Day 36 - 41 (March 7-12) - Melbourne

We only intended to be in Melbourne for a couple of days, in fact originally we thought we'd leave Sunday afternoon. However a number of events transpired, most of them good, which meant we didn't end up leaving until about lunchtime on Friday 13th.

On Saturday we dropped into Aunty Pam's church. She was doing some setting up for their service on Sunday and she was keen for us to see where she went. One of the parishoners there gave us some tips on things to do in and around Melbourne. The rest of the day was a quiet recovery day at home, catching up with Aunty Pam and catching our breath. We found out it was Aunty Pam's birthday on the coming Tuesday, so we felt staying around for that was a must!

Sunday was a special day - our wedding anniversary! :) Happy 17th Mims! :) Love you.

In the morning I went for a quick run. We intended to go to Mt Waverley for the memorial meeting. We got there about 15 minutes before it was due to start, but were met by an empty carpark and a sole gentleman standing at the door on his phone. It turned out they were away that weekend on their ecclesial camp and the gentleman was also a visitor wondering where everyone was! So he piled in our car and we zipped off to Blackburn for the meeting. Arrived rather late but had an enjoyable morning considering Ps 118 with Bro Mitch Crispin.

Blackburn Ecclesial Hall

We did a bit of shopping after the meeting, discovering that Woolworths in Blackburn South had run out of toilet paper! For those reading some months after this, this was around the time Coronavirus was on the verge of being declared a pandemic and people were panicking about running out of everything!

Monday was a quiet day at home doing school work, business work and washing. I'm actually very glad we didn't rush off on Sunday afternoon, we aren't in so much of a rush that we need to, and the time to get some more work done, without having to worry about flattening batteries or lack of sunlight to charge the van batteries, was a relief!

The kids were fascinated by Aunty Pam's pianola and enjoyed going through many of the collection of pianola rolls! We had considered going to the Moomba festival in town, which sounded a bit like the Royal Show in Adelaide but just over a long weekend, but decided the cost of getting there and back was probably more than the value we may have gotten from the program. We got a call from Sovereign Hill during the day to say they'd found Matt's elusive jumper! They would post it to us in Melbourne.

Tuesday was another special day - Aunty Pam's 86th birthday! We went out for lunch with her to Brew, a cafe on Poath Rd she recommended. We certainly had a delicious feed between all of us!

Hughesdale Railway Station

Bek took this shot of her poached eggs on salmon. Very artistic!

On Tuesday the afternoon we went to see Max and Helen Sherlock. Max is the brother of my late Uncle Geoff, Aunty Pam's late husband. We only met Max and Helen for the first time at Uncle Geoff's funeral, and only briefly then. It was lovely to see them again - 'Uncle Max' had many mannerisms similar to Uncle Geoff so it was delightfully poignant and reflective to see those mannerisms all over again.

Helen let the boys keep a couple of toy cars they'd discovered in a room somewhere in their house, so they were very chuffed about that!

Tuesday evening, Colin, Angela and their kids came around for tea. They'd left for Hobart Saturday morning and only returned that afternoon, so we had a pizza tea and general catchup. Again it was lovely to see them and hear about their adventures in Tassie.


Wednesday and Thursday were very busy days on the car and caravan, but the account got so long and (to most people probably), boring, that I shifted it to a post of its own to keep the 'diary' a bit cleaner. Feel free to read that separate account if you're so inclined. If not, I won't be offended! :)

-- Greg