Retiring in style!

Is it just me or does everyone think that retirement can be tough for some people?

I got sent a great email from a lady called Palmyra….it was written by an anonymous retiree…

I love it! Hope you do too!

Here it is....


Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting.Well for example, the other day I went into town and went into a shop. I was only in there for about 5 minutes, when I came out there was a policeman writing out a parking ticket.

I went up to him and said, "Come on man, how about giving a senior citizen a break?" He ignored me and continued writing the ticket.I called him a Nazi turd. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tires.So I called him a smelly pig.

He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket. This went on for about 20 minutes.The more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote.

Personally, I didn't care. I came into town by bus.

I try to have a little fun each day now that I'm retired. It's important at my age.

(Hope it wasn't your care!)

Anzac Day!

Is it just me or did everyone love to see the huge turnout at Anzac Services across the coast yesterday…

The kids and I went to the cenotaph at Cotton Tree at 8.30…

The turn out was huge and I even learned something new…

I didn't make the dawn service yesterday, but I did learn where it came from…

The speaker at Cotton Tree told the story of the Reverend Arthur Ernest White of Albany, WA.

Reverend White was a padre of the earliest ANZACs to leave Australia with the First AIF in November 1914.

The convoy assembled at Albany’s King George Sound, Albany and at 4 am on the morning of their departure, he conducted a service for all men. Hitstory tells us most of those men never returned to Australian soil.

After the war, Reverend White gathered some 20 men at dawn on 25 April 1923 on Mt Clarence overlooking King George Sound and silently watched a wreath floating out to sea.

He then quietly recited the words ‘As the sun rises and goeth down we will remember them’.
Everyone was deeply moved.

Reverand White is quoted as saying at the time that ‘Albany was the last sight of land these ANZAC troops saw after leaving Australian shores and some of them never returned. We should hold a service here at the first light of dawn each ANZAC Day to commemorate them.’

And so it was…lest we forget.

Caroline Hutchinson

V or Vendetta

Is it just me or does everyone hate crazy conspiracy-theory-sci-fi-indi films?

Gabe and I went to V for Vendetta on Tuesday night.

I am not recommending it. I know some people would love it, but I didn't. I don't really believe in evil as a human condition and I certainly don't want to study or wallow in it.

The movie is set some time in the future, when an ultra conservative (read Nazi style) party is
controlling Britian.

Jews, Muslims, Gays, radical thinkers have all been either killed or forced underground. Curfews are in place and all television is state run.

'V' is a disfigured victim of human testing who vows to get revenge. And he does.

Like I said, not exactly my favourite movie! However it did cause Gabe and I to talk about the present.

To some extent I think we have already demonised Muslims (see earlier discussion/comment on this blog) and to some extent we already let our government get away with too much.

For instance, I detest detention centres.

I never thought we should have entered Iraq against the wishes of the United Nations.

And I'm a bit dodgy on the new IR laws too. But have I ever thought of writing a letter, or joining an action group? Not once. Ultimately, tragically, it's only because none of these things directly affects me. Shocking I know.

While we were talking, I told Gabe about a piece (I'm sure you've heard of it) written in Germany by Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoller just after the second world war. Niemoller started out a supporter of Hitler, but quickly turned against him and subsequently spent most of the war in Dachau Concentration Camp.

When he was released he wrote this sermon, it's called "First they came for the Jews".


First they came for the Jews and I did not speak outbecause I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak outbecause I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak outbecause I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me. And there was no one left to speak out for me.

Be good,

Love Caroline Hutchinson

PS...I have to start writing my name on my blog all the time, so people can find me in Google!

Is there a God of surfing?

Is it just me, or is everybody really a very good surfer?????

I repeat my earlier warning to the general public to stay off the beach these holidays, because I, really and truly, am able to stand on a board.

I am the oldest person in my Robbie Sherwell Surfing Academy (believe me, he deserves the plug) class, by about 25 years...

On Monday, everyone else in the class stood up...

On Tuesday, everyone else in the class stood up...turned their boards, surfed all the way to beach, generally made me look like a goose...

On Wednesday, Robbie 'specialled' me... For more than an hour he stuck with me, until eventually I did it! It was awesome. So much fun!

The funniest thing was the kids in my group. When I finally stood up, I was surrounded by eight to twelve year olds screaming "Good girl!" "You're doing it, you're doing it!" "Yay!". Very cute.

A lovely lady called Megan (her son Ben is one of the students whose prowess is making me look particularly ridiculous) told me after the lesson that she took some photos of me surfing and will give them to me today on disc.

I will take a look at them and providing I don't look like Ruth from The Biggest Loser on holiday in Hawaii...I might just post them to show off!

Be good,

Love Caroline

Please leave the beach!

Is it just me, or does everyone think they look really great in bathers?

So good in fact, that you want to parade around in front of strangers? Jogging Pamela Anderson style along the shoreline? Repeatedly getting on all fours with your butt in the air?

Oh yeah! Me too!

Yesterday morning, the girls and I started surfing lessons. I grew up in Margaret River. I've lived on the Sunshine Coast for eight years. And finally, I get round to learning to surf.

I bought a board about three years ago, in the vain and ridiculous hope that I could teach myself (therefore avoiding the public-display-of-swimsuit indignity) but it's just not that simple. Not for me, anyway.

I can paddle out no worries. I can sit on my board (it's a nine foot mal, Marlon Brando, God rest his soul, could have sat his lardy ass on my board). And I can catch a wave.

But can I stand up? Can I even get to my knees? No. So while I've owned a board for three years, I've spent less than three hours in the water with it.

But I've got good news. In a forty five minute class with Robbie and Carlene Sherwell yesterday (I had to leave early...everyone else enjoyed the full 90 minutes) I learned that everything I had been doing up to now is wrong.

I learned a new technique for getting to my feet, and I can't wait to go back this morning to put it all into practice at Mooloolaba...shut up...it's big swell today!!!!

As for the public display of unsightly thigh and bodacious bottom? Rest easy, there won't be photos!!!

And I don't care how old or unspeakable YOUR rear end is. If you live on the coast and haven't called Robbie and Carlene yet - what are you waiting for?????

Pippa's Story

Is it just me or does everyone wonder sometimes what God is thinking?

Mix FM to the rescue this morning was all about a young vibrant local woman called Pippa Johnson some people might remember her as Phillipa Toyne.

Pippa grew up on the Sunshine Coast….at Point Cartwright I think….

She grew up here…worked away for a while, married a guy she met while she was working on Hayman Island and had two beautiful boys, Matthew and Mitch.

I’ve never met Pippa, but all her friends I’ve spoken to say the same thing, she’s fun.

She’s funny, and caring and generous and gregarious, but most of all, she’s fun. Her friend Linda described her like this, she said if there is ever any nonsense going on, Pippa is right in the thick of it…

Pippa is also young…not yet forty.

Just before Christmas, so not four months ago, Pippa says she felt what she describes as a couple of clicks in her leg.

Obviously she wondered about them, but didn’t worry too much. Then, she got up on a chair to hang some curtains and her leg gave out from under her then went numb.

To everyone’s devastation Pippa was quickly diagnosed with motor neurone disease, shortly after her speech began to slur and by February Pippa was walking with a walking frame.

Pippa has worked in pharmacies for a long time. Her friend Linda said Pippa joked this week that not long ago she was selling walking frames, it doesn’t seem right that she’s using one.

I know it’s a sad story, and I’d like to think it’s not over yet. Linda has a lot of faith in her friend…she says there’s a lot of fight in the old girl yet…

As of this morning Pippa is off to the Brisbane lions to meet Jason Akamanis and then to Sea World for a date with the dolphins…

Like I said, I know this is a sad. And I don’t know what God is thinking. But it’s life, and you never know when life might happen to you too.

Pro Hart

Is it just me or does everyone hate the end of an era?

Pro Hart will be buried in Broken Hill today.

I’m talking about it, not just because he was an Australian Legend…who never took himself too seriously…my favourite type of person, but also for his son David, who operates a gallery in Mooloolaba…and is a great and generous member of this community.

Pro Harts name is actually Kevin Charles Hart…he was born in broken hill in 1928…and was called the professor from a young age because he liked inventing things…
Professor eventually became Pro…and he’s never really been known as anything else.

He’s also known for his love of Broken Hill.

Last week, New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma rang the Hart family to offer them a state funeral, but according to David, the family turned the offer down.

David said Dad was born in Broken Hill, he died there, and we didn’t think he would want to leave, so we had to say no thanks.

The Premier thought about it, rang back, and subsequently, for the first time ever, a state funeral will be held in Broken Hill today, at the local civic centre. It’s expected to be huge.

Pro Hart is not only known for his art, but also his love of god and organ music.

Apparently, Pro Hart loved to paint the inside cover pages of bibles, and would constantly hand them out to people he met. There are hundreds of bibles rattling around Australia with the Pro Hart touch.

There’s something that makes me sad about Pro Hart. The (so-called) artistic elite in Australia don’t rate Pro Hart. In fact, according to some journalists, when Pro Hart died last week, some gallery curators were not even prepared to comment on his work or legacy. That gets up my nose. Pro Hart's paintings are not even hung in the National Gallery in Canberra and I think that’s wrong.

Having said that, I doubt Pro Hart lost any sleep over the chardonnay set.

For 18 years he worked as a miner in Broken Hill, turning out canvases at night.

After marrying Raylee in 1960, he was "discovered" by a gallery director in Adelaide and his first exhibition was a sellout and the rest, as they say, is history.

Pro Hart developed motor neurone disease in later life, and was unable to paint for the last six months of his life.

Pro is survived by his wife Raylee and five children, all of whom paint and were at his bedside when he died.

Caroline Hutchinson

Remind me again...why did we have kids????

Is it just me or is everyone incredibly embarrassed today?

We had a couple of friends over for dinner on Saturday night.

It wasn't a big night...the kids (my normally very responsible and well behaved 14 year old boy, a couple of visiting 13 year old boys and my girls, aged 11 and 9) were in the tv room and the adults were out the back enjoying dinner. Not a raucous night, just a very quiet get together. Lovely.

The first we knew of any trouble was knocking on the front door, which we ignored because we thought it was the kids being stupid....until the knocking became quite insistent.

At the front door, John was confronted by a very reasonable and friendly bloke...claiming that the boys had been playing 'knock and run' on his front door, and while he was a patient man, he'd had enough.

Fair call, said John. He apologised, and read the riot act to the kids. To be honest, we did not even know they left the house.

I was embarrassed and angry, but contained, I didn't really want to yell at the kids....until the guests left at least.

As our friends drove away, John and I turned on all three of our kids. "What were you thinking? How dare you be so disrespectful?".....regular readers of this blog would know that we tread a pretty flimsy tight rope with our neighbours already. We really didn't need any knock and run...

Then, just as any parent of teenagers should have come to expect...the real truth came out..

A born blabbermouth, Milli (the eleven year old) blurted... "I only got the eggs, I didn't throw any..."

Did I mention my anger was contained earlier??? Well, it wasn't anymore. I don't think I have ever been more furious with Gabe (the 14 year old).

Yesterday morning, John took him over to the house to apologise but the family wasn't home....you could quite clearly however, see where the egg had hit the house..... and Gabe will be back with a brush and bucket this afternoon.

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!


OK...quick update (Tuesday)..

Last night, Gabe and I went around to the house...and it turns out my little baby egged the house of the nicest people in the whole wide world!!!

They were absolutely gorgeous to him, gave him a bit of a stern word...then had a laugh and
treated him beautifully! Lucky little bugger....

He feels very bad though....an excellent lesson!