Easter at Bermagui

To our faithful readers my apologies for the delay in blogging. Just one of those times when there weren't enough hours in the day. Winter came suddenly a couple of weeks ago and we had our first fire. Since then it's been a mixture of warm and cold.

On the last day of the annual flower and garden show across the road in Carlton Gardens, Rosie, Sophie and I went over to have a quick look.

On the Thursday afternoon before Easter we all flew to Canberra, picked up a rental 4WD and drove 3 and a half hours to a small seaside town called Bermagui on the NSW coast. I was to take part in the Four Winds Festival, a 2-day series of concerts held every second Easter. There were musicians from Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. We arrived late on Thursday night and checked into our rustic family unit at Oceanview Flats where the musicians with families were put up.

The next day was rehearsal day for me and a day of checking out the neighbourhood for Peter and the girls. They dropped in to the concert site which is a beautiful little open-air amphitheatre. The day was warm enough for a swim in the sea and after the day's work was over we displayed our love of tomato sauce and our lack of table manners at a local dive.

Saturday was the first concert day. I played a couple of quartets by the Australian composer, Peter Sculthorpe, which featured the star didgeridoo player, William Barton. In fact he was featured all weekend adding a distinctly Aussie feel to the proceedings. Peter and the girls came along to the last part of the morning concert to listen a bit and pick me up for a few hours off before I was required in the afternoon session.

We drove to a nearby beach town, Tathra, and had lunch in a cafe/trinket shop then found a beach called Nelson's which was a short walk-in through bush. As we wandered along the path we spied a group of three kangaroos and started following them. When we got too close they'd hop away but didn't go far.

Sophie was momentarily distracted by the beach but it was too cold and windy for an actual swim.

Then it was back to kangaroo-spotting. They kept an eye on us and didn't let us get too close but I was surprised at how close we did manage to get.

Finally it was almost time to get me back to work so we finished up on the beach for some sand-writing.

That night we attended the Festival Feast, very prettily set up outdoors with trees and twinkly lights not to mention the grand piano for the musical interludes between courses. Unfortunately it was freezing but fortunately they had huge fires all around the outside of the tables which were a magnet all night long. Peter hung out at the fire chatting to William the didgeridoo man. Terry Riley, the American composer who founded the "minimalist" movement which produced more famous composers such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass, was one of the featured composers during the weekend and he provided one of the musical interludes at the feast, singing and playing some jazz piano.

On Sunday I stayed at the Festival site playing in the morning and afternoon concerts while Peter and the girls visited a beautiful garden and another beach. The girls actually swam again despite the cool temperature.


They came for the last part of the afternoon concert and hung out backstage with the performers.



One of the performers was Chris Latham, the director of the festival, who chatted with Rosie and asked if she would be willing to spend a few minutes with him before we left. Chris has known about Rosie's condition for a long time since I wasn't sure when he first asked me whether I would be able to commit to doing the festival. He is the son of a doctor and he had serious medical problems himself as a child all of which has led to his interest and proficiency in various alternative disciplines. We agreed she and I would drop in on our way back to Canberra the next morning.

That evening we had a farewell dinner at the local seafood joint with several of the performers and their families. The kids spotted a giant stingray over the balcony which emptied the restaurant as everybody went to check it out. Sophie made a new friend called Sophie, the 7-yr-old daughter of a viola/cello couple from Sydney.



On Monday morning Rosie and I went to visit Chris as arranged and he did his hands-on-her-head thing for several minutes while chatting to her. After that he asked if she'd like to get a special souvenir from the beach at the bottom of the garden where he was staying so off we trekked. He found her a crystal of some kind stuck to a rock and a piece of pumice. He was very reassuring and sweet with her and I thought it was a generous gesture on his part. He encouraged her to do lots of things that required using left and right sides alternately such as swimming or rowing or even biking. It's a bit cold for rowing now but she likes swimming every week.



When we got back to the unit the kids were playing a game together and had divied up the easter eggs. Very soon it was time to say goodbye to our new friends and make sure we didnt't miss our flight in Canberra.













The drive back was scenic and with one or two exceptions the Easter traffic wasn't too bad. We made our flight back and on arriving at Melbourne airport bought huge quantities of 50%-off Easter eggs for our deferred egg hunt which happened this morning.

Rosie has been off the Dexamethasone for a week and a half now which is a relief. (Long-term use is very bad for you.) At first she was having headaches daily but not excruciating ones, just ones which could be dealt with with Panadol. That calmed down though and she hasn't had one for several days so fingers crossed that it stays that way. She has an appointment tomorrow afternoon to see an ear specialist about her hearing loss which Wirginia and the Peter Mac guys say is unrelated to her brain thing or the radiotherapy. We'll see. Then on Thursday afternoon she has another MRI to see how things are doing in there. Never a dull moment. Meanwhile she feeds her Sudoku addiction. She does them for boredom relief whenever nothing else is happening and we have about 8 books of them lying around all over the house.