ADVENTURES IN OZ with WOK 'n WOBYN: CHRISTMAS DAY and OFF TO ALBURY

25^th December, 2012

It’s Christmas morning at Tina and Paul’s and there are lots of presents under the tree.

Lots of presents under the Christmas Tree

Our son Trent flew up from Newcastle to join in the festivities and was absorbed helping Shakiah and Talia check out their ‘Santa Sack’ goodies.

Talia, Trent and Shakiah are engrossed with the goodies in their Santa Sacks

After breakfast it was time to get down to business and start opening those presents.

Talia, Paul, Wok and Ranger (the fox terrier) waiting patiently

Shakiah and Trent waiting patiently

Tina seems impressed with her new camera while Paul looks on

The lounge room looked as though it had been hit by a cyclone with wrapping paper and discarded boxes all over the place. David and Maree (Paul’s parents) arrived just before lunchtime and it was present unwrapping time all over again. As is the usual thing we all ate too much at lunchtime and spent the afternoon watching the younger members of the family burn off their excess energy jumping on the trampoline and swimming in the pool. Pedro didn’t miss out on a tasty Christmas lunch either

Pedro enjoys his Christmas lunch

and Usher was obviously feeling the effects of waiting up all night for Santa and his reindeers.

Usher is really being lazy - munching on the grass while laying down

We spent the next two days trying to do as little as possible. Went to the movies with Trent and Josh to see ‘The Hobbit’ and got the Van ready to take to the road again. We woke up before dawn on the Friday after Christmas, waved goodbye to Tina who had bravely rolled out of bed to see us off, and with Trent claiming ownership of the back seat in Mitzi headed south. It was to be a long day of driving (1200 kilometres) in holiday traffic but we arrived on the outskirts of Newcastle before the sun went down and the next day Trent showed us around his ‘digs’ at Belmont North.

Trent's residence at Belmont North

Trent and Wok check out the water quality in the pool

We had lunch with Robyn’s brother Greg and sister-in-law Sandra who was celebrating her 65^th birthday and caught up with their children Timothy, Kimberley and their partners Jo and Kirby. It was a great lunch and couldn’t believe that it was nearly 18 months since we had last seen them – time is moving along way too fast. Then it was back to the Van for the night and in the morning we hit the road heading west and then south. By travelling this route we hoped to avoid the heavily congested highways which will be clogged with holiday traffic. We took some minor country roads and detoured through the towns of Rylstone and Kandos where Robyn’s maternal ancestors hailed from. On a hill overlooking Kandos we could still see what remains of ‘Ferndale’ - the property owned by Robyn’s great grandfather John Lloyd in the late 1800’s.

'Ferndale' - the old farmhouse buildings are behind the trees on the left.
The township of Kandos with the cement factory can be seen in the background.

Over the next two days we continued travelling south along back country roads passing through the towns of Bathurst, Cowra and Young - stopping overnight at quiet rest areas away from the main road. We heralded in 2013 with one other camper at a rest area north of Junee where we dined on luscious ripe cherries and apricots that we bought from a roadside stall near Young (the cherry capital of Australia). Wok also found a tree loaded with cherry plums not far from where we had parked for the night so by the time we left on New Year’s Day we were loaded up with stone fruit. That night we free camped beside the Murray River at Howlong and after lunch we packed up and headed to Albury where we will be doing a house sit for the next three and a half weeks. We spent the night camped in the front yard of Daryl and Meredith’s home at Thurgoona (a suburb of Albury) and waved goodbye to them in the morning. The home is large and a grape vine covers a trellis which runs down one side of the house. Lots of birds visit the grapevine and there are seed blocks and feeders which keep them occupied.

Lorrikeets under the grapevine

The most colourful visitors are the Rainbow Lorrikeets

Lorrikeets taking advantage of the seed block

and the pink and grey Galahs keep us entertained with their antics.

Cheeky galahs

Thank goodness the house is air conditioned. Out of the first ten days of our house sit the temperature for seven of those days was over 40 degrees centigrade. We will do some exploring of the area when the weather decides to be more cooperative. Of course the main reason we are here is to look after Dexter (a twelve month old Labrador) and he loves to go for walks and chase balls. He also has a fascination for water and loves having a swim in the Hume Dam and drowns himself under the hose every time Wok waters the garden. We decided to reward him with a huge bone we got from the local butcher.