TUESDAY 2 JANUARY     HOME

We spent an enjoyable Xmas/New Year period, catching up with family and just living normally.

A highlight was meeting and getting to know my new grandson who had been born in May. We were visited by John’s daughter, home for Xmas for the break that diplomatic staff receive mid way through a posting. So John met his new grandson, born in Brussels, now 19 months old, for the first time, and renewed acquaintance with the older boy, now nearly 4.

Melbourne’s weather was mostly balmy over that time, with the exception of the cold snap over Xmas itself. The Pilbara heat we’d experienced seemed almost illusory.

I treated myself to a rather expensive Xmas present – a lovely new digital Pentax camera, that had all sorts of refinements that the smaller point and shoot one did not have. There would be a lot to learn about its operation.

There had been no further communication from the company, regarding going back to work in WA. I’d rather expected to hear from them by today, at the latest, since the office resumed work today. It seemed there must have been a change of plan, and no-one had bothered to tell us. We were not overly concerned – home was nice. I was enjoying daily walks at the nearby lake and sewing some new shorts for M. John was making son a jarrah dining table. Less enjoyable was working on tax  matters and getting the relevant paperwork together. Our lovely accountant had gained us an extension of time for the return due last year, but I really needed to do something about this hated task.

We had been watching, with more interest than usual, a low pressure system building off the WA coast, that had the potential to develop into a cyclone. Today, it was named Cyclone Isobel and forecast to cross the coast somewhere between Port Hedland and Broome.