Reflections On Kyogle...

Well our time at Kyogle has almost come to an end. We are leaving Sunday to go to Iluka, and are staying at the Anchorage Holiday Park. The place seems nice from what we can work out, so let's hope it's as good as it looks.

Kyogle is a pretty little place, but the caravan park is old and a bit run down. I think Anna gets a little depressed that her old hometown has been let go a little bit - maybe it has, maybe it's a perception thing (everything always seems so big and great when you're a kid, right?). It constantly amazes me - as a city kid - how she can say "oh Mr Smith used to live there", or "The Jones's used to live there - I went to School with the youngest of them 2 years behind me". I think it's something of a country town thing - everybody seems to know everybody else. It's simultaneously kinda nice and a little disturbing if you ask me.

Anyhow, it's been nice catching up with Anna's Nan - she is old and frail nowadays sadly. It's also been great catching up with a few of Anna's old friends (Hi Maya, Pascal, Aidan, Ollie!) but it's now time to hit the road again.

Grace has not been sleeping well at all - really fighting sleep both for her daytime naps and her night time sleeps. It's putting a lot of  pressure on Anna and I - we're both tired and cranky, and all those things that come with parenthood. Grace has always been such a good little sleeper that I think it's surprised us more than anything. She is getting used to her new surroundings in the caravan and the annex, but she needs a little more time I think. Today, for the first time ever, I had to take her for a drive to get her to sleep (for those non-parents, the gentle movement of the car puts kids to sleep - or maybe it's being in the same enclosed space as dad - or his boring choice of CD - who knows). I'm told by my mum and dad that they used to have to take a drive with me quite regularly to get me to sleep when I was a kid. I'll wager they're smiling right now and thinking "see what you put us through??".

Anna's mum and dad are here this evening, sleeping in the annexe. It's nice to see them, they're down to spend a bit more time with us before we head too far way from home base. They head home tomorrow afternoon, and we're leaving the day after that.

One thing I have to get used to for this trip is not having the luxury of convenient trading hours for shops. My suggestion last night around 7pm of "just nip down to the late night chemist for some nappies because we just ran out" was met with howls of laughter. _I_ didn't know the chemist only opened 9-5 (and 9-12 on Saturday). Where I come from, shops are open convenient hours!  Same opening hours of the only supermarket in town - tough biscuits if you want to pick up something after midday on Saturday. It's strange, but I vaguely recall as a (very) small child having to get somewhere before midday on Saturday before the shops shut - but that's got to be close to 30 years ago (who looks old now?). it's just something that I had purged from my memory, something you just don't have to think about as a city dweller these days. They do things a bit different in the country folks - but who's to say it's a bad thing? You just have to be a bit more organised to achieve what you had planned.