Hi there
Well here we are approaching the end of 2004 and we’ve been in Australia for 20 months!
It’s been a very busy year much of which has been enjoyable but there have been some not so happy times. The worst of which was the recent loss of a young Australian relative – Mark Austin – who died suddenly (of natural causes) in London in mid November. This has affected us all particularly as he, along with his partner Ellen, were with us on the Murray River trip last December and our Mark and David went camping with them to the Flinders Ranges last Easter. We are all still coming to terms with his loss and our thoughts are continually with his partner Ellen, his parents Ron and Lynn and his brother Peter.
However Mark A was a chap who believed in living life to the full, so we are carrying on as he would have expected us all to, but we will always remember him.
Back in October at fairly short notice Jacky had to undergo an operation which wasn’t a whole bundle of fun but all is now well, she is fully recovered and to her deep regret is now able to do the housework again! David broke his wrist at the start of the school winter holidays which caused a few problems with his driving test but he has now passed but as a result of learning to drive in Aus he drives barefoot!
September was a good month, John’s sister Joan and her husband Sandy came over to stay. It was great to be able to show them Brisbane and a little bit of Queensland. We took them up to Port Douglas for a week so they could experience Tropical North Queensland, the Great Barrier Reef and many other delights of that area. One highlight was a trip up the Dickson inlet on a paddleboat and we encountered a crocodile and an eagle, they even let Sandy drive the boat – which given that Sandy is blind was a particularly silly thing for them to do – but all on board survived! They also did all the usual and obligatory Australian type things, cuddling koalas, feeding kangaroos, drinking stubbies and throwing boomerangs. They even got to meet a dolphin at Sea World.
David has now finished school and is currently enjoying the delights of an English winter! He did very well at school, worked hard, made some great mates and finished the year with ‘top in school’ academic honours in Film & TV (move over messrs Spielberg and Tarrantino – David is on the scene). We were of course very proud at the speech night when he received his award. There were lots of events to celebrate their final year at school including a formal (see enclosed picture) and a Valedictory dinner which this year took place in the dining room at the Suncorp stadium (which you will of course remember from the rugby World Cup last year). After school many of the leavers descend on the Gold Coast for a week known as ‘Schoolies’. It’s a week of serious partying, David and some mates shared an apartment for the duration and when he returned home he slept for 24 hours! David will celebrate his 18th birthday in the UK and at about the same time receive his school results. He is considering university for 2005 but nothing is settled yet.
Amy has enjoyed her first year in high school, she has increased her circle of friends and really settled into the school and thinks the school camp on Moreton Island was one of the highlights of her year. She has been busy out of school with 3 drama classes a week! Her other hobbies include, anything to do with Johnny Depp, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and shopping!
Mark has just received confirmation that he has passed his first year at the Qld School of Film and TV for the 2 year diploma he is undertaking. He is currently doing some holiday work at the firm where he worked in the city last year. Mark has really enjoyed this year and also made some great friends. He’s been getting into the Queensland lifestyle, he is often to be seen wandering around barefoot – which is not always totally fun for those around him 🙂 – and has been swimming at dawn down on the Gold Coast with his now girlfriend of almost a year, Anya.
Jacky has been working at Diabetes Australia-Queensland over a year now and is still enjoying it. She’s joined the Brisbane Women’s Club and has started to get involved in the Parents & Friends association at Amy’s school. Jacky reckons she just about has her current boss properly trained now – any of Jacky’s former bosses reading this will know how her current boss feels. There is a rumour that some of Jacky’s ex bosses are thinking of getting together to form a self help group and that John wants to apply for ex-officio membership.
Speaking of John, he appears to have done what he himself describes as being ‘diddely squat’ this year – which is not quite true! He was last seen disappearing in the general direction of a drinking club in the city mumbling and grumbling about some plan to start selling something called ‘bloody hardware’ to go with his software – those of you in the IT industry will of course recognise this as a very specialist technical term. No doubt he will emerge at some point next year having either made (or lost) a vast sum of money – which when it’s converted back to UK pounds from Aussie dollars will in any event be a very tiny sum either way, so actually it does not really matter very much!
In August we bought a house up at Coolum Beach on the Sunshine Coast. Coolum is a lovely small town with high rise blocks banned! We’ve bought this house to enjoy at weekends and let out for holiday lets. It has a pool and great sea views over Old Woman Island down the coast to Mooloolaba. Unfortunately it’s booked for holiday lets all over Christmas but hopefully we’ll get up there again in February!
We’ve been lucky enough to go to quite a few concerts this year, we have seen David Gates, Boz Scaggs, Fleetwood Mac, Petula Clark (don’t laugh, she was brilliant), Michael Ball (more for Jacky’s benefit of course) plus Jacky’s old friends – The Manfreds. The absolute highlight though was the Eagles just a couple of weeks ago. There’s more booked for the New Year including Rod Stewart, Neil Diamond and a stunning double bill featuring Tom Jones and John Farnham – who is a sort of Aussie version of Cliff Richard – but larger!
Instead of a 14th birthday party Amy is going with 3 friends to see Delta Goodrem – hmmmmm………. never mind!
Talking of birthdays, February sees Mark’s 21st! We’re planning a party on a boat on the Brisbane river and Mark is very excited as some of his close mates from the UK are coming over. There will be further celebrations later next year as it’s our Silver Wedding anniversary. We have decided we really should celebrate this in style and would love some family and friends from the UK to be present – so do please come and visit at that time if you possibly can. The actual anniversary is in August, but the current plan is to hold the party in early September, no final date set yet but we’ll let you know.
So, that’s been our year – if it was a company annual report it would no doubt include the phrase ‘this has been a year of consolidation’ – but it isn’t, so it doesn’t!
We wish you and yours all the very best for Christmas and 2005 and we hope to have the pleasure of welcoming you to Queensland at some point soon.
Love from the Burketts
