2023-2024 Jul-May Australia
This year we’ve enjoyed 3-4 short camping trips within a couple of hours drive from home – particularly one weekend with friends Ruth & Kelvin at the ‘Late for Woodstock’ festival. It began with amateur musicians playing jam sessions and an afternoon of 60’s and 70’s music by the Late for Woodstock band – a really talented group of musicians.
We enjoyed it so much that we’ve booked to go to the Birdsville Big Red Bash next July – it’s a music festival featuring well-known artists, held just outside the tiny outback town of Birdsville – about 1,600km west of here in the middle of the desert. Apparently, they have up to 11,000 people converge from all over Australia. Everyone camps for the four days but you have to be self-sufficient in water, food and drinks. It should be a great experience.
Our two garden sheds were leaking and we decided it was time to replace them – there were already two sheds when we bought the house. It was good to sort through all the contents and make a couple of trips to the dump. We also needed to move the raised vegetable beds in front of the sheds – we moved them around to the area outside the kitchen, which made more sense. Keith and I spent days assembling the various sides, doors and roof panels for both sheds. Then, thankfully, Bob and Garry were able to give us a hand assembling them. Keith was persuaded to invest in some shelving and hooks to organise the contents – I’m sure they’ll never look this tidy again!
I had also been going to the Caloundra Woodworking Club to make some pieces of furniture that I had in mind. Following our trip to Glasgow, I fancied making a side table roughly based on a Charles Rennie Macintosh design – the timber top was left over from our study desk. We had bought a kitchen countertop in laminated timber and had it cut down to size. There was enough left over to make the top of my side table and a long skinny piece to make a small coffee table for alongside the chaise longue. I also made a coat stand for the entrance hall to keep our keys, handbags, etc out of sight.
Other than that, it has been a quiet six months – just some outings with various community groups – mainly through the Currimundi Catchment Care Group that we’re involved with. The Lights on the Lake festival kept us busy at the beginning of December as well as the usual Christmas get-togethers.
For New Years Eve we drove up to Bundaberg as Garry was working that night (he’s a pianist/singer) and had a fun couple of days celebrating Keith’s birthday.
In January, Southeast Queensland suffered significant flooding – fortunately our property was high enough, but you could still see the ‘tide’ mark of debris on our front verge, and the drains in the park across the road backed up.
Carol & Trevor drove up to visit in April and we took them to the Jazz and Blues Collective so they could enjoy an afternoon of live music.
Early in May, Ruth & Kelvin finally moved into their new home they had had built on their property at Cooroy, about an hour’s drive north of us. Keith baked them a cake that we had fun decorating.
And we celebrated my birthday with dinner at one of our favourite restaurants, the Green Zebra – a day early as we were flying to Japan on the 8th!