Stanthorpe

We had a wonderful time in Brisbane with Sue, Graham and Eric. We hope to visit them again before we leave the country. We then left Brisbane and moved into the interior of the country to Stanthorpe. We are in a mountainous area sight the elevation being 1000m. It cools off pretty good here at night which is wonderful and makes it a lot easier to sleep.

The place we are staying is Thunderbolt Farms with Keith and Claudia. We were contacted by the, through help exchange. We work for them and they give us a room and feed us. On Thursday to Sunday we work in Claudia's Country Restaurant. I have been helping with the cooking, serving tables, food prep, dishes, and clearing tables. I have also been learning how to make espresso drinks. They don't drink coffee here like we do back home, it is all based off of espresso. My favourite has been the flat white, which is pretty much a latte with no foam. Mike has helped with food prep, dishes, moving the beer cases and cleaning/vacuuming. During the week, we helped with the garden, cleaning and Mike is helping fix the tractor and mechanical stuff. We talked today and decided we will be staying here until the end of March.

Yesterday, Mike and I drove Keith to Toowoomba, which is about two hours away to take him for chemo. He let us come in and watch the process. It was a pretty powerful experience. The room was full of 10 people, sitting in chairs, hooked up the the chemo. Some were surrounded with family members, others were alone. It was quite to process to get Keith hooked up. He has a piece placed in his chest to put the chemo into so that it doesn't collapse the veins in the hand. He let me feel it. I could feel it under the skin, it was weird. The atmosphere was actually quite pleasant and the staff were all very friendly and nice. Keith had brought fresh strawberries for the nurse that has been helping him out. She was very appreciative.

While his chemo was going through, Mike and I drove through the city a little bit. We stopped at a shopping mall which was actually quite big for the town. It had two levels and a Target. Mike did most of the driving on the trip. The only problem he had was he kept turning on the windshield wipers when he was trying to turn on the turning signal, since they are backwards here. He is pretty good at driving on the left side of the road. He drove us back to Stanthorpe while Keith rested.

There is another couple staying here as well and they are from Germany. They are Ben and Betty. Lasted night we made miso soup together. It wasn't too bad, Ben was nervous it wouldn't turn out since they have never made it before. It was very simple.

They have two dogs here and a cat. They are all female and very friendly. The dogs are Tess and Petal. The cat is Geraldine. There are also two goats who get all the food scraps from the kitchen so they are pretty spoiled. It is a very nice place here, very beautiful and out of the cities. They tell me it is one of the few areas in Australia that gets cold (can get to -10) in th winter and experiences all four seasons.