I was up early and went on line to download stuff from the Red Hat Society website. I found that there are over a hundred chapters in Australia, none of them near here. I will encourage Jean to join the #1 chapter which is a worldwide traveller's chapter. Perhaps she will be encouraged to start a Grey Nomads in Red Hats chapter in Australia.
George and Jan left us to head off towards Mt Gambier.
Jean did some laundry and then we veged out for the rest of the day.
I rang the plumber and he promised to come next week.
I had suggested that we try changing the living room and the dining room around. Jean thought she would like to try that so we spent the day moving furniture.
The monster effort of yesterday left us both a bit pooped so we did only small chores.
We visited the Samin's to see how they were. They still have two grandchildren staying with them so they are a bit busy. School holidays finish this week so they will be a bit more free after Friday.
I was out early to do some whipper snipping before it got too hot. By the time I had finished I was running with sweat and had to change my shirt before breakfast.
Jean went to the Doctor to get a new prescription only to find that she had a new one only a month ago. We went to the chemist to see if he had kept it but he hadn't so the Doctor had to cancel the old one and write a new one. I eventually found the old one tucked away and had to tear it up. At least I have an excuse for such things now that I am a septuagenarian.
I made a list of things I must do to the Motley before we go away again but it was too hot to get into that kind of work.
I started work on the Motley chores but was stopped in my tracks because the shops were all shut for the Australia Day holiday and I couldn't buy some supplies I needed.
We went to Inverell to do the shopping because we didn't want to go to Tamworth during the Country Music Festival. We had been told by neighbours that Tamworth was a nightmare place to visit during the festival. There are street closures that make getting to where you need to go a problem and there are buskers everywhere with loud amplifiers trying to drown out other buskers.
In Inverell we experienced some extraordinary serendipity.
The first place we stopped was a furniture store which I thought sold second hand furniture. It didn't and all the things we saw were grossly overpriced for our budget. As I walked towards the back of the shop, I came upon a pine kitchen nook which Jean had set her heart on having in the kitchen but which had been elusive in the extreme in our attempts to find one. Buoyed up by this success, we found a sideboard which will suit us nicely in our new room arrangement. The shop couldn't deliver to Barraba but they put us onto a guy who does Inverell-Bingara and Bingara-Tamworth runs. We arranged for him to pick the stuff up next week and deliver it to us in Barraba at his convenience.
When we stopped in a cafe for lunch, a lady sitting nearby had a box beside her with a multifunction scanner, printer, copier in it. I had been thinking of buying such a device and we noted that she had bought it from Retravision just down the street. After lunch we enquired about the price, planning to ask the Retravision guy in Barraba to get us one. Later on we read their sale catalogue and thought the price we had been quoted seemed a bit high so we went back and suggested a reduction which they were happy to give us.
We went to Woolworths to buy stuff we can't get at the IGA at Barraba and finished up with 15 bottles of soft drinks, 4 litres of milk, and 8 litres of demineralised water, over 30 litres (8 gallons) of liquid supplies.
On the way back to Barraba, we stopped to visit the Myall Creek Massacre Memorial. This is a Reconciliation project from the year 2000 which commemorates the hundreds of aborigines who were killed in 1838 by the station owner, his stockmen and some policeman sent up from Sydney specially for the purpose. The aborigines attempted to make peace with the settlers but the killing didn't stop. Eventually ten settlers were charged with murder and, after a second trial, seven were found guilty and were executed. This was the first time any white man had been found guilty of such crimes against aborigines. The site of the memorial is not kept in pristine condition but the story is very moving. The site overlooks the homestead which still exists today and one would be made of clay if one's heart didn't go out to those victims of so long ago and one's feeling for the perpetrators didn't make one ashamed to be from the same stock.
When we got back to Barraba, we asked the Samin's if they would join us for dinner at the RSL. They were happy to joins us but asked for a lift to the club as the had lost the back window of their Terios on the way back from an unhappy visit to Tamworth where nearly everything went wrong for them. Happily the day ended for them on a brighter note.
It was another hot day. I spent the morning setting up the new printer-scanner-copier. I tested all the functions including walk-up printing direct from a digital camera memory card. It will replace the Canon printer which will be relegated to backup duties.
I spent the afternoon reviewing the documents HQ is printing for the rally.