We are going to have the same featured image for this blog each day. That way it’s easy to see if we are in the past or the present.

Backstory: When I met Stephen he had already booked a year of long service leave on part pay and planned a 12 month trip around the world. So, he had to decide whether to keep me and do the trip together, or split up after dating for a few months. Being Stephen he dithered a fair bit, but when the die was cast he suggested that I move in with him and shortened to trip to six months so that he afford to pay for both of us.

We went overseas after knowing each other for less than a year. It was pretty difficult on the relationship front as you can imagine, but it was a wonderful travelling adventure.

August 2nd, 1987 Sunday

This morning we got up early and had crumpets and yogurt. Our chore (this was back in the days when staying in a YHA hostel was fairly cheap and part of deal was helping out around the hostel) was to empty all the bins in the hostel – as a shared task it wasn’t too bad. We caught a bus to the city, then caught a train to the hills to a place called Fern Tree Gully National Park. The train journey took an hour. We had to ask a local person the way to the park and once there we sat down for a while as we had already done a lot of walking.

Then we walked along a steep but beautiful nature trail until our energy ran out. We returned to the city by 4.30 p.m., caught a tram to the hostel, had tea, then rested for a while. Then we had supper and I wrote to Matthew and Stephen wrote to his parents.

It takes a long time to get anywhere because there is always a great deal to work out before you can actually get anywhere. We became very tired today, but should get better as the days pass. Stephen keeps more in touch than me by reading much of the newspapers. I’ve looked at the Arts and Entertainment pages so far. It’s not possible to be bored as there are always little things to do even if you don’t have a house to take care of.

We are coming down to earth a little today – realising that we have to be careful not to try to do too much. And that all the walking we do will be very tiring. There is a large group of young people here tonight and it is particularly noisy.

I don’t want to edit the journal too much and intend to keep grammatical errors and clumsiness – after all, I wrote this by hand without being able to easily correct my mistakes at the time (except with a rubber).

The past week has centred around Stephen singing in a concert with the WASO chorus. He had rehearsals each night, then concerts on Friday and Saturday night. He had comps for the Friday night concert as the choir was not needed for the second half. On Saturday night the choir were told they could sit in the choir stalls for the second half, and many did. On Friday night at the interval I bought myself a ticket for Saturday afternoon. The concert was a 90th anniversary of the WASO celebration of favourites, and was particularly lovely. I wanted to hear it all again.

After the concert we ran into a friend and her date, and had a drink and talk with them. On Saturday afternoon we also ran into friends after the concert and stayed talking with them for about an hour.

We catch buses to and from the concert hall these days, saves the hassle of finding parking (especially if you don’t like paying), and the bus services are reasonably frequent. It was cold in St George’s Tce last night waiting for a bus. We had some warm gear, but not really enough. The weather seems to be changing now, some cooler temperatures, with a heatwave forecast for later this week. At least it’s a bit more interesting.

When the sound was particularly rattly and grumbly on Friday afternoon I took my camera, stood on the garden bed, and took some video. It turned out to be a pile driver that was causing all the sound/vibrations and it reinforced the side of the huge hole on the Albany Highway side. Apparently they have given up doing small repairs in our house as they expect there could be more problems over the next couple of weeks.

We had a swim on Friday morning, with Stephen taking it easy, and me doing more laps than usual, with the idea that my body has probably adapted and can take more strain. I wasn’t particularly tired afterwards, but noticed during the swimming that I was getting pretty warm. I swim in the indoor heated pool, but don’t usually notice warmth.

Today we can relax until about 4.20 p.m. when Matthew arrives.