Debbie's Journal - April 2001

It is hard to believe that in a couple of days I have been in Melbourne for a year and Tony for 16 months. I didn't mean to leave the web site untouched for so long. I'm hogging the machine this weekend because Tony is in the U.S. on business. I'm not sure what to write - so much has happened in the last 6 months.

Introducing J

To start, after ten years Mum finally has her first grandchild - JP. He is a really happy baby - always smiling and alert. I'm trying to get a photo of him where he has the cheekiest grin on his face. He is now 6.5 months old.

Weather

The weather seems to be a very common topic here. In the past year it has been extremely cold or extremely hot - nothing in between. Melbournians told us that it was an unusually cold Winter and an unusually hot Summer. Hopefully that means the weather will be less extreme this year.

Winter has settled in again. Haven't resorted to the electric blanket yet but I don't think it will be much longer. With tiles throughout the house, the cold just seems to creep into your bones.

Last year, a former Sydneysider recommended throw rugs as a way to beat the cold. So I decided to crochet two - one for the lounge and one for the futon. However, the weather warmed up and so I abandoned the crochet. Luckily, Mum completed the one for the lounge at Easter. So I tend to wrap myself up in Mum's rug and continue with the one for the futon. Hopefully it will be ready for the next Winter.

Health

Last year was a bad year for us healthwise. Maybe Melbourne germs are different from Sydney germs? Tony's flu seemed to hang around into Summer and I had terrible allergy-induced eczema in Spring. I thought I had overdone the yum cha (and therefore, prawns) in Sydney during the Olympics, but one of Tony's team said that there is lots of pollen in the air in Spring and last Spring was unusually bad for people with hayfever and allergies.

Unfortunately eight months of eating out, Cuisine Courier and no exercise have taken their toll. I joined a gym in March and am now training so I can go trekking in Nepal. I plan to meet Brother and Sis-in-Law there as they make their way back to Australia. The gym is close to work so I actually do some lunchtime classes.

We've also been meaning to start squash again but that will have to wait until Tony is back from the States.

Work

I completed my first assignment last November and moved into another project in Collins Street in December. At least Tony and I were in the same street even though we were at different ends of the CBD. In January I moved to a customer site closer to Spencer Street. I am now right on the edge of the CBD and it takes me 20-30 minutes to power walk up to Tony's. When I started in La Trobe last year we thought we were as far apart as we could be. However, each new project has moved me further out of the CBD and away from Tony's office.

At the beginning of the year, Tony started in the sister company. The company's head office is in the States, as is Tony's new boss. A number of executives have moved to the States so there are not many executives left in the Australian office. My only complaint is that he's starting to fall into bad habits again - one of the reasons we're not back at squash.

Travels

In January I wrote out a list of all the places I wanted to visit because we had only visited the Yarra Valley and Sydney in the eight months. We have been a little better this year - we've visited Werribee Gorge National Park, the Great Ocean Road and Sydney. Not bad for 4 months.

Werribee Gorge National Park

Werribee Gorge is about an hour's drive out of Melbourne. Unfortunately, it looks like it was closed for maintenance. There were no maps of the walks and we only discovered that we could drive down to the river after watching a number of cars disappear before they reached our picnic area. Looks like it's a place to return to when we get some more information. We then went out to South Werribee Beach and walked along the foreshore.

The Great Ocean Road

For the March long weekend, I planned a two-day trip where we drove to Warrnambool, looked around and stayed for the night, and then travelled back to Melbourne along the Great Ocean Road. I decided to be ‘spontaneous’ for once and not book any accommodation. What I didn't know was that the annual Port Fairy Folk Festival is held on the March long weekend and it is so popular that people book accommodation the previous year for the next year's festival. We managed to get some accommodation at Cobden, a small town about 40 km outside of Warrnambool, but that meant we had to stop at the local supermarket to buy instant noodles for dinner because the motel restaurant closed at 8pm.

There is a lot to see at Warrnambool. We walked up to Thunder Point for some coastal views and drove around Tower Hill reserve - an extinct volcano. We were there at dusk so it was too late to do any walks but as we drove around we saw kanagaroos and emus on the lava flows.

The next day we stopped at Timboon for some cheese tasting. From Timboon we drove to Peterborough and east along the Great Ocean Road to visit Croft's Bay and Bay of Martyrs in the Bay of Islands National Park. We started to make our way back to Melbourne stopping off to view most of the sights in Port Campbell National Park. Last stop was Cape Otway lighthouse. Drove all the way out to find it was a closed site (I thought we'd at least be able to walk around it) and then headed back home.

Easter

Easter was a rush trip. We originally planned to fly up on the Thursday night but managed to get tickets to see Jimeoin at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. So our itinerary looked like this:

• Friday: Flew to Sydney in the early afternoon and visited Bro-in-Law, Sister, JP and the new house.
• Saturday: Visited Tony's parents.
• Sundey: Travelled on The Cockatoo Run for a friend's birthday and dinner with my Mum and Dad.
• Monday: Flew back to Melbourne before work on Tuesday.

The Cockatoo Run is a steam locomotive that travels down to Moss Vale via Wollongong and Robertson with a stop at Summit Tank lookout. Saw great views of the New South Wales southern coast and rainforest.

Walking the dog

One of the things I love about Melbourne is that it is so dog-friendly. Tony bought a book called Pack of Two by Caroline Knapp and after reading it I decided to try Mitzi off the leash. As long as I have a schmacko available, Mitzi always come when called. The first thing she does is sniff and make sure I do have the schmacko before she obeys my command.

During Summer I spent a lot of time down at the local parks walking Mitzi off the leash. We've now become our own ‘pack of two’ and Mitzi adores me more than Tony. Well, not so much now ... without daylight savings, there is not enough light to go walking in the evenings and I think she's forgotten that I used to take her for walks.

For the last year I've been fighting a losing battle to stop Mitzi getting out of our yard. The landlord has finally agreed to fix the fence but since the March long weekend Mitzi has been confined to the kitchen whenever we're not around. We got home and she wasn't in the yard. It turned out I did a semi-good job at patching the fence. She had found her way into next door's yard but she was unable to get back in. Tony had to demolish my work and pull her back through the fence.

Over Easter we had to board her. She's never been boarded before - the first time we were going to do so she looked into Mum's eyes and Mum said “How can you board her?” Well, she gave me that look when I left her at the boarding kennel and I've decided that next time, if the fence is not fixed, we're looking for a dog-friendly motel. She made me feel so guilty!

The Cat

I can't say a lot about the cat - I'm the dog person, not the cat person.

Tony took her to the vet for her vaccinations and the vet took one look at her fur and said she has some Burmese in her. Characteristics of Burmese include being very vocal, tolerating the family dog and acting like a dog.

So I can't say that I'm a cat person yet, because this is one breed of cat that acts like a dog!

Well, I only have half an hour left before it is no longer the 29th April so I better finish off and update our web site.