Australia

Twelve months ago we planned a weekend at Barnbougle Dunes and everyone I spoke to said that we should take a dozen or more golf balls if we planned to play a full round of golf.  We took their advice and also took a dozen bottles of wine to make sure the weekend was a success.  In the run up to the trip across Bass Strait I dinged the car and lost my wallet so panic set in and I had to scramble to change the booking for the car, get a new driver’s licence, cancel the credit cards and generally reorganise my life.

Puffing Billy is an historic steam train still running regularly in the Dandenongs on the outskirts of Melbourne. The Railway is the sole survivor of four experimental lines used to develop rural areas in the early 1900's. Puffing Billy is now a major tourist attraction, its operation depending on hundreds of dedicated volunteers.

The trip from Belgrave in the foothills of the Dandenongs to Lakeside via Menzies Creek and Emerald passes through some of the most fertile land in Victoria.  The stands of mountain ash are spectacular and  the bay can be seen across the Kardinia Reservoir.

Many years ago I was working in London for a company called LEO Computers.  ‘LEO’ stood for Lyons Electronic Office which was a subsidiary of Joe Lyons – the people who made cup cakes and ran the Lyons Corner Houses.  After I left university I joined them in 1964 and worked at their office in Queensway before moving out to Eastcote to work on a system to analyse the results of the 1958 census.  I am not sure what happened to that system but I seem to remember someone telling me that the results of the 1963 census were produced manually before the results of the 1958 census were completed using the new system.

Sir Samuel Mogg and his wife Dame Minnie first landed on the coast at Mogg’s Creek, Victoria in 1767 a whole three years before Captain Cook sailed into Botany Bay.  A statue commemorating his landing next to the Great Ocean Road at Mogg’s Creek, named in his memory, has long since been destroyed by vandals. Sir Samuel and his wife are nevertheless remembered every year at the Lorne Film Festival now managed by the The Moggs Creek Moving Clickers, Inc.

Some ten or eleven years ago Jenny and I decided to purchase a small cottage at the back of Lorne in Deans Marsh.  As usual it was one of those spur of the moment decisions that have been the hallmark of our lives which invariably turn out for the best.