School holidays

Since it's school holidays for a couple of weeks we decided to spend a few days in Adelaide. Mostly medical appointments (and haircuts) that have had to wait for just this opportunity! Too much time spent in waiting rooms as a result.

Rick and I arrived just in time to watch Kerran play football at Salisbury against a very physical Salisbury side - I locked myself in the car at one stage - the riff-raff were out in force! Kerran was concussed during the game (which they won) , so couldn't work that night and wasn't very well the following day either. Despite the injury he managed to kick a goal and a couple of points - at least he had an excuse for not kicking straight. He's fine now - there's no footy this week, so he has time to recuperate. Then he needed his ears syringed during the week - he can hear now!

Rick had his nose cautersied - after suffering chronic blood noses (they were lasting up to 2 hours at a time, several times a day) for way too long - exacerbated by the blood thinners he needs to take for his heart problem.

I needed a colonoscopy to check the status of my Crohn's - it seems there is some inflammation around the "join" from a previous resection of my bowel. Boring. Especially the pre-med - I always gag on the stuff - it's just vile. Four litres of a mixture I'm sure is made from soap and salt mixed together in equal portions! Took me 7 hours to get it down the day prior to the procedure.

Rick had had an appointment at the dentist in Kingston on Friday, but I "stole" it from him - have had toothache even after having a tooth filled a few weeks ago - the dentist didn't hold out much hope for the tooth anyway, so......to cut a long story short, I had the offending tooth extracted half an hour after we arrived back in Kingston! Ouch!!!! Now I need a bridge and a crown to "fix" the teeth around it. Our private health insurance company will surely love us this year.

Despite all this, we did manage to go on a lovely bushwalk with good friends of our's on Tuesday - from Mount Lofty to Bridgewater (approx 8km) in the Adelaide Hills. It's part of the 1200 km Heysen Trail - look it up at www.heysentrail.asn.au

Where are the photos? you may well ask. Raelene and John don't have a camera - their's was overcome by a leaking water bottle in a backpack some time ago! And - well, we forgot to check the batteries in our's before leaving home!!!!

Nevertheless it was a fantastic day, taking in a variety of vegetation and thankfully mostly downhill. Unfortunately the view from Mt Lofty over the city was obscured by dense fog -it was a cold day but there was plenty of good conversation and laughs.

It rained for the hour or so we were inside a delightful cafe in Stirling having lunch and coffee, following which we looked over the Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens, which are incredibly interesting, even mid-winter, having recovered wonderfully well from the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires which were so devastating to our State. There's even a Wollami Pine there - a recent addition after its discovery in an isolated valley in NSW - a living fossil it's being called. We have very good intentions to do a lot more of the Heysen Trail in future. Kerran joined us and hopes to utilise public transport to access some sections of it at some stage in the future.

In between we continued with the maintenance jobs at the unit. It must sound as though the place was derelict. Not true. It has been tenanted for a number of years and obviously each of the owners have negelcted to do all those little things that need doing. Now we just have the bathroom, toilet and laundry to "do". Big job. Not sure when that will happen. Probably when we save some more money! We think the place is looking good and really feels homely now.

We hope to go to Port Fairy for a couple of days next week - just to relax. The weather forecast isn't terribly good but it's a beautiful town on the Victorian coast, so we might just sleep and read. Promise to re-charge the camera this time. Plenty of time to visit the coffee and antique shops.

Just out of interest we have only recorded 6mm of rain in Kingston this week - despite the forecast promising much more. It is very dry in so many parts of Australia, so we are actually better off than many.