Monday 19 December 2016

2016 Xmas Missive



Capelin Lynch 2016    
                                   
Greetings all.
We’ve had another fulfilling and busy year.
Here’s a few memorable moments .

Family moments
Steve                    Going to the AFL with Jess and preferring to chat than watch the dismal performances.
Golf with Nick. Watching him hit like a baseball player and somehow have a card with a score half mine. Not envious!
Andrea                                 Playing with Nick and Dim’s new dog Abbie; getting to know my brother Dave again when he stayed for a couple of months to perform at QTC.

Good Friends    Being lucky to have a circle of long term friends with whom we share meals, laughs, stories, holidays, weekends away, good and hard times. Let’s grow old together.   

Holidays 
Steve    PNG with MIck and friend Gabrielle. Where to start? Stepping on to New Ireland where my great grandparents landed in 1880. Pinching a 150 year old brick each as souvenirs. Finding Mt Hagen clothed in razor wire on the one hand and being adopted by locals on the other. Memorable.  
Spending time with cousins Rita and Vince in Kalamunda, Perth as part of our WA trip. Freezing in our hired campervan as we experienced the coldest October in the west in 30 years.
Andrea                   Palm Cove and Cairns in July for a “girls holiday” with Mally and Lindy. The Indigenous Art Fair was  wonderful.   
WA in Oct- seeing the amazing variety of wildflowers in WA and being shown around Fremantle by a knowledgeable local, Margo O’Byrne. Meeting Sarah Drummond author of “The Sound” at Broke Inlet was another highlight.

 Family history discovery.
Steve
This was the house next door. On arrival in 1881 the 250 Italians escaping from the disastrous attempt to establish a colony in PNG were housed in a hall in the Domain, Sydney. This hall (Agricultural Hall) was fifty metres away from this amazing building. It was the Garden Palace built to house the 1879 Sydney International Expo. It burnt down in 1882. The Agricultural Hall then became the collection point for all things technical and historic and was the precursor to the Sydney Powerhouse Museum.

Andrea     Still exploring the living relatives so not yet up to the dead ones.  

Books.
Steve                    Rereading David Malouf’s  12 Edmonstone Street.” Realised it was actually about the notion of memory and family rather than a simple memoir.  Inspired me to write about my mother and her collection of wildflowers from 1946. http://mymissinglife.blogspot.com.au/2016/11/wildflower-dreams-seventy-year-story.html
Andrea                 Discovering Randolph Stow (“The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea”), a Western Australian writer whom Tim Winton credits as his inspiration. Loved reading “The Sound” (Sarah Drummond) set in WA.


Music
Steve                    Gareth Liddiard (The Drones) acoustic version of TAMAN SHUD at Mullum Music Festival
You had to be there. And I was.
Andrea                                 Happening on the local ukulele club playing “Hallelujah” in a nearby café on the night that Leonard Cohen died.

Lets get physical
Steve                    Kept swimming. Took up pilates. Played a weekly round of golf with mates Denis and Nev. Outcome: everything between despair and elation. More of the former. We’re improving. Indicator: less cursing.
Andrea                                 Continuing to go to aqua aerobics and deep water running where the jaw and tongue get a good workout as the women share their lives.

Favourite swim
Steve                    Dawn Fraser Harbor Pool, Balmain, Sydney with Nick Fury. Freezing.
Andrea                                 Cold water swim at Stradbroke Island in August.

Moments of sadness
                                Andrea’s Uncle Kent – an elder and missed
Steve Gahan – eldest cousin on my father’s side. A much loved bloke. Missed.
Death of Derek Ives – so talented, so young.
 RIP Patch (1994-2016). Buried under a pile of wood in the backyard.

 With 2017 beckoning we wish you a peaceful Xmas break and everything you hope for next year.         
Love Andrea and Steve    

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