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Brazil

"Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
TS Elliot, The Rock

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It's funny the way that when you're doing voluntary work, you're more keen to be busy and working hard than you might be at a normal job, while your "employer" feels less urgency to find tasks to fill your time than they would if they were paying you by the hour. That's been our experience over the last couple of days as we've been able to very comfortably complete the tasks they've had ready for us each day. Some spare time yesterday gave me the opportunity to put in some hours down at the Wycliffe Media Centre on a Macintosh computer problem that's been a bit of a mystery. While I was doing that Bronwyn availed herself of the opportunity to visit an air conditioned mall.

Not a bad choice really, as the weather here has been heating up, into the 30s and with energy-sapping high humidity. All cultural and other group distinctions dissolve at such times, replaced by just two groups: those who have air conditioning (the few) and those who don't (the many, including the residents of the student accommodation that we're staying in). Resisting temptation, last night we declined the offer of using my parents' air conditioned lounge (while they were busy working) to visit with Leath and Rosie Powell. The Powells were experiencing the joys of putting two young children to bed in the warmest weather the kids had probably ever experienced. We came bearing chilled apple and blackcurrant juice and two trays of ice cubes. With gifts, context is everything.

For the first time, over the last few days I've started to feel the pull of wanting to arrive in London. It's intriguing, the emotions I have about getting there. It'll be a completely different experience of course to our seven day visit there in 2001. We'll again be staying with our friend Sonja though, at her new home in Clapham South. I'm enjoying being here in Melbourne, and I'm looking forward to our time in Thailand, but I now can look forward as well to arriving in London. It seems like such a long time since we left home.

On Friday morning we headed southwest from Melbourne down the Great Ocean Road with my parents, taking a long weekend together. Since Thursday night it had been raining at Kangaroo Ground, the first decent rain they'd had this year and hopefully the break of their 30-year-record drought. On the way down the coast, we stopped for what turned out to be a rather remarkable rainforest walk. Afterwards, Bronwyn reported a feeling in some ways of disappointment that other countries have places as beautiful as New Zealand! I was struck by the contrast of this lush oasis with the drought-burnt scenery we've become accustomed to, and also with the uncanny resemblance of the place to the New Zealand bush. It could have been any of a number of bush walks we've done at home over the years. People had told us that the region we were travelling into was very like New Zealand, and as we drove down the Great Ocean Road there was virtually not a Eucalypt to be seen. The plants and terrain were reminiscent of the West Coast of New Zealand, as was the weather: it rained for most of the rest of the day as we drove down into Apollo Bay. Unperturbed, we headed into town for dinner at a local bistro where Bronwyn and Mum had fish and chicken respectively, while Dad and I enjoyed Peppered Kangaroo! It was tasty, much nicer than the one other time I'd had it. When in Australia, eat the Australians.

Yesterday the weather continued to be misty with poor visibility, but we headed further southwest round the coast in the hopes of still seeing some of the Twelve Apostles. This landmark, towering rock formations rising from the southern ocean, is one of those famous and excessively visited sites, and we seemed to hear as many languages there as at a UN convention. On the road to the site the weather had continued to be bad, but as we finally rejoined the coast near the Apostles the skies cleared and we ultimately had quite reasonable conditions for photography. Apparently the coastal microclimate means this experience was relatively typical, rather than miraculous, but we were thankful nonetheless. It was worth the visit.

Today we headed home, taking the inevitable road trip detours. It was hot, prompting some fine-tuning of the faithful but apparently aging air conditioner in the car. In any case we arrived back safely at Kangaroo Ground. We're all feeling the distance as my brother Tim celebrated his 30th birthday today, with the big surprise party arranged by his wife Megan for last night. Unfortunately none of us were there in Wellington to surprise him, although Bronwyn and I made a short video to be shown at the occasion if it proved suitable. Together with my parents we tried unsuccessfully to ring him tonight, despite what we thought were well-formed plans. Hope you had a good day big man. Well done.

After a good time in Canberra last weekend we drove to Melbourne on Monday. It was a reasonably easy drive, taking about 7.5 hours including a couple of brief breaks. There was one uneasy moment when we found the view more and more choked with smoke, and we began to wonder if there were further fires in close range. Local radio revealed nothing and as we kept driving it eventually cleared. Apparently fires remain burning, though well north of the highway.

We've spent this week at Kangaroo Ground, the South Pacific regional centre for both Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics. My parents work here as full-time counsellors, and it's been good to be able to see them and to get to know their new home turf. While here, Bronwyn and I are working in the Wycliffe Directorate Office assisting with the preparations for their upcoming biennial conference, which will be held on our final weekend here in town. Bronwyn's also being co-opted for the conference music, while I'm doing a little Macintosh tech support for their Graphic Design department. We worked so quickly in our first couple of days here that we completed the initial Conference tasks they had for us for this week. As a result, we took yesterday off and went up to Whittlesea, where we visited the International Headquarters of Mobile Mission Maintenance, the organisation that Bronwyn's parents work with in New Zealand. In addition to their warm and generous hospitality, it was good to get a wider perspective on the surprisingly varied work that MMM is involved in.

Over the last couple of weeks since we arrived in Australia I've been taking some time in various places to work on finishing drafting a journal article based on the main results of my Doctoral dissertation. This paper has been in the works for quite some time now (I finished the thesis in 2000 after all) and my supervisor has been patient but frustrated. Well, on Tuesday morning of this week I finally completed a reasonable first draft and emailed it off to her. The biggest job was actually shortening it down to a publishable length. It's still too long but we're working on that. It'll be nice to finally submit it to a journal for publication.

It's like doing a victory lap on a marathon, re-writing your PhD thesis...

We travelled down from Sydney to Canberra yesterday, after a final morning tea with my Grandma. On the way down we stopped off at the Travel Medicine and Vaccinations Centre (TMVC) in Parramatta and purchased mosquito nets, the final thing required for our Thailand preparations. Our trip down was uneventful, and in an automatic car with cruise control you feel like you're only half driving. It was great.

We don't have a street directory with our rental car so I decided to use my internal GPS and just figured I'd find the TMVC which we knew was on Macquarie Street which was somewhere in Parramatta. We drove randomly into Parramatta and sure enough without much ado we happened upon the place. A few hours later therefore, when we arrived in Canberra, we again applied this approach to finding my uncle and aunt Ross and Lynne's house. I knew the address and admittedly I had been there a couple of times before, but still... Anyway, we headed off in the general direction I knew their suburb to be in, and without much ado ended up at their house. Seemed a bit surreal but when you are in need you accept the positive things that transpire. Unfortunately, I then managed to scrape the bottom of the bumper on their low brick driveway wall, a mistake that may cost almost as much as the rental itself.

Ross and Lynne hosted an excellent dinner party with our friends Rob and Catherine in attendance last night. They shifted to Canberra almost exactly a year before our departure, ironically for Rob to work with Uncle Ross. It was excellent to catch up with them again. Today we visited them at their home and had lunch together. We've been carrying with us a mysterious package, gift-wrapped by Geoff and Adrienne and addressed to both Rob and Catherine and ourselves. This package had received significant scrutiny from Australian customs on our arrival in Sydney. Today it was duly unwrapped by Rob, who discovered "Survivor Canberra", a 40-minute game for four people. For the record, Tribe Paukena (Rob and Catherine) cleaned the floor with Tribe Niiko (Duncan and Bronwyn), with scores 14 vs 9, and 16 vs 7, winning along the way the reward of a packet of M&Ms. With Tribe Paukena having also gained immunity, it was a very close 4-0 vote of the Tribal Council to eliminate Tribe Niiko. In the final round, Rob narrowly won 12-11 against Catherine to become the victorious sole survivor, and proud owner of a packet of face masks, for surviving the Canberra fires. We had a great time! I have just one question though: what kind of people send unsuspecting friends through customs with a sealed package containing gas masks and a packet of pellets?   : )

We spent last night at my cousin Stephen's house, up the Central Coast at North Avoca. It was great to meet his new fiancee Jayne. We liked her, and they seem like a great match. We had a nice evening with them. The Central Coast is an interesting place. While Stephen actually works up there, many people live up on the coast and commute for 90 minutes each way or longer every day in order to work in Sydney. They say that people live up the coast for the lifestyle. When you see the beaches you can start to understand why. But I also struggle to see the "lifestyle" associated with three to four hours of commuting a day. I'm told it's typical for Sydney... As we move to London I'm not yet willing to accept what everyone claims, that such commutes are just part of the London lifestyle too. Someone has to live in those houses you see down the road from where you work...

We're back in Sydney now. After immersing ourselves in time with our friends prior to departing New Zealand, this week has been focussed on family. It's been great this week to spend time each day with my Grandma, who lives here in Castle Hill not far from where we've (quite deliberately) been based. Tomorrow we head down to Canberra for the weekend to see further family and friends Rob and Catherine who moved there from Palmerston North last year. Then we'll be driving on to Melbourne on Monday to begin three weeks of voluntary work at the Wycliffe Centre where my parents work. It'll be nice to be a bit more settled for a few weeks, while we plan our no doubt stretching ten days in Thailand.

Over the few days we've been in Sydney and have had the opportunity to catch up with my Grandma, and cousins, uncles and aunts on both sides of my family, as well as Bronwyn's aunt and family. It's been nice. Sydney is a familiar place for us now, having made a number of visits over the last few years. Driving here is always, hmmm, somewhat exhilarating, but routes are increasingly familiar too. Picking up family relationships where we left off has been cool; it's interesting to see how our cousins are developing and growing. We've been relieved it's been comfortably in the low 30s, rather than recent highs in the mid 40s.

Had an interesting discussion with my cousin Sharon and her partner Rene on Saturday. Her parents have just returned from the Yemen where they were working in the mission hospital which was the target of a recent shooting. We were discussing the experience of "Third Culture People": people who are not part of the overseas culture they are living in, but find they also no longer fit into their culture of origin when they return. We discussed the parallel with Rene's experience as a Chilean national who has settled in Australia, and I considered our upcoming experience where we will be the foreigners. We talked of the need to be able to "stand your ground". To do this, however, requires you know your ground to stand on. It then struck me: we now have no "ground". Our only address is babbage@mac.com. In some ways, it is in cyberspace that things remain familiar as we re-locate; perhaps then, this is my ground? The other constant is relationships: with God, with friends and family.

Apologies to Windows-using readers: the changes to the Style Sheet for the February page, in particular the header box, do not seem to render correctly on your machines. I'm afraid it's unlikely I'll be able to fix it before I'm in Melbourne next week... For future reference, if you ever find a part of the site isn't working as it should, please let me know.

You don't know what you've got till it's gone... (Borrow a water blaster and you'll know what I mean.) Yesterday we left dear friends in Palmerston North, with whom we have had the privilege of sharing the last few years of our lives. Distance will not undo the friendship, but our proximity for these years has been a rare gift we may treasure still more with hindsight. I didn't cry, but I wanted to.

Everything is sold: the fridge and the car were the last to go. Details seem less relevant now, but we are glad to have this sorted out prior to our departure. The story behind the sale of the car is a nice example of the Kingdom economy at work. Some people will no doubt have no idea what I'm talking about here; perhaps this is something I will write a little more about sometime.

We've had a final, intense flurry this week to complete shipping preparations, packing, final cleaning of the house we've been living in (which is owned by Bronwyn's parents), UK banking arrangements, and of course goodbyes. It's been quite stressful actually, despite our best attempts to be well organised. Yesterday Geoff drove us down to Wellington, in preparation for our flight out this morning. Spent the evening with my only brother Tim and his wife Megan, celebrating his upcoming 30th birthday. Due to a complicated series of events, we weren't able to stay with them so crashed with Nick and Hayley, who are also about to shift to the UK so we'll be seeing them on the other side soon.

Goodbye New Zealand. We'll be in touch.

Progress towards our departure has been swift over the last three days, which is good, but they have also confronted us with more goodbyes, each of which is tinged with both gold and blue. In terms of direct preparations, on Friday we determined that my brother Tim could pick up our documents from the British High Commission if he furnished a signed letter from us. This was dutifully faxed down, freeing us up to spend a necessary day preparing to move our gear to storage on Saturday.

Friday night brought our farewell event we arranged with Palmy friends: a 12-hole Ambrose tournament at the Linton Army Camp golf course, followed by food and drinks at the Loaded Hog. It was great to find Bronwyn's sister Carolyn had made it over from Wanganui for this event. We later moved to Barista for coffee in a lower decibel environment. We had a good time. For the record, the women's prizes were won by Lauren and Marike, while both of the men's prizes were won by (ahem) me. The overall winning team was captained by Mike Tate-Davis, whose golf was reported to be on fire, along with Lauren Downs and Arron Harford. Full stats on the prize-winning plays may follow another day in exhaustive golf-bore fashion. We got home at 12.30am, at which point I decided there were some important bills that had to be put on the computer before Saturday, so they could be filed and stored with the rest of our gear. (Even in context, some of my actions don't make any sense!) Bronwyn was talking with her sister. We went to sleep at 2.30am.

On Saturday I rose at 6.30am despite this, feeling there were many things to do! The day was full, including picking up our truck at 8am; assisting friends Chris and Lauren with moving some furniture back into newly carpeted rooms; delivering our desk, washing machine, and lounge suite to new owners at three separate addresses; packing all our gear into what became a totally full truck; and finally heading down to Waikanae and installing our gear into my parent's shipping container, in which they are also storing their own gear. Thanks to Jason, Geoff, and Mike for their outstanding assistance at various parts of this process.

Today has seen our last day at St Albans. Bronwyn led the music and worship time up the front today, something she hadn't done for over a year. In a first (well, technically a second) for me, I agreed to join the music team to sing since it was our last day there. We had hoped that the church might have a time to pray for us in our departure at the end of the service. We were humbled however to have this included as part of the service itself, and for both Steve Jourdain and Brendan O'Hagan to comment on the work that God has done through us in our seven years here. We are proud to join the St Albans "For Export Only" tradition. St Albans, we will miss you.