Hi All,

Just in case you hadn't noticed, 2022 was a very wet year! Karen and I have been keeping rainfall records at St Georges Basin since just after moving there near the turn of the century. Here is a graph of our annual totals since then. You will notice that 2022 has been exceptional. We average about 1000 millimetres of rain per year - 2022 had 2400 millimetres - almost a metre more rain than our previous wettest year!

Despite the rain, 2022 was yet another good year for Karen and me! The year was marked by lingering concerns about Covid, and some interesting health issues, but we did manage quite a few trips away.

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 almost 74,000 images on display.

Click the thumbnails below for larger images then click again to make them small again - and hover cursor on image for the DESCRIPTION

Tasmania in February and March

At the end of last year's Xmas newsletter Karen and I said we were planning big trips to Tasmania and Western Australia in 2022, and both of those trips actually happened! In February we drove to Melbourne, hopped on the Spirit of Tasmania, and spent three weeks in northern Tasmania, doing lots of day walks in national parks and climbing quite a few mountains along the way. The first week of the trip was spent walking with friend John and Gill Souter who were researching walks for a book which has now been completed - "Tasmania's Best Walks", a walking guide published by Woodslane Press. Google it and you will find it! Karen and I have photos in the book!

Lord Howe Island at the end of March

A member of Shoalhaven Bushwalkers put on a club trip to Lord Howe Island in March, and Karen and I joined them. We honeymooned on Lord Howe back in 1990, and sailed there in late 1995, so it was fascinating to see how it had changed in the 27 years since we had last been there. The main change was the successful eradication of rats from the island - and the resulting boom in the bird population! We walked, snorkelled, birdwatched and played golf. It's a wonderful place and if you haven't been there - go! The underwater shots were taken by Karen.

Newnes / Glen Davis

In late April / early May we joined some friends for five days of bike riding, walking and camping at Newnes and Glen Davis, north-west of Lithgow in NSW.

Walking with the Bushwalkers

In May, Karen and I went on another week away with the Shoalhaven Bushwalkers - this time to the Central Coast - organised by Karen. Friends John and Gill have written a book on walks in the area, and they were there to show us around. Their book is called "Best Walks of the Central Coast" - Google it and you'll find it! Below are a couple of images from that trip, and from other walks we did with the Bushwalkers during the year.

Travelling with Vic and Jan - Port Macquarie and Western Australia

In late July / early August Karen and I joined friends Vic and Jan for a week of cycling and walking in the Port Macquarie and Laurieton area. Vic and Jan had been at Newnes with us as well, and they would join us for our big trip to WA in late September, October, and early November. Jan moved from Nowra to Port Macquarie a year or so ago, and shared her town-house with us while we were in the area. We have done many trips with them over the years, including our cycling trips in New Zealand - see previous newsletters.

Karen had the sniffles when we left for WA, and gave it to me during the first week we were away. Vic and Jan also picked it up as well. When Karen started suffering a bit of dizziness after heading north of Kalgoorlie - and was put on a drip in a nursing station in Cue - Vic and I both did RAT tests for Covid to see whether our "colds" were actually Covid - and we tested positive. Karen was also tested, but she was negative by then! We are still not sure what caused the dizziness, but Karen has a very strong suspicion that it was caused by the water we were drinking once we had reached the outback.

We basically got to WA as quickly as we could, then did a big anti-clockwise loop from Norseman, through Coolgardie, Lake Ballard, Leonora, Sandstone, Cue, Meekatharra, Newman, Mt Meharry, Tom Price, Karijini National Park, Millstream-Chichester NP, Exmouth, Carnarvon, Kennedy Range NP, Mt Augustus, Murchison Settlement, Green Head, Goomalling, Wave Rock and Esperance before completing the loop at Norseman. While Vic and Jan then headed for home, Karen and I stopped off at the Eyre Bird Observatory south of Cocklebiddy for a couple of nights, before four consecutive days of 700 odd kilometres got us home.

While the east coast was still experiencing its year of rain, there was a period of four weeks in Western Australia where we didn't even see a cloud!

Every day was a highlight in WA, but if I had to choose one highlight it would have to be Karijini National Park - awesome!

Other Stuff

This "Other Stuff" paragraph is pretty much the same as the "Other Stuff" paragraphs from the past couple of years.

I'm still golfing once a week, and my handicap is still in single figures (around 8 at the moment). 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 Winter Swimming Club at Huskisson.

I am still involved with the Bay and Basin Camera Club, and have thankfully retired from the Secretary position, but webmaster stuff still keeps me busy.

Karen is still the treasurer of BirdLife Shoalhaven, and I am still the webmaster. We still feed our resident magpie pair - Ricky and Lucy. We were gone for most of the Spring in WA, and our magpies have only come in for a visit once each since we returned in mid November. Lucy only came in on 23rd December, so it had been nearly 3 months since we had seen her!

The automatic 2.4 litre turbo-diesel Mitsubishi Pajero Sport we bought at the end of 2019 did a lot more kilometres this year than the first two years of its life. We doubled our total number of kilometres by doing 34,000 kilometres this year - 14,000 of them for the trip to WA!

Health

You can skip the next couple of paragraphs if you like! Late last year my annual bowel test came back positive, so I was booked in for a colonoscopy. Standard checks were done on my heart to see if I could take the anaesthetic safely, and those tests showed some anomalies. I then had an EKG, a stress test on a treadmill, and a 24 hour Holter Monitor which showed that I have some extra ectopic beats - a type of arrhythmia that is usually harmless and doesn't necessarily mean that I have an underlying health condition. However, the Holter Monitor counted a LOT of extra beats - about 15 per minute - so further tests were called for, along with bookings with a heart specialist in Nowra (my heart mechanic), followed by another one with a heart specialist in Sydney (my heart auto-electrician), and a CT scan and an MRI. The WA trip stopped further tests, but these will start up again in the new year.

Anyhow, I was deemed unlikely to die on the table during the colonoscopy, so that went ahead, with three pre-cancerous polyps removed and no signs of any cancer! I'm also getting lots of solar keratoses frozen off, and quite a few basal-cell and squamous-cell carcinomas cut out or burnt off, but so far the dreaded melanoma hasn't reared its ugly head!

So apart from cancer concerns and a heart condition, I'm the picture of health!

Plans for 2023

We have booked a Kimberley cruise in Western Australia in 2023 - but don't have a lot of other plans - although I have just confirmed doing an 8 day full pack hike (without Karen) in the wilds of Tasmania west of Lake Pedder in March. Karen has been researching a cycling tour of the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia, but is having difficulty finding a suitable time for all the people who might like to come along (including me).

As always, we hope everyone has a great Xmas and New Year, and a wonderful 2023!

Cheers,

Brett and Karen

P.S. 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, 2019, 2020 and 2021.