We returned to Brisbane to spend the New Year with the family.
Rachel and Jeremy have travelled from San Francisco via Sydney and Bigman and Bigal have ridden the two motorbikes up from Sydney to stay with Sarah, Ian and the children.
We are staying in the caravan park again and commute to Ferny Hills each day.
It is a very happy occasion with lots of conversation, lots of presents and lots to eat and drink.
Ian worked the late shift on New Years Eve and the rest of us ate, drank and made scathing comments about the absolutely appalling ABC telecast.
We eventually celebrated the incoming of the new era at midnight Sydney time and then went home to bed.
New Years Day dawned, eventually, to reveal that the end of the world had not come and one could hardly tell the day from any other.
More presents, more coffee, more food and more presents started the new year in a suitable style.
We took a trip to the Sunshine Coast with Rachel and Jeremy and Sarah and the children. We visited Pat Corkill, the painter, so that Rachel could choose her wedding present - a very evocative semi-abstract bush scene which Rachel swears is a place she used to visit when she was riding her horse, Alfie, in the Kuringai Chase National Park.
We had afternoon tea with the Procter's at Carters Ridge so that the daughters could see how beautiful their property is. Rachel ordered one just like it for us to keep her horses on. Rachel and Jeremy went on the Hervey Bay for a couple of days and we returned to Brisbane.
More chat, more eating, more drinking.
We stayed on in Brisbane after Rachel and Jeremy went back to Sydney so that Jean could help Sarah with the wedding dressmaking!!!