We meet Pauline Ryder-Smith for coffee.

I contacted Pauline when I discovered that she actually lives quite near to Lua and John. Pauline is an old school friend of mine from Primary school days, but I have seen very little of her since I started secondary school in 1953. It was fun to spend and hour with her and to share some stories of our lives over the past 50 years. She was Pauline Lohrey before she married.

Lunch with the Days and the Scrines.

We arranged to meet our friends, Betty and David Scrine in the city. Chris and Michael Day kindly invited us to visit them for lunch. Betty, David, Noel and I met at Roma Street station and Michael collected us in his car. The Days live quite close to Roma Street - so it was only a matter of minutes to reach their home. Chris and Michael had prepared a delicious meal for us and we spent a delightful couple of hours sharing news. We had lots of laughs too! We have all served at the Baha'i World Centre, Haifa, Israel.

An evening ferry ride on the Brisbane River

Chris, Michael and Noel

Noel and Chris

This evening, Michael and Chris suggested that we take a trip on a ferry to South Bank, where we were heading for an evening meal. It was a perfect evening ... fine, still, warm and a brilliant full moon.

Portraits in a photo booth

A fun activity at the Andy Warhol exhibition was the chance to have our photos taken and reproduced in the Warhol style in a photo booth.

Andy Warhol in Brisbane

This morning Michael dropped us off at the Gallery of Modern Art so that we could spend some time at the Andy Warhol Exhibition.
It was an excellent exhibition. The new Museum is an excellent space for hanging such a show that incororates works on a large scale as well as more intimate drawings and prints. I enjoyed seeing so many of the images I had only previously seen in art books and magazines. I was particularly interested in seeing some of his movies and there were several spaces set up with his movies running continuously.

Sweeney Todd: the demon barber of Fleet Street

We decided to go and see this new movie about the 'demon barber'. Johnny Depp was excellent in the role. I think it took some of the audience by surprise that it is actually a musical. Johnny Depp has a great voice. I enjoy Tim Burton's movies. There was certainly a lot of blood in this one! I even enjoyed the movie titles.

The art of Beryl Wood

We always enjoy our visits to the City Hall in Brisbane. The Museum of Brisbane has an excellent exhibition program with 3 different exhibition spaces as well as an excellent shop where they stock high quality art objects, books and cds for sale. We have never been disappointed.

We particularly enjoyed viewing a show of the work of Gladstone artist, Beryl Wood. She is a self taught artist who explores the lives of ordinary people in ordinary situations.

A walk through the gardens

Chris and Michael live within easy walking distance of the central city. Today they took us for a walk through the Roma Street gardens. It was wonderful to see how much everything has groen since we last visited the parklands. We took quite few photos of the beautiful flowers as we strolled through on our way to the city.

Breakfast with Chris and Michael Day

Chris and Michael invited us to stay with them for a couple of days in their beautiful old home in central Brisbane before we joined our daughter Lua to help her prepare for her wedding.

We always enjoy spending time with 'the Days' and they had generously set aside some time to spend with us. We caught up with lots of news over breakfast.

Happy Birthday Rebecca

Tess, Noel and birthday girl, Rebecca

Tess, Edward and Rebecca.

Let them eat cake!

Today we met up with Rebecca Razavi to help her celebrate her birthday, along with her son, Elliot and our dear friend Tess Stevens. We had lunch together at our delighteful local cafe in Trevallyn - 'Cafe Culture'.
As we are due to fly out to Brisbane this evening, this was the last time that we were able to spend time with Rebecca before she returns to Europe and her husband, Shamim who works at The Hague.

Badges exhibition by Ardeshir Gholipour

Noel and I attended an exciting exhibition by Ardeshir Gholipour which was organised by Shirley Blackman at the Launceston Library.

Ardeshir was an outspoken supporter of democratic reform in Iran between 1985 and 2000. In 1987 he was arrested and spent 21 months in Iran’s notorious Evin prison for distributing freedom pamphlets. During the 1990’s Ardeshir worked as a writer and designer for a number of provincial papers and produced articles on social and political reform. He also wrote articles criticizing the Iranian Government and called for constitutional change. Ardeshir fled Iran in 1999 after taking part in student demonstrations, found his way to Australian shores and then was detained by our Immigration department for over 5 years.

A visit with Alicia and Ken Arnold

Recently we discovered that my teacher for Grades 5 and 6 back in 1952 and 1953, who was the head teacher at the small school I attended in the farming area of West Ridgely, is now living with his wife only 5 minutes drive from our home in Launceston.
Noel and I visited them this afternoon and we spent almost 2 hours catching up with family stories and some adventure tales. We had lots of laughs as we shared news and stories of our families.
Ken was a wonderful teacher, who helped me prepare for the 'Ability Test' which was conducted in all Tasmanian Primary schools in those days to select Grade 6 children to continue on to High School. I passed the test and went on to attend Burnie High Scool before moving to Hobart to attend Art School and University in 1960.

Daniel Price joins us for Dinner

We were delighted that Daniel Price was able to join us for the evening meal today. It gave us a chance to give him some information about working at the Baha'i World Centre in Haifa, Israel.
Daniel will be moving there to work as a volunteer at the end of March so it is an exciting step for him to take. It brought back memories of January 1999 when we were packing up our house and selling our cars etc to move to Haifa for ... what we expected to be 2 and 1/2 years but which eventually became almost 7 and 1/2 years. We spent a most enjoyable evening sharing some of our experiences with Daniel.

Atonement

Today, we enjoyed this movie.

Grand daughter Edie starts kindergarten

This was a very exciting day for our youngest grand child, Edie as it was her first day to attend kindergarten. She was so excited that she dressed herself. Edie lives in Hobart.

Juno

We enjoyed this movie very much. The acting, story and the screen play were all excellent. 5 stars out of 5. The sound track is also excellent.

Happy 91st Birthday for Aunt Jessie

My Aunt Jessie Broomhall celebrated her happy 91st birthday today ... the same day as our grand daughter, Jessica. So in the afternoon, after we had enjoyed a delicious 18th birthday lunch with Jessica, Caitlin and Raf, we travelled down to Legana where Aunt Jessie lives in a home.

When we arrived we we happy to find cousin Belinda visiting her grand mother so we caught up with her news as well as Aunt Jessie. We had a lot of laughs and we sang a rowdy version of 'Happy Birthday' for Aunt Jessie.

Happy 18th birthday, Jessica.

Edward

Raf

Noel and Caitlin

Jessica

This is a very significant day for our grand daughter, Jessica. It is her happy 18th. It is also significant as she will soon be moving to Hobart to begin her University studies. Noel and I joined Jessica, her father Raf and her sister Caitlin for lunch at our splendid local Cafe in Trevallyn - Cafe Culture.