We left Barraba at half past nine and travelled to Sydney arriving at about six o'clock. We had stopped for morning tea, for lunch, and for a long telephone call with the Chairman of the CMCA.
We went to Bellevue Hill to see Rachel, Jeremy, Claire and Julia and to have dinner with Jan and Ric Fitzhardinge. We got to Big's place in Newtown at about ten. We had a chat with Big and Rachel before going to bed in their spare room.
We went to Bellevue Hill to spend time with the grandchildren. We went to the shopping centre to try and get Rachel's glasses mended. She had broken one of the arms and was having trouble keeping them on.
In the evening we had dinner with Big and Rachel. Rachel had cooked a wonderful meal of kangaroo, spicy carrot and sultana and a green salad with a lovely fresh fruit desert.
I took Jeremy to the conference to help with the set up of the demonstration of "Constellation" which is his wonderful piece of interactive computer art. Constellation take images from the field in front of the screen, does pattern recognition on the image, tracks moving patterns and uses this information to modify the field of stars being projected on the screen producing a very attention grabbing display.
I went back to Bellevue Hill to help Jan take the rest of the family to the University. They all wanted to attend open day to see Jeremy's work. They all enjoyed it, Claire making herself one of the "actors" in the scene. There was much interest in the work from all the people who were wandering round the exhibition.
In the evening we had a local Thai restaurant deliver some yummy food.
We went out to lunch with Rachel. I found a hardware shop and bought what I needed to do a temporary repair on Rachel's glasses which I performed at the cafe.
We went on to the conference to attend Jeremy's presentation. That was pretty much incomprehensible to Jean and I as we had none of the prerequisite knowledge needed to decode the plethora of Three Letter Acronyms. It was well received by the large audience of the delegates to the conference. I had asked Jeremy why so many people had come to the conference from overseas and he told me that this one in Australia is the most important Linux conference worldwide as it deals directly with the central issues of Linux.
After the visit to the conference, we went to the cinema with Rachel to see "The Queen". It was really good but poor old skeptic me spotted several factual inaccuracies including a very negative portrayal of the Queen Mother who always has a special place in my heart since, as Chancellor of the University of London, she awarded me my degree and I was most impressed with the personal congratulations she gave me by way of a smile.
In the evening, we went to dinner with Jan and Ric at Doyles in Watsons Bay.
We went to the zoo with the grandchildren. We met up with them in the wallaby enclosure and communed with wallabies, echidna, koala, water rats, tree kangaroos and a beautiful Golden Cat.
We had a pleasant lunch at the Treetops Restaurant. We had a ride on the zoo train but had to walk down to the bottom gate to get the sky train back up to the top. Unfortunately, they had stopped it because of the wind. Happily, a bus on charter turned up and took us back to the carpark free.
We were so bushed that we went back to Newtown to veg out.
Up early to go to Nielsen Park to meet the kids. Sadly, we spent the best part of an hour trying to park without success.
We met up with them for lunch at Cooper Park. Rachel was sick and we left them at about four to go back to Newtown
In the evening, we took Iain and his Rachel out to dinner at a local Thai restaurant which was OK if a bit hot (the air that is).