‘No overseas trip for us I said.’ After our epic 9 week trip last year we needed to holiday closer to Australia.

2024 has seen us go to Adelaide twice. Once for the wonderful Adelaide Festivals ( and yes my choir Soul Song sang ),. Back to Adelaide in June for our nephew Luke’s 50th and his brother Kenrick’s 40th.

A visit to Sydney for my niece Pips 40th was fun with a beautiful High Tea at the Intercontinental Hotel.

A road trip to Tamworth for Steve’s birthday, staying at Goonoo Goonoo a cattle property set up for guests. It’s really beautiful with a top class restaurant called Glasshouse perched on a hill overlooking the green pastures.

Then a visit to the Tamworth Regional Art Gallery for a quilt exhibition and lecture by Jenny Bowker AM. Jenny travelled with her husband Bob to many middle eastern countries when he was an ambassador. She made the most of her time there by connecting with local craftspeople and has told the story of her adventures in her quilts. Quite extraordinary.

Our early November trip to French New Caledonia was cancelled due to the continued civil unrest in the country. hopefully we’ll get there at another time. Steve’s Grandmother grew up there so he’d love to discover the world she lived in there.

Our final trip is to the Cocos Keeling Islands. Sitting in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia it is close to Malaysia so many of the Cocos Malay inhabitants are Islamic.

There are around 600 people with many on West Island where the airport is located and then Home Island has many of the Cocos Malay people and the very old Oceania House.

After a very long travel day due to island winds delaying our plane we finally arrived around 8.30. There are only 2 flights a week from Perth and last week the plane got to Christmas Island then had to turn back.

An unscheduled stop at Learmouth for fuel ( in case we couldn’t stop at Christmas Island ). We managed to land at Christmas and dropped off passengers and picked up others doing the round trip back to Perth.

Our house is great. We walked from the airport as our host took the bags in her car. It’s opposite the water and has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms for ourselves and friends Jo and Martyn.

Tomorrow adventures await.