Christmas 2018 was Wonderful

We had a wonderful Christmas Day at the Henry family.

Unfortunately, son Dale had work commitments and couldn't be with us, although we did message each other on and off during the day. Because Dale's hearing has deteriorated, he can't communicate using audio means like Skype or mobile phone.

Next year we expect he will have a cochlear implant fitted and are hoping that will help him participate better. Sometimes he simply gives up trying to communicate because it becomes too difficult trying to understand what people are saying.

Meredith and Tory were with us and we managed to throw together a nice meal of pork, chicken and vegetables with a follow-up trifle. Meredith and I downed a sensibly small amount of alcoholic beverages and in the evening watched some Netflix programs.

Tory never drank a drop because we had given him his new (second-hand) Ford Laser car and he just wanted to drive around burning up a tank full of petrol, as you would when you get your first car and you're sweet 17.

Tory's first drive in his new car

We never took any photos this year with the exception of the following two which are largely self-explanatory.

But I'll tell you anyway, it's a piece of pork and a chicken with some vegetables being roasted in our new Weber barbecue.

It often seems ridiculous cooking roasts for Christmas when it's 38 C or more and I wonder why we don't celebrate Christmas in July in Australia.

Would it make any real difference?

Some years we have cooked a roast on Christmas Eve and then had cold meat and salad for Christmas lunch and dinner.

This year we had waffles for breakfast with fruit and Canadian maple syrup and I was the guardian of the barbecue who sat patiently drinking a can of German beer and doing "stuff" on my laptop.

In education we call it multi-skilling.

Cheers, here's to multi-skilling.

Hope your Christmas was enjoyable and that we share many more between us.

Robin

Setting up the Back Yard

The Garden Team

One of the benefits of being the first owner of a house is that you have an opportunity to create a garden that suits you. 

We're getting our backyard set up with grass and trees. Recently, the Barossa Village gardening team installed our grass. You can see the team celebrating the end of the installation at right.

Christina and I installed a number of trees and still have a few more to go. The ground was very hard - packed clay - so digging holes was a challenge helped with a little liquid clay-breaker.

The team at work

We are watering the trees daily and they seem to be responding well enough.

We have a number of additional trees to install under the patio, but beforehand, the gardening team is going to increase the amount of soil around the patio concrete slab and the fences. When that's been done, hopefully soon, we'll put some additional trees between the patio and the back fence seen in the photo below (the trees to be planted are in the planter box), and then 80cm around the patio periphery will consist of some coloured small stone, maybe white and the two planter boxes and some pot plants will sit on the rock and brighten up the place.

I'm making a couple of bird feeders and a birdhouse at the Tanunda Men's Shed and when finished, will hang them on the external fences. There are thousands of birds in trees across the street, so when I begin providing lunch for free, some of them will probably call in here occasionally.

Patio-a work in progress

By Christmas Day, the patio should be all set up and looking great. I'll put some LED light strips around the top of the patio and a Merry Christmas sign visible from the street and all will be wonderful.

We plan to buy a new Weber Premium barbecue and spend as much time outdoors as possible.

I'm currently looking for some metal signage to install, you know, the aged stuff that you see around museums etc advertising oil, petrol, foods or simply displaying a smart saying. I already have a couple of number plates and with Christina's permission, will install them on one small wall. Then, of course, there is the 1940s Coca-Cola wall-mounted bottle opener my late uncle gave me - that will have to go somewhere. Maybe we won't have it all done by Christmas.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Robin

Differences Between Tanunda and Alice Springs

We left Alice Springs because it is isolated and so expensive to get to the East, South or West Coasts where our denser populations live in leafy suburbs. Airfares are expensive and driving requires two or three days and a tanker full of diesel.

Recently, we drove from Tanunda to Alice Springs with an overnight stay at Coober Pedy and return and it cost us about $700. Flying would have been $700 each.

At Tanunda, we can drive to Adelaide and access many other places without having to do a two-day drive to get there. However, we've noticed some differences between life in the Barossa Valley and Alice Springs that we probably didn't expect.

Alice Springs is better catered for with shops and facilities than the Barossa Valley. None of the three towns that comprise Barossa Valley, Tanunda, Nuriootpa and Angaston has a cinema. Government services for such things as Centrelink, motor vehicle registration etc are at Gawler or Elizabeth.

Bunnings, my favourite hardware shop is at Gawler. Mitre 10 at Nuriootpa is six kilometres away and tends to be more expensive than Bunnings and not as well stocked.

Neither Woolworths nor Coles is available locally. We have several Foodland stores and Aldi, the latter of which is excellent.

However, Gawler is only about 27 kilometres away down an excellent road and the A20 Highway.

It's not too much of a drama to go there once a week and it's a pleasant drive through vineyards and lovely green fields.

There are very few indigenous Australians in the Barossa although Tanunda has an Aboriginal artifacts shop in the main street. The constant barrage of advertisements and politics related to Aboriginal affairs doesn't exist in the Barossa, which is a pleasant change after decades living in the Territory.

Religion maintains a strong hold on the local population, most of whom come from German or Scottish ancestry and many of whom have lived here for generations. Names of people and streets etc are largely Germanic and only a few of us have names that aren't Germanic.

People are friendly and seem content. As would be expected, wine production is high and consumption pretty high too. Of a weekend, the population explodes with tourists travelling from one wine tasting to another.

While the Barossa (along with the other four South Australian wine regions) contributes greatly to the Gross Domestic Product and other economic aggregates, I expect it also has a considerable impact on the livers of many inhabitants.

We loved life at Alice Springs and we believe we'll also love our lives here as our last destination after many moves during our married life together.

Robin

My Polo Shirt Logo

Anyone who knows me will know that I'm a pedant - a person who is excessively concerned with minor details and rules - when it comes to documentation and other communicative media.

It comes from my policing and business teaching backgrounds. In policing, the letter of law is important. Teaching document production in typing, word processing and accounting classes requires attention to a high degree of accuracy too, so there's the apparent source.

How does that relate to the heading, "My Polo Shirt Logo?" Read on.

When Christina and I were in England last year, we visited a huge outlet shopping centre near Chester. Every brand imaginable had an outlet there as well as brands we hadn't heard of before. Even Tag-Heuer, one of my favourite watch brands was there. There were literally dozens of them spread over quite a few hectares.

It was a Saturday and thousands of people filled the shops, corridors and open spaces, many carrying branded bags indicating multiple purchases.

Several of the outlets were obviously selling their current fashions, not outdated products. We visited a Polo store where I looked at several lovely polo shirts. They were displaying prices of 75 and 80 British Pounds (around $130-150 AUD) which I thought was outrageous. Locals were snapping them up! 

Without exception, all the polo shirts had been made in China. Thousands of shirts bearing Chinese brands and small logos. I'd seen equally nice shirts at K Mart and Target at home.

There was no way I was going to pay $130 for a K Mart shirt with someone's brand logo displayed. You can buy the same quality shirts at K Mart for $10 AUD. Thirteen shirts for one seemed like a good trade-off.

As we drove back to our hotel at Swindon, it occurred to me that I could buy $10 K Mart shirts and steal logos from the big name brands and have them embroidered on my shirts. After all, Christina has a sewing machine that embroiders. But using someone else's logo is dishonest, so I decided I'd use my own logo. Here it is.


I've got a number of unbranded K Mart polo shirts on which I'm going to get Christina to embroider my Henry logo.

Nobody will know who the hell Henry is, but who cares? It will keep them guessing. Maybe I could start producing my own brand line of shirts at half the price of Polo, Adidas, Nike, and the rest of them. Who knows where this could lead.

Robin

It's Now Henrys of Tanunda

Robin and Christina at Al Ain, UAE

When I started this blog I had moved to Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates for a three-year work contract, so I called it "Henrys of Al Ain". It was intended to help communicate with our friends without having to send multiple emails.

It wasn't a good name choice because I didn't think ahead, that we wouldn't always live at Al Ain. In hindsight, I should have called the site the "Henrys".

It's now 13 years since Christina and I moved to Al Ain. Since then, we've returned to Alice Springs (10 years) and now we are at our final house at Tanunda in South Australia. It's time to change the blog's heading yet again, this time to "Henrys of Tanunda".

I've also changed the URL from https://henrys-of-alain.blogspot.com to https://henry-tanunda.blogspot.com.

I hope you continue to visit occasionally and keep in touch.

Robin

Settling in to Our New House

Concrete block laid for pergola

We've been in our new house three weeks and are still unpacking.

There's no hurry as both of us have all the time in the world now that we are retired.

We've had to buy some metal shelving from Bunnings and other shelving from Ikea in which to store our seeming oversupply of "stuff". (Where the hell did we get it all?)

Each day we go through a few boxes and have a charity box into which we put things we no longer wish to keep. The rest go into our shelving or get moved from table to desk to floor or somewhere until we work out where to put it.

We are waiting for delivery of a wall unit into which some of our heritage crockery will go. At present, it takes up space on an old coffee table.

Two of four Bunnings metal shelves 

 We've had a concrete slab 5.5m by 3.0m laid adjacent to the back verandah which one day will have a pavillion roof, table and chairs and a barbecue in-situ.

Hedge trees are to be placed at our rear fence providing privacy from the main road towards the pergola, but we still hope to be able to sit outside drinking wine and watching the many parades that apparently travel along Murray Street to or from Nuriootpa.

Part of the garden will have lawn and at each side of the pergola we plan to put pot plants with daisies or other annuals to pretty the place up. But not today.

Ikea shelving

Today we continue unpacking and finding places to put stuff.

Christina's "Sewing Room", which I prefer to call OUR "Multifunction Room" will be adorned with two new Horn cabinets by end of the day if they are delivered as promised. One will support her sewing machine and have a gas lift so the machine can be lowered below desk level when not in use and the other is for an overlocker.

Every day we make a little progress. One day hopefully, we'll wake up in the morning and think, 'What will I do today?' and not have to entertain the idea of unpacking and storing.

Then there will be time to visit one of the 72 vineyards, or perhaps do some volunteer work helping others. There's plenty to see and do here and we are just beginning the journey.

Robin