SATURDAY 11 DECEMBER     WHITE BEACH

Today was exceedingly windy. It seemed to have disrupted services and traffic in places.

John worked on his Xmas letter. I worked on mine, needing forty one copies in total, of which I already had seven, plus odd copies of some pages.

My plan was to print some photos on the otherwise blank back of Page 7, the last page of letter. So it would be printed on the special paper we bought, for photo printing. I made the requisite forty one copies of pages 1-6, back to back, setting up each page as before. I stood for hours, doing this. When I then printed a trial page 7 on the special paper, the letter did not end, but needed three paragraphs onto page 8. That threw out my photo plans.

John worked out that the fiddling needed to print each page had moved the cursor and hence made a gap. He though it would be easy to fix, by just printing a page 8 of the letter. Then I ralized that the movement had happened progressively so each page 7 ended at a different point! And likewise all the preceding pages. It was a total nightmare. It proved impossible to try to sort out matching pages, so effectively the whole printing was stuffed up. Waste of time and effort, not to mention paper and ink.

I was deeply disappointed – it would be the first Xmas in a decade that I had not sent out an annual letter. John’s letter was shaping up to be good, but it ran to seventeen pages! He would be lucky if the ink lasted out for him to make enough copies for his family.

I did not have any problems like this last year, doing my letter and printing it out, with the “primitive” program then on my laptop. This problem was due to John installing Corel Word Perfect on my machine – which I did not really want in the first place!

We scanned the photos for the card – could only use a few of the ones I originally selected. There was just not room for all the good ones!

Tea was roast lamb and vegies, followed by fresh raspberries. Yum.

White Beach dusk

FRIDAY 10 DECEMBER     WHITE BEACH

Today we drove to Hobart.

We needed printer ink refills and card sized envelopes, in particular, but it turned into a big hit on the shops.

The drive in was very pleasant, marred only by too much road kill evident of the native animals.

We went first to Myer in the city centre. John wanted to buy me a birthday present, so I went to the wool section and bought some cream coloured wool and a knitting book – will be baby knits for no one in particular – yet.

After that it was Fullers Bookshop. I had read good reviews of a book called “Travelling Inland”, which was about a couple taking time out and travelling north west WA – but also on a deeper level about self discovery. No luck at Fullers, so we tried A and R – they put it on order. It will arrive after Xmas, but I can wait!

At Office Works we stocked up on assorted stationery and John bought a manual on Office that will help him learn more about PowerPoint, which interests him.

At Glenorchy PO, got envelopes, stamps and Xmas mailing containers.

Printer inks came from Dick Smith.

We had lunch at the Glenorchy shops. John had a pie and sausage roll. I had a vegie roll. Most indulgent.

Did a grocery shop at Glenorchy Coles – oh, the choices available!

Then we’d had enough of “town”.

On the return journey stopped at the Dunalley Fish Market. The crayfish were way too expensive for us but we bought some smoked salmon – $4 for 100 grams.

I bought two punnets of raspberries from the stall at the house in Taranna – $1.50 a punnet. Such luxury. There are so many wonderful fresh foods available in Tasmania.

Tea was bought fish and chips. Fridays were coming around so fast, it seemed.

The weather forecast for the coming weekend was poor, and we noted that there were fewer of the regular weekenders in tonight. This was good – might be a quiet weekend.

Drove 236kms today.

THURSDAY 9 DECEMBER     WHITE BEACH

It was a fairly bleak day, outside, so conducive to staying in.

Today was devoted to working on Xmas letters. Got mine finished, and started to print mine and ran into difficulties. I think they were related to the new program I was using. The printer did not automatically feed pages for some reason, so after each sheet was printed, I had to set it up all over again. It was extremely tedious and I only managed to get seven full copies.

John was trying to put together photos on a page that can be folded to make a “card”. It involved scanning photos. Times like this we could do with a bigger van!

In all, it was a fiddly and frustrating day.

Tea was pasta with tuna, capers, olives, tomato – a very nice meal.

TUESDAY 7 DECEMBER     WHITE BEACH

We had a lazy morning at camp. Did some work on our Xmas letters. Trying to condense our year’s experiences into a reasonably short document was not easy.

I was outside the van and heard some loud rustling in the nearby bush. We had a visitor – an echidna, who tried to hide himself when I went to look. He was large and fat.

Echidna visited us at camp

After lunch took the bikes and rode to Nubeena, to post some mail. On the way back we explored the headland area that is north of the caravan park. There were some orchards there. We  managed to accumulate 10.3kms on the bikes.

John had flathead, pan fried, and a potato for tea. I had salad.

SATURDAY 4 DECEMBER     WHITE BEACH

We had another quiet day. Spent the morning reading the papers.

There were a lot of people in the park for the weekend.

It was not a bad day, weather-wise. The wind had dropped.

After lunch, went for a walk right around the beach, and back. A local warned us to watch out for jellyfish, if we were going to walk in the shallows. Apparently there were stinging ones about.

Had bought fish and chips for tea.

The caravan park was very rowdy this night. Obviously, many of those with semi-permanent structures are regulars who know each other, and like to carouse together! Still, it is only a couple of nights a week that the mob is here – the rest of the week we have the peace and quiet pretty much to ourselves.

FRIDAY 3 DECEMBER     WHITE BEACH

We did our food shopping at the supermarket in Nubeena, and also at the shops near the White Beach road junction. I had found that the fruit and vegies there are much better than the ones at the Nubeena supermarket.

Apart from that, we had a quiet day. It was very windy and so not conducive to doing much outside.

We expected mail today, but there was none at the PO when we went to collect it. John then realized that when he spoke to P on Tuesday, he told her to send it Priority Paid, rather than Express, so guess that may have made a difference. He knew what he meant, just didn’t say it!

The power went off for most of the afternoon – due to the wind, we guessed.

We could not have bought fish and chips for tea. Due to the power outage, the shop had shut! So we had toasted cheese, and sardines on toast – no hardship, as we think these are yummy items. The grill in the van stove is too feeble to do meat, but great for toasty things.

The weekend influx to the caravan park started this evening.