Committed Travellers

Fortunately I checked the Bunnings' website before driving there last night as they are now closing at 7pm instead of 9pm. These 2 hours are used to sanitise the store and restock the shelves. While Bunnings opens at 6.30am only tradies are now allowed in until 9am when everyone is allowed in. This morning at 9am people were lined up in the designated lanes. The pink dots are spaced 1.5m apart, but I felt more comfortable at 3m distance. In the store each lane has signs limiting the number of people to 4 at any one time. There is one entry door and one exit door, and the number of customers in the store at any time is limited. I picked up the few things I needed and was out in less than 10 minutes.  Our cleaner came this afternoon so we left home and went to the stables to collect some timber and other equipment. I also had a project to try to fix a very large door that was sticking. With some hand planing and sanding of the top of the door and the top of the frame, it now

I hung a dart board on the back of the door to my tool room. We must have bought this board more than 10 years ago but have not previously hung it or used it. There are rules about the height it should be above the ground but I decided to hang it lower as the standard height was set for men who are taller, and because we don't need to follow their rules! Our next challenge will be how to insert the foils into the ends of the darts. Let the challenge begin! We started the day with a short walk around our area. I asked my neighbour what he was planning to do for the day and he said he was going to Bunnings to buy a wheelbarrow. I told him I had one he could have so drove out to the stables to pick it up for him. On the way home I saw a motorcycle police officer who had pulled over a rider, presumably to issue a speeding ticket. No random breath tests or speed cameras are being operated by the police, but obviously they are not ignoring idiots flaunting the rules. All other traf

We walked about 4kms this morning via the new pedestrian Green Bridge crossing the Nerang River which links HOTA (Home Of The Arts) with Chevron Island. It was lovely weather but at one stage we could overhear two idiots being flippant and ridiculous about coronavirus. We kept a considerable distance!  The bridge cost several million dollars to build but it is hard to see there will be enough pedestrian or bicycle traffic to justify the expenditure. There is also a problem with people jumping off the bridge into the lake.  The HOTA Outdoor Stage is in the background. The building to the right is the new art gallery still under construction. I spent the rest of the day doing fiddly tasks preparing our bifold doors for painting. One screw head was ruined so could not be removed with a screwdriver. I ended up chipping out some timber to get it out, then filling the space with epoxy resin. We had more than half a tin of paint leftover from when our whole house was repainted by

Both sets of bifold doors were rubbing against the door sills so I decided that job could not be put off. This involved getting out the big guns - my electric planer and belt sander. After lowering the high spots I sanded and painted the sills with undercoat. Unfortunately one door is still rubbing against a small section of sill which is close to the door jamb where my tools can't reach. Plan B for tomorrow will be to undo the fittings from one side of that door and try sanding the bottom of the door to stop it from scraping the sill.  We went for a walk this morning but when the rain started we turned back and drove the Jeep to pick up the papers and support our favourite coffee shop.  Our caravan won't be finished by early April as the workshop has lost staff directly and indirectly due to the virus. That means longer working around all of the boxes of things that belong in the van but which are spread over the garage floor.  Yesterday I finished knitting a samp

We were at Coles just before 7am to replenish our supplies. Unfortunately Australians are not good at queuing so we stood back and waited for a group of people to form a funnel shape at the entrance, resulting in the physical distance between each shopper reducing to way less than 2m. After passing through the old folks checkpoint a staff member was pointing us to hand sanitiser. We were happy to use it but I told her she was standing too close to the table to allow customers access to the bottle without being less than one metre from her. As well as essentials we bought some flowers to brighten up our house on this dull day.  At 7.30am there were no customers at the butchers or the coffee shop so we were able to buy some meat not available in coles and pick up a caffeine hit, all purchases achieved with a wave of the credit card. Back home we resumed our cleaning and house maintenance jobs. It takes me about an hour to remove two hinges from the bifold doors, clean off the old pain

Our garage is overcrowded with most of the tools, boxes etc from our Bushtracker because it is away having work done to the kitchen. Over the past few weeks I have been rationalising the things we normally keep in the garage, selling some on Gumtree and simply grouping like items to reduce our storage needs. I have timber out at my friend's stables which I need to sort out and bring back to the garage so I bought some heavy duty shelving, moving the old Ikea shelving I have had for years.  These shelves are rated to carry 180 kgs per shelf so they are much stronger than the Ikea shelves, but they feel very flimsy until assembled. The upright supports are just pressed sheet metal, but after being assembled the shelves feel sturdy.  We went for an afternoon walk picking up the take away menu from our local Thai restaurant. Naturally we ordered Thai for dinner, paid for it over the phone, and I collected it in a shopping bag. It was good.  In the morning I had

When I cleared out my father's home in December I found half a dozen jumpers that could not be donated to charity as they had been attacked by moths. All of these had been knitted by my mother. This blue jumper must have taken her hours to knit. In retirement she tested and corrected knitting patterns for Cleckheaton so was recognised as an excellent knitter. I found I could not simply throw these jumpers away as rubbish so brought them home with me. There is only one that I might be able to repair without the hole being obvious. So far I have pulled apart two of these jumpers to reuse the wool. If you have never seen this done it is a very old practice. After unpicking the seams each piece of the jumper is unravelled and wound to make skeins. I used an upside down chair and wound the wool around two legs. These were then washed and left to drip dry to help stretch out some of the wrinkles. When dry the skeins are wound as balls of wool ready for knitting. It is years

Late yesterday my next door neighbour rang our doorbell to tell me about an injured bird on our driveway. The bird waddled in front of her house but it was apparent the problem was still mine! I put on gloves and grabbed a cardboard box to catch this pink galah. I rang our vet but they referred me to the Currumbin Wildlife Hospital so that is where I went. I decided I wasn't wasting my time when I heard the galah squawk several times very loudly. Today it was cloudy with some rain to keep the temperature down. This was ideal for doing some jobs on our front veranda. I am removing hinges from our bifold doors and cleaning off paint and touching up the paintwork. I can only do one hinge at a time unless I take the doors off and that is not practicable. It seems like a lot of work but there is a big improvement. I had an appointment with my dentist who has moved just down the road so I walked there keeping 2m+ from others using the footpath. My new Samsung S20 has the capac

All of our travel plans are off but I decided to resume my Committed Travellers blog to keep readers up to date with our non travelling activities. We had booked a cruise around Japan on Cunard's Queen Elizabeth for May 2020, followed by a Viking cruise from Tokyo to Vancouver, Canada. After the large number of coronavirus cases on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, both of our cruises were cancelled by Cunard and Viking in February and we received full refunds. We were able to cancel flights to Japan and hotel bookings at no loss. The rest of our planned trip was then up in the air. From Vancouver we were to catch the Canadian train across the country to Toronto, fly to New York then sail on the Queen Mary to Southampton, England. We had also booked flights and hotels for a month travelling around Switzerland, and a cruise to Iceland on the Queen Victoria. We were going to sail on the three Queens, but are lucky not to have been stranded on a ship unable to return home. Cunar