Finishing off our home assignment in Perth

I'm dropping in here quickly from Western Australia. We've been very busy since we got back from holidays just over two weeks ago. In Queensland we spoke at a church and two Bible/theological colleges before flying to Perth (five and a half hours) last Friday. In Perth on Sunday we spoke at two churches. This coming weekend we've got four more speaking opportunities before we fly to Tokyo on Monday.

In between all these up-front opportunities we've been meeting various people over meals, in fact we're out every night this week except one. It's been a lot and my body is protesting. It's been very encouraging, but also very tiring, despite getting good food and sleep and even some exercise (we've walked nearly 30,000 steps in the last three days). Unlike some missionaries on home assignment, we've only slept in six different beds over the last 11 weeks, and one of those was for a total of about seven weeks (in three segments). That's definitely worth being thankful for! But nonetheless, we're longing to be home in our little apartment, and back into our own routines.

It's also been a lot easier doing this HA without any children or teens under our care. We've spent time with them in the last 11 weeks, but then they went back to their own lives (in their own cars to their own homes). Juggling the care of kids while doing speaking on home assignment was the norm for us many years and it's really nice to put that behind us now.

One thing we've continued to do, though, is try to appreciate the localities that we have passed through. This week we've been enjoying Perth. We've been to Kings Park and walked along the nearby stunning rivers (Canning and Swan). Our hosts even took us to Fremantle to enjoy fish and chips (but it was at night, so we saw little of this historic city). Here are some photos from our recent outings:

Canning River and a Coral Tree.

Perth and the Swan River from Kings Park

Fraser Ave in Kings Park

False Sarsparilla or Native lilac (Australian native)

More Swan River

Pink (or Hill) gum, viewed from the Federation Walkway

A portion of the elevated walkway

Queensland Boab tree

Ornamental pincushion (native to southern Africa)

The above sign describes the below flower—an astoundingly large flower on a gum tree.

Close up of the Coral Tree flower

Another gum tree in silhouette. 

The soil here is very sandy, hence river-side beaches aren't uncommon.

Can you see the Black Swans, the birds the river is named after?

Many opportunities

The home assignment sprint continues, more like a 400m than a 100m! 

Despite the busyness, so far we've had many wonderful opportunities to talk to a variety of people. Last Saturday we spent several hours meeting people at a church hall, people who hadn't been able to catch us anywhere else. This "open house" style of meeting is an efficient way of catching up with folk when we have limited time to make individual appointments.

I've had two different team meetings this week with colleagues in Japan. I'm thankful the time difference is only one hour! But each of these meetings have jerked my head around: I'm both in Australia and in Japan and it's a bit challenging. Certainly I wouldn't encourage newer missionaries to attempt such continuity of Japan-based ministry while on home assignment!

We've also been attending to medical needs: skin cancer checks and mission medicals and the action points from those (including an iron infusion for myself), women's health screening, etc.

We've cooked two Japanese meals this week for each of our younger two sons (and others), and spent extra time with them. I forgot to take a photo of the chocolate cheesecake I made them :D I'm treasuring these times with them.

As a result, this week there has been less opportunity to rest, and that's probably why we've been feeling more ragged heading into another full weekend.

I really want to write more here...but I'm almost out of time and energy this week. 

We've got a whirlwind of things on in the next four days. These are some of the things going on:

• Three public speaking opportunities (which need Powerpoints and scripts finalised).
• 300+ km of driving over two days.
• Meeting up with two different couples over coffee and then a meal on Saturday.
• An online meeting with Japan-based colleagues for David.
• Planning and shopping for our own food (not something we've had to do in the last five weeks as we've stayed with people who've provided most of our meals).
• Packing up, then unpacking into my parents' motorhome (our mode of transport and accommodation some nights in the coming 2 ½ weeks).
• Answering some emails and finishing up a few Japan-ministry bits and pieces before we go on holidays from Monday.

We're tired and hankering after that holiday—just have to get through these final days before we get there!

Our holiday will include time on our own as well as time with family, including four nights with our granddaughter and her parents.

Please pray for God's strength and grace in these coming days!

Time to rest (and move)

One of the biggest challenges of a short, fast-paced home assignment is getting rest. We've designated each Monday as a day off and have that written on our online shared calendar. It's important to decide that beforehand otherwise a dangerous "creep" can happen and you end up with not enough time to truly rest. Also, we're trying to have a mentality that downtime can happen at other times too. This week we have meetings on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. It'll be wise to have rest time during the day on those days (and probably Friday morning too...after an evening event I often don't sleep well).

Yesterday (Monday), on our designated day off, we went a little further afield for a longer walk. White Rock Conservation Park is not far from our home church in Redbank Plains, Ipswich. We've lived around this area several times in the last 15 years and yet never gone to the park, though I've heard it mentioned many times by people. Yesterday we had good weather, plus the time and energy to go and explore it. We ended up walking seven kilometres through typical Queensland bushland. It was a delightful outing that was good for us on many fronts.

There were so many gorgeous trees, mostly a typical Queensland eucalyptus forest.

The "rock" itself is a sandstone outcrop. We walked from the carpark in to the rock and out again.

We saw a number of kangaroos, but none so close as these two who calmly grazed on grass as we walked within a few metres of them.

When we were almost back to our car we passed this kookaburra. He was perched at head height, only a metre or so off the track and also didn't move as we walked past, pausing to take his photo.

Early home assignment plans for 2026

In the last few weeks we've been working on putting a new-to-us plan into action. We've spent 4 ½ years of the last 25 years on home assignment in Australia. It's a requirement of our organisation to periodically spend time in our passport country visiting supporters and supporting churches. Yep, we did that in 2004/2005, 2009/20010, 2014/2015, 2018, and 2023/2024. Three of those five times we packed up and moved out of our place in Japan. That adds up to a total of ten international moves.

The bookmark we gave people before we
left the first time for Japan

I've written here a lot about the strange institution of home assignment. If you've seen some of that you'll know that it's an exhausting, stressful, all consuming thing. The purpose behind it includes you getting rest in your passport country, but an awful lot of work goes into getting there to get that rest.

But I'm at risk here of not toeing the party line . . . Home assignments have numerous good things about them, including staying connected with family and friends. After our only six-month home assignment in 2018, I wrote a post pondering: Was it worth it? It was a difficult home assignment (we had two teenagers still at home, just for starters). The blog post was pretty brutally honest, but I did come up with some really good things that happened because we took the time to go to Australia.

The world is changing, though, and short home assignments these days are far more common than six- or twelve-month ones. And we're feeling quite jaded about these huge international moves. Now that we are in a season where we don't have to consider the schooling (or mental health) of our kids and it's just two of us moving around, we've decided to try out a short home assignment, one that will last 76 days, or just short of 11 weeks.

This has numerous benefits:

• we don't have to move out of our beautiful apartment in Tokyo (massive benefit, I hate moving)
• we don't have to find somewhere to rent in Australia or find a car (also massive benefit)
• the above two points means that moving between countries will be smoother with far less exhaustion and practical details needing to be arranged
• we have minimal handover to others for our jobs in Japan (also a huge benefit)

One of the downsides is that we'll be moving faster in Australia and have less rest there. We'll also have less time to spend with our home church, family, and friends.

So, I've been contacting our main supporting churches and getting some 'big rocks' in place. David's bought plane tickets and we've been communicating with key people. It's actually been amazing—since the start of the year the following things have fallen into place quite easily:

• dates to visit eight churches in Queensland and Western Australia
• places to stay throughout our visit
• cars to drive
• a place to have a holiday and a motorhome
• time to visit both sides of the family (and hope to see our granddaughter)

We're arriving in Brisbane on May 21 and then fly to Perth on July 24. Then onto Tokyo, arriving in the hottest, most humid part of the year on August 4.

Closer to the time we'll decide on some "open day" type events where people who live in SEQ and Toowoomba can meet up with us, rather than us racing around to see many people in such a short time.

But for now, we need to put our heads down and live here and now. This morning I've set aside for writing, especially putting time into a first draft of this book project I'm working on. So I'd best move onto that now...but I'm looking forward to seeing some of you who live in Queensland and Perth in a few months time.

Reflecting on our five weeks in Australia

We're back in Japan. Last night David and I went walking on one of our usual routes—it was great to start getting back into routine. While I get excited about things like retreats and conferences, meeting up with people, and travel, I function better when I have general structure around my life and am settled at home. As we walked and talked, we saw how busy and non-routine the previous weeks had been. Strangely, the longer we stayed in Australia the more chaotic things became!

In the last five weeks we've:

• spent time over multiple meals with 17 family members, not all at once, but did enjoy dinner with 11 members of my family last Friday night,
• had dinner most nights with our hosts (we stayed in four different houses),
• met around half a dozen friends for meals or coffee or walks,
• done medical and optometry stuff,

• 

  You don't know how amazing Australian skies
  are until you have lived outside Australia.

  spoke at an OMF event for people thinking seriously about mission,
• attended an OMF half-day conference in our home state,
• worked remotely (part-time) on things pertaining to our work in Japan (computer work and online meetings),
• spent time at both our home church (in Redbank Plains) and at our son's church, and
• met six dogs and two cats!

I think that's most of it...

One of the dogs we met

But the main reason we went to Australia was to spend time with our two younger sons, who only moved out last year. We had meals with them, watched footy, played video games, made (and ate) cheesecake, went to the movies, (David) took our youngest to a driving test (and he passed!), and even drove a couple of hours to an open evening at a conference one of our sons was attending (university Christian group). Without our own home we had to get a little bit creative at times, but I think it worked and was worth it.

The cheesecake I made with our 
youngest, and we all ate! It's a
family tradition.

The icing on the cake was that our eldest son and his wife were able to fly down from Townsville for our last week (they also were attending a wedding down there). We spent a few days with them at my parents' house. Finally, on our last afternoon in Australia, we got all four "kids" together (believe me, it was quite an effort!). We hung out, ate pizza, and said our farewells. Then the two "locals" (i.e. the ones who live in Brisbane and Ipswich) drove the two couples to where we were each staying the night.

It was a great month and we really appreciated all who went out of their way to host us or feed us or simply talk with us.

In the light of the "changing identity" blog post that I last wrote, I would definitely say life is changing, has changed. And this quite different "holiday" was very much proof of that. 

Back in hot, steamy Tokyo

Now we're trying to get our heads settled back in to Japan, to the work that God still has for us here. Even though some of our hearts have been left back in Australia, that has always been the case, ever since we first came in 2000. So it's not too much different, except that our kids are now living their own lives, instead of being entwined with ours on a daily basis.

Seizing the moments this month in Queensland

It's nine days since I last wrote here and I'm definitely feeling more settled and am a little less "discombobulated". Yesterday I cooked two different meals in our friends' kitchen (successfully and without undue stress), I feel like that proves the point!

We've also been trying to keep up with
regular walking. This part of Queensland
has some beautiful spots to walk.

Normal for July is that I'm balancing my online work with the Japan Harvest magazine and our organisation's social media with David being on "summer" holidays. What's not usual is that we're also spending time with people we don't normally see: the friends we're staying with, family, church family, and other friends. It's all very good and worthwhile, but also challenging to get a good balance. I suspect we'll be a little weary when we get back to Japan.

One interesting thing I've noticed is that the time frame that we're here for (5 weeks) means that people who really want to see us are more motivated to make the time, and we're more likely to seize the moment and go for it. Six months or twelve months provides a lot of time to get a better balance (and more rest) but less urgency to get things done. 

Our main purpose of being here is to spend time with our kids, and you can see below that we've been very intentional about that.

Here are some of the things we've done in the last 10 days:

• Had a "State of Origin" party (high profile rugby league game between our state and another) at our youngest son's house with his brother.
• Met my parents for lunch.
• Met different long-term friends on three occasions for lunch or coffee.
• Wendy went to an afternoon tea fun gathering with other women from our home church.
• David’s gone to a couple of men’s coffee mornings.
• A couple of routine medical/optometry visits.
• Drove to 75 km to the north of Brisbane for an open night at a camp that our youngest son is at with Christians from his uni (and another local uni).
• Went to a movie with our middle son and had lunch at his place another day.
• David went to another movie with our hosts and youngest son.
• Most nights we've had dinner with our hosts.

I've been trying to keep up with general work that comes across my desk. Thankfully it's not been too heavy a work-flow this month, but I'm aware that I'm pretty distracted by all of the above. Along with that I've had some online work meetings about magazine and social media matters.

Someone asked me the other day how often we come to Australia, and I had to say that there is no usual now, it's actually in flux as we figure out this new chapter in our lives. But as we go about life here this month, we're thinking about the middle of next year. Our organisation has a key value of ensuring missionaries spend time in their "home" countries. There are five purposes for that:

1. Reporting to churches concerning the ministry/work.

2. Participation in the mobilisation work of the OMF Homeside.

3. Rest and renewal.

4. Reunion with family, friends, and supporting churches.

5. Re-equipping for a more effective ministry.

There used to be a pattern of around four years of service "on the field" and one year in your "sending country" the latter year being called "home assignment". This has been changing in the 25 years we've been working in Japan. Now, for various reasons, it's less common to do one year home assignments and thankfully our organisation is flexing to accommodate. And we're re-evaluating our own plans in the light of our new season without children at home anymore. 

This time next year we're planning to do a short home assignment, probably June and July. There are many reasons for this, which I won't bore you with. But we're hoping it will be a viable ongoing option for the future because the whole upheaval that goes with moving to Australia for six months to a year is a lot. We've done it five times now and are fairly reluctant to do it again, though we know the value of the above points!

We've got two and a half more weeks before we fly back to Japan now and it's probably going to fly by fast with more of the types of social engagements you see above. We're trying to seize the moment and be as present as we can as we spend time with precious people we would not otherwise see.

June's a big month

June, how can it already be June? My calendar says it's a so, so it must be so!

My calendar also has a lot written on it this month. It's a month that will contain a five-day OMF Japan conference in Hokkaido, a trip to Singapore for work, a couple of days holiday in Singapore, and flying to Australia for a five-week stay.

The day before we head off to conference I'm playing the piano for church. It's been a long time since I did that! David's also leading the service, which is something he's not done for a long time either. It's a great joy to be able to serve our new church in these tangible ways.

Conference starts on the 16th, and there are many preparations going on. The schedule is pretty much 8 am to 9 pm! We've done many of these over the years and they are really good times, but very exhausting at the same time (though not as bad now as when our kids were little). More than 250 adults and kids will meet together at the pictured hotel for the week.

We've been to this venue on
the outskirts of Sapporo multiple
times. It's beautiful. Our boys 
especially loved the all-you-can-eat
buffet for breakfast and dinner
as well as the water park in the 
basement!

My own small parts are:

• I'm part of a worship team as the pianist for one session, which has required creativity to get the music as well as practise (I no longer have a piano at home and live a long way from others on the team). 
• I'm leading a voluntary session that is themed writing. It's unclear what this will look like and completely unknown if anyone will even come to it...and it's on the last evening, by which time I'll probably be staggering around under the influence of too much coffee, just to stay upright! So, some preparation has been necessary (yep, I stopped writing this blog post and actually did some prep!).
• I think the only other thing I'm responsible for requires almost no preparation, but will require concentration. I'm the designated "conference recorder". Which basically means recording the important stuff that happens through the week and providing a report at the end. I've been given a copy of the report from 2023, and it's actually pretty intimidating. I don't think I'll be able to make my report as pretty!

On June 20, after conference, we head back home for the weekend before David heads to Thailand. I get to stay at home for a couple of extra days before I fly to Singapore. I'm planning on meeting others in our organisation who do similar work to me in social media and we're going to "job alike", which is a new term I learnt last year that is mostly used in education circles. It's when people who do similar jobs in different places/organisations get together and talk about common stuff in our jobs. It's the first time I've done this as an in-person thing in another country. I've talked to various people over video calls, but usually just an hour or so, but this will be larger than that and I'm interested to see how it goes. Our organisation is large and spread over multiple countries around the world. It's not easy to get together with others who do similar things. Social media is a newish kind of ministry and there aren't so many of us around.

After that David will meet me in Singapore where we'll rest for a couple of days and catch up with some Singaporean colleagues from Japan who happen to be "at home" at the moment. And then we'll head to Australia on the last day of the month.

When we left Australia last July we told our boys we're planning to come back this year to see them. As it turned out, we saw all of them in January at our son's wedding, but we still wanted to catch up with them and other loved ones, so we've pushed ahead with this plan.

Our five weeks in south-east Queensland will be a combo holiday/work remotely situation. It's much like July would usually look for us in Japan—with David on summer holidays from work and me still working from home, but scaling things back a little (getting some mid-week sleep-ins for example).

We'll fly back to Japan in early August in time for a couple of annual medical checks for David before he starts back at school.

Phew, I'm tired just writing all that (about June, especially).

Wedding week (the short version)

On Saturday our eldest son got married. I have not been as close to a wedding since my own 27 years ago. It was a very special experience! 

We flew to Cairns (far north Queensland) on New Year's Day. It was a red-eye flight (this seems to be the most common flight from Japan to Australia, we haven't flown anything else in 20 years of flying from Japan to Queensland). We're getting too old for overnight flights! We arrived at our accommodation as the sun came up and slept most of the morning and into the afternoon. We slept again that night and drove four hours south to Townsville the next day.

Townsville is a coastal city of around 200,000 people. We've driven through there once, and had lunch there once. It was new territory! Our first meal in the city was with our son and his fiancé. Such joy! It's been six months since we saw him and this was just the fourth time to see them in person together.

The weekend was a quiet one, but I did get started on something I'd been pondering ever since they got engaged in late August: what was I going to wear to this summer wedding? I haven't been in a place where I could buy summer clothes, so this had had to wait (almost every girlfriend was asking me...). I had three friends on quick-dial to give me advice from change-room photos and I found a dress quickly in a most unexpected place. Our future daughter-in-law recommended a second-hand shop close to where we were staying and she was right, they had a large selection of classier outfits for amazing prices. 

On Sunday we had the joy of worshipping with the soon-to-be-married couple and meeting some of their precious church family.

Scrambling over rocks at Magnetic Island.

Monday we put on our tourist hats and caught the ferry out to Magnetic Island with our son. It was interesting to see an island I grew up knowing the name of, but never had any idea exactly where it was or what it looked like. It wasn't as touristy as I'd expected. The buses also didn't run as often as we'd expected them to, so we got stranded for a while in the middle of the day. Lots of "shoulda's" but it all turned out in the end. The day ended back in Townsville with a casual meal with our son and his fiancé. We lingered a long time in conversation after the meal, it was a night we didn't really want to end. We've not spent much in-person time with our new daughter-in-law, but we're growing to love her!

Tuesday was quiet. We took a walk along the Ross River, and also did a little more shopping, and I found low-priced accessories to go with my dress.

Wednesday was a work day and the start of the influx of the rest of our family into Townsville. We helped decorate the church for Saturday. David worked on chair-shifting and high-strung auditorium decorations. I ironed tablecloths and curtains for several hours. My parents arrived mid-morning in their motorhome (yes, the one we drove around Tassie) and helped out for a bit too. It was tiring, but a great day to meet more of the young couple's biological and church family.

Thursday we met my own mother-in-law and then late at night welcomed our younger two sons at the airport. We also had coffee with the senior pastor of the church—he and his wife have a special part to play in the story of the young couple, so it was good to have a brief time with him.

Friday was the day for meals and hospitality. We had breakfast as a family of six for the first time: us, our three sons, and soon to be daughter-in-law. I'm glad for the advice from an older friend to lock in this event. Then we hung out with our younger sons for the rest of the day. Took them shopping, had lunch, and played host to another wedding guest. Dinner was a BYO picnic on The Strand (park on the coast in the centre of the city) with our wider family who had joined us in Townsville by then. It was also a worthwhile time to spend together before things got a bit more formal the next day.

Saturday morning was quiet, thankfully, and then the wedding at 3, coffee with family and friends at a nearby coffee shop while we waited for the couple to return from their photoshoot, and reception at 6.30.

That's a short one-sentence paragraph! It was a beautiful, simple, God-honouring ceremony. I was nervous beforehand, but didn't cry. David, however, lost it twice—once while the bride was walking up the aisle and again as he prayed on the platform for the newly married couple.

The Bridal table at the reception. 

There were lots of family photos afterwards: thankfully all inside in air conditioning. I definitely underestimated how busy it would be. I didn't have a pocket, so kept having to give my phone to others. And I didn't take many photos, but did get a few special ones, including a selfie with the bride and groom.

We left at 5 for a local coffee shop with family and a couple of friends. While we were gone key people transformed the church into a reception venue with stunning fairy lights surrounding a dance floor. This was no small feat—the church is a former gym, complete with exposed steel beams and basketball hoops. But it was gorgeous. I'm looking forward to seeing more photos from others; again I didn't take many.

The most unexpected element of the evening was the dancing. First of all, I ended up dancing with my son after their first dance. The song they were dancing to repeated, so on the spur of the moment he grabbed me and she got her father. No practice...just shuffling around together and saying precious things. But later the dancing got a lot more wild, including the Macarena! Most of the guests ended up dancing, and for the first time in my life I was on a dance floor with both my sisters (and my mum shooting evidence). It was a lot of fun after all the serious planning and logistics.

It's no secret to those who know me well that I love a good, deep conversation. One of the best conversations I had the whole week was on the day after the wedding. I had some things that needed to get to our son and daughter-in-law's house before we left the city (and country), and ended up giving them to the pastor's wife. We had a very special, short conversation before the service which will continue to give me a lot of joy. Our son is far from us, but, as well as a beautiful new wife, he has people nearby who love him and understand him well.

We're now back in Japan, after a day and a half of travel, but like Mary, the mother of Jesus, I have many things to treasure and ponder in my heart (Luke 2:19).

Looking ahead to 2025

I wrote this before we left for Australia…and haven’t got around to double checking it and publishing it before today (9th).

_______

I'm a bit squeezed for time on this one. We're leaving for Australia at 3pm New Years Day (today). So I won't make this long.

Compared to the last two years, 2025 is shaping up to be much less dramatic. Yes, we do have two short trips to Australia planned, but neither involves moving house or country. But other than that, it isn't going to be a dramatic year as far as we know.

We are starting dramatically, however, with the first wedding of the next generation: our eldest son. That's our first trip to Australia. We're looking forward to welcoming a new member to our family (I'm excited about adding another girl to the mix!). And also exploring a new part of the state we both grew up in: Townsville in north Queensland.

Then we'll return, mid-January, to a mid-winter Tokyo to finish out the school year (in June). June will involve more travel: Hokkaido for a field conference for our organisation, then David (and maybe I) will travel to Thailand for meetings, and then on to Australia to catch up with family and friends and take a short holiday before returning to a steaming-hot Tokyo in August.

But, apart from the above details, I haven't thought a lot about 2025. I have some hoped-for plans for work, but not sure if they will come to pass. We’ll see what surprises come our way!

Many things I did in 2024 I will continue to do in 2025. These things:

• regularly walk with my husband (I averaged about 2.5 km a day in 2023) walking average 2024 = 2.6k
• study Japanese
• read lots of books (my goal for the last 5 years has been 100 books a year, I nearly didn't achieve that in 2024, but I'm going to try again in 2025)
• listen to English sermons at least once a week
• stay in touch with close friends regularly, and when I can, in person
• bake
• writing

We've also added in a regular 16 km ride on Sundays to get to church (when we are well enough and the weather is cooperative).

So we await whatever other surprises God brings our way in 2025.

A bit of couple fun

Every time we go to Australia for home assignment we have a debrief with a psychologist/counsellor. A few years ago they told us we were obviously good at working together, but probably needed to rediscover fun. Missionaries having fun?!? Yes, we need to!

And it was true that we'd fallen out of the habit of having fun as a couple. When the boys were younger we rarely went on dates. We first moved to Japan when we'd been married just three years, and we had a very busy toddler. In Japan we had no family and it was just too much stress to find a babysitter, so we learned to stay home and enjoy what we could do there, like watching a TV episode from a DVD or play Scrabble. We’ve turned into home-bods, even more than we previously were. As our guys got older David and I have slowly gotten out a little more, but still often found going out too tiring when we were already tired from work and parenting. Much of our fun was as a family: supporting our guys at their sporting events as well as camping and holidaying together.

The last 18 months, and especially the last nine (since our younger two moved out), things have been changing. David and I went to several cricket matches in Australia (our shared love). Obviously (if you've been reading my blog this year) we went away for two months! Living on a budget, though, we rarely ate out in Australia—though it’s easier to do so now that we don’t have to cater to enormous sporty teenage boy appetites.

This is the first time we've ever been to a live
match of any sport between our two countries.
Japan and Australia just don't have many team sports
in common. One day we might find a Rugby Sevens
match to go to!

Last night we did something that felt like "playing hooky". We went to an international sports event: Australia played Japan in wheelchair rugby, a sport we’ve come to appreciate via the Paralympics. We actually had tickets to go to a session of this sport for the Tokyo Paralympics in 2021…but Covid…'

It was a lot of fun. I just wish I could have cheered louder…there didn’t seem to be many true Aussie fans around (they handed out Australian flags to Japanese people at the door, in a valiant attempt to support the guests).

Time out for a quick team meeting with the players on the court.

It's called the Shibuya Cup and the teams are playing four matches. Last night was the first. They gave us a booklet that showed the teams, and explained the game and the rules.
If you'd like to take a look at some of the action, it's here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JWRF/streams

Japanese publications are so cute!

 

We also were given these free cartons of coffee milk as we entered!

This little trip yesterday was fairly spontaneous, I only heard about this free event last Monday because I follow the Australian Paralympic Facebook page. I wonder what our next adventure will look like? David's got Christmas holidays coming up...and we have no family to hang out with this year, for only the second time in our lives. We'll see what turns up and what fun we can find.

 

Where did you go in the last fortnight?

More than half the 60 km into town from their
property is on a gravel road.

It’s more than two weeks since I last wrote here. In that time we've driven over 2,500 km. We drove up to David's sister and brother-in-law's place in Central Queensland: it took us 10 ½ hrs. Then on each of the next four days we drove 60 km into town (they manage a property). 

We spent those days helping my sister-in-law prepare for and (a little bit) run her Alpaca stand at the Emerald Agricultural Show called Ag-Grow. They were long days, but we were glad to work alongside her, rather than be the kind of visitors that took her away from her daily life. And of course time spent with family is valuable, especially when you rarely get to do it!

My amazing sister-in-law (in pink).

Ag-Grow was mostly a place for farmers to look at stuff they were interested in buying, so there was a lot of large equipment and things we had no use for. They had cattle dog trials (dogs competing at cattle work) and Camp Drafting, which is horses doing a similar thing. I learned the latter is a unique Australian sport, but unfortunately I missed the actual event and only saw the horses the next day as they showed off their skills prior to an auction. 

We enjoyed Australian "show" food (but not the Chiko rolls) and the general atmosphere, though did feel a little bit out of our depth at times. For starters, we didn't have the "uniform" of an Australian farm show: long-sleeve button-up cotton shirt with blue jeans. But in the downward run towards packing up and flying back to Japan, we're also not in a mood to buy stuff, not to mention that prices continue to sky rocket.

Always chooks!

Rosegum Alpacas is my sister-in-law's business

Outback sunset

Sunset with view of the large Burnett River

After that, last Saturday, we drove 600 km out to the coast to stay with friends in Bundaberg. These friends we hadn't seen in over 25 years, but had kept up with what each was doing via Facebook. During that period they worked in three different large Asian cities as teachers and it was great to swap some of the many stories that arise from an international life.

On Sunday we spoke at their church, but overall had a quiet afternoon without driving much at all!

Walking with friends along Woodgate Beach

On Monday and Tuesday we drove about 65 km each day to a nearby township on the coast to spend the days with two families we are very close to who were holidaying there, then each evening we drove 65 km back to our lodgings in Bundaberg. Those were precious days of just hanging out together, unfortunately we then had to say goodbyes, just like we had to with David's family.

On Tuesday we had a bit of a car scare, but it was sufficiently resolved for us to be able to get back to Brisbane the next day. We've got a lot of car uncertainty in the coming weeks, and more than one car as our adult sons look at cars too. Probably that's something to write about another day when I know more.

Then on Wednesday we drove 450 km home. That night (and the next one too) we had family parties while watching football (State of Origin, an annual rugby league competition between our state and New South Wales).

Thursday afternoon I spent driving around town getting medical tests done, hopefully I'll know more about that next week after going back to the dr (it's related to the infection I had while we were travelling in the southern states). And David's been taking our middle son driving the last couple of days as he prepares for his second attempt at getting his licence on Tuesday.

It all adds up to a lot of driving and a lot of people! And a number of farewells too. Yesterday I woke up with a headache and pretty much just blobbed around all day. I read a 200-page book too! Today I'm feeling better, but still not hugely energetic. Tonight we're looking forward to our first evening in nearly two weeks when it's just the two of us.

We have just over two weeks until move in with friends and less than three weeks until we hand the keys in for this house. Three weeks on Monday we will, hopefully, fly back to Tokyo. Time is racing past and some days I'm really feeling the pressure. Not so much the pressure of packing up – I think that will be fairly simple – but the pressure of other things that we want or need to get done while we're still here.

Day 57 and 58: Dubbo to Cranky Rock to home

The last two days of our journey were mostly driving, but we did find a place to camp for the night that had a cool name. And also two fascinating rock formations. If we'd not been looking for a campsite or stopped to ask at an information centre, we would never have found either of these. I'll tell the story mostly with photos:

Our last campsite: Cranky Rock Recreation Reserve
We used their showers and toilets, but opted to pay less
 and go without electricity. This is just outside of
a small town I'd never heard of: Warialda

The width of Australian country town streets can be astounding
to these two travellers who've lived in Tokyo most of the last 19 years.

Narrabri. We ate lunch here and watched a bunch of school children
running around and around a largish circuit in this park. Not sure what
it was that they were doing, but it didn't look especially competitive.
I found something on the footpath nearby that told me this small
town is the "origin" of a high percentage of elite
athletes. I'm pretty sure none of the group we saw running are
destined to be runners, though!

Wide open plains. We're not in Tasmania anymore!

Sawn Rocks. Allegedly one of Australia's best example of
a rock formation called "organ piping". We took a "road less 
travelled" from Narrabri to Warialdra and this was just off the road.
We would never have stopped except for the mention of it by a
keen local at the information centre.

Beautiful drive through Mount Kaputar National Park (not far past
Sawn Rocks).

Cranky Rock. The source of its name is debated.
The sign here gave two possible origin stories, one
more colourful than the other and involved the stabbing
of a woman and death of a Chinese man known as "Cranky".

We climbed up to a lookout (looking down at the pool seen in 
the previous photo)

Got a little sentimental as we watched our last sunset
of our trip.

And there were chooks at this campsite!

Final day on the road

We crossed the border into our home state in a town called Texas :D

It was great to get home again after over eight weeks away. What I'd looked forward to most was my own toilet and shower. But unpacking and inhabiting a larger space where things didn't always have to be put away before you did the next thing was wonderful too...as was our own washing machine and a larger kitchen and a larger selection of clothes. And multiple places that one could sit! We emptied the van as soon as possible and then parked it down the road on a level parking space. The next day we spent a couple of hours cleaning it and then David drove it one last time back to its home with my parents in Toowoomba. I drove our car; we took our younger two sons too and enjoyed 24 hrs with my parents. They were patient and listened to some of our travel stories!

But I'll leave the rest of my reflecting till tomorrow's post.