After unpacking half the house (lounge, bedroom 1, bathroom, laundry) the weekend came.
Rachel's step-sisters, Kylie and Kristy, live 12 minutes up the road from us and invited us to attend Galston church as the youth were running the church that week. It was a "cafe church" and the entire congregation met in the hall, sitting around tables with bikkies and chockies on them, while we watched a DVD and had a group discussion. There we met some relatives also. Graeme Wegener and family were there (Dad's cousin) - who I hadn't seen since I was a wee kid.
Everyone was very friendly and no doubt we will be back again for a 'normal' service some time. Leaving, we drove through the gorge, which included a free ferry ride, lovely and calming really. I suppose it's good before the rally cornering out of the gorge that awaits!
During this week we heard the "QE2" and "Queen Mary 2" boats were in the harbour. The "Mary", as pictured from a borrowed source, was promoted as being the largest moving man made object ever to visit Australia. Also, to stand up on it's end it would be taller than Sydney tower. I wanted to go and see it purely for this visual amazement, but they never even looked like trying to stand it up on its end - ripped off!!!
I picked up Rachel from work and headed back through the city (7:30pm) - extremely slowly, (if standing still is slowly) to see the boat on the way home. We got parked and almost to the boat (9:00) when the fireworks started, so we saw fireworks on Sydney harbour on our first week here. They was either for us or the two hugenormous boats.
Leaving the boats, and needing to visit a rest room, we decided to go to a restaurant (9:45). Ordered a hot chocolate, and hoped the traffic may have eased a little. However, being a Tuesday evening (the worlds slowest evening for restaurants), they only had one waitress and the place was packed being close to the boats. Took us about an our to get the drinks, and the the traffic hadn't eased anyway!Once on the bridge the traffic flowed and we only stopped for one set of lights all the way home! Got home about midnight. Don't think we'll ever have a quicker trip home from the city unless we hire a helicopter and land in at the Hospital helipad.
One afternoon I came walking up through the bushy gully from work and could hear one precious doggy barking his head off. Great, hope he hadn't been barking all day! I found Henry in the backyard circling a Blue-tongue Lizard (pictured). He acted the same when we found a blue tongue and echidna at our Basin house. I locked the HJ inside and relocated the lizard over our back fence in the bush block. Haven't seen him since.Our telephone had what we thought was the world's strangest dial tone. Took us a while to figure out it was Telstra home messages telling us we had a message to collect, but when we did figure this out, our phone had gone dead. It took a couple of days for Telstra to get the phone working again.
On my first Thursday of work the SPD had an "Away day" where many of the employees went to an island on the Hawkesbury river for team building activities and so on.
My highlight was having a go at fencing (that is the sport, not the farming version), wearing the whole mask thing and all - very tiring but an experience! Don't think i would want to sword fight for my life. Pretty freaky.
We had 2-3 offers on our house this week. About $5k below what we hope for, but the buyers wouldn't budge. SO we accepted, but before they got word, the highest bidder raised the price by $3k if we get rid of the wood and stuff under our house. That was the only condition too. Not subject to finance or to a building inspection. Was a deal! Happy to have sold it quickly.
When the funds come through we will think about getting an investment unit to rent out, probably in Melbourne.
Rach's work has been a traveling experience. She'll tell you a little bit about that in the next post!
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