While Not Working

Sydney was noticeably warmer than Melbourne, and with more sunshine too. Mind you, it helped to have a working heater in our little cabin in Lane Cove National Park. We were marking time before moving into our August house sit. I undertook a terrifying drive in night time traffic to Macquarie Park to buy a cheap camping table so that I could grind out the requisite two days of work while BD, confined to the cabin by a gammy leg and inconvenient steps, ate chocolate and taught herself to touch-type. I took my evening walk in the Macquarie Park Cemetery which turned out to be much larger than I'd anticipated and held the usual fascinating glimpses into life and death in long ago Sydney. When not strolling cemeteries I went back to Lane Cove and wandered along the river. Pathways. Trees. Some trees were bleeding. Back at the cabin hopeful cockatoos congregated in the sun every morning, ready to descend on any breakfast left unguarded outside.  And scrub turkeys prowled for pickings on...

 I went for an early morning walk in Holbrook. The puddles in the motel driveway had frozen and frost melted slowly in early morning sunlight. An old man fidgeted in a patch of sunlight.  "It's a cold morning," I said as I went by.  He reacted with excessive shock.  "Morning? What time is it?  I thought it was evening!  Isn't the sun about to set?" Far be it from me to lecture a man about the relationship between East, West, the sun, and the beginning and end of the day.    I confirmed that it was indeed morning, and went on my way. Just down the road Gundagai called us with the promise of not one, but two Big Things.  The Big Koala turned out to be merely medium-sized, a small cousin to the big one that I myself had visited in Dadswell on the way to South Australia. Not as scary as the one in Dadswell, but it had the same evil eyes. Drink this and you will turn into a terrifying koala. The Dog on the Tucker Box was not big at all, surrounded...

 The consequence of one of us having frusemide for breakfast was making sure that the first couple of hours driving included adequate toilet stops.  Not any old toilet stops either, they had to be toilets of a suitable height for someone with a compromised right quad to get on and off.  Sadly, cafe toilets were of a height that the user could well be compelled to call someone to help stand up from the throne.  How do we know this?  Pure speculation, of course. I pored over the map for suitable dunnies, noting our proximity to Glenrowan.  "We're in Ned Kelly country," I told BD, who displayed a distressing lack of excitement at this news.  I inspected the map more closely.  "There's a Big Ned Kelly in Glenrown!"  Well that settled it: Glenrowan was on our must-stop list and the toilets would just have to measure up. We spent a happy half hour taking photos of Ned in all his glory, conveniently brushing aside all the inconvenient history of thu...

Reluctant to pay for months of accommodation, I bounced around house sits in Melbourne as BD bounced around the Royal Melbourne Hospital, through ICU, HDU, CCU, and a veritable avalanche of medical acronyms. Every day after visiting hours finished I dragged my weary self home to clean Guinea pig cages (Bentleigh East), console needy cats (Hughesdale), and walk exuberantly friendly dogs (Bentleigh and Alphington).  BD joined me and we crashed her little transit wheelchair over cobbles on our daily visit to HITH (another acronym!) where I took lessons in wound care. Along the way we collected a swag of medical accessories: bed stick, toilet frame, shower stool, walking stick, knee brace. I packed the car like the tetris pro I was. On Thursday morning we dragged ourselves free of Melbourne's centrifugal force, put on our brand new Grandma/Auntie hats, and took to the road, Sydney-bound. There was a brand new baby in Sydney just waiting to be cuddled, kissed, and generally doted upon. ...

If I could have ridden away from Bourke I would have done so in a heartbeat.   I would have ridden toward the head of the river, so tantalisingly close, along the little gravel roads and riverside bush camps that I'd plotted and planned for, across the 14 river crossings of the Cambanoora Gorge where the Condamine tumbled in its hurry to leave the mountains. But I didn't. On Monday I worked in Bourke while rain clattered on the roof and outside of town the claypans turned to sheets of raindrop-dimpled water. Bourke was the final part on the Darling,the point where the steamers could no longer navigate the fickle river. Rain just starting to fall. From the verandah, Port of Bourke Hotel. "My doctor's gonna ring you," said Daughter on Monday night.  Doctors don't usually ring the mothers of adult daughters just to chat now, do they? For the last couple of months, while she played with her cat and caught the tram and went to work and took photographs at soccer a...