The lady is wearing her blue dress

Friday /Saturday 14th Nov.

I am in Mount Gambier, which as I said before, is about 900+klm  South-West of home. I arrived here yesterday afternoon after a five and a half  hour drive from Adelaide,

where I stayed overnight. My accommodaying is quite pleasant and spacious so I  am comfortable enough. In the morning I will attend to Presbytery and in the early afternoon, head back to Adelaide. I’ll stay there overnight again and head home on Sunday morning. I will have been away for four days and although John has come over each night to take Benji our walking, I have to say that I miss my dog. Goodness I’ve hardly had him five weeks and I miss being away from him already.  Herself tells me that he gets excited when John comes to take him out but most of the time  he jumps up on my bed and stays there for much of the day.

I did get to see the Blue Lake in Mount Gambier and although it was quite blue, it needs the sun to bring out the full colour and we didn’t have much sun today. For most of the year it’s just a normal water colour but from mid-November it starts to change due to

some chemical reaction. It was a volcano. There were two other smaller lakes beside this and although there are viewing platforms for them, they have mostly dried up.  By the time I come back here – probably in May – the colour will have gone. We are not due back here again until May of 2016.

Adelaide 14th/15th

The meeting finished just before noon and I did not stay for lunch but headed back to Adelaide, arriving here  shortly after 5pm. stopping only briefly at Keith for fuel. The freeway was fairly quiet, so it was a good run through to Bolivar. I called home to let herself know where I was then had a fairly good sleep. I packed up and was on the Main Highway to Port Wakefield at 5:35 and with only one stop for fuel and food I was managed to catch  the after service coffee at the church before going home with herself to get attacked by an excited dog. I think it’s fair to say he was glad to see me. It was only four days for me, but that’s a long time for a dog.

The trip, however, was great and I  enjoyed passing the wineries and vinyards and although all the major  wine producers are there, there is a fair number of smaller boutique Wineries and the next time I come through here I  am going to make a point of stopping at some of the smaller wineries and perhaps doing a bit of a stock up  :o)

Home 16th. Nov.

In the meantime my computer is playing up something chronic. I cannot get into my mail server and I don’t know how much I have lost. I cannot get into other programs so

although I need to finish off the  Magazine, I cannot because I can’t get into MS Publisher — so, we are doing the best we can until Wednesday when John will come over and help me set up the new computer. I’ve just about had it with this one- it’s been an on-going battle for months now and although this is not the first time I have lost mail, this time it is serious and I cannot even get into the mail server.  and it’s only my good nature (??) that stops it from having an up-close and personal with a sledge hammer. However, it’s not a total loss and after we set up the new computer I will format this one and see what we can do with it. Use it as a spare with Windows 10. At the moment I seem to have no major concerns with the Internet and internet programs, but everything else is gone haywire. At the moment I still have no mail system but we are working on that. Part of the concern is the amount of stuff I have on Outlook Express – which is no longer available.  We are having problems setting up the Windows Mail system, but as I said, we are working on that.