Jane's Birthday Lunch

Now we come to our main reason for going to Australia, to celebrate Jane's 60th birthday. When Bill started talking about this, her response was that she'd be happier to just ignore it, but he wasn't having that.

Once it was established that we would be coming over, I started worrying that Jane would end up doing something very frugal and involving a lot of labour. I couldn't think of much worse than loading down the birthday celebrant with cooking and cleaning, but she came up with a fabulous idea: she booked a buffet lunch for 40 at a very nice restaurant, Echo on the Marina. I'd assumed we would all pay our own way, but no, she made Chris buy everyone's lunch. Well done, her!

We had a choice of chicken or fish and I ended up having the fish, barramundi, to be more specific. I can recommend it. I can also attest to having witnessed Bill eat roasted olives, he who does not eat olives. Nor, actually, does he eat avocado or 'squidgy food' like mussels, but he did when they were served to him on this trip -- proving once again that he really is a grown up, in spite of the usual impression. Also in spite of the fact that he referred to said olives as [kanga-] "roo poos".

It was a lovely day, perfect weather, in fact. Jane gave a little speech thanking everyone for coming.


There were lots of family group photos taken.


I went around snapping over 200 pictures (it's been really tough choosing which ones to share here).

We decided we should buy the lovely navy blue boat on offer in the marina beside our tables. Everyone got to catch up with people they don't see often enough. The only children there, appropriately, were Jane's two grandchildren. She figured there were enough potential minders present that they couldn't run too wild and she was right.


Bill and I sat with the Canberra contingent, Michael and Caroline, whom we had met on our trip to Prague last year; and with Gwenda and Ray (who was in London in the 1970's along with Chris and Bruce). We'd heard about Gwenda as she, Jane and Jenni had spent a week in a place called Palumpa, teaching the Aboriginal women there how to sew, which sounded really exciting. They were all very good company. We had a discussion about digital cameras and Michael was explaining Australian politics to me, but I must admit it was largely over my head. I'm still trying to figure out Europe!

Eventually the party dispersed and a handful of people came back to the house with us where Jane opened her birthday gifts. She got loads of lovely things including a patchwork book I covet and a beautiful green scarf that perfectly complemented her already gorgeous outfit.

I think Jane had a pretty good birthday celebration -- I know I did!