Once we’d unpacked and caught up on a little sleep, the next three months flew by filled with some absolutely delightful catch ups with family and friends, our weekly volunteering at Foodbank packing food hampers and also helping out at a local nursery that grows and sells indigenous plants, and, as always, we had to tend to the essential body maintenance stuff – medical, dental, optical, vaccinations, etc. There were also travel plans for 2023 to finalise as well as VISAs to be arranged for our March-April visit to South America. In between those bits and pieces, I made many attempts at sorting my photos and writing up our Arctic travels - not very successfully I might add - other things got in the way.
One special thing that took us winging a little way northwest was a reunion of the Cochran Clan. We Gibsons (my father’s side of the family) are descendants of John and Elizabeth Cochran who arrived in Hobsons Bay on the
Wanata on 17 September 1852. John Cochran was a master weaver from the famous Paisley district but came out to Australia as a shepherd. The family established themselves in the Beaufort area and there have been Cochrans in the region ever since. Descendants of John and Elizabeth, members of the old Highland Scottish Buchanan clan also, who gathered for that happy weekend in Beaufort came from Tassie, Qld, Victoria and NSW. It was a marvelous weekend spent catching up with cousins not seen for many decades and meeting others for the first time. It was an extremely nostalgic time topped off by a piper who entertained us for over an hour with many requests for the
Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond where the Buchanan clan hail from. Family – we’re a crazy jumble but being able to draw the strings together reaching back to two of our ancestors was pretty special.
And talking of family, we spent an exhausting but very satisfying day helping number one son plant 700 grape vines on his property in Heathcote. Next month he is installing his distillery at
Envy Rise. From city slicker to ‘Farmer Brown’ - it has been a happy transition for him and Vanessa.
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| Our gorgeous great grandchildren |
Because we would be away for Christmas, we held our family Christmas gathering in early December and that was a happy, noisy, sprawling affair – just wonderful. It's a bit of a miracle managing to get our higglety pigglety family together in the one spot - only a few couldn't make it.
\What’s that got to do with travel you might ask? Well perhaps not a lot other than it is all part of our journey through life. I promise you more ‘proper’ travel in my next blog. Stay tuned for a bit more excitement as we travel to Antarctica. Read about that at hwheat2023.blogspot.com
