Our Foreign Travels

ANDERSONS' TRAVELS

Once again on Wednesday evening Lawrie Anderson treated the club to a talk and slide show of their recent trip home to Australia, this time coming back via India.

This time on arrival in Oz they bought a new de mountable Mazda camper van.

(De mountable in the sense that the accommodation can be left on legs and the transport bit driven out from underneath and used as a car, so the camper bit doesn't have to be taken everywhere with you. A very good idea.)

The camper enabled Heather and Lawrie to take their grandchildren on tour with the and we saw several pictures of Charlotte and her brother Lawrence and also of the Mazda. It is possible that Mazda had written this part of the presentation. Lawrie is obviously very pleased with it!

We saw trips to a wildlife park with the children playing with Koala bears and some very interesting birds including a large white parrot and something with a bright red breast called a Gallahla. Then on to a carol concert in their summer which was a fund raising event at Heather's home club of Baronia.

They came back via Karella in India and spent some time travelling in a quite luxurious houseboat. We saw some ingenious rice plantations, that used land reclaimed from the river that could be re flooded and also of the local rice which when cooked had huge grains. Later Lawrie had a go at harvesting cocoanuts using gadget on his feet like the GPO used to use to climb telegraph poles. They visited some traditional boat builders who used binding to hold the planks together and cocoanut rope for caulking.

They saw the Dali Lama's temple (and got thrown out!) and the carved temples at Hampi, an experience of which I was somewhat jealous.

All in all a very interesting trip and talk.    Thank you Lawrie and Heather.

John Walden.