Well, Geoff's company car (a Holden Captiva) turned out to be quite a good choice. Comfie, and an easy fit for an adult couple in the middle 2 seats with the kids sitting in seats no 6 and 7 in the back. (He has had the car for 2 months now, and he is very happy with it - and me too - I drive it now and then when I have to take Mieke to Irish over a weekend. Nice sound system too :-). )
FICIFOLIA FESTIVAL IN DROUIN
That was quite festive. About half the residents of the town make their way to the main road in Drouin, and hang around chatting to friends while waiting for the procession to make its way up the street. There are various floats (OK, if you were at varsity in the 80s, forget the picture you now had in your mind! - no elaborate shapes and forms and nights of folding little flowers to then squish into wire mesh shapes) - basically just open flat bed trucks with people sitting on the back. Schools and businesses use this procession to promote themselves, and the theme this year was sport.
The whole affair takes about 45 mins and then everyone (and his dog) makes a move to the Drouin Civic Park for burgers (a patty on a slice of white bread) or a sausage sizzle (a sausage on a slice of white bread), and to stroll around for a look at the stalls that line the walking/bike track. And again lots of time to catch up socially with your friends - we are the newbies, and ended up stopping every so often to chat to someone we know from church! Living in a small town certainly has many advantages, this being one of them. :-)
There was even something for the kids - they ended up having a great bumper car ride!
The whole thing comes to an end with the free open air movie that is shown in the park at 8.30pm, but we decided that it would be better to get the kids to bed at a decent hour, so we gave it a miss.
BUGS
Well, as you probably know by now, Aus has more creepy crawlies than some other places (phew, and apparently NSW and Queensland are WAY worse than Victoria - needless to say I am even more chuffed that we live in Vic!!) - SO I decided to follow the advice given by the TV advert for Mortein Professional and declared war on the goggas. Ended up spraying right around the house, around the windows and doors, etc - and I think it actually helped, as we have had very few spiders in the house since then. Specially those fat Huntsman spiders, yuk! Summer being over has also helped with the fly problem, so we don't have dead flies on our window sills (thanks to no name brand surface spray!) every morning anymore. OK - if you leave the front door open for too long you will still have 3 or 4 normal sized flies taking a chance at an encounter with the fly swatter (this usually ends up being their destiny) - but none of those ugly huge flies that make SA flies look like muggies :-). But then give me a fly anytime - as long as the spiders stay far away....! (Or at least in the field across the road where Geoff dumps the ones he rescues before I get there with the surface spray!)
WILSONS PROMONTORY
mmm - what can I say, except that these Aussies do NOT exaggerate when they rave about Wilsons Prom. I thought that it is quite ridiculous that a place could be so popular that you have to enter a 'ballot' to get a possible camping spot at Wilsons Prom over the Christmas holidays, but now I know why! This place is absolutely gobsmacking beautiful! R&M (our friends) camped there the weekend of 20 and 21 February so we decided to make the 2 hour trip there for the day on Saturday. (We were going to camp there with them, but Geoff ended up having to go to NZ on the Sunday...)
Unfortunately I did not take any photos of the beach, but to give you an idea - take the best features of Clifton Beach, Llundudno Beach and Strand Beach, combine them, and then you will still be a bit short of how nice this place is. We are determined to go camping there sometime, wanted to make it while it was still Summer, but there were just not enough weekends! Tidal River is the place to go, it has a camping site with about 400 and something sites, the most stunning protected beach and a tidal river that is safe for children to play in.
An interesting experience was going to Squeaky Beach - a beach of pure white quartz sand. When you walk on the beach it literally squeaks - needless to say we had loads of fun stomping around on the sand! This is a photo taken during the walk down to the beach.
We stayed there until about 8pm and made our way back home so that Geoff could pack for his NZ trip.
FAMILY FELLOWSHIP TEAS
What a great idea! Our church family gets together once a month for a fellowship tea (dinner/supper whatever, remember?) at someone's house or in a park if the weather permits. We all take food and dessert to share and generally eat way too much!
So Geoff left for NZ the Sunday morning before church, the kids and I went to church, then we had a worship team lunch at the church, followed by the fellowship tea at someone's house. I had a very nice time chatting with everyone, even though it would have been so much nicer if Geoff had been around as well, and generally had a good time around the dessert table as well... yum :-)
MARY-ANN's PLANNED VISIT AND BRUCE's SURPRISE VISIT!
M-A and Bruce arrived on the 26th (when Geoff got back from NZ). What a surprise it was for him when he waited for M-A at arrivals only to have Bruce walk out with her as well. We started the weekend off with a picnic at Inverloch beach (about an hour from our place) for tea,
and then went and did the Walhalla Train trip on Saturday. (Click on the last picture to enlarge it and you will see 2 guys actually panning for gold in the little river!)
And that was pretty much it for what was left of February after my March 18 post.
Next up.... March in a nutshell...
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