Inveterate Travellers: March 2013

Last week we travelled to Newcastle to enjoy the wedding of our niece, Kylie, who was marrying Justin Murray. Justin serves in the Air Force and is stationed at Richmond and we were looking forward to meeting him and celebrating the marriage of two lovely young people. The wedding was held at a lovely old home (now reception centre) which was originally the home of the first CEO of BHP in Newcastle. The ceremony was meant to have taken place in the gardens, which are rather beautiful, but an early downpour made that next to impossible, so it was moved onto the terrace, which turned out to be a great choice. The marriage was celebrated by the Padre of the air base and it was quite a lovely service. We then enjoyed canapes and drinks before sitting down for the wedding dinner.

One of the great joys of a family wedding such as this, is that we all get together in an atmosphere of fun and frivolity and there is inevitably a good deal of all kinds of beverage consumed and this was no exception. In fact, I was quite amazed at the level of imbibing taking place, although there are some parts of the two evenings we were there that are still a little vague. Perhaps my memory is not as sharp generally as it used to be! It's great that my brothers and sisters-in-law can still keep a party flowing, but the nieces and nephews are getting better at it than we've ever been.

After the celebration, the Princess and I jetted off to Brisbane to join our old friends Darryl and Betty for a few days of catchup after a couple of years of being apart and, as always, it is as though we have been together forever. I'm most grateful for the constant friendship over 35years or so, of these beautiful people and we look forward to another visit from them, in the not too distant future.