LIFE AT THE HIGH COMMISSION

The Australian High Commission (AHC) is in Australia House on the corner of Aldwych & the Strand. The building is the longest continually operating foreign mission in London. The building is beautiful with alot of fascinating history.  The marble spiral staircases have clearly been trodden by many over the years and would no doubt have many stories to tell if they could but speak.  The exhibition room is beautiful and was even the location of Greengot's Bank in the Harry Potter Philosopher's Stone movie.  It is certainly a pleasure to walk in every morning!  Sally has been made to feel incredibly welcome and is happy to be working with a great team of colleagues. 

GETTING AROUND LONDON

In the first week Mark & the kids had a day at the Tower of London & another at Big Ben & the Houses of Parliament.  We also went to carols at St Martin in the Field & heard the Welsh male rugby club choir, the National Opera Chorus, a virtuoso violinist & a school choir interspersed with our singing!

Because the pre–Christmas house hunting was not  producing many houses to see we had time on our hands so we all headed up to see the kids’ school.  While it is VERY small, it is bright, friendly & well resourced & the kids both came away saying they liked it.  They then spent another day doing assessments to work out whether they should be in 4 or 5 (W) & 6 or7 (A).  William was confirmed in Year 4 & went back for a second day while Aisha tried out the senior campus & came away confirming she was happier in year 7 because there were things she didn't know.  We bought some quite expensive uniforms & the ids counted down the days to the end of their holidays until 5 January for the start of term 2.

A380 AND LONDON

With all the news of snow in Europe & airport closures, we were unsure if our flight would go, & given that it was still early hours of the morning in London, we fully expected to be stuck for a while in Singapore or diverted/flying around & around for a while.  Anyway, having been told there were no changes to the flight we headed to the airport & off to London - on the much anticipated A380!!  It was a fabulous flight & we managed some sleep had on the fold out beds!  Arrival was uneventful & before we knew it, Sally’s new boss was there in arrivals to meet us & we were being whisked off to Kensington High St to our apartment.

We have now been in our 2 bedroom apartment for 7 weeks, far longer than we had expected, as we hunt for suitable accommodation.  The apartment is very conveniently located opposite Holland Park (where the kids were able to have a snow fight the morning after we arrived!)  It has been a great place to be as we work our way through the various things that one does in a new country - where to shop, what is the same, similar enough or different/unavailable, where things are, how to get around etc. 



AFTER LUNCH IN St JOHN'S WOOD

We got the buses right to have an afternoon with Mark's Aunty Mary - a very spritely & fun 82.

We have mastered the tube so Sally is now travelling to work independently while Mark is getting around the city with the children. After just two weeks Aisha had mastered the tube map having taken the  map to bed to 'read'. She was and still is our tube guide .   A link to the tube map.



IN SINGAPORE

The flight to Singapore was on a very comfortable jumbo.  We were delayed in leaving by an hour, but that was fine & we enjoyed a very well attended flight.  Aisha & William were like little piggies in mud sitting in big business class seats with stewards meeting their every need! 

The hardest thing for them though was getting any sleep (they didn't) & then dealing with the time difference - by the time we got to the hotel, we were 3 hours later than we'd expected (traffic was awful too) & it was nearly midnight Australian time.  William was an inconsolable heap on the floor at reception at the Marriot! 

Anyway, with a yummy dessert from the exec lounge we had access to in them, they rallied & we all went to see the incredibly gaudy amazing lights on Orchard Rd! 

The next day we had enough time for a swim in the pool & luxury breakfast on the hotel (we spent no cash in Singapore after all!), before heading off to the airport again.

ON OUR WAY

The next morning we were up at 5am to get to our 7.30am flight to Sydney.  Two taxis were needed to fit us & all the suitcases & bags!  Mark & I literally felt blessed when we saw our ambassador John McCarthy from the Jakarta posting - heading to Sydney on the same flight.  It was the first time we'd seen him since leaving Jakarta & he even remembered our names!  He started his career in London & was really positive about it - ambassadors at his level are of an incredible 

calibre so it was wonderful to have this happen as we were leaving. 

Because of storm weather, we circled Sydney for an extra 45 minutes & were glad we had changed our original flights for a later Singapore flight several weeks before when the timing looked too tight. Very fortunately, our luggage, which we were told would have to be collected from domestic & transferred to international, had been booked through to London!  

We met Mark’s mum, Elizabeth, at the Sydney airport & had a lovely time - she looked after Aisha & William as we got Singapore money organised, sent a few last minute letters etc.  True to form, Elizabeth had gifts to add to the bags - she is always thinking of us & it was reassuring to have her farewell us as we headed through the gates.

LEAVING STREHLOW PLACE

With so much to get done, we negotiated a departure date of 1 December. The final few days of packing up the house in Flynn were a whirlwind that didn’t stop until late the night before we left. The usual chaos of such a move was compounded by a poorly managed storage and uplift and 3 days of pouring rain.  Mark called in Hugh Boulter, family friend & fellow school/guide/scout parent to help out with the things that we just weren’t getting through – we owe you big time Hugh! 
Despite all the cleaning out, donations to charity shops, school fete etc, we still ended up leaving a small mountain of things with our good friends & neighbours Ross & Colleen ( we owe them even more !!) and left more boxes with Lucy and Rachael – we hope at least of it was useful!! It was a strange sight, & an even stranger feeling to see the house totally empty. The kids, who had kept going to school right up until the day before we left, were somewhat awestruck by the emptiness of the place & perhaps it was only really then that the reality of the whole enterprise sank in. 

As we finally drove down the street in the bucketing rain at 9pm on the night before we left, Sally suddenly realised she didn't have her diamond ring on - PANIC!!  She wandered around outside in the car light thinking of all the boxes, the bags of rubbish & recycling she had been through over the past few hours & was convinced we wouldn't see it again.  Mark & the children started searching upstairs in our very empty & dirty house.  Amazingly, within 5 minutes Mark had found the ring on the floor in the kitchen!!!  We all took it as a positive omen for all that lay ahead.  With one last trip to the recycling depot, we then zoomed to our 9.30pm (twice delayed) car sale in the city.  The kids went to bed on a piece of toast while Mark & Sally stayed up till midnight pulling everything together in the suitcases.  

POSTING ANNOUNCED

Then 2010 got a whole lot more exciting and everything was turned upside down in August when Sally found out she had a posting to London and we were to be there by the end of November!  Within days she finished up her job in Humanitarian Branch, started back in full time work and went onto a 5 week overseas training course.  With such short notice, Mark ended up taking the last term of school off to try to get us ready to leave. In the 14 weeks between finding out and departing we; put in a new kitchen and laundry, took the pre-arranged 2 week 3,500km driving trip to Queensland to see our friend Ann Gripper and Sally’s brother Chris and his family, went through 20 years of accumulated STUFF, organised painting, new carpet, electrical work and tackled various other sundry household maintenance tasks (all the things we should have done but hadn’t!). To top it all off we had a week in Tasmania to join Sally’s brother Tim and his partner Andrea at their wedding, very generously arranged at equally short notice so we could be there with them.  Aisha was a beautiful bridesmaid and William a dapper pageboy while we couldn’t have been prouder parents – not only because they did such a good job on the day but because they coped so well with all the chaos and upheaval we were dealing out to them.  It was a beautiful wedding with everyone so happy that this long awaited day had finally arrived - precipitated by a posting! 

2009 - A SUMMARY

At the end of the 2009 we headed to Tasmania in the new car.  As you would have read in last year’s update, Mark’s father died in September.  Just prior to our departure, we bought his Range Rover from the estate – while this was not the sort of car we had ever considered, this car was & still is a tangible link with Harry. There were three things that really defined him – his printing business in Pyrmont, his house in Hunters Hill & his succession of Range Rovers.  Very sadly, it is only the Range Rover that remains in the family now.

We had two weeks of almost perfect sunshine, while friends who went north to Queensland were rained on for 10 days straight. After some bushwalking & sightseeing in the north of Tasmania, we headed to Hobart for Christmas with Sally’s family, now augmented by new cousin Caitlin. We then headed off to show the children parts of Tassie they had not been to or forgotten. A fantastic break!  Back on Melbourne we dropped Aisha off for an 8 day Centenary of Guiding camp in Geelong which she had worked all year to raise $1,000 to attend.  William meanwhile went for 5 days to Sydney with the Cubs which included a visit to the Scout jamboree and a promotion for William to seconder, a responsibility he was very proud of and has taken quite seriously since.  Mark and Sally made the most of this fortuitous confluence of child free days and headed away for their own relaxing escape!

At the end of February Sally got a surprise request to work on Christmas Island for 3 weeks. In the time she was there, 6 boats arrived with mainly Afghan & Sri Lankan asylum seekers, but the largest boat made up of various groups of Arabic speakers & Iranians. Christmas Island itself is in the Indian Ocean, about 5 hours by plane north of Perth. It is an amazing tropical island renowned for incredible birdlife & crabs.  While she worked very long hours she had a good time and once she was home, Mark & the kids were soon tired of hearing “…on Christmas island, on Christmas island….”

In April, Sally decided to apply for an overseas posting. Having said she would never do it again after Jakarta, she now thinks it is a bit like childbirth; after a while you forget the pain and it all starts looking a bit rosey again!  While she wasn’t at all sure of her chances we nonetheless sat down and drew up a short list of possibilities. 

Meanwhile life went on.  The children were having a great year with their swimming (Aisha made it through to A.C.T level) and indoor soccer (Aisha was a star goalie and her team won their grand final while William outclassed the mainly younger boys he had been put with in a 6-8 yr old team).  Aisha made it through to regional level with cross country and both children continued to enjoy the various fun runs they went in with Sally.  Mark was happy with his new school, Charnwood Dunlop Primary School, where he was again working with several teachers from Gold Creek High School where he'd been two years before and, in particular, the deputy Kate Smith with whom he has a great working relationship.  Sally had been elected as president of the school music scheme (in her absence on Christmas Island!) and threw herself into helping arrange the schools’ annual 3 day music festival. This was to be an extra special festival, being the school's 25^th but an additional complexity came in the form of a looming federal election (the school is always required as a polling booth) and school building projects going on.  As it turned out the festival  did coincide with the election but Sally and the principal managed to get the Electoral Commission to move and the festival was a great success!

While the year could be summarised as a good one, the kids didn’t come out of it accident free!  In the middle of the year, William took it upon himself to climb down the 3m verandah via the irrigation piping hanging down to the garden.  Not surprisingly it failed to support his weight…he fell down onto his back, cutting it open and gashing his head on pavers below.  This required a trip to casualty and he only avoided stitches because Mark realised they would never get close enough for them to be done!!  

We moved into the soccer season and to our surprise each child ended up breaking an arm in what we had thought was one of the safer ball sports!  First it was Aisha who was elbowed and sent for a 360 degree roll onto her arm by a bad sport in a particularly aggressive team.  She was in a cast for 4 weeks with a small buckle fracture.  No sooner than she was out of the cast than Sally got a call from school to say William was down.  He had fallen over his soccer ball just before the bell for the end of lunch went.  His was a much worse fracture through both bones and only short of requiring pins.  He was in a right angle cast up to the middle of his upper arm for more than 6 weeks.