The time right now in Sydney is:
If you want this clock on your page click on it!
and I live near Penrith NSW, which is situated
at the foot of the beautiful Blue Mountains,
about an hour's drive west of Sydney.
Penrith will be hosting the rowing and canoeing events
at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
Click here to take a look at the venue - the Sydney Rowing Centre.
Some of my interests are:
a short distance from the beach, which was one of my favourite places to go.
(No, that's not me sitting in the chair!)
. . . but this is me at Balmoral at the age of about 10,
sitting on almost that same spot.
When I was 12 my mother, sister and brother travelled to Sri Lanka (it was called Ceylon then) by ship (the P&O Arcadia) during the school holidays. We stayed three days in Colombo at a beachside hotel, then caught another ship back. That was the first time I had ever travelled overseas.
In 1966 my mother, sister and I went on one of the first cruises of the (then) Sitmar liner, "Fairstar", travelling first toTonga, then to Pago Pago (Western Samoa), then finally to Suva, Fiji. The cruise lasted 2 weeks and whetted both my sister's and my appetite for travel.
We decided to save up our money and take a working holiday in England the following year.
In August 1967 we set sail (again on the Fairstar) for the UK - stopping off at Panama, Curacao (Netherlands Antilles) in the Caribbean, Lisbon (Portugal) and finally Southampton. During our stay in London we both worked at Australia House, before setting off on a hitch-hiking tour of Europe with two other girls, Sue and Desley, who were cabinmates from the Fairstar. We had a lot of memorable experiences and time seemed to go so fast. We arrived back in Sydney 2 years later - almost to the day - in August 1969. We travelled back on the Fairstar too! It was starting to feel like our second home.
After scoring a job on the floor of the Sydney Stock Exchange, I made yet another trip in December 1970 - this time to Los Angeles where I visited Desley, who had married an American.
In 1971, after working for several months, to satisfy the travel bug I returned to London and Italy for another 10 months. I travelled over on the Arcadia (yes the same ship we had travelled to Sri Lanka on). During the time I was away my sister became engaged to an Englishman who was on a working holiday in Australia and I paid a visit to his family in London. I returned to Australia in March 1972 and was bridesmaid to my sister at her wedding later that year.
In 1976 I decided to go to India and whilst visiting Kashmir I met and married my husband.
(We're no longer together these days - but that's a long story.)
My husband's family own houseboats like these.
