Back in Oz for 2 Months – Mitchell News

Nov to Dec 2018

So after 6 months away in Canada and Florence we headed back to Australia for two months, principally to visit Glenda’s Mom.

We arrived in Sydney early in the morning. The place we had our car stored was supposed to pick us up. Unfortunately their driver was witness to a fatal car accident and was unable to leave the scene. We ended up getting a cab and picked up our car – destination our old home ground of Manly. We had booked a couple of nights at the Quarantine Station Hotel to get over jetlag before driving up to Brisbane. The Quarantine Station has long been touted as an upmarket establishment and having got a great deal a year earlier we were looking forward to spending a couple of days there.

Hmmmm – the marketing hype certainly exceeded the experience. The rooms were small but it was the run down (not rustic) nature of the room that left us very disappointed. The complex was nice and had great views, so not all bad. We enjoyed the opportunity to catchup with a few friends.

We then left and stopped over at friends in Gosford. Martin and Michelle have an amazing ministry and are always a great encouragement to us – http://www.elim.com.au/

Leaving Gosford we arrived in Brisbane where we spent the time staying with Wayne & Judy (Glenda’s brother and sister in-law). It was good to catch-up and were greeted with the surprising news that they had sold their business that day – something they have been trying to do for a few years. A week or so later they then packed their RV and set off on a 3 week trip up to their farm north of Mackay. It was fun loading the motorbike on the trailer.

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It was also great seeing Glenda’s Mom again and over the 2 months we were able to spend many days visiting and having some interesting conversations. The doctors have now reached the point where they are no longer operating on any of her melanoma’s. They are trying a new treatment that is the opposite of chemo – it is based on boosting the good cells. So far it has been working wonderfully, although like all strong treatments it comes with numerous side effects.

This time round we decided that we are likely to keep returning to Brisbane for the foreseeable future and so we moved our car rego to Queensland – yes we are now Queenslanders.

So what did we get upto…

Saturday mornings – we completed our normal Parkruns, this time at Southbank. It is very different to Florence. In Florence we had around 60 participants – Southbank has closer to 500+ or on Christmas day over 800. Sad thing is that whilst the field is large there is very little atmosphere. No support, no cheering. Running is Australia is sadly very different to many of the other countries we have run in. During the week we managed to few local runs and even went into the city a few times to run along the river.

Sundays – it was really nice getting back to Lifecity church where we were able to connect with many of our friends. They were organising a big concert event which happened to coincide with the time Walter would be away visiting his brother. Glenda was able to get involved and the event held over 2 nights went off very well.

Weekdays – most of the weekdays were spent visiting Mom, taking here for blood tests or to the hospital. We also had many opportunities to catch-up with friends. Glenda even managed to spend a day in training this time receiving rather than giving. On one of the days we drove out to Redcliffe (just over an hour away) for fish and chips. We love the Redcliffe area and their fish and chips are that good.

We visited our storage unit a few times to put stuff into storage and change some of our wardrobe. Whilst we live out of 4 suitcases most of the year it is nice to know we have a few bits and pieces we can use when back in Oz. This time we did not bother getting our bicycles out – to busy visiting people.

Keeping ourselves busy, we went for a walk in the mountains. Imagine our surprise when we crossed paths with one of nature’s slithery creatures. The walk was to some falls – well if there had been any water, their might have been falls. Brisbane has been very dry.

On another day we went out to see where Courtney (Wayne & Judy’s daughter) keeps her horse (one of them). They have large paddocks out on a farm not too far from where they live. She lives for horses. Reckless (the horse) is a good looking animal but wow, the amount of effort required to keep a horse (especially thoroughbreds) is ridiculous – not for me. It was funny seeing sunscreen being put on a horse – I know the sun is fierce in Australia – but….

Interestingly it seems all the people we saw with the horses where girls – don’t know what the boys are doing.

Walter went off to visit his Brother Theo in Adelaide as he celebrated a milestone birthday. Again it was a great opportunity to catch up with him and the rest of the family. I enjoyed spending time bike riding and walking. Theo is an avid mountain bike rider. As a roadie, I was not able to keep up with his antics but had fun all the same. On one of the days on our way to do some riding we stopped off at a motor museum. It was nice seeing some of the old cars. The museum had many old and not so old cars on display.