Renovating

2 Replies

Write about your dream home.

View from back door

Just over 2 years ago sitting in a pub in Penola, in the Coonawarra wine region of South Australia, I mused with my favourite persona about sorting out the spiral staircase in our beach house.

Our spiral staircase has been the bane of our regular visits. All of us have fallen off the last step, with my mother needing stitches from her fall. My youngest daughter said all of her friends had stories about their falls; presumably after a couple of drinks. It has also been a safety hazard for our young grandchildren.

So we started planning.

Continue reading →

As time passes by our interest change – activities and hobbies I’ve outgrown or lost interest in

Leave a reply

Are there any activities or hobbies you’ve outgrown or lost interest in over time?

– Jetpack prompt

As I reinvigorate my blog I’m experimenting with different approaches to posts. In my early stages I used regular prompts as an approach, so here I go.

Riding in Sicily

There are many activities and hobbies I’ve grown out of. No surprise there, I’m on the wrong side of 65.

The one that quickly came to mind was stamp collecting. As a primary school child and early teenager, I was an avid collector. I wasn’t the beneficiary of a parent or grand parent’s collection, so I started from scratch. I say that because I used to look on at envy at those who had old albums full of interesting stamps. Mine however was just ‘bog standard’. Aussie stamps collected from envelopes, swapped and bought over time. For a while my sister and I went to a local stamp club where we’d buy a few stamps, as my own swaps weren’t of much interest. I also built up a collection of First Day Covers. However, as I grew older I simply lost interest, and today I’m not sure I even know where my stamp collection is.

Continue reading →

I just want to enjoy their music – A reflection on Bob Dylan

4 Replies

I recent times I have been reading a lot about AI and have been experimenting with it in various scenarios. I thought I would experiment with a blog post. I gave ChatGPT my draft of this post and asked for a suggested post. In finalising this post, I used a combination of both my original draft and that of the AI interpretation. 

I am very interested to see what readers think about the concept of AI as an aid to blogging. For me the jury is out. This post was very much an experiment. I used it here because this post is a departure from my normal subjects. 

Photo sourced from the official trailer, Searchlight Pictures.

Over the 10 years or so that I have had this blog I have adopted a strict policy of steering clear of three topics: politics, religion and s$x. Growing up, these were definitely taboo at the dinner table. It seems the times have changed with everyone from celebrities to everyday people more than willing to share their views on these topics. I’m not sure our society is the better for it, in fact, I’m sure we are not!

In this post I depart from my policy as I reflect on Bob Dylan, a cultural icon and his avoiding canvassing his political views other than through his music. The release of A Complete Unknown, a story about Bob Dylan’s early years, highlights this unwillingness, while at the same time being more than willing to engage in the public discourse.

This isn’t a movie review, although having seen it, I can recommend it to those who like Dylan.

Continue reading →

A weekend in Maryborough, Victoria

2 Replies

Maryborough Railway Station – its as impressive as Mark Twain says!

An opportunity to hear a relative’s daughter in the Victorian Goldfield town of Maryborough was too good to pass up. It’s about 45 minutes from Ballarat and a couple hours from Melbourne, however, for us it was a six and a half hour drive, which with a couple of stops made it about an hour longer. Easy to do in a day from Adelaide.

We set off early on the Friday, taking the well worn path through Tailem Bend, stopping for a late brekkie in Keith at Henry and Rose. It’s been a go to for us in our recent trips. The coffee is always good, the service is friendly, and it has a good menu whether for brekkie or lunch.

I’ve lost count of the number of trips we have done on this road. Tailem Bend is about 70 minutes from Adelaide, and I always think it’s not until you drive past it you are actually on a road trip.

The recent addition of a world class motor sport park aptly named The Bend has increased activity in the region.

The towns on the drive are all ones we generally zip through. In the past, I have stopped at Cook Plains, but these days, it’s off the main road, so, these days, it’s a window view. Even though the towns whizz by, you can’t but love some of the town names, such as Coomandook and KiKi. We’ve occasionally stopped for a coffee and to ‘powder our nose’ in Coonalpyn. Like many of the towns along the road, it has a silo for the grain trains to stop at.

Once past Keith, it’s on through Bordertown across the border and into Victoria. We have often stopped in the nearby town of Mundulla if we’ve left late and need an overnight stay.

We made another stop at the quintessential Australian town of Dimboola. We couldn’t get over how much it had changed since our last visit 3 or so years earlier. On our previous visit, the town was all but a ghost town. Today it’s buzzing with lots of new shops. We revisited the Dimboola Imaginarium, which was being renovated when we last visited.  The Forbidden Forest looks a great spot for kids and The Dimboola Store is great for coffee.

Dimboola Imaginerium

From there, it was back on the road, through Horsham and Stawell, all places we were familiar with, before turning off to Maryborough. We weren’t familiar with this road, but the countryside is pretty typical of the region—paddocks with a few sheep and not much else. The dams were all pretty dry, which was no surprise given that it’s been a hot, dry summer. The final part of the drive took us through the Pyrenees wine region and Avoca before arriving in Maryborough.

Continue reading →

A New Year Post

2 Replies

Over the years, I’ve often used my year-end or New Year post to reflect on my music listening of the year, but this year, I’ve decided not to.

Instead, I’ve reflected on what I could do in 2025.

I was taken by Maddy Kearns’s post in  The Free Press to cold-call friends and family. That’s going to be my New Year’s Resolution.

As Maddy reminds us, it’s easy to do but also easy not to.

Just how many of those I’ll call you or be in touch have just gone by?

It matters, as one of my dear friends died a few years ago, and I didn’t realise it. I saw an obituary a year or so after and realised I just hadn’t been aware. I could have reached out so easily, but life got in the way. It shouldn’t have.

I recall checking in with an acquaintance mid-COVID, someone I  hadn’t spoken to in years. He lived interstate, so it was easy to lose touch. It spawned a regular Zoom chat over a glass of wine and a great day with him in Sydney mid-last year. I want more of that this year. I’m looking forward to seeing him in Adelaide when he visits.

One of my bike-riding friends is I’ll. I try to catch up with him regularly for coffee. He struggles to communicate easily, so the onus is on me. I look forward to catching up with him soon.

I posted about being ghosted by a friend a while ago. Well, I reached out again, and it’s led to a few emails. Yes, it’s been me driving it, but so what?

Thanks, Maddy, for your suggestion. It’s a resolution I want to hold to this year.