Happy New Year

Scratched car

The year 2012 started full of hope and apprehension, we were staying with Barnadi's sister in Jakarta having left the UK over a month before and still being a couple of weeks away from landing in Melbourne to start our new life.  It is hard to believe how much our life has changed since that moment, we are now very settled into our new lives in Australia and things seemed only to be getting better, although hopefully the new year will see an end to the recent spate of bad luck that has seen the death of our fish, my diagnosis of latent TB and my accidentally scratching the car against the garage entrance.  Our biggest goal for 2013 will be buying our first house together, and with several more potential candidates lined up we are still very hopeful in this.

On new years eve Barnadi was working at the restaurant, so despite a last minute invitation to join some of the pharmacists from work at a party in the docklands, a prime fireworks viewing spot, I went instead to Bundoora to join Barnadi.  The last of the customers had cleared out by about 11 o'clock and so we headed over to Bundoora park and the highest point within Melbourne to watch the fireworks over the CBD.  We were not alone and the atmosphere was very festive so I do not regret my decision to forgo seeing the fireworks from within the city (even if the photo's didn't come out so well).


Barnadi enjoying the fireworks

In a start to the new year we took a drive up to Barnadi's friend Doug in Mangalore (a small rural village just north of Seymour).  The last time we met Doug and his wife was in 2005, so a visit was well overdue.  The hot dry weather of the past couple of weeks has seen a dramatic change to the landscape, with all the greens disappearing into a burnt yellow.  The fire risk has also changed and warning signs on the way out to Mangalore revealed a yellow status, the highest fire risk level since we moved here.  On arrival we had lunch outside on the BBQ, but had to move inside when we got to hot.  Needless to say with 7 years to catch up on conversation continued to flow for many hours before it was time to head back down the Hume freeway and home.

Doug's bus in Mangalore