Blogger Bill

Late in June this year we drove up to Marysville (100 km from Melbourne) to see for ourselves the damage caused by the fires on Black Saturday (7/02/09). I do remember listening to Radio National in the small hours of the following morning, hearing the unforgettable words “It is reported that there are only about 5 buildings left standing in Marysville.” It shocked and stunned me to the core, and I remember turning to Glenyce, fighting back the tears as I told her what I had heard. It turned out to be true; what’s more, 34 people were burnt to death that night, part of the total of 173 who lost their lives that day!

My heart still turns cold as I remember the horror of that day in this beautiful state of Victoria. Out of consideration for the people who had lost their homes, their friends and families, together with their dreams of life amongst the beautiful forests, we had fought the urge to see it for ourselves. Rebuilding is slowly starting, and the blackened trees greening up, so we drove NE to formerly beautiful Marysville. It’s a place we’ve visited many, many times in our lives, not least some wonderful times at scientific conferences, and at human relations weekends at Marylands guest-house, now in ashes. In the latter I had swum in the pool, naked at midnight! But now it’s all gone, all those lovely building destroyed.

The damage became obvious as we left Healesville. Burnt forest appeared as we drove past Maroondah Dam, part of Melbourne’s water supply. At beautiful Fernshaw the park full of exoitic trees was spared, but the bush was blackened and singed. But even here, the Australian miracle was happening; the tree ferns had responded with splashes of emerald growth shining like a beacon of hope throughout the bush!

Up towards Dom Dom Saddle the marvellously iconic stretches of Mountain Ash were forlorn but not beaten, with minimal damage. I had feared that they were burnt to a crisp, but that was not so. In fact, the fire had paused at the very edge of Dom Dom Saddle, scene of many a fungi foray in past years - but not this year. (Several of our fungi foray sites have been burnt out.)

Driving past Narbethong we encounter extensive damage to the forest and that goes all the way to Marysville, which shocks us. The bakery escaped the fire, and is the centre of town, crowded with any locals, construction workers and travellers like us.

There is little else except portable houses as temporary buildings, although there is the amazing presence of a little cottage here and there that escaped the blaze, for no good reason. The streets are empty of the once charming shops and businesses. But the grass is greening up here and there, and the verdant glow of tree ferns is common, offset against their blackened trunks. Here is the view from the bakery towards the bridge:

A lovingly created garden of sculptures existed along the road a bit, but it’s all destroyed, although there are early signs of rebuilding. Here’s a forlorn sight:

We have enjoyed many walks and drives to Steavensons Falls, just out of town, but the falls are closed to visitors, as all the signage, bridges and facilities were completely destroyed. There are signs of rebuilding just starting to happen along that road, but it’s basically a mudscape starkly puntuated by blackened trees, some of which show tentative signs of greens shoots.

We sadly wend our way home to safely suburban Glen Waverley, shocked and silent, finding this catastrophe difficult to explain to ourselves, let alone anyone else. Given the nature of the Australian bush, it is impossible to say that it must not happen again, as there will be fires again. But surely, somehow, it ought not to be beyond our civilisation to organise things so that the losses are not so devastatingly tragic!

One thing is for sure - our day’s visit to Marysville has changed Glenyce and myself irreversibly - our spirits will never be the same.

Today we’re off to Merimbula Jazz Festival where I’m playing with two bands. I love the south coast of NSW, and the Victorian countryside is now beautifully green and lush. Not sure that I can blog while on the road, so I’ll be back in 10 days.

Looking forwards to playing, and confident of my playing. Health tolerable (with pills). Ciao.

Earlier this year I played in the Grampians Jazz Festival. My usual bass player had fallen ill, so I found a replacement in the form of Don Calvert, owner of one of the venues, the Mountain Grand hotel. Described by him as a “boutique” hotel, it’s closer to a guest house and restaurant, and a very nice place it is, too.

Well, Don provides music in the restaurant on Saturday nights, with himself on the electric bass and singing. He usually gets a piano player on the grand piano or a guitarist to accompany him, and he has a range of good people playing with him. He provides the musician with meals and accommodation.

The pianists he gets are good - very good, so I was flattered when he offered me the chance to go up and there and play with him. And so, accompanied by Glenyce, I drove the 300 km to Halls Gap last Saturday and settled into our room for a rest and recovery. Togged up in musicianly black, we took our places on the small stage and started in with our first set of numbers.

For this, I sight-read the piles of music he places in front of me, and so we proceed through the eight or so songs. Taking a break, we had a chat about how the playing’s going. I was playing a little too loud, with a few too many notes from the piano for his style. That’s partly from the fact that I do all my practicing alone, and am not used to this duo work.

Undaunted, in we go for the next set, after which he expressed satisfaction with my adaptation to the gig’s stylistic requirements which pleased me greatly, because I was working very hard to keep on top of the sight-reading and the need for a kind of minimalist approach to the keyboard.

The dining room had been almost full, and as people left, we could make a bit more noise. We finished up with just one table full of enthusiastic listeners, as we turned to some spirited jamming to cap off the night.

Then it was a late dinner of his beautiful breast of chicken with pistachio sauce, accompanied by some excellent local red wines. We talked of music and vocal style, jazz personalities, and had a damn good time of it all. However, lying in bed, I was so stirred by the stimulation of the night (and the red wine), that, despite a sleeping pill, I had insomnia.

Next morning, showered, I started to wake up (or so I thought), and had a hearty breakfast in the busy dining room. There’s nothing like a good cooked breakfast to get you through the day! Glenyce, bless her heart, loved every minute of it, and so did I!

Knowing how I tick, I’d taken several caffeine tablets (No-Doze) to keep me awake for the drive home, and off we went. Before long I realized that I had a problem. Last night I’d taken a sleeping tablet that didn’t help me sleep. Now I’d had taken wakeup tablets that weren’t keeping me awake! So I handed over the steering wheel to Glenyce.

I settled in to snooze in the passenger side of the car. Now, I am not usually the passenger, and am not a good one, because I get nervous about the driving not being done quite how I do it. And so, whatdya know - I stay awake all the 300 km back home just from my nervous Nellie antics!

As soon as we got to Glen Waverley in the late afternoon of a grey day, I hit the hay, and succumbed into the arms of Morpheus. That, until I awaken by darling Glenyce with the news that the neighbour had noticed that we (actually she) had left the headlights on. Consequently the battery was too flat to start the car! Girding my loins, I got on the blower to the RACV, who arrived quite soon, jump-started the car and we pushed off for a long twilight drive on the freeway to charge it up again. By now I had woken up, fortunately, and after our drive we had tea.

Next thing, we had a knock on the door from a man who had noticed that I had left the headlights on! Talk about slow learners. Fortunately the engine started OK this time.

It was a long trip and an eventful weekend, but most enjoyable, in a very tiring sort of way. it took me a couple of days to get over it. But I look forward to hearing from Don for another chance of playing up there with him.

Making our way down the picturesque South Gippsland Highway to the attractive town of Inverloch, Glenyce and I settled in to the foreshore caravan park for a week. The park gradually filled completely with campers and caravaners for the Labor Day public holiday.

Come Friday, we picked up our registration badges which let us in to all of the jazz venues for the Inverloch Jazz Festival. I’ve been to about eight of these, now, at Inverloch, and looked forward to playing some good jazz, hoping the audiences will be reasonable. That’s the way it turned out, and we had an excellent time of it, regardless of the fact that Glenyce had a nasty fall backwards down 3 stairs and we had a couple of nice folding chairs stolen from our caravan annexe! The weather was nice, apart from some initial rain.

I was registered in three bands. Firstly there was my own band, the Jazz Travellers, a quartet plus vocalist, playing mainstream style. Then there was the Elster Vista Jazz Band, a group oriented to traditional jazz, including a banjo and washboard, led by Tony Brothers. I also played with the Janet Arndt Quintet Plus, a group paying slightly more mainstream style than the previous band.

Each band plays 2 sets of numbers in a 45 minute slot, each set being comprised of about 8 numbers. So I got to play 6 sets, totalling about 48 tunes over four and a half hours playing time. In addition, I was approached in a car park by a friend of mine, Tony Harling, who was looking for a piano player to fill in one set of his band the Clare Castle Jazz Band. I happily agreed, as I’d played with that band for a couple of years in the late 90s. So that made 6 hours of playing, a total of about 56 tunes.

All told, I had a most enjoyable time of it, and apart from one or two hiccups, was happy with my playing. I met a lot of friends from the past, and ate at the Chinese restaurant 4 nights out of the seven. The day after arrival, we drove down to Wilson’s Promontory, through the pretty Gippsland towns of Korumburra, Leongatha, Foster, Yanakie and Fish Creek. The landscape was dry and drought-stricken, but slightly enlivened by some rain on the first night. There had been some severe bushfires at the prom, and it was closed. But there was little smoke visible from the fires, which had been dampened down by the overnight rain.

My wife Glenyce is still pretty sore from her backwards fall, and has difficulty getting in and out of bed and the car. She’s to be seen by a back specialist in a couple of weeks time. She already had spinal stenosis which might need surgery before long. I suspect the fall simply exacerbated that condition rather than cause new damage.

Since we came home this week, I’ve been pretty sore in the back and very tired, taking a bit of sleep during the afternoons. I’m typing this around 6 am, as I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. I think my 70 years are catching up on me.

The next jazz festival is at Merimbula Jazz Festival during the Queens Birthday weekend early in June. I have 2 bands registered in that, namely, the Jazz Travellers quintet, and the trio called Jazz Therapy. Quite soon I’ll arrange some rehearsals for both of those groups.

Let the music play!

Last weekend I was away with my wife in the caravan for a week to participate with my band the “Jazz Travellers” in the Grampians Jazz Festival. Just one of 100 or so bands, we play for pleasure and fun. I hadn’t been to Halls Gap for a couple of years, and welcomed the opportunity to play our mainstream style of jazz in front of reasonable audiences.

Our band consists of myself on the piano, a drummer, a double bass player, and a colleague who plays the tenor sax, doubling on the clarinet. We also have a singer who is new to the art of jazz singing: Anne Smith is also a talented actor and puts that to good use fronting the band and entertaining the audience in various ways as well as by singing. The extra entertainment value adds to our success nicely.

On the Friday my bass player phoned up to say that he was ill and couldn’t make it, so I had to do some quick thinking. We have to play for two slots of 45 min each, so I needed to fill that. It so happens that Don Calvert, the owner of the Mountain Grand hotel, one of the seven performance venues, plays the electric bass, and he agreed to play with us, at which I breathed a sigh of relief. I raced over to the newsagent, who kindly enabled me to duplicate the bass music and put it into a folder, after which I had a short rehearsal with Don.

Jazz Travellers playing in the Mountain Grand

Come time to perform on Saturday at 3 pm, with our replacement bassist on deck, all went smoothly, with considerable acclaim from the appreciative audience. Our 45 minutes set of 7 or so tunes passed quickly, and all we had to do was to get through our Sunday 10:30 am slot and all was hunky-dory. We wondered whether much of an audience would arrive so early in the morning, but our fears were groundless.

Glenyce and I listened to many other bands during the day, as usual, and we met many friends and acquaintances from the 11 years we’ve been coming to these country jazz festivals. After tea on Saturday night I got involved sitting in at the piano at a hamburger joint called Ralphy’s. This was just an impromptu “casual playing” venue where whatever musicians feel like sit in during the day and night. There’s a kit of drums and a guitar amplifier provided, and there’s no charge for audiences, unlike the main program venues.

Myself playing the piano at Ralphy’s hamburger cafe, Halls Gap

As I played, other musos came and went; I think at one stage I was surrounded by a sousaphone, banjo, guitar, drums, trumpet, saxophone, clarinet, a couple of trombone players and to top it off, a washboard! No wonder I could hardly hear myself play and had to take the front off the piano! All told, I stayed there an and off for about 3 hours. Tragic, isn’t it?

Come Sunday at 10:30 am, we fronted up to an excellent morning crowd who soon warmed to our musical efforts. In no time we were done and retired off stage feeling relieved at our success, and that was that - we’d sung for our supper - the advantage being that being performers we can attend all the many other performances free, unlike the paying public. What’s more, we get paid a modest fee.

On Sunday afternoon I played some more at Ralphy’s and then we had a band barbecue where some of us were staying. Then Glenyce and had a couple of days to stay over in the caravan park until we came home caravan on Wednesday. On Monday night we decided to eat at Don’s hotel restaurant, in gratitude for his helping me out. It wasn’t a cheap meal, but excellent food - I recommend his menu!

In fact we went to a little vineyard near Ararat on the way home and bought a couple more bottles of the wine we’d had at his hotel.

Bon appetit!

Last Xmas, at Xmas dinner, in front of the family, I asked my son Peter if he would take me for a ride on his motorbike, to which he readily assented. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, and it’s taken almost 12 months to happen.

Every now and then I have a go at things which are a bit risky in some way. Many years ago it was taking my clothes off at a big hippy festival, and then joining a nudist club. That was great, but a bit daunting at first. We haven’t done that for a while, and must get back to it somehow.

And so the idea of the motor-bike ride came up recently, and we set a date. Unfortunately that was washed out, and more or less on the spur of the moment yesterday we contacted each other and decided to have a late afternoon bike run through the nearby Dandenongs, where there are some nice sharp bends.

So it came to pass that I became swaddled in tough motor-bike garb, which is heavily padded at the knees, elbows and bottom, just in case the worst happens and I fall off! I was instructed how to sit on the bike, gloves and helmet were donned, photos were taken, and off we went.

From the very start it was a full-on experience with all my senses taxed to the limit. I held on grimly as we accelerated and braked through traffic. Pete was pretty gentle with me, and stuck to the speed limits. But quite soon I was getting a fair amount of pain owing to my spinal stenosis (narrowing of bone onto nerves). My back and left leg let me know they were not at all pleased with me, but I decided to simply put up with it, as I usually have to.

It also took a while before I got the hang of simply allowing centrifugal (or is it centripetal?) forces lean our bodies sideways as we went around curves. As well, when we braked, it threw by body even more snugly up against Peter’s back. I was holding on with my legs, as instructed, and was wrapping my arms firmly around him, so that as he accelerated away again I wasn’t left behind rudely on the road.

After reaching Grant’s Reserve, part of Sherbrooke Forest, we stopped for a welcome stretch of the legs, and an ice-cream. It turned out that Pete was having some leg cramps which he couldn’t resolve because my legs were in the way. And we both experienced a crushing/tangling phenomenon on our testicles. Par for the course for the biker brigade it would seem!

As we battled through the traffic on the way back home I was still acutely aware of the sheer vulnerability of both of us in the event of an accident. I simply put my trust in the riding skills of my son and let the anxiety float around wherever it went. I must say that when he was tempted to accelerate strongly up a traffic-free hill, it was pretty interesting for a minute or so! Glad we did it - it topped off the ride for me.

Back home, having climbed out of my borrowed riding gear, and after a beer or two, I must say I was full of contentment, extraordinarily pleased that I’d done the motor-bike thing.

What’s next? Bungee-jumping? Tandem parachute jump? Scuba-diving? Or just a bit more nudism?

The world’s out there for me to savour, like some spicy dish. Whee!!

Well, it’s been over a month since we arrived home from our 6-week caravan holiday in Central Australia, and it took that long before could no longer withstand the blandishments of television. But that’s not bad, is it? And we only ever watch ABC TV or SBS. But even the latter’s ads are becoming more and more brainless, aren’t they? As bad as commercial TV, which we only ever watch if that nice David Rabbitborough is telling us some more about Nature, of course. Snobs, we are.

In the caravan we have no TV, by choice, and because there’s no room. You can tell, because when you walk around the caravan parks at night you can see the blue glow from within their darkened shells and you know everyone’s watching TV. Probably the usual American drivel loaded with guns, crime, murder and sex. Or some totally brain-dead sitcom where people behave like we are afraid real Americans might really behave.

But at night in our superior caravan we read books. Lots of books. I read one (1) on a scientific study of whether or nor alternative medicine really works, and guess what - it doesn’t. That’s why it’s still “alternative”, because if it worked, everyone would be using it. And I read a deep one (2) about the sociology of Australian culture and politics - or was it the culture of Australian politics and sociology? Doesn’t matter - just so long as I can feel superior. No - just joking - I think…

And I read one (3) about the word of Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, in crap places like Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, DR of Congo, Bosnia, Kosovo, etc. Some of them have been literally crap places, because there are descriptions of the health workers actually paddling around in blood and faeces amidst the refugees. That was really sobering and infuriating. Infuriating that the UN can be so manipulated by the major nations of the world. The USA, Russia, France, Britain, and a horde of Islamic and African nations have a lot to answer for in some court of justice that unfortunately does not exist. Hundreds of thousands of humans suffer and die just because there are political struggles based on religion, or on the fight for ultimate control of territories and future resources such as petroleum and minerals. Very disturbing books, some of these.

In our caravan holidays we have a portable radio which may or may not pick up the local ABC radio stations - commercial is always useless for decent news, and loaded with inane ads and ghastly pop music. We almost never buy newspapers, by choice. We enjoy just talking together about our travel, reading our books, having the occasional chat with fellow travellers, and listening to the radio.

And so when we came home we chose to continue the relatively media-free existence. But we do read The Age daily - Glenyce first, then myself, later in the day. Often I barely bother, because I must confess to missing the internet while I was away. Occasionally I logged on to an internet café, usually to get the weather forecast, which is important when you’re on holiday.

But one major activity we do relish when away is writing our diaries. Every night before bedtime we get out our A4 exercise books and write about our day’s activities. Individually we write about the country we’ve seen, the sights we’ve seen, the people we’ve met, and the way we felt. Each night we write a page or a number of pages, and then when we’ve each finished we swap books and compare notes. It’s aways very interesting to see the differences and similarities of our daily stories. What’s more we find it an excellent exercise for our minds to sit down in this disciplined way and. string sentences together.

In our recent trip I wrote 92 A4 pages in my diary. One day it’s my intention to type it into my web site and together with photos, create an illustrated diary of our journey that might be of interest to others. That would be a big task, but I’ve done it before. In 2001 we did a 3-month caravan tour across to WA, which is illustrated in my web site as Bill Leithhead’s WA Trip Diary.

A whole blog item and no complaints about health or money!

References for books if you’re at all interested:-

1. Singh, Simon and Ernst, Edzard, “Trick or Treatment - Alternative Medicine On Trial”, Bantam Press, 2008.
2. Davis, Mark, “The Land of Plenty: Australia In the 2000s”, Melbourne University Press, 2008.
3. Orbinski, James, “An Imperfect Offering: dispatches from the medical frontline”, Text Publishing Melbourne Australia, 2008.

Some ten days ago we arrived back home from our epic caravan tour of Central Australia and some SA wine-growing areas. It is always an easy transition from caravan life to existence in our suburban house, but back home both my wife and I have unaccountably endured insomnia and damnable aches and pains. It is a mystery why this is so, because in the caravan we have about 4 square metres of floor space, which means lots of twisting and bending into cupboards and drawers, and deft sashaying past one another. Perhaps we became fitter with all the walking entailed by desert tourism; I lost 2 kg, so that’s a bonus.

Our route has been as follows:-

• Melbourne to Bordertown (SA), Crystal Brook, then Port Augusta, lying on the edge of the desert outback.

• Drive 536 km in one day to the fabulously strange opal town of Coober Pedy, via strange town of Woomera. Do tour of Coober Pedy, seeing the opal mines, the coloured Breakaways, the Dingo Fence, your underground mines and houses, buy expensive opal pendant.

• Go to Alice Springs via overnight at Erldunda. Do tours of the township, all-day tour to points along the West Macdonald Ranges, have a spontaneous helicopter ride over Glen Helen Gorge, which was fabulous. There were no doors - yikes! See a night-time Didgeridoo show (in which I got to play the drums briefly). Stay over a week in Alice, enduring high 30s heat most of the time. Whew! We drank lots of water.

• Drive 400 km down from Alice (via Erldunda) to see Ayers Rock and the Olgas. Although seen many times on TV, these rocks are truly awesome. We walked a lot around their bases - again in high heat.

• Drive 300 km up to Kings Canyon, doing a small walk to the canyon. In the camp there are signs warning about dingos, and sure enough, one walks past our caravan, bold as brass! Next day we see another ferreting around in the belongings of a nearby camper-trailer, trying in vain to get at some foodstuffs. We have a second helicopter ride (in a bigger one, with doors) over a mountain range with fascinating domed-rock formations. We can see the cliffs, gullies and canyons with clarity.

• Drive back down to Coober Pedy (again, via Erldunda) and go down another opal mine. Then on to Port Augusta. Along the way we find one caravan window is gone, possibly sucked out by the vacuum as one of the monstrous road trains slams past! Make temporary repairs from sheet plastic and duct tape, which has to last 1500 km until home. Thence to a quaint little town of Quorn, on to Wilpena Pound, in the ancient mountains of the Flinders Ranges. Here we do a hair-raising 4WD tour into a sheep property amongst the mountains, followed next day by a flight in a light aircraft over the stunning Flinders Ranges which stretch for a hundred kilometres in undulating beauty.

• We drive down the the town of Clare, savouring the greenery of wheat fields and freshly-sprouted vineyards after the red-brown-ochre stony desert with its spinifex and saltbush. We discover the lovely Clare wine district, and spend some time visiting some of the lovely old properties and sampling the wines. We start buying bottles of wine.

• We go south to Nuriootpa, in the Barossa Valley. We savour the beauties of this region, almost wallowing in the lovely scenery, the old wineries and of course the alcoholic vineyard fare. We buy more bottles of wine to take home.

• We drive back towards Victoria to Hall’s Gap, via Horsham overnight. After several nights there, we tour another winery, Great Western, and buy more wine, and then head for home. The city smog, the traffic, and the experience of being constantly surrounded by semis and other trucks on the freeways is unpleasant.

• We arrive home after 6 weeks on the road, travelling 7,500 km, spending $1024 on accommodation, $2750 on 1611 litres of petrol, $1400 on tours and flights, and $700 on 35 bottles of good wines. Now we’re a bit broke, but recovering.

• We saw all that we had aimed to see, did even more than we’d thought to do, retained our general health throughout, with judicious, sometimes copious use of pain-control medication, discovered a great deal about Australia, and are overwhelmed by the beauty of it all, including the stark, primaeval quality of the deserts. Our car ran OK, and we only had a damage to a caravan window, which can be fixed.

And so we can truly say “Mission Accomplished”.

Back to ordinary daily life, which isn’t so bad after all.

Well, the gastroscopy gave the news that I have no more ulcers and no more damage and inflammation. Jeez I’ve been missing the dishes with chilli in them! I’m going to make up for it tonight when we go out with my daughter Leanne.

So it’s clear sailing for my gut, and after holdups with car and caravan we’ve decided to push off for Alice Springs, a unique town in the centre of Australia. We’ll be driving my 1993 Ford station wagon (6 cylinders, 4 litres), which has enough grunt to handle our modest little caravan, a seventeen foot Viscount Ambassor van that my father bought sometime in the late 1960s. It’s old, but it’s been renovated and properly sealed at all the joints to avoid leaks. We know where everything goes, and we’re quite comfy in it. It has two beds and a table and benches for the eating area. We sleep in or on sleeping bags.

I spend a lot of time in the van lying down sleeping, reading, and listening to whatever I can hear on my portable radio, and Glenyce is the same, except that she likes to sit outside more than I do. We have a gas stove, electric frypan, toaster and electric jug; these do fine for our needs.

There is no television or microwave (no room for either), and we buy newspapers very rarely - just when we need for wrapping, etc. We have a range of books to read. Mine are mainly on sociology and politics, broadly speaking. We have books on birds, flowers, trees and fungi. I also have a range of books on geology, minerals and gemstones, as the region is quite interesting that way.

I have a hammer and special rock chisel for chipping away at interesting rocks, as well as boxes to bring them back home. We have a collection of rocks from many parts of Australia, souvenirs from our travels - many of the larger ones wind up in the garden!

On the Stuart Hightway between Port Augusta and Darwin there is a gap of 256 km with no petrol available, so I’ve got a 10 L special plastic container for carrying extra petrol. We also have a 10 L container of mineral water as a spare, so we can avoid hard water, because Artesian bores are common in this area. Even Adelaide has water with more calcium ions than usual, so I understand - makes the soap lather poorly. (We’ll be close to Adelaide tomorrow night, if all goes to plan.)

We’ve had to spend a lot more money on repairs and maintenance for the car and the caravan than we expected. But we’re both getting more and more aches and pains, such that I really wonder how long we can keep caravanning with an pleasure. The Red Centre is somewhere that we’ve not visited until now, so I want to make sure that we get there before some sort of disablity or infirmity sets in!

What Glenyce doesn’t know is that when we’ve done Alice Springs I’ll propose that we’ll push on for Darwin! That depends on how our bruised budget is coping with it all. Also, during October the build-up for the monsoon season starts, and starts to get very muggy, with frequent thunderstorms. But I’ll enquire about it at the “Alice”, and try to make it, as we’re so close, comparatively speaking, even though it’s a 2-day journey from Alice Springs.

Anyway, we’ve packed almost everything, and are eating out. Then it’s just a few more things before we go off into the wild blue yonder sometime about 6am, if possible. I’ll try to keep up with this blog, just in case someone other than my friend Gaye reads it!!

Arrivaderci!!