19th February - Midlands Highway - Sam's library in Java - school bear

Friday 19^th February 2016

Beautiful Hobart (thank you Mercury) 

Yesterday I had another trip up and down the Midlands Highway, for another very pleasant Salon Visit with my mum.  I enjoyed the drive very much; I had total control of the radio!  There are LOTS of roadworks happening south of Oatlands

(Opportunity to insert another Treasure of the Oatlands Paddock photo…)

so the traffic had to crawl along at 60-80ks.  Not a problem; nobody wants to squash the roadworkers… What was a problem was a large caravan towed by a slow car which would NOTY pull over.  And an endless line of very beautiful Special Interest cars which all went a very respectable 80ks… never mind; I had interesting stuff to listen to on the radio which was….under MY control (very rare, this.)

 

Our lovely Indonesian friend Sam Fadill – one of the organisers of the 2013 Indonesian Rally we went on – is setting up a small, modest but very beautiful library in his little town in the backblocks of Java.  It seems to be going very well indeed.  There ware very few libraries in Indonesia and a lot of Sam ‘s sailing friends are sending books and $$$ to make this venture as successful as possible.  He is also running English lessons (a lot of the books he has been sent are in English - extra motivation!)

When Pete had his 8 grandchildren Friday and Saturday it was all as stress-free as possible.  All except for one HUGE responsibility – the Scotch Oakburn Early Learning bear! 

Matilda had charge of it for the weekend.  The bear had its own backpack, a set of lovely knitted clothes, and a baby brother.  So many things to be potentially lost!  I for one heaved a HUGE sigh of relief when it left the premises!

Kate Headlam told us that her Early Learning Bear experience at Fahan School was worse!  Lizzie had her precious weekend with it and everyone was VERY aware that this bear was 25 year sold…nobody had lost or damaged  it in all of these years…I don’t l think I would have coped at all.  Children – no problem; precious school heirlooms – NO!