Jannis & Martine

We arrived last Thursday at the approximately 60 acre place (about 15 hectare in Dutch measurements) one of Martine’s uncles – Aad.

This place is as big as my fathers’ organic farm, but the difference is Aad is not doing any active farming here, but is only staying here to have a very good life, but in full balance with the environment. The only thing he ‘farms’ is original Australian tree races, to revegetate the Brisbane area again with native Australian trees (as it was untill 200 years ago).

One of the reasons we are here is, that Aad had a big party Saturday at his place to celebrate he is turning 80 years old. The wheater just turned in the weekend (it had been raining the week before)  so it was the perfect weekend here for a big party. Lots of people gathered here this weekend, including Martine’s brother Nick and Martine’s parents.

That was just as well since we could then also celebrate the fact that Martine’s parents have been married for 40 years this week.

Apart from the big celebration party in the weekend we recelebrated their 40 year marriage in a somewhat more cosy setting by staying over in Brisbane city with the six of us: the two of us, Martine’s brother Nick and his wife Lucienne and of course Martine’s parents themselves: Henk and Willy.

During our 80 km drive from Aad’s place to Brisbane city, the 35 degrees (very) hot wheater (very common here) turned into a big thundestorm which completeley disrupted the whole Brisbane area with falling trees, floodings, drowned cars and even people. Except for some delays due to this wheater, we arrived without any problems in Brisbane city and had a great evening accompanied by some drinks, pizza’s and wedges. Next day we visited the mignificant Brisbane Art Gallery before Nick and Lucienne had to return for their flight to Canberra where they live and (now and then) work.   

Today we have visited some more of Martine’s family who live around here: aunt Wicca, her mother Miena and Martine’s cousin Stof with his wife and kids. 

Tomorrow we will be probably doing something like that, as it will be raining (and maybe even thunderstorming) again here tomorrow. Rain was something we had not expected here, as heavy spring rain such as happening this week is pretty unusual here, so I think we are maybe experiencing some of the Global Warming effects….

I am now writing on a very slow internet connection in the country side, so the posting of the pictures from our Great Ocean Road and Tasmian trips, will have to wait until we have arrived in Canberra at the end of this week. See you then.

Jannis.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 4:42 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.