04 Jan 2025 CHRISTMAS/NEW YEAR

Simon and Nicole and Pepper are safely back in Longreach, having arrived in Brisbane on December 21. What a contrast the celebrations this time have been to last year’s. My fervent wish was for the normal Christmas trajectory to resume. Our family Christmas lunch, just the six of us, could not have been more welcome and appropriate, and the weather was ideal. Kathy is doing extremely well after her heart attack, her morale boosted by the first visit to Australia of her brother David and his wife Joyce (her third). They were in Brisbane for a few days at the end of  November. Simon and Nicole spent two nights at a B&B on the mountain. I treated them to dinner at our best restaurant and we went to the Gold Coast Motor Museum – a stay planned for last year which had to be abandoned due the extreme weather event which cut off power up here for a fortnight.