Australian Reunions

22 October 2010 (and yes, I am very behind again!)

My week in Sydney was not about doing the sights, more about catching up with friends and I was so pleased to be seeing more friendly faces.

I spent the first day reacquainting myself with the city and called up Diana and Gary, a couple I met on my Fiji cruise to see if we could meet up.  Diana had recently had an operation to remodel her foot and wasn't very mobile so the invite was to take a ferry to Manly on the Sunday where Gary would pick me up and bring me to their home in Collaroy on the Nothern Beaches for lunch.  It was a shocking day, tipping down with rain so when Gary took me up to the North Heads to look at the view of the harbour and city, I could just about make out the highrises in the distance through the rain.  Lunch on the veranda with the blinds down and the heater on was a delicious seafood feast of oysters with lemon, oysters mornay, prawns, salmon and breaded prawns, salad and potatos.  Lovely.  I was so pleased to see them, I heard all about what happened on the cruise after I had left that day in Fiji and was reassured that it was a good decision that I had decided to go back and do it properly next time!  At the end of the afternoon, I said my goodbyes to Diana and Gary dropped me to the ferry terminal at Mossman for the shorter ride back to Circular Quay and the city.  It was so lovely to catch up with them again, I felt very priviledged to have been so well looked after.

On the Monday I had a quiet day doing laundry and having a haircut and in the evening met up with Michelle and Stephen, neighbours from my home in Fleet who now live in Manly.  They met me at my hotel but took me back on the ferry to Manly where we had drinks first overlooking the ocean then a lovely Thai meal at one of their favourite places.  I'm not that good at knowing what to order in a thai restaurant so I was very glad they ordered for us and it was all very delicious.  It was lovely to see how their life is now and it would seem there is no comparison with a commuting life in London.  Makes me slightly envious but also pleased that such lovely people are making the most of what the world has to offer.

Tuesday was the biggest reunion of all.  My friend Annamarie was coming to visit for an overnight stay from Canberra and we had a lot to catch up on.  I have known Annamarie for 20 years, we first met when I was a teenager and she and her husband came on exchange to the Royal Navy where her husband was a colleague of my dad's.  We met on several occasions in the UK and when they went back to Oz, they welcomed me while I was on my gap year, putting me up for probably about 3 months in Sydney while I got a job temping and helped out around the house and with the kids.  Those were good times.  Annamarie and her husband moved then separated and the christmas cards stopped coming.  Over the years I looked for her by various menthods and then earlier this year, I had success when I located her son on Facebook and asked him to pass on my email address.  The rest is history, we had just over 24 hours to catch up on 10 years of our lives and it was a very special time, we had a lovely lunch at Darling Harbour, walked for miles around the city, did a spot of shopping, had champers on the balcony overlooking the Harbour Bridge and then had a lovely dinner.  There was talk of me changing my flights to spend time with Annamarie in Canberra but in the end, it was quite expensive so for this trip 24 hours will have to suffice, but there is always next time and I won't leave it 12 years again!


The following day I had dinner with Helene and Rob, Helene was my neighbour at my Dad's house for about 11 years and she now lives in Southampton.  Would you beleive that it has been a few years since I have seen her but we were both in Sydney at the same time and what better way to catch up than with a backdrop of the iconic Harbour Bridge and ferries.  It was also great to meet Rob, Helene's boyfriend who I hadn't met before, they seem to be having a great trip and I was pleased to hear how they'd got on up until that point.


And then it was time to move on to Brisbane.  It went very quickly but it was so nice to see such lovely people!