10th February, 2012.

5.15 am and it was time to get up and get ready for the next phase of Jonesy’s exercise routine. Every Friday he goes for an early morning ‘power walk’ with a friend of his called Colin, who I discover is originally from Newport, Wales. Colin immigrated to Australia in 1982 and told me he wished he had done so years before that.

Off we went with Jonesy setting the pace and Colin and me falling in behind. I must admit I really enjoyed the next hour criss-crossing the streets and parks of Hamilton even visiting The Railway Station where the steps leading over the tacks were part of the route .It was interesting to see so many other folk out walking or, in the case of the park, getting in an early game of tennis prior to the heat building.

Our reward at the end was to go to one of the many cafes in the area for breakfast. Today it was to be Dimitrys Café, owned unsurprisingly by Dmitri (I jest!), a Greek couple originally from Athens. This gave me a chance to use my few words of Greek picked up from my time as and overseas representative for First Choice Holidays on Crete in 2003.

I couldn’t tell if they were impressed or not but they were very friendly and interested in my visit and ambitions for writing a book. They certainly reminded me of my dear friends Yianni, Antonia and Billy, owners of The White Lady Taverna, in Adelanos Kampos, Rethymnon, Crete.

A sumptuous fresh fruit salad with Greek yoghurt and drizzled with honey was delicious, and then it was back to work on my writing prior to being entrusted to take Jonesy’s car and collect his brother and sister-in-law from Newcastle Airport.

The airport is situated ay Williamstown, about 30 minutes north of the city on the Pacific Highway. I had driven this route before on a previous visit but the most daunting part is getting out of the suburbs and onto the Highway in the first instance.

I actually did better than I dared hope and was waiting for them when their flight from Ballina, in the north of New South Wales, landed about an hour late. They actually live in Byron Bay and were visiting for Jonesy’s sister Karen’s 50th birthday. The regional airline operating this route is called REX airlines and explains the sign at the airport entrance, ‘Newcastle welcomes REX’. There was me thinking it was a celebrity dog arriving!!

I’ve stayed with Stephen and Michelle on three occasions now so it was nice to be able to see them again. I took them first to visit Peter, Stephen’s father, who is in a nursing home currently.

Later on we had some lunch and sheltered in a coffee shop as a thunderstorm raged outside, delivering rain of biblical proportions. Wet summer or what! Wettest for a number of years I was being told….still, it was shorts and t-shirt weather as opposed to coats, hats and gloves back home.