Days 10 and 11: quiet days in Canberra

These were the first slow starts we'd had in nearly two weeks. It was much needed. I was feeling pretty exhausted. 

Lake Burley Griffin

On Friday we went out for lunch with good long-term friends from Queensland who happened to be down here visiting their son. After lunch our friends dropped us at a shopping precinct, where we got a handful of items for our tiny larder and then we walked about three kilometres to "home". For much of the rest of the day we hung about the motorhome playing word games and reading. Oh, and I got a start on our April prayer letter, with the goal of having that done before we officially start our long service holidays on Monday.

One of the statues on Anzac Ave, close to 
where we’d parked the motorhome. 

Saturday was an even quieter day where we hung around “home” relaxing, with a little bit of preparation for speaking at a supporting church the next day. 

We went for a walk around 5 pm down to Canberra’s lake: Burley Griffin. Then we picked up some ice cream to share over dinner with two Canberra-based families that we knew from our young adult years. It was a fun evening, enjoyable to reminisce about our lives back in the early '90s when we were all university students.

The week to come was going to be eventful, but we didn’t know that yet! I’m thankful we had these quiet days before things went a little crazy. You’ll have to wait for the sequels 😊

Day 9: Mittagong to Canberra

Our first long-drop loo on this journey.

Today (21 March) was another big day. We drove from Mittagong to Canberra, which is only two hours.

 In the north of Canberra we met a couple for lunch who have prayed for us and encouraged us along our cross-cultural ministry journey for a long time (and not forgetting his first wife, who passed away from cancer early in our journey, she too was an encouragement to us). They are in their late 80s and early 90s now and still passionate about mission (they both served in PNG in Bible translation).

Roadside stop on our journey.

We spent most of the afternoon with them before heading to the next place to park our home-on-wheels. 

It turned into a not-so-fun-Google adventure. Google Maps doesn’t include a setting to exclude routes (and car parks) that have height limitations, so we ran into difficulty. This motorhome is 3.25m high and we got stuck at the entrance to three car parks and had to do awkward manoeuvres to avoid damage, including driving over a traffic island inside the car park. Me, the navigator, was very tired by this point, having not slept well and experiencing a few points of physical pain, had trouble and David, the driver, had his own difficulties! We were glad to finally find a grocery store that had the half-dozen items we wanted and no height restriction in the car park.

Our next point of lodging came courtesy of personal connections from our uni years. We’re parked on the property of St John the Baptist Anglican Church, a church that predates the city of Canberra. We know the Rector and they’ve kindly allowed us to park here for a few days. It's an amazing location, almost in the centre of Canberra. So now we can say that we've "camped" in Canberra, Sydney, and Tokyo!

Day 8: Sydney to Bowral

Parked at Bradman Oval

This day (Wednesday, 20th) we left Sydney—but not before a walk with our host and extracting our motorhome from her backyard via a narrow driveway.

Cricket fans: look closely at these field
placements! This is a mural at the museum.

Before leaving the city we drove to Castle Hill to catch up with an old friend of David’s from uni days. We met him in a historical park called Castle Hill Heritage Park Reserve. We discovered it was the site of a very early government farm the fed the colony. It was established in 1801, only a dozen years after the first white settlers arrived in the country. This was also the site of a convict uprising a couple of years later. "The Castle Hill Rebellion of 1804 was Australia’s first uprising. The rebellion was an attempt by a group of Irish convicts to overthrow British rule in New South Wales and return to Ireland where they could continue to fight for an Irish republic" (from here). Also close by was Australia’s first official institute for people with mental illness, from 1811 to 1826. 

Cricket gnomes

Then we drove towards Canberra, our nation’s capital. But we made a planned stop at a small town that is the birthplace of a famous Australian: Donald Bradman. He’s been called the greatest batsman of all time (that's across all countries). In a game that loves statistics, he’s head and shoulders above the rest, and with a career batting average of 99.94, His career batting average is almost 39 runs higher than the next batsman who has scored more than 2,000 runs.

Our goal was to visit the cricket museum bearing his name. We spent two very enjoyable hours there reading all sorts of things about this game we love. We revelled in taking our time in a way that one can't when one has offspring to also take care of...

After we were done (not long before closing time), we took our time having afternoon tea in the motorhome and then drove 10 minutes down the road to set up at a caravan park, in a town with a great name: Mittagong.

We enjoyed lovely showers and WiFi, along with the sound of trains through the night (though they were across the other side of the road, about 100m away). We're gradually getting used to where everything is in the motorhome, as well as all the little routines that come with a life on the road.

Days 6 and 7: a 2nd conference

These two days (18 & 19) we spent at OMF Australia home staff conference.
It was a "day" conference: i.e. attendees were either staying at their own home, or billetted out. We parked the motorhome in the backyard of one of our Sydney-based colleagues and slept there. So the "where are you staying" questions provided interesting conversation starters!

The focus of this conference was on the people who work in Australia for OMF long term (as opposed to people like ourselves who primarily work overseas). They cover a wide range of roles from finance and other admin, to walking alongside people interested in becoming cross-cultural workers and looking after workers like ourselves. Around 40 or so were in attendance, and had come from around Australia. On Monday morning we also had some field representatives from a few East Asian countries, as well as our speaker from Sri Lanka.

For three nights in Sydney we slept here

This was the first time we’d been invited to attend the home staff conference and it was a great blessing. We’ve had time to get to know some of these people who have served us for a short or long time. The conference included worship and teaching times which were welcome encouragements. 

Plus, we “home assignees” were given opportunity to give feedback to the homeside about our experience of their support of us. Moving in and out of the country takes a lot of effort and moving between admin centres (for us, Japan and Australia) can be tricky for all sides of the equation. We were glad of the opportunity to give our perspective on things, including some constructive feedback.

We’re grateful for a quiet, scenic spot to stay in a big city like Sydney, though were still struggling a little to get used to the bed which is quite solid, so I didn't sleep as well as I'd have liked.

We also got lots of walking in as we left our motorhome in situ and instead caught trains and walked.

One of the beautiful streets we walked along

I had good conversations during the conference with a handful of people, including one with another mum of a child who isn't neurotypical. We cried together. And another conversation with parents of kids around the same age as ours who have had to make hard decisions about their ministry location.

There is a great deal of common understanding when cross-cultural workers get together. It really is something we love to do.

It’s common to feel completely exhausted after multiple days of missionary conferences. By the end of these two days I felt like was running on coffee and adrenaline. I was looking forward to some slower days later this week.

This was the end of our sojourn in Sydney and in the next stage of our journey we headed off to another city and our final "ministry" appointments before our long holiday.

Day 4 and 5: a conference

On Friday and Saturday nights we slept in a conference centre, it was an adjustment, even after only three days on the road! We're at the OMF Australian National Conference. I'm struck again at how different a "homeside" national conference is to a "fieldside" conference (for example, the one we went to in June last year). 

At a homeside national conference, there are people attending from many different perspectives. We've met retired OMF missionaries, some currently serving with OMF in various countries, and missionaries on home assignment like ourselves. There are staff who run things in Australia for OMF—they look after things related to us like finance and personnel matters, but also who work with new people interested in going overseas to serve with OMF. And this latter bunch of people are also at conference: people learning about OMF and about the need for the gospel in East Asia, either because they're interested in going themselves, or because they are part of the team that supports those who go. That's a complex group of people!

The conference venue was gorgeous. This is the view 
from outside the dining room towards the ocean.

A fieldside conference mostly consists of people sent to serve in one particular country. So the feel is quite different and a fieldside conference can feel much more focused and "family-like". Also, generally, significantly longer and more intense. Fieldside conferences often fulfil a role of refreshment and spiritual nourishment, a time for missionaries to step aside from their ministries for a period, something that is compulsory and also longer (often five days in Japan).

Quite a few people know our faces at this conference, but it tends to be a one-way street and we don't know them, or perhaps we've prayed for them through the prayer material that OMF Australia provides, but we've never met them in person.

In any case, it's been a great time so far of talking mission with others who "get" this crazy lifestyle. When we're in Australia we spend little time with other people who live like we do, so a missionary conference is a place where we get to enjoy fellowship with many likeminded people.

Our location is in Collaroy, which is on the northern coast of Sydney. We can see the Pacific Ocean from our room! It's been lovely to be fed by someone else who also takes care of the dishes! And to enjoy the facilities, including our own private bathroom.

On Sunday, after the (first) conference ended, we drove 45 minutes to park in the backyard of another missionary. We were really unsure how the afternoon would play out. We ended up having a bring-and-share type lunch at our host’s house along with two other missionaries we’d only just met, then some quiet time (we used to call it SQUIRT time). At 4 pm we joined a video call for a couple of hours with our three sons who were hanging out in our empty house in Ipswich! We chatted and played online board games.

Then dinner was a simple leftovers meal heated up in our little kitchen, short walk to buy ice creams, showers, writing here, and then to bed!

Monday is conference number 2! That's for my next post.

Day 3: a lake, three beaches, and a conference

Can you spot Lake Macquarie in the background?

This day we woke up in a caravan park on the shores of Lake Macquarie. A peaceful caravan park where we only encountered cheerful staff and residents. We're still adjusting to the change to daylight saving that we copped when we crossed the Queensland-New South Wales border on Wednesday (for non-Aussies, Queensland is the only state on the eastern side of Australia not to have daylight saving). The sun got up after 7. It was very weird to wake up at 6 am and find it was still dark!

Cave beach

We packed up and left by 10, and drove a short distance to Cave Beach, where, surprise surprise, there are caves on the beach! Alas the tide was coming in and we could only just get to one of them. The winds were high and the surf pretty fierce, but we walked along the beach for a bit anyway. Then, after it started raining, we hopped back in our vehicle and drove north a short distance, in search of a walk along the shoreline and found another beach (ingeniously called "Coastal") after a short walk through bushland. We then drove to a sheltered spot, read for a bit and made lunch in our portable home. 

Long Reef Headland in Collaroy

Then it was time to face the trip to Sydney. We were surprised by the Pacific Motorway to the north of Sydney. It goes through a lot of uninhabited mountainous area, with large portions of hills blasted away to accommodate the road. I looked it up later (I get travel sick, so I only get away with a minimal amount of reading as a passenger); I think much of the blasting happened in the 1920s, presumably when tunnel technology wasn't really a thing in Australia! In any case, the middle part of our journey was prettier than we'd anticipated.

Lunch in the motorhome

Driving in big cities you don't know is never fun and doing it in a larger vehicle makes it worse. Google Maps is a huge help, but it even got a bit lost at one point and gave us information that didn't match the signs in front of us, so we ended up in a tunnel that took us too far into the city! 

Around 3pm we did stop for caffeine as we got weary, but then powered onwards to the beachside suburb in northern Sydney of Collaroy. We were too early to check in, so we parked and went for a walk up the Long Reef Headland, which afforded beautiful views up and down the coastline, then walked down to the shoreline and back around to where we'd parked, touching the southern end of Fisherman's Beach. I walked a bit more than seven kilometres in the day, which is actually very good considering how tired I felt in the early part of the day!

Dinner was, of course, fish and chips, and then we drove to the conference centre and checked into our room. This is OMF Australia's annual national conference, something we only get to every five years or so. But I'll write more about this next time.

Day 2 on our way to Sydney

Thunderbolts Way

This day we travelled from Uralla to Lake Macquarie (south of Newcastle, near the coast), 355 km. I’ve never travelled in this region before and it’s been delightful.

We took “the road less travelled” from Uralla to the coast: Thunderbolts Way and then Bucketts Way onto the Pacific Highway. It took us through and down the Great Dividing Range. This range is not “great” because it is especially high, although it presented explorers and settlers of this land considerable difficulty when they tried to go west from the east coast. It’s called great because it is so long. It stretches 3,500 km, from the very top of the east coast of Australian mainland to western Victoria on the southern coast. I grew up in Toowoomba on “the range” as it is colloquially known, but that’s only a tiny part of this huge geographical feature. It was fun to drive through a different part of it.

The road we took went through very few towns and those it did were very small (under 3,000). At lunch we stopped at a town, Nowendoc, with 146 people, but the only ones we saw out and about were tourists passing through. We stopped next to an information booth that had some great historical information about the area. It has a long history of agriculture, logging, and even a gold rush.

The road after lunch was windy and up and down, as we made our way towards the plain from a height of over 1,000 m (Uralla). The slopes we drove past were worthy of comparison with Japanese mountains, though obviously not so high. We stopped for a photo at one designated spot (see second photo in this post).

Cambodian street food stall

Afternoon tea was at another small town called Wards River. There were signs outside a small shop across the road that looked like ice cream signs, so we went to investigate. Turns out they were signs for Cambodian street food! The lady who runs it came out of her house next door just to serve us and we didn’t have the heart to say no. So David had a pink milky drink and I had a fried rice-potato-vegetable thingy with sweet sauce.

Probably the least interesting part of the drive was when we joined the Pacific Highway (major highway that follows the coast and links Brisbane to Sydney. They’re doing major roadwork on the highway northwest of Newcastle and we got stuck in traffic. I’ve never been to Newcastle…now I can say I’ve driven near it, but I still haven’t seen it!

Cambodian street
food!

We’re staying in a caravan park near the shores of Lake Macquarie. We didn’t get here too long before dinner and so only got a short walk near the lake. But nearly two dozen ducks joined us as we ate bacon and eggs for dinner under our awning! At the time of writing the first draft of this blog post I was looking forward to getting to bed. It was a couple of long days and I didn’t sleep really well first night, though it was lovely and cosy with the temperature dropping to around 10 degrees early this morning.

Lake Macquarie

Duck friends

The start of a long road trip

Warning: this blog is temporarily turning into a travel blog! Hang tight and we’ll return to normal programming in a couple of months. Meanwhile it’ll be this Aussie who sometimes feels like a visitor in Australia, travelling in her wide land to see what she can see.

I'm publishing posts with a few days delay so that you'll see our journey, but not know where we are at present (generally).

Monday and Tuesday

We got off to a rocky start to our motor home trip. Key to the whole adventure was borrowing my parent’s small motor home, but to do that we needed to fetch it from their place, about 1 ½ hrs from us. Our plan was to do that on Monday and bring it to Ipswich to our house so we could leisurely put our stuff in it on Tuesday. But David felt very weary on Sunday and woke up late on Monday wondering if he was ill with something. So we postponed our motorhome-fetching trip and instead spent a few hours getting a medical opinion and tests. Then resting. Thankfully nothing came of any of that and by the end of Monday he was feeling better. 

My parents kindly offered to meet us halfway on Tuesday, so we met them for lunch and picked up the motor home, packing our stuff into it in the afternoon.

Wednesday

I didn’t sleep well on Tuesday night. Nerves? Excitement? Both? This big audacious plan has been percolating for well over a year. We’ve known for several years that we could take long service leave during this home assignment, and this time last year a plan started to form about what we might actually do with this lengthy time off. So, after thinking about it for that long, it felt like a lot was riding on “getting it right”. And, of course, I’m always concerned that I’ll forget something vital. Going away for eight weeks is a considerable length of time…

We finally got away a bit before 10am, stopped close by to do a couple of last minute errands and realised I’d not packed my hat, so returned for that vital piece of equipment.

The first part of our journey is to Sydney to attend an OMF conference on the weekend, but we took our time about it. The first leg was Ipswich to Uralla, 463 km.

Uralla is a small town of less than 3,000 people. We stayed at their showgrounds. There were only a handful of others doing the same and we were thoughtfully placed a long way apart. 

It was a tiring day and I was grateful to be carrying leftovers from earlier in the week that we could just heat up and eat. But we did pull out the Scrabble board and complete a portion of a game and I got started with this travel blog. You're going to have to be patient with me, though, as I figure out how to balance this travel and writing!

An empty house, a retreat, and a long road trip

We're walking through a little bit of metaphorical whiplash here...and it's not just that we're now suddenly alone in our home after 24+ years of sharing it with our children, though that is not a small thing.

Next week we're leaving on a two-month-long adventure in a motorhome (I mentioned it in January here). So while our attention has been very much focused on our sons these last couple of months, we've now turned our minds to trip preparation in a big way. In addition to that I've got some writing and magazine-team admin work to do before we go which I've been trying to focus on yesterday and today, with patchy success!

I have an office space again, that isn't in the dining
room! We've moved our work stuff into this bedroom,
as well as some other things in boxes like Lego.

Our house is quiet. Periodically we're reminded we have children when they text us about one issue or another. They all came over on Sunday afternoon for several hours, as is our current weekly routine. That was fun, but it was also nice when they all went home! It's actually very satisfying seeing them move on from dependence on us. We've been preparing them for this for many years and it's great to see them living it and stepping up to the challenge.

Earlier in the week we nutted out more of a skeleton for the route of our journey around south-eastern Australia and now it's down to details about booking accommodation sites and investigating things to check out while we're on the road. I'm being a little guarded about sharing where exactly we are going, because this is not a ministry trip, nor is it a "catch up with as many people as you can" trip. We're hoping to unwind and relax on our own (most of the time). People have asked me to post a lot of photos so they can enjoy it. I'm also planning to blog about our trip as we go, but with a little bit of a time-delay so you will see where we've been, not where we are. I hope to allow you to vicariously enjoy some places in Australia that you've never heard of, or perhaps you have, but haven't seen them through the eyes of an Aussie who hasn't lived most of her adult life in Australia. 

As I thought about this trip I realised the trip is a little like a babymoon, but at the other end, an "empty nest moon"? It's certainly an interesting way to begin this new chapter of "coupledom". We're excited, but at the same time wondering how well we'll cope with two months in a motorhome! We've stocked up on a number of unplugged activities to relax with and are looking forward to seeing a good amount of "nature" on our travels.

I didn't plan on waking up to see the sun rise on
Saturday morning at our retreat, but took advantage
of it when I noticed the time. This awaited me out
the back door!

But, before I finish this, I can't neglect to mention the other big thing that happed last week. I went on a mini-retreat with two of my closest friends. We've never done this before, and it was fun. Our families (offspring included) enjoy getting together (we holidayed for a week together in 2022), but those times are not without many interruptions. It was super for just the three "girls" to get away together and hang out for many hours. We rented a cottage through AirBnB in the countryside to the west of here for the night. But the journey to get there was all part of the time away as we travelled together, talking all the way. It was a good Aussie experience, with an evening meal at an old pub (est. 1902) as well. 

Plenty of rain recently meant a beautiful vista
as we travelled some small country roads.

I'm so thankful for these two friends. We've been in touch via texting almost daily for five and a half years, though our separate friendships go back many more years than that. We've walked alongside one another through some really tough times and it's been a huge blessing. To be able to spend physical time together is amazing. So thankful to our heavenly Father for the blessings that he's showered on me recently!

More sunrise...

This was a bit before sunset the night before.

But, I'd better get back to writing that editorial that I've got to finish this week...and we'll see if I get back to writing here before we leave next week, or maybe not till we're on the road (the first part of our journey is work, but then around six weeks of holidays on the road—Yay!).