We were up early and away before half past eight.
We stopped for morning tea at Wallabadah where I took pictures of the First Fleet Memorial Gardens. This is an interesting place having been built by a convict descendant who only found out about his antecedents in adulthood because his family were ashamed of their origins. They had even changed their name. He became obsessed with the need for a memorial to the First Fleet convicts and spent twenty years trying to find a town which would help him to achieve his aim. Wallabadah was that town and the memorial was opened on Australia Day 2005.
It is pretty impressive with headstones commemorating all the convicts by ship and a complete listing of all convicts giving the date and place of sentencing and the length of the sentence and the name of the ship on which they sailed together with a listing all the sailors and marines with their rank and the name of the ship on which they sailed.
I found a couple of small errors. The headstone on which Esther Abrahams and her daughter Rosanna are listed is correctly located in the Lady Penrhyn section but they are listed as having been on the Prince of Wales. They were originally embarked on the Prince of Wales but were transferred to the Lady Penrhyn, which was the ship on which they were rostered, before the fleet sailed from Portsmouth. If they hadn't been, It is unlikely that George Johnston and Esther would have even met much less founded a very large dynasty which includes my mother and a Governor of New South Wales among many others. The other error is that Lady Penrhyn is incorrectly spelled Lady Penryn. I guess the research behind the Memorial was less than perfect.
We reached Barraba in time for lunch. Jean settled down to rest an I spent the afternoon unloading the Motley. I was totally out of it by tea time.
Jean went to see Doctor Sanji. Apparently Jean burst the other eardrum, presumably on the flight back from San Francisco. The doctor gave her some new medication and wants to see her again on Friday. We'll see how it goes. I did the laundry and a bit more moving stuff from the Motley to the house.
I arranged for the plumber to come next week.
Jean woke up a bit worse than yesterday. She went back to bed after breakfast.
I futzed about a bit.
In the morning, I did some work on the self-containment scheme.
I spent most of the day working on the Xmas cards.
We sent a cheque to Sarah to buy a cello for Kelly.
Jean had to see the doctor again. Her ears are improving but her chest is causing concern. The doctor gave her another antibiotic and said that if there was no improvement by early next week, she would have to have a chest x-ray.
We finished writing in the Xmas cards and I took them to the post.
I was up early and spent some time on the internet, getting lots of spam and downloading some new free software. I am about to close my account with austarnet because it has become infested with spam, mostly sent to generic addresses at austarnet.com.au. It is a sign of the times that I had to change from ozemail to austarnet to reduce the spam rate from 100:1 (100 spams per real emailto prettty much zero. I now have to migrate from austarnet because the spam rate has risen to something like 20:1.
I did a few jobs including moving a quarter of a tonne of gravel which had washed down to road into the gutter at our driveway. We both veged out in the afternoon watching the golf.