14th August 2011

14th August 2011
Getting close now our furniture is being picked up on Tuesday and settlement is the following Monday. During the past week or so we have systematically relocated loose items, fragile things and clothing to Lisa’s each time we went to Lota. In my usual fashion I have numbered all the boxes drawn up an inventory of contents and drawn a mud map of where each box is located (some call it anal). Keep in mind we have 5 storage locations in and under the little old house Lisa is renting, including both ours and Lisa’s gear that will be stored for quite a long time while the new house is built. From past experience I know during that time we will want something and you can never be sure where you have packed it resulting in opening numerous boxes looking for it. We could have left it all for the removalist, but doing it this way at our leisure hasn’t been at all stressful and has given us a good chance to establish the most suitable location for particular items.
On another subject I had a pleasant surprise the other day when out of the blue I received a text from an ex- work colleague making contact. When I first got to know Tom Macbeth he was a geologist with Boral Resources and later took on management roles. Tom is the sort of person who is fortunate enough to have an abundance of natural talent and excels at whatever he takes on board, academic, top golfer, musician and artist to name a few. On the art front, Tom was based in Cairns for a spell as Area Manager for the region and while there took an interest in pastel painting, self taught by researching the medium he concentrated on Australian fauna while developing his own particular method and style. His work was that good that a gallery in Port Douglas sold and promoted his work and he sold paintings into North America via the internet. While I was still working at Boral Tom would e-mail me his latest creations as I had shown so much interest in his art, but lost touch once I retired. As you know I retired from Boral several years ago, so when I received his text the other day I was quite excited. Out of curiosity I decide to Google his name and to my delight I discovered he has not only won several awards for his pastels including having one used for the cover of National Geographic, he has at some stage ventured into oils and was one of this years finalists for the Archibald Portrait Prize with a painting of Jessica Watson the teenage round the world sailor, wow what a fantastic effort and as you can imagine I can’t wait to catch up with him.

Cheers Nigel