A few days in the Coonawarra – getting there

Our daughter’s involvement in a wedding in the South East of South Australia and our offer to look after her children while she and her husband were at the wedding and surrounding events gave us just the excuse to visit The Coonawarra, one of Australia’s most famous wine regions. In my case, it had been about a decade since I had visited and, for my favourite person, much longer.

The Coonawarra is about 400kms from Adelaide, making it about a 4 hour 30 trip assuming a short break somewhere like Tintinarra or Keith.

Tintinara

The road to Keith is well travelled as it’s the main highway to Melbourne, and just short of Keith, there is a turn-off for the Riddoch Highway that took us through Padthaway past Naracoorte and onto our destination of Penola in the heart of The Coonawarra.

The Coonawarra is a designated wine region that was hard fought for in the late 1990s, finally getting its own designation in 2003 as part of the Limestone Coast Region. There are just over 20 wineries in the region. It is a mix of the big corporates such as Penfolds, Treasury (owner of Wynns) and large family wine companies such as Casella (owner of Brands Laira) and Yalumba, along with smaller concerns such as Whistle Stop and Raidis.

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“I’ll call you soon”

In today’s vernacular, I’ve been ghosted!

Across the Christmas period, I reflected on two instances where my last contact with 2 individuals ended with “I’ll call you soon”.

Of course, they haven’t!

One was a consulting client with whom I’d built what I considered a good relationship. The other was a longstanding friend who had lived interstate for many years.

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Brisbane – a week in the city

We had arranged a trip to Brisbane to coincide with the end of Winter. A chance to escape the cold and wet. However, our late August trip had to be postponed due to illness. No matter our rescheduled trip in late October achieved the same result. We still flew out of Adelaide in dreary wet cold weather. So much for Spring!

Airport security remains a shambles but my years of flying while working gave me lifetime membership of one of the higher frequent flyer higher categories, allowing us priority access and jumping the queue. Those long over and back day trips to Perth had there advantages.

We arrived late morning in Brisbane. As we didn’t know where the airport express train would stop in relation to our accommodation, we caught a cab. It was more expensive but convenient. Our accommodation was private overlooking the botanic gardens.

Other than a day with my favourite person’s sister and her son’s family we had no plans for our week in Brisbane. We’d made some bookings at a few restaurants and downloaded some “things to do” via https://www.visitbrisbane.com.au/ . It gave us an outline for a week that fitted within our Slow Travel mantra.

We hadn’t lined up dinner for night one, although I’d given some thought to The Prawnster. The reviews were so polarised that I wasn’t sure, but after the Ok from my favourite person, we gave it a go.

As the picture shows it’s a boat and as the website says it does seafood and nothing else, except for wine and beer! If you want chips, a salad or dessert the advice on the website is to bring them. It was fabulous! Very casual, with the waiter in shorts and a tee shirt, happy to serve a drink when needed and ready to plonk the food in front of you. We had a mountain of prawns and bugs which came with a couple of disposable wood forks, tartare sauce, a finger bowl, serviettes and a bucket for the shells. We loved it, but as one of the reviews said make sure you’ve read the FAQs before you go so you know what you’ll get.

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I’ve got the hat! PhD Graduation

Yesterday was my graduation — the culmination of what I started in the final year of my full-time work more than 7 years ago.

Getting the hat was what it was always about!

The last few months have been a series of celebrations, from submitting my PhD thesis to its being accepted, my PhD being conferred, and then graduation yesterday.

It was awesome that my favourite person and son were able to attend in person and my two otther children for whom I could not get tickets were able to watch the live stream. One of my grandchildren also watched and was delighted to tell me he had seen me walk across the stage. He occassionally calls me Doc, which is fun!

It was a big day. A sense of excitement, achievement and celebration.

I must have written a million words, maybe more.

I am in a period of reflection about my PhD. I don’t think that’s surprising as it took an enormous part of the last six and a half years of my life. If you include the preceding two years to complete Honours which was a precursor to being admitted into the PhD program, it has been the best part of a decade.

I still subscribe to blogs from various sources that provided inspiration, advice and support during my PhD. In my feed for today was Pat Thomson’s Patter where she discussed how much writing goes into completing a PhD.

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