Home schooling began yesterday for Issy, Brie and Reuben in Maryborough. There were no real issues and an air of excitement in the house, but on day 2 the novelty has worn off as yes, there is still work involved!
The school day though finishes at 1pm, allowing plenty of time to do other things. It has been raining every day lately here, however the kids still enjoy plenty of park, scooter, beach and outdoor time, often coming in very soggy, but very happy.
Jasine's Grandma fondly known as Ma, is in hospital when we arrive in Maryborough, not coping at home on her own with uncontrolled symptoms of pain and nausea due to advanced bowel and gastric cancer. They have ceased Chemo as it was not effective and she now requires full palliative care at home. After discussing options, we manage to get Ma to agree to us looking after her at home. She stays another week in hospital to become more stable before coming home.
Between visits to the hospital, we take the kids on day trips to local parks, the beach at Hervey Bay, and an amazing Aboriginal Story Walk park and Wildlife Sanctuary just outside of town. Maryborough and surrounds is brimming with interesting places and history!
Ma arrives home on Wednesday 11th January which is so lovely. Ma means so much to Jasine as she spent so many teenage holidays with Ma. Ma taught Jasine how to ballroom dance and play indoor bowls. She even helped her with driving lessons! We feel it is so timely that we can postpone our travel and take care of our Ma. After all, thats what Jasine is trained for.
Christmas and New Year has been with Jasine's dad, step-mum, brothers and their families in Crows Nest Qld. It was lovely to have some family time and Christmas Day was a big BBQ breakfast followed by a late Christmas roast lunch/dinner. All very yummy!
On the 27th, we packed a picnic and went to Crows Nest falls, only 6km from Pa's house. The kids had a great swim in the fresh water and had a ball clammering over the rocks. What a beautiful spot!
On the 30th, we headed down to Brisbane for the day to spend some time with Jasine's Nana who is 94 and still going strong! She has some dementia though, so we did need to remind her who we all were a few times.
On New Years Eve Jasine's brother Lloyd and his wife Stacey and little girl Addyson joined us on their way to Broome so we celebrated NYE with them. New Years Day was spent in Toowoomba at Picnic Point with Jasine's other brother Ben and his little girl Seannah and the rest of the family. It was lovely to have all of us together.
Our thoughts were to stay in Crows Nest a bit longer and catch up with some more of our old friends, however we became more concerned about Jasine's grandma in Maryborough and felt it important to come sooner to see her, so on Jan 3, we packed up the van and headed for Maryborough, about 3 hours further north.
Our aim today is to reach Pa and Granny in Crows Nest. We left Glen Innes after visiting the Standing Stones and drove through Tenterfield, across the Qld border and on to Warwick for lunch at our favourite pie shop. Yum! Here we drove past the hospital where Brie was born and our house where Issy used to say hi to the pony across the road and visit the big rigs at the truck stop down the road when he was 2.
We drove on to a little town called Allora, where Jasine's mum is buried and visited the grave site. We were able to also show the kids some other very old family grave sites here as this area on the Darling Downs is where a lot of Jasine's mothers family lived and died.
At last we arrived at Pa and Grannys house in Crows Nest, yay! Cuddles all round!
We continue our drive today moving from the Newel Hwy to the New England Hwy due to our earlier advice. We were happy though to be able to pass through Tamworth for lunch where we viewed the Golden Guitar and checked out the home of Aussie Country Music Awards.
We drove through to Glen Innes where we 'free camped' at Celtic Country rest stop - our first free camp experience! We went into town to grab some things and spotted some celtic carollers! The town has an amazing Celtic history. The next morning we visited the Standing Stones, a celtic monument built in the 1800s. The tiny Glen Innes has so much to it.
We drove on to Forbes and Parkes today and had to stop for lunch at the famous CSIRO Radiotelescope - or for those into their Aussie movies, The Dish! It was actually very interesting and the kids (and us) enjoyed the 3D movies.
After lunch, we kept going and unfortunately caught the tail of a major thunderstorm which was incredible to watch, buy very difficult to drive in! We drove on to Coonabarabran where we were glad to stop driving in storm rain. What a pretty place.
