I'm Back!
The trip over inland (to the upper Hunter area of NSW) was pretty good, although it rained much of the time. Not as cold as usual, because with the rain there were no frosts. My sister veronica who takes even more photos than I do, left her camera charger behind, so borrowed mine and between us there are some beautiful photos of the foothills west of the Barrington Tops which is wild and wonderful country...It is my favourite part of the world to look at...but not in summer...it can be hellishly hot over there then. Its funny how I feel about the countryside up there, it touches something deep inside and I feel a longing for something lost if this makes sense. But I choose not to live there.

So between us we ended up with about 500 photos!!! Most of them pretty good. I ended up christening her "The Camera Nazi" because she seemed to forget who's camera it was, and seemed a little surprised when i requested taking a photo at all...it was good fun...

It was emotional as well as walking through the old hometown cemetery, after taking flowers to mum and dad's and other rellies graves, many of the headstones bore the names of people we had known in our childhood...too many of them were too young...

Some first photos... This is Joan (in front) and Veronica standing where we used to play Rounders as kids...it is our old back yard. The house was moved about 30 years ago and the backyard where we had such fun is just a vacant lot...its funny, I can still see the cement paths, the chookyard, dad's woodcutting business down the back, the swing and the long clothes line...



Veronica and Joanie under the old Pepper tree (there are a few of them now, from the original old one...this was where dad's large chook run was.



















We stayed at a friend of veronica's place...she was away...her bedroom had an amazing view of the landscape...you could see it all even lying in bed. I'll post this later. We downed the odd glass of wine here, and watched many Father Ted DVD's. I got to set the camera up and then run into position...




My sister Veronica is a real Winery person and loves to go round looking at them all...I admit not being all that big on doing this...but the scenery was beautiful. On the second last day we had lunch there and it was really no more expensive than in a coffee shop. I am more of a cask wine person... something unmentionable in the Winery tasting areas...HM!

Before I came home I spent a day with the journalist who has finished the final edit of my book. She managed to strip 10,000 words and its hard to tell where from so well did she do it. Its much easier to read now and no repetition. She is really positive about getting it published and I am really lucky to have linked up with such a like minded person. I was straight away comfortable with her. We are the same age, and also our husbands were the same age. Hers died (also caused by the doctors) a year before Don and her youngest son has cerebral palsy caused again by mistakes made shortly after his birth...so i sure found the right person...

Now must catch up on everyone...it seems like ages.