Happy New Year 2020

Hello from St Helens, or more specifically, Stigletz.  We've just woken up to this view, that's right, you can't even see the sea even though it's just behind the trees there.  It's very smokey and hazy this morning, our drive yesterday from Sister's Beach was met with a very smokey hazy view when when turned off the Midlands Highway towards St Helens.  When we got to Fingal we could see lots of smoke (and maybe fires) burning in the hills either side of the road.  The Fingal fire-station was packed with people, vehicles and was an obvious hive of activity as we drove past it.

So a quick recap of everything since my last diary entry, we've been so busy with doing stuff that I've never sat down to write it all up!

After our night in Penguin we got up, packed up and went down to the Penguin market.  Beth bought a little stuffed Penguin for $1 and called it Pengee, Theo bought a couple of Matchbox cars, well, a car and a speedboat.  The Speedboat is called, obviously Speedy, while the car is called somewhat less obviously Dave.  We had some coffee and I was very excited to be called "Cobber" by the man serving the coffee.

Once we left the market we drove and met up with Granny at the place she's house-sitting.  She met us with a Roast Chicken for lunch, so we had a lunch and then sat down and relaxed for a while, Granny took the kids down to visit/feed the chickens on the property, then they did some of a really hard puzzle with her.  Sarah found the missing piece that had been plauging Granny for a few days.  Then we all (Granny in Leanne's car) headed down to Sister's Beach.  We arrived at the place Jeremy had booked and there was some confusion for a few minutes because the lady had been dealing with a "Jed" and didn't realised that when we said Jeremy we were talking about the same person.  Anyway we sorted out the houses even though Jeremy, Nicole and Fletcher were still on their way, then went and checked into our little house.

We got settled, went to visit and say a huge big hello to Leanne and Paul, plus Kade was there.  Then we went down to The Creek for a swim and a splash, which the kids of course loved.  There was something very nice about watching the kids splash, play and laugh in the same place that I loved so much growing up as a kid.  It's a shame that the creek has had all the old pine trees cut down, but it's all been done in the name of public safety etc.  Sister's Beach is certainly more popular than it was when I was a kid, the road is much better to get to it, there's 4G now thanks to a big tower over the whole area etc.  Back when I last visited you still had to climb up a tree in the top of getting a basic 2G connection.  I don't even think mobile data/roaming was a thing back when I last visited.

Next morning we got up and said good morning to Jeremy, Nicole and Fletcher who had all arrived very late (midnight) the night before.  We foisted the kids off on Granny for a bit then went into Wynyard for a couple of hours, nothing too exciting though, just some shopping for the next couple of days.  Went back, went back down to The Creek again and played around swimming etc, jumped in with Granny in the water.

Pretty much the same the next day too, New Year's eve.  We'd just stay at home, then visit the Bonney's shack, go for a walk etc.  It was NYE eve though so we all tried to have a big sleep in the afternoon.  It worked for Theo and Sarah, not really for Beth or I.  I tried hard but people kept arriving to say hi.  First Granny and Auntie Lyn, then Jeremy to give the kids some flowers.  Once we were all ready to go, we headed down to the Big Party!  Everyone was there, by everyone I mean:

Me, Sarah, Beth and Theo.

Jeremy, Nicole and Fletcher

Granny, Auntie Leanne, Auntie Lyn and Uncle Shane.

Rebecca, Regan and Gina

Bronson (with Willow and ?), Tegan and Erin (with

Lucas and Kade

I tried to get photos of everyone that was there to document the occasion.  I don't think I missed anyone, but I haven't sat down and ticked everyone off yet either!  It was a really great night anyway, once the Sun went down Sarah got out the glowsticks she'd bought and distributed them to all the children and the few adults that wanted them. Beth conked out about 10am and really wanted to go to bed (because she hadn't had an afternoon sleep) so we tucked her up into bed with a promise that we'd get her up for the countdown.  At 11:45pm I did just that, she was very hard to get up and very crabby, but the 15 minute bootup time mostly helped.  At midnight we did the countdown and did the big HAPPY NEW YEAR and some cheering and cuddles.  Beth told me later than the countdown wasn't at all what she was expecting, not sure what exactly she was expecting.  I guess maybe fireworks or a big clock or something...

It was great to see everyone again anyway, it'd been nearly twenty years since I'd seen some of them.  Thanks to Facebook it doesn't feel that long, because I've seen photos of them, and them of me etc etc.  Paulie gave Theo a little torch he'd gotten that day when he replaced his creek pump, which Theo loved and spent half of the party shining up in the trees looking for possums and the other half shining it into people's eyes accidentally.

Sarah took the kids up to bed just after midnight, I stayed on until about 2am when everyone called it a night.

The next day was a slow bootup for everyone, the kids didn't get up until about 9:30am or so which was pretty impressive, but given how late they stayed up I guess not that impressive.  Sarah woke up feeling very ill, nothing to do with the night before as she'd only had about 1, maybe 2 drinks tops.  So we had a bit of a quiet day, Granny took the kids down for a swim a bit later in the day and I was going to have a sleep, but I just spend a few hours chatting to Paulie and Lucus down at Bonney Shack.  Later that afternoon Pa arrived from Hobart, so it was nice to catchup with him down at Bonney shack for a big BBQ dinner.  Just as we were leaving he gave me my new Pixel 4XL so once I'd got the kids to bed I spent a few hours having a play with it and getting it a little bit setup.  I don't have a case for it yet though, so I'm not using it as my regular phone yet.

Next day we got up and went to Stanley for something to do.  We stopped at the Chocolate shop and had some lunch, even though I'd already had a pie that morning when I'd gone for a walk with the kids, Granny and Fletcher.  Once we'd been to the cafe we took the chairlift up The Nut and had a walk around for 15 minutes.  Theo was instantly bored, Beth did a good job of pretending to be interested at the top of The Nut but I think she was pretty bored too.  To be fair there wasn't much to do except walk around and look at the amazing views.  So we caught the chairlift back down, this time seeing a couple of Bluetounge Lizards at the station where you get on to go down.

Once we arrived back at the house we were staying at we realised that Theo'd left his new torch from Uncle Paul at the Chocolate cafe.  Doh!  I took Pa back into Wynyard and we did some shopping shopping for a BBQ that night, again down at Bonney's shack.  Once done, we went home and pretty much packed up everything.  I was in favour of doing it the next morning, but Sarah made the right call and we did it that night.  Very glad we did because it took twice as long as I thought it would and even then it wasn't 100% complete.

So that means that yesterday we packed everything into our Mistubishi ASX, drove down to Bonney Shack for the final farewell to everyone, and headed off.  Poor Beth was very sad when we had to leave, she's got good at saying goodbye to people when she's had heaps of fun with them. Poor little chicken.  We'll see Pa again soon, so that wasn't a big farewall, but it was sad to say goodbye to everyone else.  We got some nice photos though.

From there it was onto Wings Wildlife park, quite a long drive with a quick stop in Burnie to get some breakfast.  The wildlife park was great though, very hot day, but great to see all the animals, especially the Tassie Devil's.  I thought Theo/Beth would be more interested in them, but it was hard for them to see them because of the fences and there was so much stuff to do that they seemed more interested in the map half the time.  But they both loved feeding the Wallabies, feeding the fish and even feeding the Goat.  Extra bonus excitement points when the Goat ate one of the paperbags that the feed came in!

From the wildlife park it was the long drive to St Helen's, about two and a half hours.  They both did a great job, we stopped in Perth and got a bite to eat from a lovely little cafe, then headed on.  As mentioned, when we turned off we could see a very hazy bunch of smoke which got bigger and thicker the closer we got.  I was a little worried we might be turned around, but then they hadn't blocked the road so I figured it must be OK, plus checking the Tas Fire Service website said that there was an alert in Fingal, but not a state of emergency.  Anyway as we went through like I said, very busy little town but we passed through without incident.

We got to St Helens/Stigletz and found our house.  Much to our disappointment, there's no Internet here!  Sarah said that no wonder it was still available to book when everything else was taken.  It's a very strange house, it's got lights in it like a normal house but they're all super dim, like 40watt maximum.  So even with the lights on you can't see shit around the place, I'm glad I bought my uber torch because it's easy to see then!  Crazy.

Anyway once we arrived we unpacked then went to find something to eat, the first place we tried was totally booked out, so we found a nice place in town.  We went in, looked at the menu and quickly realised that Beth and Theo were millimetres away from total meltdown, so we left the nice place and went to the local pizza place.  It didn't seem that busy but turns out they had a mental number of takeaway orders, so it took a while to get our dinner.  In fact the garlic bread we ordered came AFTER the food, doh.  Anyway the kids ate it up and it seemed to help restore their sanity.  Theo was actually OK because he'd had a sleep in the car, it was Beth who was tired and hangry.  

Dinner over we came home to the dim gloom and got everyone into bed.  Theo took ages to go to sleep because of the fact he'd had a sleep in the car, but Beth crashed out quickly. They'd having to share a bed here, unlike the place in Sister's Beach where they had their own double bed each.

And that brings me up to date with now.  I've woken up and the view outside is just hazy.  Very disappointing, especially as it's supposed to be 31c today!  Have to wait and see what happens.

And a few other notes from the last few days:  Beth's still not over spongey.  It gets mentioned at least once, maybe twice a day.  She's also attached now to other things, one being a feather that Granny gave her (fethery) and also a tiny pink shell she found.  She managed to part with the shell out the car window (on purpose, after having kissed it and saying goodbye) when we left the wildlife park yesterday.  She also managed to burn/melt Pengee's bum in a candle at Sister's Beach but doesn't seem to worried about that.

She also has a very nasty cough that won't seem to go away, we're going to have to get that checked out when we get back to NZ.

And so that's that!  I'll have to tether to my (old) phone to post this, hope it works!

Tim