Author: Mrs A
Location: Sydney, Australia
We’ve had a busy week getting our final tasks completed in Sydney and saying a few farewells to our lovely friends.
Monday night saw us treated to an absolute gastronomic feast, delicious wine and food prepared by friends Cathy and Scott and hosted by Donna and Andy – we were incredibly spoilt, and it was so great to see them.
Tuesday was a little dusty after the excesses of the night before, but I headed off early to see my Gastroenterologist in St Leonards to hopefully be signed off to continue travelling. Thankfully I got the tick of approval, and Dr Smith also organised for all my notes to be sent across for me to take to the UK, should anything go awry.
In the afternoon, I had a bouncy blow dry to add that little bit of glamour before we headed to drinks with friends at King Street Wharf. Despite it being a Tuesday night we had a great turnout with about 17 friends joining us.
Wednesday was a great day to pack – we both are currently Qantas Frequent Flyer Silver – probably for the last time ever, so have plenty of luggage allowance – 42kg each! Still it was a good practice to get it organised and bags weighed in advance to settle any nerves.
In the evening we met up with more friends, Clive, Aisha, John and Eveliene for dinner and drinks in Circular Quay.
Thursday was the birthday of one of our kind hosts, Jenny, who is currently working her socks off closing down one of her framing shops, and upgrading another. She came home to a well deserved glass of champagne before we all jumped in an Uber and headed to a fabulous Asian restaurant in Coogee Beach, Sugarcane. Highly recommended if you’re looking for somewhere new to eat and are in the area.
After a crazy week, Friday was much quieter. Mr A and I went into the city for a few final tasks (Mark’s shaver broke, but thankfully within warranty and exchanged swiftly) and I had my final medical procedure – steroid injections into my airway. They’ve been working really well, and my Otolaryngologist (ENT, head and neck surgeon) showed me he was delighted with how the scar tissue is drawing back and opening out my trachea. We just hope it keeps on working. Again, he has given me notes and videos to take with me to the UK.
We had a quiet night with Jenny and David, all of us exhausted for our own reasons after a busy week.
Saturday morning finally arrived, and after a walk around the neighbourhood we packed up for real and did a final weigh in – thankfully all within our allowance still, despite a total of eleven bags.
Our Uber XL arrived on time and we loaded up the boot….
We are finally off!
We have checked in seven bags, and are hoping we will see seven again at the other end. We have a kind friend who is driving through the early hours of Sunday morning in the UK to pick us up…not sure we are prepared for the 2 degrees centigrade forecast for our arrival though!
This will be the first time in 20 years we will spend more time in Europe than here!
Farewell Australia!
L-R: Phil, Libby, Catherine, Therese, Darryl, Natalie, Greg
Soon we were off on the road again, heading towards Marysville. Marysville is literally a town which has risen from the ashes, and as we drove through spectacular woodland you could not believe the horrors of the fires that shot through here a decade ago. Over 90% of the town’s buildings were destroyed and 45 people killed. I can remember sobbing as I watched the news and saw the devastation to human and wildlife habitats and lives.
Owen returned from work early evening, and took us for a spin around the Albert Park Grand Prix track in his Mercedes AMG GT R (correct me if I’m wrong!) – a great ride…
…and then up into the bustling Acland Street. What a great atmosphere – plenty of interesting boutique shops and an eclectic variety of eateries and bars. Simply people watching over a cup of tea or coffee would be a great way to spend an hour here.
The food was delicious (Pani Puri, Aloo Baingan and Fish Moilee) but it was a shame about the ambience of the restaurant. With concrete floors, walls and ceiling, the sound was deafening and we could hardly hear one another talk!
Despite the warm temperatures we went out for a stroll around this very picturesque little village. It was initially a gold mining town, but now is a service centre for the agriculture providers surrounding. It has a couple of pubs, one apparently serving boutique wine (not on a Monday night though) and the other boasting ‘real Thai food cooked by a Thai chef’…we were almost tempted.
Mr A and I drove into sleepy Canowindra to send off the last of our eBay sales, a couple of Christmas gifts to the UK, and return our tyre-pressure monitoring kit back to the factory for testing. Despite fully reinstalling the monitors from scratch in the morning, they still failed to show all our wheels on the system.
We farewelled Jo and Alan and drove to our next destination, Bathurst. There we stopped the night with friend David and his two boys, Felix and Rory, enjoying steak and salad and a good night’s sleep. This is where the Cruiser will spend the next few weeks while we are in New Zealand.
The afternoon was spent doing a little Christmas shopping and a visit to my ENT surgeon (iSGS followers – I had my first awake steroid injection into my stenosis!).
Jenny and David had invited a bunch of their friends over for Christmas drinks and nibbles in the evening, so Mr A and I helped prepare the apartment for visitors, starting with quality testing the beverages – a glass of French Champagne before the guests arrived.
A fun evening proceeded – delicious food and drink accompanied by much laughter and interesting conversations. Fabulous!
This week was also about medical visits. I had a few tests and saw a doctor about my sore foot – he believes my issues are not neuroma after all, but torn ligaments around my toe – something that can take about 18 months to heal, but can be helped with an orthotic insert. Excellent! I had been fearing surgery was my next step (so to say!).
And I was in hospital for an operation on my airway. I’m starting a new procedure with a new surgeon and hope my idiopathic subglottic stenosis can be kept at bay so more unhindered fun can be had in the great outdoors in the coming months.
There will be a few eBay/GumTree sales coming up too – a few household items, plus our packrafts and Mr A’s single kayak. So lots of work ahead.
Miss Tassie has been enjoying having a wide choice of sunny spots to stretch out in, and has settled in nicely to being back in the house for the time being.
The America we have met on this trip is one full of kind, respectful people (no..we didn’t meet any politicians). We had so many instances of people (friends and strangers) go out of their way to be thoughtful and courteous. When you read the headlines focusing on the negative headlines from here, as elsewhere, its easy to forget a country is made up of individuals. It’s hard not to generalise about the “behaviour” of groups of people from the same geography, race, religion or sex. As humans, we want the simple truths, but really we will find as much variation as commonality.
We have so many highlights it would be unfair to call them out, but I will. Thank you to all the people who went out of their way to help make our trip here go so well. Those who had us stay (may your livers recover), those who helped us settle in (Deborah of the care package extraordinaire), those who gave us tips on specific things to do in their patch, and most importantly to the doctors who provided a “just in case” safety net for Catherine (who can’t get medical travel insurance for her breathing disease).
We have eaten some fabulous food, cooked by friends or out and about, the choice of cuisine is almost endless. The option to not have sugar or dairy in it…a little harder. We sampled some amazing wines in California (Dave and SJ, Susan and Joe – you have such great taste!), and mind bending cocktails and bourbon courtesy of the Chases in Cicero.
Thank you for your hospitality America. It’s time to return to Sydney, and the life and friends we have there, but we are certain we shall return.
After many cups of tea and a proper southern breakfast (Mr A at least tried grits with cheese and maple syrup – an odd combination I thought!), we all went our separate ways.
I presented a few slides first, talking about the group and some thoughts I have for future opportunities with treatment and information, then Dr Gelbard and Dr Francis presented their findings from three years of longitudinal research with patients.
There is much more opportunity for more research and studies ahead. We’ve funded a further two years of data collection from the iSGS 1000, but more funding is required to enable clinical trials in the future. We’re hoping to somehow set up a charitable foundation to help fund this, and I have no doubt Alex and David will be keeping an eye out for any more grants they can apply for.
