My New Blog

As you can see I have come to the end of my life in Africa and have moved on. I have started a new blog called “Zimbabwe to Australia” and if you are interested in continuing to read what I have to say you can find the rest of my story on

www.ZimbabweToAustralia.blogspot.com/

141) Goodbye

Saying “Goodbye” is never easy but as we were leaving for good and had no idea if and when we would see our family again it was particularly sad. Australia is a very long way away and we all felt that this could be our last farewell.

When I first arrived in Africa I would think how amazing it was that I was really in Africa. I had been taught a little about it in Geography at school. I had learnt about the highest mountain and its longest river. I learnt about the Rift Valley and drawn maps that showed the mineral wealth of the countries. More maps showed each country’s crops, flora and fauna and we also learnt a little about the climatic conditions. We were read stories of brave missionaries bringing Christianity and health services to the poor black people. We would collect our pennies to send cloths and gifts to the children in Africa and we would wonder what it was really like. I don’t think I ever imagined that I would one day live there. I think now, that in those days I thought that only missionaries, explorers and wild life photographers went to Africa. We watched films on wild life; David Attenbrough was very popular (and is still going strong.) That reminds me of another wild life program we used to watch when I was little. It was hosted by a couple called Armand and Michaela Denis. Armand was the photographer and Michaela did the narratives. She would start every paragraph saying “Armand says…”. But we enjoyed them too. Another couple of wild life photographers who had a TV show at the time, although theirs was underwater photography, were Hans and Lottie Hass. We always called it Hands off Lottie’s (I’ll leave you to think of the last word)

Yes, my knowledge of Africa was pretty limited. I was amazed that the sun went down so quickly, you could just watch it falling behind the horizon; it was a much slower process in the United Kingdom. I had trouble remembering that my rhyme to tell me were the sun was needed to be revised:-

The sun rises in the East,
sets in the West,
is highest South
and is never in the North,

had to become:-

is highest North
and is never in the South

It took me a long time to think of the North being the sunny side. North had always meant cold to me.

But I was very blessed to spend 38 years on the continent and I loved it from the very first. Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa all have problems and life is not easy for the majority of the people and I feel a great sadness about the terrible things that have happened there. I pray continually that there will be improvements.
Now that it is obvious that we will settle in Australia and not go back to live in Africa I think that this might be the right time to finish “Letters from Zimbabwe” after all it was quite some time since we lived in Zimbabwe. I would like to tell you of all the wonderful things that have happened to us since we came to live in this lovely land but I think my new blog should have a new name don’t you? How about “A Zimbabwean in Oz”? Or “To A(ustralia from Z(imbabwe). If you have any ideas on a new name please submit them to me. I wish I could promise a six-week holiday in the Caribbean to the name that is chosen but unfortunately I am afraid I can’t even afford to give a weekend in Bognor Regis.

140) Some Problems Solved

On November 28th we visited the bank to see our friend and organise the transfer of the funds that would come from the sale of our house. We were sitting at his desk when we got a call on our mobile phone from the lawyer to tell us that the money had been released and that it would be in our bank account within the hour. We then got another call from the removal company. The young lady told me that there was good news and there was bad news, I always ask for the bad news first. She told us that when our household goods had been finally measured we had quite a bit more than she had originally estimated so the bill should be more but the good news was that as we had to pay in American Dollars and that morning the South African Rand had spiked and was worth a lot more, the exchange rate was being very kind to us so we would in the end pay about R2000 less than the original quote.

Now everything started falling into place. We had sold the Ford Sierra and the gentleman who bought it came and paid us the final amount and Jonny delivered the car to him in Pinetown. We had no furniture in the house except our bed that we were giving to Petros and his wife Elizabeth and some garden furniture belonging to the new owners. We spent the rest of that day cleaning up around the yard and the next morning we handed the keys over to Murray and Linda. Joel and Alley Kuiper, friends from our church had kindly offered to take us to Pinetown to catch our bus. The bus left from outside the Pinetown MacDonald’s and we were amused to see that in just about every little town and village that we went through the bus stop was in very close proximity to the local MacDonald’s. It just goes to show what money and influence can achieve. I am sure the bus route was before the Macdonald’s; they must have organised to have the stops changed to fit in with their restaurants. People waiting for a bus or arriving in town after a long journey often look for something to eat and MacDonald’s was the obvious answer. And it was a long journey! We often drove to Pretoria, it was a three hour run straight along the Highway. The bus did not go that way though; it went via Vereeniging which was miles out of the way. The trip took us about 6 hours. Fortunately we had our mobile phone so we could call Don and Sandra and give them our expected time of arrival. They were there to meet us at the station so we spent a very pleasant weekend with them. While we were there Jonny’s sister Cecilia came to say goodbye to us. His brother Devilliars and his family came to see us. Stan and Rena Malabssy-Smith, friends from when we lived in Witbank also came. We really appreciated that they all made the effort to come and spend some time with us before we left for Australia, it was very special.

One of the first things we did when we decided to emigrate to Australia was to inquire about our Police clearance. We went to the Police station in Hillcrest and we were told that if we applied from there it would take about two months but we could just go to Police Headquarters in Pretoria and it could be issued there and then over the counter. Thus doing away with the need to post documents and so we were advised to do this. We spent half a day of our time in Pretoria trying to get our clearances but we had been given incorrect information and were told there that it would take about three weeks to process the document so we had to arrange for Jonny’s brother Don to collect our police clearances and post them to us in Australia. We were not happy about leaving without them but there was nothing else we could do.

139) Some Problems

The first bank that Murray and Linda applied to for a loan to buy our house turned them down so they had to apply to another one. We were concerned that it might slow things up and delay our leaving. The second bank agreed to give the young couple a loan on condition Murray’s father agreed to stand guarantor, which he did, so now the transfer could be started. We were beginning to be a little concerned about the timing of our move but the lawyers told us everything was in hand and we would get our money in time so that we could leave as planned.

We went to a Travel Agent to book our air tickets. We were hoping to be able to leave before the prices went up for the holiday season but we could not get a booking at that time so we thought about waiting until the low season prices came in at the beginning of February but we realised that what we would have to spend, in the approximately two months that we would have to wait would far out weigh the difference in the cost of the tickets. We told the agent to go ahead and get us the earliest ticket she could manage. We also booked bus tickets to Pretoria, so that we could spend a few days with Jonny’s brother Don and his wife Sandra, as we did not know when we would ever see them again. We arranged with Don and Sandra that they would drive us through to the airport in Johannesburg for our flight to Australia. When I got the tickets home and had a look at them I realised that the travel agent had made a mistake and instead of booking us to travel from Durban to Pretoria she had made the booking from Pretoria to Durban. I don’t know what she was thinking of. I had to take them back to be changed.

At the last moment there was some hitch with the transfer and so we did not get our money when we were supposed to… When we telephoned the lawyers office one of the young ladies who worked there was very casual about it, she said “There has been a delay, Oh I suppose I should have told you about it” Understandably Jonny was very cross and tore them off a strip but I think they needed it or we would still have been waiting for our money. Our tickets had been paid for and we had sold some of our surplus belongings and our car so we were not in dire straights but we needed money to pay the removal company and we wanted to get our money transferred to our Australian account before we left. When we told the removal company that there was a problem they were very understanding, I suppose it happens to a lot of people and they said that once they had packed all our goods and made up a final account for us they would just require us to sign a form to allow our bank to pay them the money once our funds were transferred and they were quite happy. We had rather a distressing few weeks when we rushed around trying to get everything finished, saying goodbye to friends, getting angry with the lawyers, and worrying that we would not be able to leave when we said we had planned to. Then Jonny remembered that a friend of ours from church had moved from his job with an insurance company and was now working in our bank so we went to see him. Why we didn’t go and see him before, I don’t know because he was a big help to us. We explained our situation and he just gave us some forms for us to fill in and sign authorising the bank to pay the residue of our house sale into our bank in Australia after they had paid the removal company. No problem, no fuss, just do it. He told us that as we had booked our bus tickets for the 29th Nov. to come and see him on 28th Nov and we could finalize the whole process.
Early in the morning of 26th November the packers came to wrap up our life and ship it to the other side of the world. It was very heart wrenching. Of course we wanted to go to Australia and to live near our children but we had been in Waterfall for about 11 years, the longest we had lived in any house during our marriage and we had loved our little home and been very happy there. Seeing everything packed away was very hard. The men who did the packing were efficient and quick. Their job was to pack everything that they found and as there were still things in the house that we did not want to go with us we had to keep an eye on them to make sure that they did not pack them. I had a pile of nice clean rags that I intended using in my final cleaning of the house when it was empty, well they got packed and at least I did manage to use them to clean my new home in Australia. We said that if we stood still for too long they would have packed us away too. The workers were dropped off at our house early in the morning and were supposed to be collected at the end of the day. They were on the first day but on day two the van failed to materialize and they were left to find their own way home. We were very upset about this as Jonny ended up having to lend them bus fare and had to give them a lift through to Hillcrest where they could catch the bus. We felt that it was a terrible way to treat men that had worked diligently all day.

138) Completing the Trailer

Another thing Jonny had to do was finish building his trailer. He had started it some years before and would work on it when he did not have anything else in progress. It had been on the go for quite a while but as one could not sell a half built trailer he had to do something about it. He bought the components that he needed and completed the work but the process of registering a homemade trailer was horrendous. I think that there had been a great deal of corruption in the vehicle registration departments so to try and combat that the authorities were making it harder and harder to register vehicles. We went first to the vehicle registration office in Pinetown and were sent from there to the other office miles away where we had to fill in the forms. Once the forms were filled in we had to go back to the Pinetown office to get the trailer checked. By the time we got there, it was closing time and the gentleman on the door had locked up and was not going to let us in. The charming young African girl behind the counter who recognised us from our visit earlier in the day came and dealt with us at the door. I think she gave us another set of forms that had to be taken to one of the government approved mechanics for his signature. She knew that if she gave us the forms we could get the next stage of the process going and might be able to complete it before the end of the week. If we had had to wait until opening time the next day to get those forms we would have ended up having to wait another whole week to get the trailer on the road. The next morning after the mechanic had inspected the trailer and certified it to be roadworthy we had to once again go to the Pinetown office so that we could get it weighed on the weighbridge. We did not have much ready cash on us as we intended paying for it with a cheque but this section of the licensing department refused to accept a cheque so we started emptying out our pockets to see how much we could come up with. We emptied my purse and looked for any loose change at the bottom of my handbag, Jonny went through all his pockets and we scratched in the consul of the car to see what we could find there. We did find some extra cash but after all that we were still 19c short. The man in that department was not friendly and helpful like his female colleague who had been so kind the day before, he would not budge about the cheque and would not let us get away with the 19c. As Jonny and I walk down the steps and into the car park we were complaining and moaning about the waste of time of having to go to the bank and change a cheque and come back to get the trailer weighed. A passing man must have heard some of our conversation and stopped to speak to us. We told him the sad tale about being 19c short of cash and how it meant that we would not get the trailer registered that day and we would have to finish it all off the next week as this was Friday. The kind man took pity on us and gave us a 25c piece, we asked for his address so that we could repay him but he would not hear of it .So once again back to the cashier to pay him the money. It was a great pleasure to be able to give him the money in small change that he had to count out. Not a great deal of revenge but it was good to get our own back on him in a very small way.
Once the trailer had been weighed we then had to go back to the other office for the number to be stamped on the chassis to make it all legal. I am giving a very abbreviated account of the whole thing; I think all in all the process took us almost four days. We thought that we were never going to get it sorted out and felt like dumping the thing in the sea. We were very fortunate that our good friends Doug and Anne Marshall who had gone to visit their son in New Zealand had left their truck with us over this period, as we did not have a tow hitch on our car. Without Doug’s truck we could not have got any of the paper work on the trailer done and maybe would have ended up throwing it into the sea.

137) Getting Ready to Move to Australia

On 12th Sept 2002 we and Murray and Linda signed the agreement of sale for the house. We fixed 15th November as the transfer date and agreed to waiver any occupational rent so that the sale would go through quickly and smoothly. We had two months to get all our arrangements finalised and so we knew that we could not dawdle but had to get started.

While waiting for the bank to approve Murray’s loan we got in touch with some removal companies to get quotes to take our furniture to Australia. We knew that we wanted to take personal things like books, photos, tools and things so we decided that if we were going to need a removal firm we might as well take our furniture as well. There were some things that were really too old and worn to be worthwhile taking so we had to sort things out and make some decisions. I think the contents of the house were easier to make decisions on, I either wanted it or I didn’t. It was much harder for Jonny with all the things he had in his workshop. He would have liked to have kept everything but even he could see that a two-meter long heavy-duty steel worktable was too big and cumbersome to take with us and it had to go. Also the removal companies told us that everything had to be perfectly clean for us to take it into Australia. The young lady who came to give us the quote said that it would not be worth our while to take garden tools. They would have to be scrubbed and painted and the customs department would probably put them into quarantine when our goods arrived in Australia as garden tools were notorious for carrying germs and fungus and other nasties that they did not want us to take to their country. All Jonny’s tools would have to be cleaned and some of them given a coat of paint before we could pack them into the container. There was just so much to do, Jonny employed the husband of our neighbour’s maid to help him, get all the work done. His new assistant was called Petros and was a great help to him even though it did not look like it at times. I would take them morning tea in the workshop and they would be sitting sorting the “junk”. They had three different piles, one for things that were ready to be packed, one for things that were going to be packed but needed to be mended, cleaned or painted before they could be packed. Then there was the smallest pile of all, the one that held the things that were going to be either thrown out or sold. Jonny has always been a bit of a “collector” and does not like to get rid of all his old things. Petros was really not the best assistant for him as Petros also liked to keep things so would often transfer things from the “Out” pile into the “To be cleaned” pile. They seemed to spend all their time talking about the things Jonny had collected, how long he had had them, where they had come from and who had given them to him but they eventually got everything sorted and packed so they must have got through quite a bit of work while they talked.

136) The House Sale

Our lists mainly consisted of work that needed to be done to our house before we could put it up for sale. It needed to be painted and there were some repairs that we wanted to do so that we could get a good price for it. We decided that I would leave my job on the biltong barrow at the end of August to give us more time to organise the house repairs. On 29th August just as I was getting ready to go home an old friend walked passed the barrow. His name was John Ronaldson, he owned a textile business and he was also a lay preacher. He and his wife Barbara had spoken at and attended our church a number of times. John stopped for a chat and asked “What are you doing here Marina?” I told him I was working there and he asked “This is not much of a job, don’t you want a real job in my textile business?” I thanked him for the offer but said that as we were planning to go to Australia soon it would be unfair on him for me to take up a job only to leave it pretty soon. John asked me when we were going I told him “As soon as we can paint the house and sell it” He asked me where our house was and how much we wanted for it. I told him it was in Waterfall and that we had not had a proper valuation yet but thought it was worth about 200 thousand Rand. John said “Don’t paint it, sell it as it is” I thought ‘here we go, more advice from people who are not really involved it the estate business’ I said it really did need a coat of paint but John explained that his son and daughter-in-law were looking for a small house to buy in that area and would rather paint it themselves. I told him the exact address and we agreed that he would bring Murray and Linda to see the house the next day.

When I got home Jonny opened the gate for me and asked “Have you had a good day, what have you been doing” I laughed and said “I just sold the house” I explained that John Ronaldson’s children were interested in looking at the place and would call the next day. While we were still in the drive way we saw a car slow down and the couple in it had a good look at the house as they went passed. It was John and Barbara and once they realised we had seen them having a peep they stopped and apologised. John said he was just keen to see the exterior of the house and did not want to be a nuisance in any way. I explained that I had been at work all day and still had not gone inside but if they were willing to take a chance on what kind of mess it might be in they were welcome to come and have a look at the inside of the house too. They came in, had a look and liked what they saw.

John told us that he knew a Christian estate agent who attended the same church as he did. His name was Mark Webber and John would ask him if he would be prepared to give us a valuation of the house so that we could decide on a fair asking price. We agreed with the Rolandsons that we all wanted a ‘righteous transaction’ so would accept the price that Mark thought was correct.

A few days later Mark and all his colleagues from the estate agency arrived. There were eight of them in all, armed with their clip boards and pens they separated and went round the house, poking in all the corners, examining the rooms and opening the cupboards and turning the taps on and off. They did not comment on anything that they saw, just smiled and nodded, piled back into their cars and were soon gone. Then I started to worry what we had agreed to. I said to Jonny what if they valued the house at a lot less than we wanted for it, what if they did not like it and we did not have enough money left to get us to Australia, what if?, what if,? what if? Jonny told me not to worry. We had agreed to a ‘righteous transaction’ and all would be well. Mark contacted us and told us that his colleagues were in agreement about the house and they all agreed that R250 thousand was a fair price for our home, before we did any painting or repair work.

The next day we got a call from John Rolandson asking if he and Barbara could bring Murray and Linda to have a look at the house. They came in the afternoon and we left them to look around the house. When they had had a good look around they all came inside and Murray made us an offer of R240 thousand as he felt that there was quite a lot of work that needed to be done to get the house into tip top condition. Jonny and I looked at each other and were about to agree to the lower price but mentioned to John that we had agreed to a righteous deal and that we had prayed about it. Then John spoke up. He said, “No! We agreed that we would pay the price that Mark Weber valued the house at and I will stand by that, R250 thousand is what Mark said it is worth, he saw that it needs a coat of paint, he thinks it is worth that and that is the price we will pay for it. Murray and Linda, if you don’t want the house I will buy it and I will pay the R250 thousand”. So within three weeks of our discussion to make a move and go to live in Australia we had without advertising, sold our house and got a higher price than we had originally thought it was worth.

I was happy that our house was going to such a nice young couple and their little boy Reese but I was a little disappointed that they did not seem to love the house the way we did, but I was wrong about that. About a week after the sale, Linda phoned me and asked if she could bring her Dad around to see the house as he was visiting them and wanted to see what they were buying. While her Dad looked around the house Linda and I sat drinking tea and chatting. She told me that every evening after work, she and Murray had driven passed the house, parked their car just up the hill where they could look at the house and sat there for about half an hour looking at “their” house and dreaming about what it would be like to live in it. I was pleased to hear that, I knew then that it was going to good hands and it would be loved the way we had loved it.

135) Our Empty Nest

At the beginning of August we made up our minds that we really wanted to go and live in Australia. With both our sons, our lovely daughter-in-law and our two beautiful grand daughters living there, there did not seem any point in staying in South Africa. But we were not sure that Australia would accept us. We were no longer young and did not have a great deal of money. We tried to phone the Australian Embassy in Pretoria and just got more and more frustrated. The phone was answered by one of those recorded voices giving eight or nine different options but none of them suited what we wanted to know. After trying for about a fortnight we gave up and emailed Jonathan in Australia and asked him if he could talk to the immigration department in Sydney and get a little bit more sense out of them.

Jonathan told us to fax him copies of our passports and he would talk to them about our chances. When we made copies of our passports for this purpose we realised that the ‘business visas’ that we had taken out to when we had gone on our trip in 1998 were still valid. This was quite a revelation for us. But we still weren’t sure that we could enter the country on a permanent basis on those visas. We photocopied them too and sent them to Jonathan as well, for him to make enquiries.

On 18th August we invited some friends from our church, Lee and Lucy around for afternoon tea. As one does we talked of many things and the subject of Australia came up. We told them about the valid entry visas and they immediately said “What are you still here for, Go. You have your children and grandchildren there, you say you like the country and you have the means of getting in, Go” Lee prayed about it and he said he felt it was ‘God’s will’. I must admit we were beginning to think that maybe we would be able to go but we knew we had to take it slowly and not make a silly move.

On 22nd August we got an email from Jonathan telling us that he had been to the immigration department to confirm our status and he had been told that as we had a valid business visa we could enter Australia and as Jonny was over 65 and more than half of our children were already in Australia we could come into the country and apply for an “Aged Parent Visa”. When our business visa expired (March 2003) we would be granted a bridging visa that would enable us to stay in Australia until our Aged Parent Visa was granted. Jonathan asked the person at the immigration office if he could have that in writing. He was told that it was not necessary as it was just a fact and no one would ever question it. She also said that we would be able to work. It just seemed too good to be true. We had friends who also had both of their children living in Australia and had entered the country on a tourist visa and applied for an Aged Parent Visa. They had been allowed to enter Australia and had been allowed to apply for an Aged Parent Visa but they were only allowed to stay in the country for 6 months at a time. Consequently they had been travelling back and for between South Africa and Australia while waiting to their papers to be issued. I told Jonathan about that couple and asked him to check once more with a different person in the immigration department, which he did and he got the same answer. We were not too happy to be classed as “Aged Parents” we certainly did not feel like “Aged Parents” but we decided that if it would get us into Australia and allow us to be with our children we would not put up too big a fuss. I was still rather reluctant to believe that it could be done so asked Jonathan to once more ask for advice from the Immigration department. Once again he got the same answer and we felt that as we had it in triplicate we could believe it To enable us to get the benefits of the business visa we had to be in Australia before it expired on March 26th 2003 so we knew that we had a lot to get done in the next six or seven months. We started making plans and drawing up lots of lists.

134) The Biltong Barrow

I had been looking for a job for quite a while but the only one I had been offered was as a receptionist in a doctor’s office. It was only one afternoon a week but I thought it would be interesting and could lead to more hours in the future. I had known the doctor’s wife when I worked in the stationery shop. She was sure that I could manage the job and just told me to come and work with the girl who was leaving so that she could train me. The practice had two doctors and a physiotherapist, it was pretty busy and most of the work was straight forward, except for the computer. I had been working on my computer for a while by then and managing the bookkeeping work without too much of a problem but I battled with the program on the doctor’s computer. It was the patient’s medical files, the doctor’s diagnosis, what treatment they were having and what medication he had prescribed. There was, of course, a great deal of medical terminology and one had to be able to read the doctors hand writing. As I would only be working one afternoon a week and I would be the only one on duty I was too nervous to take the job. I felt that if I was doing it every day I would get the hang of it, but what I learnt in one week I was sure that I would forget by the next time I was on duty. Also there would be no other experienced person that I could turn to for help and confirmation. I was afraid that I might make a mistake that would cause someone to get the wrong treatment or even to die and I was not prepared to take the chance.

About two months after Dominic left for Australia I was asked to contact a gentleman called Brian as he was looking for someone to work for him. I spoke to Brian and he explained that he wanted someone to run a barrow selling biltong that he was going to set up in the forecourt of the shopping centre where Ballard’s Stationers had been. He intended starting at the beginning of July if he could find the right person for the job. I had a few doubts about it but as there was nothing else going at the time I decided to accept.

In case any of you don’t know what biltong is I should explain. Biltong is a South African delicacy. It's dried or cured meat, usually beef or game of some kind with spices and flavours. The meat is first rubbed with spices and then dried and cured under controlled conditions for a few days. During the Boer War the Boer soldiers were constantly on the move and this dried meat kept well, could be transported easily and needed no cooking so they carried it with them most of the time.

July in Durban is not very cold, that is by world standards but to me it was freezing. The forecourt of the shopping centre was under a roof but it was open on three sides to the elements and very windy. The job was not hard, just to sell the biltong and to keep the barrow clean. There was another barrow there, it had leather goods and accessories and was manned by a young woman named Carol. What would I have done without her? She had been working there for almost two years. I don’t know how she had lasted so long. It was bitterly cold and not at all pleasant. Carol and I became good friends and looked after each other. We would help each other with change, and look after each other’s barrow if we needed to go to the bathroom and just generally watch each other’s backs. It was also good to have someone to talk to when business was slow and the hours dragged.

One morning I was standing beside my barrow having a cup of coffee and the next thing I remember I was flat on the ground with Carol bending over me. I just went clean out; I had not felt it coming and had hit my head quite hard on the tiled floor. Carol was an angel; she got me into a chair, phoned Jonny and Brian, closed up the barrow and took the float into her barrow for safe keeping. I wonder what would have happened if she had not been there. Jonny came and took me home and I spent the rest of the day in bed. The next morning I felt fine but thought a visit to the doctor would be a good idea. The doctor told me that my blood pressure was rather high. I thought that was odd as I usually have low blood pressure. We worked out that I was probably drinking too much coffee. It all seemed very odd to me but I cut out the coffee and when I had my blood pressure taken a week later it was normal again and I was fine.

One good thing about that job was that I saw many people who had been my customers when I worked at Ballard’s. It was nice to see familiar faces and to catch up on all their news. But it was not ordained that I would stay in that job long. I left at the end of August so was only there two months, the two coldest months of the year.

133) Off to Oz

About two weeks before Dominic was due to leave for Australia our dear dog Muffin’s health began to deteriorate. She was weak, lethargic and off her food. I took her to the vet who did some test and diagnosed kidney problems. She gave Muffin an injection and a course of tablets, which did help a little, but she was still not completely well. Then two days before Dominic was due to fly out Muffin took a turn for the worst. All weekend she would not eat and just lay on her bed. By Monday morning she could not stand and could hardly hold her head up. I took her back to the vet, who thought that it was cancer in her kidneys. The only way to be sure was further testing and as the poor old girl was almost 15 years old and would not survive any treatment that we could give her for the cancer we decided to let her go peacefully. We were very sad to loose her; she had been a wonderful pet, a real comic and had given us all a great deal of pleasure. I stayed with her while the vet gave her the injection and she fell asleep in my arms. I think that was the best for her, she had suffered enough and there was no more we could do for her.

The next morning we were loosing another loved one. Not so sadly though, Dominic was off to Australia to a new land and a new life. He wanted to go and we were pleased for him even though we would miss him greatly. We now had an empty nest.

While Dominic was still in South Africa and working for a firm called Omron he had contacted Omron in Australia to see if they had a position for him but he did not get a reply from them although he did managed to find out the name of their manager and the contact details in Australia. When he arrived in Sydney a few days before Easter he telephoned Omron and asked to see the manager. He got an appointment with him and was interviewed for a job. The manager said that he would be contacted after the public holiday to tell him if he had been successful or not. On the Thursday before Easter he got a phone call from the manager to ask if he would be prepared to start work straight after the holiday. He was very pleased to get employment so quickly.

He then needed to get himself a car and started looking around. A friend of Siân’s told Siân that her husband had a car for sale and Siân told her that her brother-in-law was looking for a car and that he might be interested. When Dominic went to see the young man who was selling the car he offered to sell him the car for $1. I have a feeling that for the transaction to be legal money must change hands but in fact the car was given to him. It was a rather old Subaru but it went well and served his purpose for quite a while.

He then found a small flat in Berowra to move into. It was very tiny but as he did not have a lot of furniture it suited him for the time being. I think he had only been in Australia about two weeks when he had got himself a job, a car and a flat. He joined the Baptist Church in Berowra where he started to make friends and settle into his new happy life in Australia.

132) The Triplets

Ben, David and Joanne

Through our church we met a young woman, Leanne who was separated from her husband. She is the mother of triplets. They are a delightful trio called Benjamin, David and Joanne. The first time I met her we were at some evening function or other and I noticed the problems Leanne had getting three sleepy children into the car to go home. I had always found that a hard job with only two kids and a husband to help me so felt very sorry for her. We discovered that Leanne and the triplets, who were about five at the time, lived just around the corner from us and so we visited them now and again and offered to lend a hand when we could.

The children would sometime come for the afternoon and were great fun even if a little exhausting. They would bring their bicycles and ride round and round outside the house as fast as their little legs could pedal them. They liked to tie their jumpers around their necks by the sleeves and ride fast enough to make the jumpers fly out behind them like “batman cloaks”. They liked to hold long sticks out in front of them, to represent lances, I think. They would come speeding around the corner in a clockwise direction, head down, going hell for leather and crash into another triplet doing exactly the same in an anti-clockwise direction. It did not take us long to realise that if we wanted to avoid serious injuries some rules had to be laid down. We put it to the vote and it was agreed that the only direction they could ride was clockwise. We tried to enforce some sort of speed restriction, this was impossible to do, but the “lances” had to go. Once they got the idea they were very good about it, Jonny and I weren’t so sure about it though. Have you ever sat in your house with three batman bicycle riders going round and round and round? Jonny said that it reminded him of the old Cowboy and Indian movies. You know, the ones where the stagecoach had been ambushed by a marauding Indian war party, the coach driver has been killed, the horses are galloping out of control and they are running short of ammunition. In the films the cavalry always arrived in time to save them and luckily Leanne would arrived to collect them before the triplets got our scalps. We named them the Apaches.

David had a wheat intollerence so could not eat the biscuits or cakes that I normally made. I started looking for gluten free recipes and made some rather horrid things out of rice or potato flour but David was always pleased with them. It made me realise how much we use wheat and how hard it is for mothers of wheat intolerant children. It is so easy to give children a sandwich for their lunch but now I had to put a bit of thought into what I would feed the children when they were with us. I did not want to make David feel odd so had to feed all three of them the same thing, but also serve something that they would all find tasty and filling. I am very grateful that I had not had this problem with my children. David was very good about it and would always ask “Can I eat this?” before eating anything anyone gave him, this made the gluten problem easier to handle.

Another thing they liked to do was collect pecan and macadamia nuts from the trees in our garden. David was very good at finding them and he would always say “I’ll find them, because I’m a good looker” and he was, in both meanings of the word. Once they had a nice pile they wanted to break them and eat them of course. The pecan nuts weren’t too bad but Macadamia nuts are very hard to break. Jonny would lend them a large pair of pliers from his workshop and then the fun would begin. I would lay out newspaper for them and they would take it in turns to use the pliers. David usually had the biggest pile of nuts, (he was the good looker) but he found it hard to actually crack them. Ben always felt that he was entitled to any nut that he cracked. Joanne was neither very good at finding or cracking but usually got the most as her brothers both spoilt her. Trying to sort out whose nuts were whose was a hard task. If I shared them out before they were cracked and some turned out to be bad it could cause arguments. If when Ben helped David to crack one he broke the kernel as well as the shell that could cause tears as well. We would end up with the broken shells all over the place and very little nut to eat. I used to buy packets of pre-shelled nuts for them but they never liked them as much as the ones they had collected and shelled themselves.

They were good kids and great fun. It was good to have met them and been part of their lives for a little while.

The Triplets on a Trailer

131) Rascally Rabbits

The family that lived in the house next door to us had two young daughters who had pet rabbits. The girls did not like to keep them in the cages all the time and they wandered all over their yard. As rabbits are in the habit of doing, they were prone to multiply. At first the girls were able to sell the baby bunnies to good homes, but as time went by they were giving them away to anyone who would take them.

One afternoon our dog Muffin was barking and scratching at some timber pallets that Jonny had stored behind his workshop. When we went to investigate we could see that there was a rabbit behind there. I locked Muffin inside the house and called the girls from next door to come and rescue their pet. They came and retrieved her but in a few days she was back again. We went through this procedure a couple of times and Muffin got used to the visitor and gave up barking when she came over so Cotton Tail (the girl’s name for her) became CT to us and wandered between the two houses at will. For the most part Muffin just ignored her but the dog from the house on the other side would make a terrible racket when he saw CT so she tended to stay away from that yard but would sometimes go for a walk across to the other side of the road and became quite careful of the traffic.

After a little while CT started bringing her boy friend to visit us as well. We called him Boyo. Not long after that there was a happy event and eight baby bunnies where born. They were ever so sweet but even the girls who loved them all so much realised that things were getting out of hand and something had to be done. Before a solution was found some dogs got in and killed CT and her babies but Boyo was too smart for them and he survived. The girls’ father decided that the rabbits must go and he started collecting them and taking them up to the countryside in the Drakensburg Mountains and setting them free there. They came to collect Boyo but he did not wish to go to the country. He was a smart city rabbit and had no intention of being shipped off to possibly becoming a tasty meal for one of the many hawks and eagles that lived there. It was decided that as one male rabbit alone could not do much harm we would keep him and he could live with us. The girls brought over half a bag of rabbit pellets that they had left over but he didn’t like them. He much preferred a slice of bread or some fresh fruit or vegetables. Carrots and cabbage were his favourites. He also liked to nibble on the avocado pears that fell off the tree. Every time he saw Jonny he expected to be fed and would come running up to him. He came when called and liked to be petted. He was very popular with any visiting children and so we were pleased that the people who bought our house had a little boy who would enjoy Boyo and we included him in the price of the house.

C.T. and Boyo