2020 Xmas Letter

Hi All,

2020 was surprisingly not much different to other years for Karen and me! Sure we had bushfires and floods and Covid, but for us these were more of an annoyance requiring minor changes to our lifestyles rather than earth-shattering events. For others of course, those events were devastating!

We can understand you not wanting to wade through all the boring words describing our experiences in 2020, but please check out the pictures below by clicking on the thumbnails to make the images bigger, then clicking on the larger images to make them small again.

If you want to find out what we are doing more than once a year at Xmas, you can visit our Facebook pages by clicking Karen's Facebook page and Brett's Facebook page. You can also see a whole lot more of our photos of bushwalks and trips on Brett's Flickr page - which now has over 66,000 images on display (so some of them should be good).

Last Summer's bushfires

The bushfires of late 2019 / early 2020 were horrific. Our local government area - the Shoalhaven - has an area of 4,567 square kilometres, which can easily be thought of as a rough rectangle approximately 45 kilometres wide by 100 kilometres long.

Two-thirds of the Shoalhaven is national park, state forest or crown land - one of the reasons we live here - which is about 3,200 square kilometres. 90% of the Shoalhaven's bushland - almost 3,000 square kilometres - was burnt. See the map below which shows the burnt area. The red X shows where our house is ...

The loss of habitat was immense; the number of animals that were burnt is difficult to think about. The bush and the animals and the birds will hopefully come back, but if it happens, it will take a long, long time ...

For a few months all the burnt areas were no-go areas because of the danger of falling trees. We have resumed our bushwalks in the burnt areas now, and the scenes are amazing. We are seeing things we have never seen before, the shape of the land is much easier to make out, and the walking in some areas is much easier now. It's a completely different experience - and one we would have preferred to miss out on.

We still walked everywhere - through burnt areas and massive regrowth, and untouched areas on the coast and out of the Local Government Area. We adapt ...

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images - then click the large image to make it small again

Cycling in New Zealand

In mid February Karen and I were joined by friends Vic and Jan for five weeks of cycling - and a bit of walking (all planned and booked by Karen) - in the North Island of New Zealand. We took our own mountain bikes and panniers over, as hiring costs were ridiculous! The four of us could have hired a car for just $17 a day, but to hire 4 bikes would have cost us $200 a day! We eventually cycled 1,000 kilometres from Auckland to Wanganui linking five major cycle trails - the Hauraki Rail Trail, the Rotorua Thermal Trail, the Waikato River Trail, the Timber Trail, and the Mountains to the Sea Trail. The rides got progressively more spectacular!

Prior to leaving Auckland we did a day-walk around the city, and did day-trips to the nearby islands of Rangitoto and Tiritiri Matangi. On "rest" days during the cycling we climbed Mt Te Aroha, toured the thermal areas of Rotorua and rode out to check out the nearby lakes - Blue Lake, Green Lake, Lake Okareka and Lake Tarawera, climbed Mt Pureora on the Timber Trail, did three day walks in Tongariro National Park, and had a jet boat ride down the Wanganui River.

At Wanganui we hired a car and spent a couple of days at Stratford near Mt Taranaki, including a visit to New Plymouth. The highlight of the whole trip for me was a climb up Mt Taranaki that Vic and I did while the girls contented themselves with walks a bit lower down.

It was while we were in New Zealand that the Covid-19 pandemic got into full swing back in Australia. Images of empty toilet paper shelves in Australian supermarkets appeared regularly on the nightly NZ news, and Australia was a laughing-stock!

The first image below was taken from a ferry as we left Auckland, and shows the Ruby Princess backed by the Auckland skyline. The Ruby Princess would infamously dock in Sydney on March 19th when all of its possibly infected passengers were allowed to walk free - this was the day that we flew back into Sydney!

We may have shared our train journey with some of those passengers, but as it happened, we had more pressing matters on our minds - Karen's mum had suffered a stroke two days before and was lying in a coma in Wollongong Hospital. Karen and I were officially in lock-down for two weeks, and were not allowed to visit.

The unexpected death of Karen's mother

Two days before returning from NZ we learned that Barbara had had a stroke, and that the prognosis was not good. When we arrived back home Karen rang her sister-in-law at the hospital only to find out that Barb had just that minute passed away. The stroke had been really unexpected. Barb had heart problems but a pacemaker was looking after them, and she had just started back at the gym after a second knee replacement.

Not only did Karen have to cope with the sudden loss of her mum, but she had been appointed executor of Barb's will as well, so we had lots of work to do over the next few months. Because of Covid restrictions and our lockdown, a funeral was out of the question, so Barb was cremated privately with a celebration of her life to be had at some time in the future, probably on her birthday in May 2021. Even that is still problematic, with family having to travel from interstate - depending on border closures!

We packed up the contents of Barb's villa and stored them at our house, filling two garages and our upstairs living area. We couldn't take anything to Vinnies or Op Shops because of Covid, so our house was very cramped for quite a few months. Even selling on eBay and Gumtree was impossible until the lockdowns eased. Because of the clutter and the executor duties, we were constantly reminded of Barb's death.

Luckily, we also had many reminders of Barb's life - her photo albums, both physical and digital, showed that she had really lived her life to the full! She's had three kids, one husband (Kevin) and two other long-term partners (Alan and Brian) and although she rarely left Australia, she had travelled all over the country, especially with Brian during the last ten years. One of her overseas trips was to Nepal in 1993, when she joined Karen and me on a three week trek doing the Annapurna Circuit!

Rest in peace, Barb ...

Cycling and walking at Barrington, Gloucester and Dungog

By October the Covid situation was stable enough for us to travel with friends to Barrington Tops, Gloucester Tops and the Dungog area for a variety of bike rides and walks. I replaced the bike I had taken to New Zealand - "The Beast" - with a new Polygon mountain bike with 29 inch wheels, and it was a real pleasure to ride a bike that changed gear when asked, didn't jump cogs under pressure, and actually stopped when the brakes were applied!

The rides were mostly on backroads and firetrails, although we did some single track on the Dungog Common, and the walks included the 20km firetrail slog up to Carey's Peak and back. Our various accommodations were all excellent!

Cycling and walking in the Blue Mountains

Karen continued the cycling and walking theme for the year with a trip to the Blue Mountains for a week in November. We were based at some rustic cabin accommodation near Wentworth Falls, and cycles included various lookouts, Narrow Neck, the Megalong Valley, around Mt Banks and the Oaks Trail. Walks included a climb of Mt Banks, Hanging Rock, the Grand Canyon, and Wentworth Falls.

Other Stuff

Karen retired from the Presidency of the Shoalhaven Bushwalkers after 8 years in the top job. She has now led 250 walks for the club. We are both still on the Shoalhaven Bushwalkers committee.

The rest of this paragraph remains basically unchanged from last year's letter. I'm still golfing once a week, and my handicap is still in single figures (around 6 or 7). As usual, while I'm playing golf on Thursday morning, Karen is riding her mountain bike with the Shoalhaven Bicycle Users Group (BUG). She does one or two extra rides a week as well. In addition, Karen swims three times a week (on average) with the Wobbegongs Swimming Club at Huskisson.

I am still the Secretary of the Bay and Basin Camera Club, but that will be changing in February. I plan to stay on the committee but I want to give up most of my administrative roles so I can actually do more photography! I have had three new (second hand) cameras and lenses sitting on my desk doing nothing for over a year - I've just been too busy to take photos - apart from the usual snaps on bushwalks and holidays!

Karen is still the treasurer of BirdLife Shoalhaven, and I am still the webmaster. We still feed our resident magpie pair - Ricky and Lucy - who managed to produce another baby this year. Unlike last year's progeny, this year's youngster is doing really well so far. We named him Covid ...

During the year Karen worked on a quilt project and finished it relatively quickly compared to her previous efforts. It is a wall hanging, and is now displayed in pride of place above our kitchen ...

Like many of us, Karen and I did a lot of maintenance to house and garden this year. Projects included the removal of our cracked and buckled front porch and surrounding garden, replaced by a new concrete porch and garden made from sandstone pavers. We also had to chop down a huge, potential widow-making tree from our front yard, and our front and back decks received a couple of coats of decking oil that brought them up nicely. We are still working on the front lawn, which was totally trashed by the tree removal and then the back-hoe that demolished the front porch!

The automatic 2.4 litre turbo-diesel Mitsubishi Pajero Sport we bought at the end of last year did not get the opportunity to do many kilometres this year. We were away in NZ for over a month, and locked down upon our return, and Covid restrictions reduced our travel to less than 15,000 kilometres, down significantly from the 25,000 kilometres per year we averaged with our X-Trail.

Plans for 2021

Last year we said we would be doing bike riding and walking in the North Island of New Zealand in February / March - and that happened - but our planned trip to the Pilbara was cancelled due to Covid border closures. We hope to get to the Pilbara in 2021 - both Karen and myself are really missing the Outback. We love deserts!

Karen and I are both alive, and reasonably fit and healthy, so despite people saying that 2021 couldn't be any worse than 2020, it could actually get a lot worse. Let's hope that doesn't happen!

As always, we hope everyone has a great Xmas and New Year, and that 2021 is an improvement on 2020 ...

Cheers,

Brett and Karen

P.S. As usual, our previous yearly letters can be viewed by clicking the following links - 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.