Oh my goodness. It’s Saturday afternoon and more than a week has passed since my last diary entry. I was wondering the other night about whether or not it was time to end this journey, but I don’t think so, as I’m sure there are lots of wonderful adventures still to come. Anyway, I’ve just been out for lunch which was lovely and I have been looking at New Zealand brochures, since I think I would like to travel there. Anyway, the last week has been a reasonably interesting one, so I guess it’s time to catch up on what’s been happening.

On Saturday afternoon, I caught the train to Newcastle. It was a reasonably eventful trip, since I saw for the very first time sniffer dogs on the train. A young man was “sniffed” and then taken away for a search, revealing nothing, but he’d obviously been somewhere in the last twenty four hours were drugs were. This action outraged the woman behind me who had been visiting her boyfriend that day in Long Bay Gaol. “It’s not a fuckin government institution”. Actually, it is, someone corrected. “Oh yeh, but it’s not fucking parliament or something”. Anyway… she then went on to relate the story of how she and her boyfriend had been pulled over by the police a couple of years ago and she SAT on the 1/2 kg of heroin they had. Amazing stuff.

Arrived in Newcastle later in the afternoon and went straight to the View Factory, which is the restaurant/bar next door to Kate’s place. We had a terrific five or six hours drinking, chatting and eating, before finally heading back to Kate’s place for a good night’s sleep.

On Sunday morning, we paid a visit to the Damien Minton Gallery, home to a new exhibition by a Newcastle-based artist, called Michael Bell whose work is also on show at the Newcastle Region Gallery in A major survey, spanning the last 20 years, of typically fresh and vibrant paintings, works on paper and decorated ceramics with subject matter that explores the suburaban pathos of the everyday by this nationally recognised Newcastle based artist. We all immediately liked this work, so we bought it.

We went briefly back to Kate’s before heading off to Tonee and James’ place at Catherine Hill Bay for our lunchtime meeting. It was a lovely afternoon. After a brief return to Newcastle, I caught the train back home.

On Wednesday night, I went along to ABBA drinks at The Masonic and to my delight there was a new (hopefully regular) participant, Damien who is a 28 year old backpacker from Northern Ireland, currently in Australia. He’s surly, he’s funny, and he likes a drink or eight.

On Thursday, Louise raised the prospect of another RRHS Reunion, posing the question Is there any chance of some sort of reunion or get together for us in the nar future? I would certainly be interested in doing that and helping organise if anyone else is interested. So far, only Paul has responded, but this is the kind of thing I hoped would occur, that it would develop spontaneously without too much hard work on my part.

Last night, Colin and I went to see a couple of theatre events, both of which were fantastic! Broken Glass – Arthur Miller was at the Ensemble Theatre, featuring several well known Australian actors, including Lynette Curran in a lead role. Then, a quick cab trip took us to Muf-Tee Cabaret with Hayden Tee at The Stables.

Exhausted after all this, I came home and slept soundly for about 12 hours, although I did have two dreams about trains.