Return to Lord Howe Island - 62 years later

 Up nice and early - airport bound shortly. See you soon New Zealand

The big event of today was a morning tea that Mum had organised for a group of high school friends - Dawn, Beverley and Jocelyn - as well as her niece Alison. Most of the ladies had travelled from out of Sydney by train, so the designated meeting spot was the Queen Victoria Building in the central city. Peter did a great job driving around town, with bus lanes and compulsory turning lanes and quite heavy traffic. Parking at the QVB is daylight robbery, but it was handy to be parked in the building. It was lovely to meet the ladies (some I'd met on previous visits) and to have a yarn with Alison (my cousin). We sat at a cafe for several hours before the high school friends headed back to their respective homes. Dawn had something like a 3 hour train ride followed by an hour and a half in the car to get home - quite a commitment to come down which was lovely.  Peter and I then left Mum and Dad to catch up some more with Alison and had a fairly cursory look around the shops - not too ...

Wednesday 12th October This morning we had a few ‘chores’ on our to-do list: clean the BBQ, clean and return the car, scrub shoes that had been bush walking, and pack out the cottage. We managed to get all of this done in record time, and even had a chat with Gary the owner of Beachcomber Lodge. He is from one of the island families with cousins all over, but was not yet born when Mum was teaching here. However, his cousins and aunts and uncles etc were all people Mum knew. We had organised for Paul, one of the staff at Beachcomber, to drop us to the museum around 10, so that we could base ourselves there and make the most of our car-less morning. Having a couple of hours without the car really reinforced what an asset it had been - the accommodation providers are happy to drop people about to and from dinner etc, but we’d had the freedom to zip in and out all over the place. No-one was in the office at the Lodge where we had rented the car from - so we left a note, the key, and $10 fo...

  Tuesday 11th October When I woke up this morning Mum was out and about on another solo walk - we must teach her about leaving us her intended route and return time! I think she has enjoyed the times spent out walking, retracing steps and memories. After breakfast, the first thing on our list was to visit Ned’s Beach to feed the fish. Special fish food pellets are available there from a very technological “dispenser” - signage suggests that the dispenser may have changed somewhat over time. The official hours of the shop are 9ish-4ish, and the ‘shop’ is a big honesty box system. Wetsuits, snorkels/mask/fins, deck chairs, umbrellas etc are all available for hire and you just pop the money in the box.  Ned’s beach is on the opposite side of the island from the lagoon, and was a wee bit rough for standing in the water distributing fish pellets. You could see schools of fish floating up in the blue water at the tops of the waves before crashing down and being lost in the swirling...