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I think it should be a point of unshakeable policy in this family that every holiday should include a day of doing absolutely nothing about once a week. Like that "Sabbath" thing that one of those obscure bronze-age religious sects came up with. We spent today doing no touristy stuff at all, and we're all feeling much saner as a consequence. The Beloved went off and op-shopped in the morning, which is her idea of perfect me-time, then I went and chatted with baronsnorri over ricotta pancakes (me) and curry (him) at lunch, and then we did some light tidying and packing and generally just veg'd. Tonight we pigged out on excellent Indian food from Zaika on Sandy Bay Road, and enjoyed the cool change. It's been a lovely day.

Meanwhile, I'm getting ready for the wrench. Tomorrow we drive back to Devonport and catch the ferry. On Sunday, I fly back home from Melbourne. Then I have a week of work while the Beloved swans about meeting people and trying not to strangle our babies. Consolations: I can download the latest Doctor Who and also recent Heroes episodes, and catch up on my comics, and also have the rare experience of tidying the house and not needing to tidy it again five minutes later. But I'll have no cuddles from my babies or my Beloved, so it's a net loss really. But I'm glad thelancrewitch has the confidence to go off like this; it's good for her and our monkeys. And it won't be long, really...

Right, enough singing about stuff that only a few people know the full story of (though not nearly as many as think they do, it is now apparent). Back to stories of travel, in a state containing no incompetence, dishonesty or smug, self-serving ignorance masquerading as diplomacy, other than in Parliament, where it belongs.

We were planning to head off to Port Arthur to steep our tired brains in a little history, but we balked at the thought of four hours of travel plus a lot of walking and munchkin-wrangling. The Beloved decided to stay home and fall in a heap, and I planned a more accessible day in Richmond, with a zoo, a maze and possibly a miniature village. The heap-fallen Beloved liked our plans so much that she decided to come along, so off we went.

The weather was warm, which, for the benefit of any Australians spontaneously combusting on the North Island, is Hobartian slang for nearly 30° with a pleasant breeze and no obvious humidity. Bliss, in other words. We wore our hats and wandered about looking at alpacas and emus and some very sleep Tasmanian devils. The Boy covered himself in ice cream and we generally had a lovely day.

Tonight involved a bit more melting down on the part of, well, everyone -- but we're getting better at dealing with that, and tomorrow's schedule heap-falling day will help a lot. I'm off to have lunch with baronsnorri, and then I was hoping to go along to Ynys Fawr's regular Friday get-together, but it seems the calendar is broken and I just now notice that it was on last Friday, not every Friday, so I guess I'll give it a miss! D'oh!

Off to Devonport and the Ferry on Saturday, then I catch a plane back to Canberra in time for a promised cool change, if the Bureau is to be trusted. The rest of the clan are off to meet tangent_woman and assorted other friends, and will be home in time for Brunch next Sunday.

Inspired by a comment by my wife, that gets right to the heart of what's really wrong with the SCA. This is an original tune, so if you want to hear it, I'll have to sing it at you.

We Choose Our Kings

We live our lives in a secular democracy
Where freedom and equality
Are orders of the day.
But on weekends we plump for aristocracy,
A dreaming meritocracy
We call the SCA.

We grant acclaim for dedicated service:
You pull your weight for long enough
You get an AoA.
And if you work, the equal of a thesis,
An A&S award is how
We tell you you're OK.
Or if you shine at following instruction,
You can be local officer
And work your life away.

But we choose our Kings by their ability
To take repeated head blows
And not fall down.

We play this Game with absolute sincerity.
The sombrest sobriety
Accompanies our fun.
And when we find a renaissance celebrity
Of talent and integrity
We tell him he's the one.
We load him down with policy, propriety,
And all the stuff Society
Requires to be run.

But we choose our Kings by their ability
To take repeated head blows
And not fall down.

You take a chance, entrusting your activity
To any personality
Who hasn't passed the grade.
And that is why we assess their productivity,
And vet them well before any
Appointment can be made.
Important tasks, like sticking on a bandage
Or booking halls for tutelage,
Are measured out and weighed.

But we choose our Kings by their ability
To take repeated head blows
And not fall down.

Yes we choose our Kings by their ability
To take repeated head blows
And not fall down.

Breakfast At Dunning/Kruger's
To the tune of Breakfast At Tiffany's by Big Blue Something

You'll say we've been through the procedure,
Proceeding to departure:
It's high time we should part.
You'll give your earnest explanations
Regarding expectations --
Still somehow you don't seem sad.

An awful lot of pieces...
I guess they'll go on.
So what now? The sun is sweetly dying,
Oh but somewhere else it's rising,
There's so much more to be done.

I drove in to Hobart first thing this morning, to show my driver's license at the car hire place so the nice lass wouldn't get into trouble for not sighting it before hiring me a car. I also picked up the Beloved's phone, which had an LCD-related incident when we were in Melbourne. It's been raining on and off all day, so it was a good test of the typical Hobart/Huonville commute, and I have to say it's not nearly as nasty as I'd been led to believe. The Huon Highway, which our sadistic GPS doesn't believe in, makes it much easier: I certainly wouldn't want to do the Huon Road route in less than perfect conditions.

We went off to the Tahune Airwalk, but the rain would have made that unpleasant so we backtracked and checked out the Hastings Caves instead. I stayed aboveground with the Boy Wonder while the ovary-equipped members of our party descended slimy staircases by torchlight and went oooh at stalactites and stalagmites and other such denizens of the deep. Then we did a bit more driving around, and then came back to our motel room and made dinner, because all this cafe living is all well and good but I didn't marry the best cook I've ever met for nothing, you know!

We heard from the mechanic. New radiator, flushing the engine, replacing the various compounds (eye of newt, chunky custard with extra yak fat, etc) comes to a little under six hundred kangaroubles, which is tolerable. And it will all be ready tomorrow arvo, so our plans are not significantly affected and we've gained a valuable insight into the usefulness of four wheel drive vehicles, which will serve us well when or if we move here. I see one of those little Subaru 4WDs in our future, I think.

I'm batting around ideas for how to be self employed. I can resurrect Captain's Log and the idea I had for a web page maintenance service for little companies that could benefit from an internet presence. Not sure if we could live off any such income though, and there would be a lot of programming up front before it started being valuable. Not time to give up the job search yet, I think.

It's pleasantly chilly. I was cold last night, but I didn't bother adding an extra blanket because I wanted to remember the feeling for when I get back to the continent. I hear it's ranging between disgusting and repugnant up there. Not looking forward to finding out.

People here are evangelists. They all love spruiking Tasmania. Everywhere we go there's someone trying to convince us to move here. The Beloved believes this is so they can increase their property values; I suspect it's because they want to try to outnumber the rednecks but they can't get there by breeding because it takes too long.

Drivers are very polite. They wave if you let them into your lane. People standing by the side of the road wave too. Maybe we're just frequenting places that don't see many visitors? I don't know.

There are cyclists everywhere, but that may be because of some kind of fundraising thing that was happening this weekend. They ride up hills that I'd think twice about driving up.

Four wheel drives are useful beasts on the aforementioned hills. I'm glad our temporary hire car is a 4WD, even if that automatically makes us wankers.

The food is astonishing. We went to the Contented Bear cafe tonight and I had lamb shanks cooked by the former head chef of the Carrington. It was incredible. And then I had dessert that was even better. And all the food at all the cafes has been amazing, with the solitary exception of the greasy scrambled eggs at a cafe in Hobart a couple of mornings ago. It's funny: Melbourne produces nothing of any value but has foodie cred out the wazoo; Queensland is a food basket but all the restaurants are average-going-on-meh (though the quantities are good); I assumed the places that produce food were the ones that didn't know how to cook it. Tasmania wrecks that theory.

They all pronounce "Devonshire tea" as "Devon Shire tea" here. That's weird.

We went to the Huon Show yesterday. All the little redneck kiddies had elaborate plastic guns. There was some kind of showbag or something. Why???

This part of the world is all rednecks and hippies. The rednecks are gun nuts; the hippies are obsessed with naturopathy and aromatherapy and other such clueless woo. I still prefer the hippies: homeopathy, unlike guns, can only kill you if you were already sick...

The GPS that we borrowed from friends in Launceston was clearly programmed to make Huonville look bad, by deliberately navigating me by the twisty-turny Huon Road, instead of the straight and wide Huon Highway. Luckily we remembered in time today, and avoided believing it.

We want to live here. But I'd need a job. I've worked for myself before, and I'm a crap boss. So where do I get a job? It's a quandary.

The day improved dramatically once we had a car. We've found a mechanic who we can drop the Mazda off with, and who thinks it should be all fixed by Tuesday arvo. We went to the Huon Show, which the BatPup and the Boy Wonder loved without reservation. I think it will stand as the highlight of their entire holiday, in fact. Then we drove around Huon and checked out stuff. A much more relaxed day and consequently less argumentative all round. I suspect our dastardly EDoD is more of an empath than I give her credit for (I give her credit for being an autistic paranoid sociopath with a hair fetish, so she'd have to be, really) because she always picks up our stress levels and bounces them back.

Tomorrow it's off to Port Huon. We love this place! If only there were such a thing as a job market...

My personal communicator woke me at 6 this morning, and I gathered up the world-wide navigation speech-synthesiser and portable super-computer and drove our long-range transporter down the Hill Of Doom, whereupon I got a lift with the co-owner of the retreat into Hobart. Consulting my network-linked navigation system I found a car rental place. It was only when I went to sign up that I found I'd left my license behind! Fortunately, I spoke instantaneously at great distance to my Beloved, who was able to send a perfect facsimile directly to the office. While I waited, I sat in a cafe and ate food pills and Romulan ale until they called to let me know everything was in order, during which time I also published my experience to a world-wide network-linked audience.

The car, regrettably, does not fly. But you can't have everything.

Here I sit, in the reception area of Huon Bush Retreat. We're all moved in to our cabin (we forewent the opportunity to camp yet again in our tent, because meh) and all is well... except that our car appears to have celebrated the trip to the top of the hill by dying. The radiator exploded. The RAC guy said we won't get anyone to look at it before Monday, and it may take a couple of days to find a replacement radiator. Way to enforce a getting-away-from-it-all ethos, Chaos Gods!

So if we have any readers in the area of Huonville who want to pop up to the Huon Bush Retreats with a care package of a take-away Chinese meal for five + yourselves, we'll welcome you and do our best to entertain you (and pay you for your trouble). Meanwhile, it looks like I'm about to make a taxi company and a hire car firm very happy...

We avoided much of the navigation stress today by the deceptively simple trick of giving up on our plans. Instead of aiming to be at X at 09:00 and at Y at 09:45, we just packed our stuff (while it rained! Canberra people may need to look that up on Wikipedia) and headed off to Hobart. There were assorted random blow-ups, including a delightful attack of the bullying bullshit from the EDoD just when we needed her and the Boy to shut the frak up for some complex city-traffic farnarkling, but that was a minor hiccup in an otherwise pleasant day.

We're now camped out in the living room of thelancrewitch's friends L. and O. and their daughters X.¹ and A. X. and the BatPup got on like a house on fire² and were dressing up as ballerinas and being quite lovely. A. latched on to the EDoD and followed her around happily. The Boy Wonder just tagged along and occasionally climbed furniture, ate wax fruit and generally did Boy Wonder things. Once they got a bit rowdy, we stuck them in the bath then the Beloved did her energy (ie meditation) trick and got them to calm down, and then I told the BatPup a story and they went cheerfully off to bed.

I've been telling the BatPup a complicated multi-part epic at the moment. See, she has several story-worlds, in approximate order of creation:

• the Three [BatPup]s, a story of an alternate-universe family like ours but with triplets, all called the same name as the BatPup; their Daddy is a bit of a dabbler in weird technology, so they have a space-time rift that wanders about the farm they now live on, and three friends (also triplets) who are alien shape-shifters;
• the Household Gods, a story of a little girl named Chloe who can talk to the various Pratchettian Small Gods who do things like create earworms and blow lightbulbs;
• the Planetary Society, kind of a Famous Five version of Ellis's Snow, Wagner and Drummer, which is still finding its feet as a story and hasn't really gelled yet, but so far there's also a were-dragon named Miriam and a very grumpy computer named Orac (yes, that Orac);
• Lilliam and the Zoo, a tale of a little girl whose parents own a zoo that contains, hidden among the normal animals, a lot of mythical and magical monsters, like a family of TV-obsessed sasquatches and a terribly under-confident boogyman; and
• Flea, a little girl who lives in a caravan park with her mother and has just discovered that she can talk to animals.

They're all Magical Realism stories, because that's the formula she seems to like -- the Three [BatPup]s started out just mundane, but the storytelling engine just worked naturally in the direction of universe-hopping space ships and suchlike.  So anyhow, I was telling her a Flea story, and the two pairs of triplets just kind of showed up, and then they went to a zoo and met Lilliam, and I think tomorrow night they're going to meet Chloe as well.  I can't see the Planetary team mixing in very significantly, though they may get a cameo just for laughs.  It's Crisis On Infinite BatPups around here!

The Planetary stories are very popular, as it turns out, but I'm having trouble getting a handle on them, which is why I've been throwing more elements in to see what sticks.  It's a tricky business, designing a storytelling engine.  Having them all in a shared world with a lot of unspoken back-story also helps, because it means I know why those shape-shifters can do what they do, and I also have some idea why Flea and her mother live alone in a caravan park.  It may or may not come out in the stories, but just having the underlying knowledge makes it easier to tell stories.

Anyhow: off to Huonville tomorrow, then back to Hobart later.  Plenty of time to iron the bugs out of a few storytelling engines and set them up for the long run.  I rather enjoy this particular parental task, and I'm sure the Boy Wonder will like it too, once he's old enough.


¹ And don't I feel silly abbreviating that, since there's really only one name it could be unless you're a Lucy Lawless fan.
² Apologies for that metaphor to anyone living on the Australian mainland at the moment.

The grubby-but-adequate caravan park turned out to be less adequate once the reality of camping a hundred metres from a busy highway became clear to us. I have no idea why the fuck there need to be that many trucks in all of Tasmania, let alone on one piddly little highway. So we gave up and went off to find a motel; the one we found is clean, comfortable and quiet, so we are well pleased. Granted the WiFiZone internet is $8 for two hours or 100Mb, but you take what you can get.

We went and saw the platypuses and the seahorses, as advised by assorted commenters. The highlight was definitely the echidnas, by which the Boy Wonder was mesmerised. Especially their long licky tongues. We also had yet another gorgeous cafe lunch, and spent most of the day being whinged at by a Boy, a BatPup and an EDoD as we drove from place to place. This Family Does Not Travel Well. We need to take some time out to fix the bugs in our plans so we can fix that: perhaps we would benefit from some stricter enforcement of mealtimes, particularly in the area of forcing the Boy to at least eat SOMETHING that isn't fruit.

We had dinner with friends of the Beloved, who are still trying to convince us to live here. Apart from the Dickensian architecture and the complete lack of jobs, it's almost tempting. Wait until we've checked out Hobart first though.

Almost forgot: two years ago today, our living room contained a wading pool full of water, a nessbrain and incidentally also a Boy Wonder. Second birthdays being the last ones that aren't a big deal for the guest of honour, we didn't make a huge fuss, but after using up all our summer clothes in the recent heat, we were very glad of the cute little t-shirt and shorts from his Grand Moogi. I even got some photos before he commenced filthifying them, but they'll have to wait for a net cafe.

I'm cold!

WOOOHOOOOO!!!

Oh yeah; start at the beginning. Right.

The dinghy docked in Davenport before we woke up. By the time the pleasant little voice interrupted our air-conditioned slumber, it was already parked happily in its place, and we were ready to... wait. For about two hours, half of that in a car queue waiting for quarantine inspection. In the fullness of (yawn) time, we made it out and had a suitable breakfast, before heading off to Launceston and the slightly grubby caravan park.

With our palatial Tent Mahal erected, we had a relaxed day. We went to the Gorge, where the Beloved, the BatPup and the EDoD took a ride on the chairlift while their male relatives stayed sanely on terra firma. Then we went and had a "light lunch" at the "cafe", which is apparently Launcestonian slang for a wallopping huge meal at a gorgeous top-class restaurant, after which we could only waddle.

This evening we had a BBQ (again!) with thelancrewitch's local friends, who apparently think we should move here immediately and are starting a bidding war with her Hobartian friends who think the same regarding their town. It's certainly tempting; apart from an apparent love affair a century ago with the ugliest red-brick architecture you've ever gouged your eyeballs out rather than gaze upon, it's certainly a lovely place, and even when we get completely lost it's much less stressful to navigate. (Navigation stress is the theme of this holiday so far; we gave in yesterday and bought a map, so it should get better now.) But there remains the small matter of needing a job to keep myself supplied with food, comics and wonglepongs, so it remains a pipe dream at this stage.

Anyhow, that gets us to now. The weather has been mild all day, although warm enough that there were a lot of swimmers and sunbathers at the Gorge, and now it's deliciously cool. I like it! Here's hoping it stays that way, so we can really enjoy the transition back to Canberra's filthy heat when we get home...

I am sitting on a large throbbing cast iron dinghy, heading south. The fact that it's possible to write this blog entry and even post it via wireless intarwobs is quite boggling, but that's what you get for living in the future.

Navigating in Melbourne was like living in the future, too – 1984 perhaps, or Brazil, or one of the earlier Mad Max movies. A large part of the problem was Nokia's excremental Maps program, which should be grounds for the summary executation by genital nailgunning of every person involved in its design and implementation and all of their immediate family as well. Eventually I downloaded Google Maps, and was greatly pleased. This didn't immediately make navigation a joy, but it improved it to the point where we only wanted to die in a nuclear explosion rather than take every denizen of Melbourne with us.

We went to ScienceWorks for most of the day, in between interminable navigating, and had a lovely time in the air conditioning, watching our munchkins playing. Then we queued for ages and drove onto the abovementioned dinghy, and just like that we were on our way to another countryTasmania. Woot!

Twenty minutes left to post an entry! Where did the time go?

Hmmm, actually I know where it went: in wrangling a stupidly overtired BatPup:

She would not, could not go to bed.
She would not, could not lay her head.
She will not lie down on a mat.
She will not lie down near a cat.
She will not doze off near the wall.
She will not doze off here at all.
She does not want to sleep tonight...
She may be dead before first light.

But let's take it backwards. The Beloved is presently soothing her and singing her to sleep, having now also done the same for the Boy Wonder on our airbed in mr_bassman and mrsbrown's back room. I took the EDoD out for a walk down to the local Coles to get some stuff, which had the benefit of soothing her too.

We had some assorted friends over for a BBQ and general natter, so I have now finally properly met catsidhe and mimdancer. In between wrangling small people I got to chat a bit with bar_barra and actrealdon and meet his and pezzae's very tiny Small Person, who is gorgeous. mr_bassman, who is a lovely man despite his cruelty to his own toes (don't ask), took me to Tullamarine to pick up the EDoD from her flight; it turns out she missed out on Pony Club due to a fractious horse, so she could have come with us after all... but I think we're glad she didn't because it would have been hellish with the weather we're having.

We got to the home of mr_bassman et al (I'm getting REALLY tired of writing out all those angle brackets by now) around 4pm, having left Albury in plenty of time to get there an hour earlier; the delay was mainly due to the BatPup and the Boy Wonder being grumpy and requiring an awful lot of stops. I managed to get enough sleep, despite being bloody angry at the news I received last night, which those who know me can read between the lines enough to calculate.

And on that topic, it was pointed out to me that blaming the Royalty for the actions of the Peers is not always appropriate. I can accept that. However, there are times when merely holding one's nose and deciding to treat it all a learning experiences is not the best option. This, I'm quite sure, is one of those times. Wherever the buck really stops, nobody has impressed me. A stupid decision was made and was allowed to be realised. That's not good. Take this as my "time-out" warning; beyond continuing in my mostly on-line obligations, I will have nothing further to do with the SCA for the foreseeable future, at least until a few more people will admit to what I already know regarding certain people and their fitness for office.

We've arrived at Aunty Debbie and Uncle Greg's place in Albury. The trip down was relatively painless, apart from the glare off the roads that made it bloody painful. Must get wrap-around sunglasses! The Boy Wonder slept for about half the trip, but the BatPup stayed awake and complained about being bored (silly monkey).

We've introduced the monkeys to their Graunts and Gruncles (Great Aunts and Great Uncles), plus some Grousins (ie first cousins once removed) and one Scousin (second cousin). Having a pleasant time, especially now that the monkeys are all asleep. It's bloody hot of course, because Albury is a very silly place. Looking forward to Tassie weather even more now.


Meanwhile, I've just heard the news from the SCA: the Kingdom of Lochac has officially jumped the shark. The peerage system, specifically the Order of the Pelican, no longer has any credibility, and anyone here who tries to stand up for them will be laughed at. Bitterly. And then I'll spit in their faces. The best I can hope is that they'll never offer me a peerage, because a punch in the face often offends...

Packing nearly done. I've printed off plenty of Car Bingo games to play with the BatPup, and the new bus/Carrier/TARDIS/Mildred/Myrtle/Millicent/Murgatroyd is groaning under the weight. I will probably get a chance to blog later, but just in case, there's this.

tangent_woman had a discussion about PMS and how some men use its mere possibility as an excuse to belittle women and ignore their legitimate concerns. I commented that, in many cases, men seem to react with surprise to a woman's emotionally-charged complaint because they're oblivious to the less emotional, more subtle complaints that preceded it. You can hint a dozen times that they should wash up before you go off the handle, but from their point of view the going-off came out of the blue with absolutely no warning.

tangent_woman made the point that one manifestation of male privilege may well be that men have the option to be ignorant of stuff that only affect women, whereas women don't have the matching option.

It's a bloody good point! It also extends to other forms of privilege.

For example, I don't know if most of the websites I design work really well in screen readers for the blind. Even when I was working for AGIMO, a quasi (or queasy) government organisation (run by clueless potplants, especially the useless incompetent coward who was my boss... but I digress) that had a strong emphasis on accessibility, it wasn't until I ran my designs past some actual experts that I found out just how many mistakes I'd made that would have made the sites all but unusable. I'm not blind or visually impaired, so I have the privilege of being ignorant about accessibility. In my defence, I did try to get it right, and over a few iterations I did better than every other worthless bastard in that place and most of the rest of the government, but I still had the advantage of sighted-person privilege to save me from needing to learn.

Similarly, I could go my entire life not understanding why some women get so hysterical (pun intended) every 28 days, more or less. Being male, I have the ability to remain ignorant. Now, as it happens, I've experienced hypoglycaemic moodswings myself, and discovered first-hand that getting all emotional is not, in fact, a sign of mental infirmity. (Gosh! Stone the crows!) It's not the same thing, but it's miles away from the default male assumption of female frailty. But without that more-or-less coincidental burst of enforced empathy, I could be ignorant forever, and not even know it.

There's more. I know very little of the truth about those brave refugees fleeing oppression and striving for a better life for their families queue-jumping people-smuggled terrorist so-called asylum seekers taking advantage of our nation's wealth... because I don't have to. I don't need to form an opinion about whether they're here for good reasons or ill. I can go ahead and vote for our boring and disappointing PM in the next election without stopping to consider the relative merits of his alleged policy vs the opposition's nearly-but-not-quite-identical policy. I don't need to know or care, and with so much else to do, I can generally avoid it. It might be that one or other party out there has a sane, compassionate and reasonable policy on "illegal" immigration, but I haven't really looked into it. I can afford to be ignorant, because I was born here and I'm white and I speak excellent English and I have a house to live in. White middle-class resident privilege = a license to remain ignorant.

It's a disturbing thought. How much privilege am I relying on without know it, simply because I don't know it? And along with that, how much should I know? Would a fuller appreciation of Tampa vs Oceanic Viking make me reconsider my vote? Should it? Is it as important as the other matters that strike closer to home? Should it be?

We all remain ignorantly privileged, I think, because the alternative is paralysis. Every action I perform, every thought I think, is informed by privilege: I walk because I'm not quadruplegic, I breathe easily because I'm not in a South American prison, I think clearly because I'm not clinically depressed. If I tried to stop and "consider those less fortunate", I'd never start again.

Which is not to say I can keep glorying in my ignorance. I'm not a member of terribly many minorities (odd that "female", at 50.1% of human population, still shows up as a minority in most ways that count, but then so does "poor", at 99.8%) but every time I try to understand someone, I improve my odds.

A couple thousand more steps, and I may get good enough.

From General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord:


I prescribe the reading and memorising of this quote to anyone who may be called upon to appoint heralds, bardic guild coordinators, website administrators, OziBoD members, etc. Remember: just because someone is the only volunteer for a job doesn't make him qualified to do it!

We're driving down to Melbourne this weekend and staying overnight on Sunday with mrsbrown and mr_bassman (aka armourer) in Richmond. The Elder Daughter of DOOOOM, who has other obligations on that weekend, will be meeting us courtesy of her Nanny's Frequent Flyer points: she gets into Tullamarine at twenty past six on Sunday. We're planning to have a BBQ to catch up with (and in some cases meet) old friends. All of this means some juggling of time, but I think the following plan makes sense:

Come along to the barbie at 33 Smith Street, Richmond from about five-ish (time TBC with our hosts). BYO everything for a BBQ. I'll have to pop out at six-ish to get the EDoD, but I'm sure you can party on without me; gods willing and the creek don't rise I'll be back within the hour, but don't bet the farm on it.