A Surprise Getaway

Sunday 29th July, 2012


Finally caught up with Tori on Friday to give her the ticket for the Hilltop Hoods concert.  She called in as she was over this side of town to look at a house that she was interested in renting.  She ended up getting the house to rent.

Tony had set the alarm for me on Saturday morning to get up  at 5.30am so that I could watch the opening of the London Olympics.  I was disappointed with the opening, for me the best part of it was Rowan Atkinson as Mr Bean.  Why would you make your National Health Scheme as part of an opening ceremony?  Got me beat!  I would have thought Britain is better known for more than that.

There was so much going on in the arena even the overhead camera shots didn't portray it that well.  In recent times there have been so much better Olympic opening ceremonies than this one.  Even the part where Daniel Craig, aka James Bond 007, visited the Queen and then they both supposedly parachuted into the arena didn't impress.  And what can I say about Paul McCartney.....he definitely doesn't have the voice any more in my opinion.

In the afternoon I went and did a scrapbooking class.  I am mainly doing digital scrapping now and have the pages printed into a book, but I do miss the paper scrapping.  When Tori was here a few weeks ago she showed her friends the book that I had done for her and it made me think about doing some paper scrapping once again.  By doing the classes at least I might be able to get a couple of pages done each month.

While I was there we had the plumber come out again.  The toilet needed to be adhered to the floor more securely.  On Tuesday when he was here he stuck this softer compound under the toilet and as the toilet was a lot heavier than he imagined it wasn't suitable and so he came back and put a concrete mix under it.

Consequently we weren't able to use the toilet for at least 12 hours and so when I got home Tony suggested we go somewhere overnight and stay in a motel.  Sounded good to me!  The only problem was where do we go?  Do we go to the Clare Valley, the Barossa, down South or up North?  

I put some underwear in a bag, got a change of clothes and toiletries and we were off.  As I needed to go to the loo Tony suggested we go into work and use the toilet there.  After doing so we ended up going down to Goolwa and booked into the motel.  Went and had dinner at the Corio Hotel, came back to the motel and watched some of the Olympics on the telly.

This morning when we woke up Tony complained that his eye hurt.  He thought that he might have got something in it.  I looked, but couldn't see anything.  He said that the pain was really bad.  Yesterday morning he cut the branches back on the tree and one of the branches fell and grazed the side of his face.  Whether he got a speck of dirt from that we don't know.  He got under the shower and washed his eye but said it didn't make much difference.

After breakfast and booking out of the motel we went to the chemist.  They gave him some eye drops to help soothe the eye and then asked him to go to the doctor tomorrow if it didn't improve.  The chemist had a look but couldn't see anything either.

He said it didn't affect his vision and he could still drive and so we headed off towards Victor Harbor.  As we were leaving Goolwa we saw that the sign was out for the Cockle Train, something that we have been meaning to do for years, and so we decided to take the train to Victor and back.

The carriages, known as the 'red hens' were built in Adelaide back in the 1930's.  They have been restored to their original state by volunteers.  It was a nice trip that took approximately 30 minutes each way.  At times we were so close to the coast we could have jumped from the carriage into the water, if allowed.  We didn't see any whales.

The paddocks around the area had so much water lying in them, the train driver said that the area had more than 4 inches of rain (100mm) in the last month.  Because of all the water it had attracted a lot of water birds such as swans etc to the large pools. 

Back in Goolwa we got the car and went and had some lunch at the local Bakery and then headed back to Victor Harbor.  We decided to go back to Adelaide via Waitpinga and Cape Jervis.

As we drove into Cape Jervis we could see Kangaroo Island across the water.  The Sealink ferry was already heading over to Kingscote on KI.  The water between the mainland and KI is known as Backstairs Passage and they say it can get very rough during wild weather.  Tony reckons the trip across takes around 40 minutes.

We decided that KI should be one of our next getaways, once the weather warms up.  I'm not good on boats and definitely don't want to be on the ferry if the weather is too wild.

We came back along the coast road through Normanville, Yankalilla, Myponga, around to Sellicks Beach, Aldinga and then got onto the Expressway.  Called into work for another pit stop and Tony decided that if the Medical Centre was open he would go and see a doctor about his eye.  He said that it was still sore, the drops hadn't done much.

We got to Modbury just after 6.00pm and he was able to get in to see a doctor even though there were 35 people ahead of him and only 3 doctors on duty.  After 90 minutes of waiting he was finally seen to.

The doctor didn't find anything in his eye, but gave it a flush and said that there had been something in there as he could see a little nodule.  He was told that if it didn't improve in a couple of days to go back.

We ended up getting some pasta for tea, got home and flopped.  Tony wasn't too long out of bed, I decided to watch some of the Olympics.

For a spur of the moment getaway we had a great time.  Gotta do that again!!