Marie went to the Bendigo Pottery. There was a glass model maker, a soap maker, and some locally done chocolate, so we picked up some of that as well as some bowls etc.

Went to the night market, and bought some Bendigo alco fizz pops for home.

Left: camels at the night market.

20th - it was very hot, we left early. First stop Benalla, Main St cafe, no vego option bar a salad turkish sandwich. Stopped to get 3kg of cherries just before Shepparton, no stopping there as it looked kinda borin.

Dropped in on Lib, Hugh, Cam, Row, Ben and Angus. It was about 40deg C so we stayed indoors, pulled out some beer, alco fizz pops (Spritzer) that we bought in Bendigo, boys went nuts, we played 500 once again. The girls beat the pants off the boys. They scored a free stray cat that is very cool. They tried to find the owners via Facebook announcements and the local pound, but no takers, so she's staying there. She has no name except for Miao Miao. Always a pleasure. Good feed, good conversation, good wine, good swing, kids were v entertained.

Finally rolling at 11am, and we've got a long way to go! Lunch was fast at Gundagai - some pies, then back on the drive. As we get closer, clicking into the notification about the fire in the Southwest says the Hume Highway is closed. Is that right? Is it current? The winds are strong. It's hot and dry. The fire is out of control. Google maps agrees - the highway is closed. We're off down to Wollongong to get around it. There's a smash on the Macquarie Pass, so we have to go even further around - via Jamberoo. Heading to Robertson, fire trucks speed past, in the direction we're travelling. Smoke is thick. Are we heading into a fire? We listen intently to ABC radio, people ringing in to pinpoint where the multiple fires have reached. One guy says the flames are about 50m away from his house. Anyone who thinks climate change is not real either has their head in a bucket, or are being wilfully ignorant. They will get converted one disaster at a time.

Picture right: welcome home! Once you get into the traffic, it's like you never left.

Eight hours later (should've been 6) we arrived where Vonne and family live. My brothers and sisters are in Perth but we've just been there, so it didn't make sense to go, then have to drive 4000kms back. Doing the last 1500 odd has been tough enough.

We sent her an SMS selfie of us out the front of their house. Holly saw it and yells 'Ted and Marie are outside our front door'. Vonne yells 'Outside our house??' then they all come out to see us. What a surprise!

It's nice to be home. We went to see our house, which is just an endless stress. Let's not talk about it. Other chores include shopping for gifts, food etc. We've been cleaning Evonne's house down for the Christmas get together. Today is Christmas! The boys were pretty stoked with their goodies - Lou got Zombicide, a board game, and Ollie got a laptop.

Long story short - that's the end of the trip folks!