Exploring on Saturday

We had breakfast in the local cafe. My poached eggs and bacon were delicious and my iced latte was good and strong

Freyja and Simon had smashed avo
on sourdough

Then we went to the wildlife park. There were lots of koalas and macropods - although there are also lots of agile wallabies pottering around outside the wildlife park

I am not a koala OR a wallaby.
I am the Mighty McCulloch!

Then to Catseye beach

It is a very lovely beach

One of the good things about Hamilton Island is that there are two shuttle services which loop around the more populated part of the island. The green shuttle, which runs every 10 minutes and more or less services the hotels and the resorty bits, and the blue shuttles which loops around a larger part of the island and runs every 30 minutes. Both of these are free, and operate as hop on, hop off services. We rode on both of them. We did not hop off, except just past the airstrip where the driver had a five minute break, so we did too.

We had lunch at Sails, in the resort centre. My Vietnamese style noodle salad was delicious and my lychee and cranberry mocktail was delightful. So was the lunchtime view

Freyja and Simon went swimming, not in the sea but in the public pool.

We drove around the island in our golf buggy. 

This put me immediately in mind of
Wildcat Island (Swallows and Amazons),
transplanted from the Lake District to the tropics

We met another neighbour, guarding the entrance to our buggy garage

It's a yellow bellied tree snake
so not venomous
but we kept out of its way anyway
and did not run it over with our buggy

And we enjoyed delightful sunset views from our apartment

and from the marina

It was a good day - apart from when Simon discovered that his vital medication had cracked and was leaking. The local pharmacy had a replacement but it was the wrong brand and his script didn't cover it. But even that was resolved with a phone call to Melbourne and the almost immediate arrival of an e-script for the brand that the pharmacy did have. Technology is a wonderful thing!

Oasis Apartments, Hamilton Island

We arrived mid afternoon yesterday and were met by a shuttle bus which brought us to our apartment.

It's a nice apartment with lovely views

Afternoon view, on arrival

Morning view today

 We have two bedrooms, a lounge, dining, kitchen area and a lovely large, enclosed balcony

We have neighbours, both human and not:

We have a little village with shops, cafes, restaurants and an IGA (These are from yesterday; it's sunnier and less cloudy today)

And there are no private cars. Instead, people drive golf buggies. 

This is our buggy

  

I sit  here at the back

And this is our apartment (that's my bedroom window)

The forecast temperatures while we are here are in the low to mid 20s, with not much variation between night and day temperatures. Pretty perfect for exploring a small-ish tropical island

Week Off

It was Lindsey's birthday last Sunday. Ordinarily we would have gone out for lunch but it was also Mother's Day and the places we might have wanted to go to would have been booked out by the time we thought about it.

So she and Ian came to my place instead and I made roasted chicken leg quarters, with roast potatoes and lots of green vegetables.

On Monday I went to Melbourne to visit my podiatrist and went to La Manna supermarket on my way home. I had to be careful not to buy much. I don't have much freezer space and I am away this weekend.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I pottered about in the garden, started washing my poor, spider-webbed, dusty and much unloved windows. I started washing and brushing the patio. I swept and vacuumed the floors and carpets.

Hilary next door came around and agreed to feed the cats on the days that Lindsey can't  while I am away.

I came to Melbourne on the airport bus (and left my dinosaur cap on the bus 😥) and stayed in the Holiday Inn at the airport overnight. I don't remember staying in a Holiday Inn before and it's rather nice. Very comfortable and excellent wifi. Reminds me a bit of the British Premier Inns. I am about to leave on the hotel shuttle to meet Freyja and Simon at the airport. We are off to Hamilton Island for the weekend.

Room with a view:

All was going well yesterday until I left to catch the local bus to the station. I noticed that I had left a light on, went back inside to turn it off -  and my electronic lock flashed to say that it needed new batteries. I didn't have time to find the new batteries, get a screwdriver from the garage and change the batteries. So I wrote a note to Hilary and left her my garage fob. And then, of course, worried all the way to Melbourne that someone would walk up the driveway (unlikely), find the note (also unlikely) grab the fob from its hiding place and let themselves into my place and clear it out (extremely unlikely). In fact, as long as the cats didn't run away it wouldn't be a massive disaster if someone did break into my place and clear it out. It would make moving into a much smaller place much easier.

Lindsey already has a fob for the garage. I'm hoping she might change the batteries on Saturday.

🛫🛫🛫🛫🛫🛫🛫🛫🛫🛫🛫🛫

Later:

We have made it as far as Sydney. A bit of a wait now for the flight to the Whitsundays and Hamilton Island

Visiting Docklands

Freyja and I went and looked at a couple of apartments yesterday afternoon. As I said, I booked the viewings purely because they were yesterday afternoon at times when I was available. I wasn't seriously considering them as contenders.

I might well have considered the first one as a contender once we looked at it. The location was excellent and the apartment was very cute and well laid out (and very tidy). The layout flowed well. Both Freyja and I liked it and could see me living in it quite happily. The deal breaker was that it is at the top of my budget and it is only 48 mᒾ, plus a large 6 mᒾ balcony. I would need a (small) mortgage to be able to afford it and the mortgage lenders won't consider anything that is less than 50 mᒾ, not including the balcony.

Pity. But then again, it probably won't still be on the market when I am in a position to buy.

I knew the second apartment was tiny. It also had a tiny price. I also knew it was right by Marvell Stadium, only just within Docklands. What I didn't realise was that it was more or less a studio / bedsit apartment, with a partition wall, that didn't go right to the ceiling, separating the sleeping space.  I'm not sure how you would get furniture into the sleeping space. The gap between the kitchen bench and the partition wall was very narrow. The balcony wasn't big enough for my egg chair. There was no natural light in the living space. And there was a completely useless, narrow "hall" next to the second partition wall leading to a window. A living space for the cats, perhaps. On the plus side, it was very quiet in the flat. There were crowds gathering at the stadium for a footie match and you couldn't hear them.

Also,  as Freyja pointed out, it had more of a CBD vibe than a Docklands vibe.

If I happened to be a youthful student it would probably have been perfect. But I am neither youthful nor a student. So - Absolutely No.

On the plus side, as we walked across the Marvell Stadium concourse, we found a stall giving away good sized cones of hot chips with tomato sauce. For free! I have no idea why they were free. I didn't ask.  Just took my cone of chips. I think they were advertising Heinz tomato sauce. The chips were quite nice. Excellent value for money 😁

Freyja and I walked along to The District, where I had parked the car. It was a beautiful afternoon. Perfect for an afternoon of exploring. Then Freyja went away, I collected my car, and then I came home.

I walked just over 10k steps in Docklands alone. It's lovely and flat.

The die is cast

Actually, it should really be the dice are cast because two dice have now been thrown on the table.

I have signed the authority for the estate agent to sell

I have engaged the services of a conveyancing solicitor and paid the upfront disbursement charges. (That sounds grander than it actually is; I use that company for all my solicitor needs and they did the conveyancing when we bought this place)

I seem to be committed!

And then, of course - I got seriously cold feet about this whole enterprise 😹

I've got over that now. 

Anyway. I have to buy a new apartment. I've bought it a present, even though I don't have it yet. In fact, I've bought it two presents. When I have bought it and moved in it will have a brand new NutriBullet fancy air fryer and a new NutriBullet blender to go with the mini blender I already have.

I'm working on Saturday morning so have taken the opportunity to book in for a couple of apartment viewings. They might not be apartments I would actually ever want to buy but they were later in the afternoon so I can comfortably get to them. Doesn't hurt to know what's going on, property wise, in an area you are looking to buy in.

*************************

Struggles with Jim's finances continue to haunt me, even though he's been dead for 21 months and I was under the impression that his estate had all been finalised. 

I received a cheque in the post yesterday from HM Revenue and Customs. I was a bit surprised. I wasn't expecting anything from them and usually if they decide I have paid too much tax on my British income they send me an email telling me to log onto my account and then they pay the money into my British bank account. Then I read the accompanying letter and realised it was a repayment for Jim's tax. I did fill out a tax form when he died and sent it back - and then forgot all about it. I don't know what to do with it. My Australian bank won't accept foreign cheques. If it was just something small I would throw the cheque away but it's for a fairly large amount of money (large by my standards, art least) and I could certainly use the money. I can't quite bring myself to ring HMRC and ask them to cancel the cheque and pay the money electronically into my British account, which is what my local bank suggested I do.  It's a pity it didn't arrive before Wendy left for London on Tuesday. She could have taken it with her and paid it into my account in person.  I shall ponder.

Getting Ready for the Estate Agent

I spent most of last week, when not at work, (not) getting ready for the visit yesterday of the estate agent.

I say "not" because I could have put a lot more effort into it. I left the proper cleaning of the house until yesterday morning (apart from the daily stuff I do anyway). I did not clean any of the windows, although I am fully aware that they need doing. I did do a bit of work in the garden, although there is quite a bit still to do.

Lindsey and Ian came by on Sunday and helped me move some of the things that aren't coming with me into the garage, which has transmogrified from a house for the car into God's Waiting Room for Unwanted Things. Some of the things will go to the Lion's Opportunity Shop in Buninyong. A few things are going to Hill House. A few things have potential new homes waiting for them. Anything that is left will go into the next skip.

The next steps are that a handyman is coming to fix a kitchen door and to paint over a few spots on the walls. I need to get curtains for the small bedroom, which somehow was overlooked when I bought the blinds for the rest of the windows. When I get back from Hamilton Island a photographer is coming to take the marketing photos. And then the place will be advertised and a For Sale board will go up on the nature strip.

The estate agent is a bit worried that settlement might happen while I am in Japan. In itself, this isn't a problem. I don't need to be here for settlement to happen. I can be in Japan. I can be anywhere. I can empty the house before I go. I could, if absolutely necessary, empty the house at any point. The problem is what to do with the cats. I can't exactly send them away in a skip!  I am not going to worry about that. I'm only away for two weeks and I have some agency in when settlement happens. And if someone offers me silly money if I settle while I'm away, I'll accept it and move somewhere short term well in advance

I should perhaps clean the patio!

We moved the sideboard into the garage on Sunday. Brandy approves of the new view

Some time ago, I bought a very expensive cat tree. Mostly, they have ignored it, although Whiskey has used the scratching pole quite a bit. 

I don't like it on here.
I'm getting down

It has now been moved into the garage, waiting for its new home, and I have bought a cheap, smaller, Kmart replacement.

I should just have bought a cheap, smaller, Kmart one in the first place!!!

ANZAC weekend

Having the Easter weekend followed by ANZAC Day on the following Friday most definitely punched enormous holes in my sense of time during the week, especially since I worked on the reception desk all day on Tuesday and didn't then go into work as usual on Wednesday. For most of last week I had no idea what day it was, nor what I was supposed to be doing.

It didn't help at all that I did my Japanese lessons on funny days as well.

I did, however, remember to go to work on Tuesday, which was a good start. After that I don't suppose it really mattered which day it was, and I set alerts to remind me to do my Japanese lessons.

The weather has turned its attention to autumn. It may even be contemplating winter. It's been cold and damp, cold and drizzly, cold and foggy, cold and wet pretty much since Easter. This probably wouldn't have bothered me, except that I had another skip delivered on Thursday and I mostly had garden things in mind for it. I also seriously overestimated what I could move all on my own! By this morning, the skip was half full - if I were being generous. It's not absolutely full now, but at least it looks as though I've made a bit of an effort. It's being picked up at some point on Thursday and I'm at work tomorrow so I don't have much time left to put more in it.  I am going to have to get another one, preferably when there is someone here to help smash things up and then to help me carry them.

Brandy threw a spanner in the works by becoming unwell on Saturday. I didn't know what was wrong with him but he stopped eating (not a good sign in my tiny, little cat who LOVES eating), kept crying, and hid under the couch, under the bed, in a corner, under a chair. On Saturday evening I thought he might be feeling better because he stopped crying and came and lay on the couch with me when I sat down to watch TV. He slept on the bed overnight. But then on Sunday morning he started crying again and hid under the bed and wouldn't come out.

Fortunately, my vet clinic runs an "emergency" surgery on Sundays, so I rang and got an appointment for him. Getting there was complicated by road closures for the Ballarat marathon, which my sat nav didn't seem to know about. Again fortunately, I have lived in Ballarat long enough to know my way around alternative routes and managed to get there exactly on time for the appointment.  The vet didn't really know what was wrong with him and, of course, he wasn't doing his dying swan act while we were there. So she gave him an anti-nausea injection and an appetite stimulant tablet and we came home - after I had paid $410 for the privilege. (I knew it would be about that much; they had told me when I rang that there was a significant Sunday surcharge.)

He still didn't eat anything when we got home but at least he spent the rest of the day on the couch and not under it, and he wasn't crying anymore. Later in the afternoon I took him over to the water bowl, which he drank dry. He woke up yesterday morning and had another big drink and a bit later decided that perhaps after all he felt well enough for a soupçon of breakfast, maybe also a sliver of cheese - oh, and while you're using the butter I'll have some of that too, please.

Brandy, feeling a bit better and
enjoying the heated blanket on the couch

Whiskey, enjoying the
fact that I had lit the fire

That cat bed really isn't big enough
for two cats and they both want
to sleep in it!

I'm glad he's eating again. I don't worry so much if Whiskey stops eating, partly because he sometimes does and partly because he has enough weight on him for it not to matter if he loses a bit. Brandy, on the other hand, is quite a scrawny little cat. You don't notice because he's quite fluffy but if you pick him up, or brush him, you are aware that there isn't very much cat under all the fluff. He can't afford to get any scrawnier. 

Lenten Food Challenge - Going Gluten Free

Most years, if I do a food challenge during Lent, I give up eating red meat. 

If you said to me that giving up red meat wasn't much of a challenge, I wouldn't argue with you. It's not much of a challenge. You just don't eat red meat and they don't tend to hide meat in places where you aren't expecting it. 

(I define "red" meat as being any meat that comes from animals with four feet, so pork counts, ostrich does not. Kangaroo also counts because I said so and it's my challenge -  although I (almost) never eat kangaroo anyway, or ostrich come to that).

I didn't do a red meat challenge this year.

Gluten is a whole different challenge. Quite tricky. They hide gluten in all sorts of unlikely places. I have cousins who have coeliac disease, so I do know about hidden gluten. Even so, it came as something of a surprise when I went through everything in my pantry and fridge and checked the ingredients. I knew that soy sauce has gluten in it. I did not know that light soy sauce usually does not. Tamari may or may not contain gluten depending on the brand. Tomato sauce does not. Brown sauce does. Vegemite does. The mirin in my pantry does, the cooking sake does not. Baked beans in tomato sauce are fine. Milo is not. Za'atar does not usually contain wheat but it is just as well I checked the ingredients on the bag I bought when I ran out because it did have wheat in it. My Lebanese friend was unimpressed when I told them

You can, of course, buy gluten free bread, even gluten free Vegemite. But mostly I didn't. There didn't seem to be much point in doing a gluten challenge and simply replacing everything with their gluten free equivalents . Also, I didn't want to go out and buy new stuff just for Lent. I did buy gluten free for things I ran out of but mostly I ate from the gluten free items I already (accidentally) had.

I got a bit tetchy with people who asked if I was losing weight during this challenge. It was not a weight loss challenge, and I didn't go particularly low carb (rice is gluten free, although Rice Bubbles are not). 

I quite enjoyed my gluten free Lent. It was an interesting challenge and meant I had to be both vigilant and mindful about what I bought and ate. I am hugely grateful, though, that in my case it was a challenge by choice and not a medical necessity. I was dreaming of ham and cheese toasties by the time I got to Easter! I also discovered that I could have been eating scotch finger biscuits, even the chocolate covered ones. Arnott's does a range of gluten free alternatives for some of their biscuits. But again - not really in the spirit of the challenge!

I didn't quite make it to Easter Sunday. I bought sourdough hot cross buns (definitely not gluten free) from my local cafe on Good Friday. It seemed appropriate.

Easter Monday breakfast at the Pompeii cafe.
A fancy pants toastie.
Egg, bacon and cheese on a sourdough calzone,
hot chocolate on the side

Easter Weekend

I made another attempt to visit the new Costco on my way home on Wednesday. This time I managed to make it into the car park. But there were no available parking spaces and when spaces became available the cars ahead of me got them. If the (enormous) car park was full, then Costco was likely to be unpleasantly full. I cut my losses, left and came home.

I had a fairly quiet day on Thursday. A quick trip to the Post Office for Lindsey, a visit to Hill House, a trip to the IGA.  I spent most of the day sorting out one of the garden beds in the back yard and tidying the house.

On Good Friday, Lindsey and I went to Victoria Park to check out the Easter Extravaganza Festival. It was marketed as a Street Food Festival, with additional market stalls. We went at about 3pm, which isn't really eating time, so there wasn't much we really wanted to buy. Good Friday was glorious, from a weather point of view, so the market was very crowded. We did a circuit and wandered off.

Wendy came to Ballarat on Saturday and we went out to the Avalon Nursery for lunch and a wander around. Both Lindsey and Wendy thought I meant Avalon Airport when I suggested a visit to Avalon. You couldn't even go plane spotting - it's too small and there aren't many planes to spot!

The weather has been lovely for the past week or so. Warm, sunny, dry. So it was almost inevitable that Easter Sunday would be cool, wet, windy and thundery. Fortunately, the weather cleared at lunchtime. It was a small gathering by our standards, although most families would probably have thought it quite large. We scattered Jim's, Rupert's and Hugo's ashes, together with some of Stella and Tony's in a scrubby bit of the garden at Hill House. Easter Sunday seemed an appropriate day to do it. Jim loved being in the garden at Hill House and was almost always accompanied by Rupert and Hugo. Stella and Tony always enjoyed their visits to Lindsey and Ian's place and especially enjoyed a good family Sunday Lunch. We sent Jim on his way with the can of Quick Brown Fox ruddy ale that I bought for him; we left some dog treats for Rupert and Hugo. Then the rest of us repaired inside for a magnificent Easter Lunch, prepared by Lindsey and Ian.

Wendy and I are about to head to Pompeii for breakfast and then she is heading home. If it doesn't rain this afternoon, I might plant some of the seedlings I bought at Avalon. And get myself ready to go to work tomorrow. I need to focus on going to work tomorrow. I very seldom work on Tuesdays but I am covering someone who is on leave this week. Must remember to go!!

Good Friday skies and Cosmos:

Another Busy Week

Just after lunch on Monday I got a message from the library to say a book I had ordered was available. I thought about the rest of the week, wondering when I could go to pick it up. Then I thought: I'm not actually doing anything very much. I could go right now, this minute.

So I did.

As I drove out of the cul de sac I live in, I noticed that the child care centre was all in darkness. I had a closer look. It was GONE! Not the buildings, of course, but no lights, no signs, no children, no cars in the car park. Nothing. Gone!

I checked later, and discovered that it had closed a little over a week before. I hadn't noticed for a whole week! You have to go past it if you are leaving my cul de sac by car. I really should pay closer attention to what's going on around me. (Although, to be fair, Lindsey hadn't noticed either and she comes past it quite often too.)

On Wednesday, I was coming home from work. The satnav wanted me to come off at Ballarat Road, one exit earlier than usual. So I did. As I prepared to come off I thought: the new Costco opened here today. Perhaps I could go in and have a look. I changed my mind when I realised that the queue to turn left coming off the freeway was well and truly backed up. All the roads leading to the site  were backed up. The Costco carpark (which is enormous) was literally full to overflowing. I wasn't that keen on a visit to Costco so I kept going homewards. I will go and inspect it at some point, but I might wait for the excitement to die down a bit.

On Thursday, Lindsey and I thought we might have lunch out after doing our shopping. Perhaps at the newly renovated and recently re-opened Buninyong pub. Alas. They don't serve lunch on Thursdays. So we mooched on out to Meredith, where we found that the Meredith Hotel also doesn't serve lunch on Thursdays. But The Royal does. We had never been in The Royal, which is on the main road. The menu was typical of country pubs.  I had steak and chips, thinking it wouldn't be particularly exciting. In fact, it was lovely. The chips were hot and crisp. The steak was perfectly cooked. There was an enormous amount of garlic butter.  Lindsey had a lunchtime size chicken parma which she also said was nicely cooked and a perfect size for lunch.

Saturday saw us, in glorious autumn weather, at the market by the lake. There were lots of stalls, lots of people, lots of dogs.  The olive oil man wasn't there, which was disappointing, but otherwise it was a big and bustling market.

I was invited to join Lindsey and Ian for lunch yesterday. They had thought to try the pub in Buninyong but it was fully booked for lunch. So we went to The Shared Table instead and had the Chef's Tasting Menu.  I do like a good tasting menu - lots of different mouthfuls of things. We had mushroom croquettes, fresh crusty bread with olives and roasted carrot butter. We had a tomato salad with silken tofu, then little sticky lamb ribs and finally roast duck breast with fennel, beetroot and cherries

A vegan amuse bouche

I have been eating tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, runner beans and potatoes from the garden. I have also eaten the one apple that was on my apple tree. It was lovely, juicy and sweet. 

But that's the end of the summer harvest now. I am about to pull out the remaining summer plants and sow pea and broad bean seeds. I already have three silver beet plants settling in, and one celery herb plant. I don't use much celery but occasionally I want a little bit. It is very hard to buy a small amount of celery and if you do  find individual stalks they are very expensive. The celery herb isn't a proper, big celery plant. It has smaller, finer stalks.

Cosmos in flower: