A home day - 5 loads of washing done and a trip to Miranda Fair for a birthday present for Eddie.
Day 31 - Sat 27th July 2019 - Port Kembla Steelworks
We had organised a tour of the Port Kembla Steelworks for today. We got on the road early and headed down to Wollongong where we met up with Mel and her family.
We all had to get dressed up in full safety gear. Coat, goggles, hard hat, gloves and earbuds
We had a driving tour around the plant - 7 hectares - it sure is large. We saw a tanker offloading iron ore and loads of coal and scrap metal.
Then we got to go inside and see them mixing the scrap metal with the molten steel. Lots of heat and flames and explosions - was very impressive, but no cameras allowed unfortunately. We had to stand behind 2" think safety glass for most of it so couldn't see a lot, but once it had settled down somewhat we got to go out and see it in person which was very cool.
We then got to see them pouring the molten steel into slabs which were then cut to length with huge acetylene torches. In the next building we saw them rolling the slabs into sheet and then coiling the sheets. Lots of machinery, heat and noise.
Mel and family then headed up the mountains to celebrate Eddies birthday with his other Grandma and we went down to the German club for a great meal of sausage, pork, ham, sausage, sausage, sauerkraut, cabbage and more sausage... yum.
We managed to get a night time train run in after dinner which was fun.
Day 33 - Sun 28th July 2019 - Eddies Birthday
Had a relaxing morning at home, played a whole lot of trains. After lunch dad went for a nap and Mum and I went to sit outside in the sunshine. After sitting in silence for a while - its really quite hard to talk to Mum these days with her dementia, I grabbed an old photo album and we started looking through it together. That was fun, except Mum couldn't even recognise herself in the photos - kept saying it couldn't be her as she had never had hair that colour (dark brown, but at least she could recognise her Mum.
At about 2.30 we headed over to Mels to celebrate Eddies Birthday. Unfortunately it did not end well with Dad storming out early.
The rest of us had dinner and the kids had a good time playing computer games together then Mel drove us back to Loftus.
Day 34 - Mon 29th July 2019 - Audley
We decided since the forecast was for rain for tomorrow that we should try and get in one last activity today and we decided to head down to Audley for a picnic. When we got down there we decided to hire an Aquatrike and spent and hour switching off pedaling. It was a lot of fun, but very hard on the legs.
We went for a short Bushwalk.
Then tried to find a place to have our BBQ for lunch. The first BBQ didn't work so we ended up back near the boat shed. We cooked our lunch and obviously the call went out among the birds because by halfway through our meal we were surrounded by them.
Med hens, ducks, a couple of Kookaburras and a whole flock of cockatoos. One of the Kookaburras tried for the extra sausage, but was fended off by a vigilant Grandpa.
Once we finished eating though people (otherwise known as Grandma and Josh) kept dropping little bits of food and then the cockies came in force.
They certainly weren't shy - one guy even tried to make off the rest of the bread still in the bag.
We packed up and headed home and the kids and Dad played trains whilst Mum and I went grocery shopping. You really have to watch Mum these days. I caught her putting something up her shirt at one stage - she made a joke about it but.....There were a lot of "You wont let me have anything good" type quotes - it was like shopping with a toddler.
Got home to find another flock of cockatoos in the back yard - did they follow us home?
I made lasagne for dinner then left the kids with Grandma and Grandpa and went up to Engadine Pub to catch up with some of my friends. was a fun night out.
Day 35 - Tue 30th July 2019
One final day at home.
Day 36 - Wed 31th July 2019
Time to head home. Our plane left at about 12:30 so headed for the airport about 9am. Met up with Mel for one final goodbye. Was really hard to say goodbye to everyone as usual but we finally had to. Through security and some final shopping for souveniers then finally onto the plane.
A fairly uneventful flight. Touched down in Dallas on time and had a couple of hours to kill before our flight to Boston where Dad was waiting for us.
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