BIRTHDAY BEAR RIDES "THE GHAN"

Apologies to Birthday Bear, Mary and the Birthday Bear Group. I forgot to post about our celebration in June for Mary's birthday. (That dementia is creeping ever closer). If you are not familiar with our Birthday Bear tradition, read here. Anyway back in June we all went to the Power Boat Club in Caloundra for lunch. Caloundra is about one and a half hours drive from home. However, Chris and Bob have bought a property north of Gympie which is even further north than Caloundra. So we thought this would be about a half way place to meet.

Back row: Mary, Chris, Helen, Ann.

Front row: George, Bob, Bill and me.

The view from our table was very relaxing. We were looking across the Pumicestone passage towards Bribie Is.

Birthday Bear was happily waiting for us in a train. The train is 'The Ghan" a famous Australian train, which travels from Darwin on the north coast to Adelaide on the south coast. It travels right through the centre of Australia from top to bottom or the other way. It takes 3 nights and 4 days. It also stops for you to take side excursions to Katherine, Uluru, Alice Springs and Coober Pedy outback towns. "The Ghan" is named after the Afghan cameleers, who used to take camel caravans along this route before roads and trains were there.

Chris on the left dressed Bear for Mary on the right. Mary has just been on "The Ghan" for a trip with Ann, George and Helen. I would have loved to be with them but we had other plans. We had booked a photographic trip to Hawaii at the same time. It turned out we had to cancel as we both had medical problems at the time.

We all had a good time except I managed to knock a full glass of red wine all over Ann's top and pants. We went to the bathroom where she rinsed her top and dried it in the hand drier. Sounds funny now but I was ashamed at the time. It was a long, slow drive home because there had been an accident.