Jacqui, Marcus, Peter (of the twisted face)
Marcus, Vicki, Peter
Jacqui, Marcus, Vicki, Peter.
Favourite Daughter
The only photo I took of Alan... Great job on the barby Al.
The reason I put the camera away, too many people in too small a space.
Alex, a great mate of Marcus and the family, sings and entertains and who could resist that pretty pink guitar.On June 21st the third of my children turned 50, 1 more to go in 2 years time, so most of the family and friends from all over gathered to help him celebrate the event.
You may be aware of the chaos caused to air travel by the volcanic ash cloud from Chile's volcanic eruption, this ash cloud has taken quite a fancy to Australia and paid us a couple of visits, the first one was while we were all flying into Melbourne for the party and the second time was as we were all flying home again, flights to Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth from Melbourne were all affected at some time and caused some delays and disruptions.
With the news constantly changing about cancellations and delays when you are at a seaside town some 60 klms away from the airport planning the next move takes on a whole new outlook.
Enough about that, Marcus assured us that it was his best birthday ever, the travel that his family went through to be there with him was dwarfed by the efforts of one of his friends from the USA, way back in 1990 and again in 1991 Marcus traveled from England, where he was living and working at the time, to the USA where he was a camp councilor some 200 miles outside of NewYork.
Summer camp was for these kids was an 8 week vacation with accommodation and the camp activities led by the team of councilors of whom Marcus was the leader, during his first year at camp there was a boy named Joshua with whom Marcus developed a friendship, this culminated with Marcus and some years later his mother Jacqui staying at Josh's parents home in New York.
During the second year of camp Joshua had a fairly bad fall from a horse breaking his collar bone during an activity and in his words his only memory, apart from the pain, of this incident was of Marcus carrying him to camp and spending the next 3 or 4 hours looking after him in the local emergency room.
Again in Joshua's words Marcus became his instant idol, and during the past 20 years they have kept in touch and remained friends, but the last thing that Marcus expected was that the now very busy Tax Attorney that Joshua has become would spend 4 days traveling half way around the world with his 5 year old daughter in tow just for his birthday, to say that he was blown away by this would be an understatement.
I am a very proud parent when I hear of the high esteem that all of my children are held by those that they cross paths with and get to know.
On Saturday June 18 we had a Barbecue at lunch time with Marcus introducing us all to one-another with a short story of how each met and became friends this was an amusing time as he is blessed with a wit that makes his stories interesting and amusing, that evening he drove us all in a hired mini-bus (19 in total) to a night football match at the mecca of AFL Football the MCG where we saw his, and quite a few of the others, favourite football team The Geelong Cats play well and win convincingly, we had taken great pains in explaining to Joshua that while he was in Australia he should Barrack for rather than Root for his team, once we pointed out the Australian meaning for Root he decided to Barrack for Geelong.
On the evening of his birthday June 21 we went to dinner at a very nice local restaurant where once more we had the chance to see Marcus taken completely by surprise by a couple from Perth that had told him that sadly they wouldn't be able to make his birthday and then did.
The saddest part of this adventure was that I took so few photographs, hope someone else was more on the ball than I was and can fill some of the gaps.
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