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It was early evening and I walked down past the Fish and Chip Shop with its lovely Vietnamese family and over the road and through the family recreation area. Nearby was the long stone jetty and I walked out on it drinking the cool sea air and looking up at the stars. Orion the hunter was slipping towards the horizon to my left as the Southern Cross climbed towards the Zenith on my right. The tide was out and I noticed a grey bird stalking over the mud flats. It kept pace with me for a while as I walked. Two thirds of the way out I reached the waterline and left the bird behind.

The jetty ends in a T and there are benches to sit on, which were my destination. As I reached the T I saw another grey bird in the darkness and a second flew to meet it from the direction of the shore. They greeted each other with guttural utterances. I moved slowly and carefully to try to avoid startling them and they stayed nearby for a few minutes as I approached the bench I wanted to sit on. I now know the birds are White-faced Herons. They stalked off together and vocalised to each other and seemed to be affectionate. I wondered if they were a breeding pair. The Herons remained on the T of the jetty.

I sat and relaxed on my bench in the semi-darkness, looking around me at the sea and the sky, experiencing the vast slow movement of ocean and the slower and vaster movement of sky, feeling the very light breeze and relaxing. When I got up I walked slowly and gently, hoping to pass the birds without frightening them away but they moved onto the main arm of the jetty and flew as I came within ten metres of them. As I looked down the length of the construction the light from the lamps spaced along it revealed a heron here and there. I wondered what attracted them until I saw one of them loft up gracefully, snapping at an insect in the light.

Coming to each bird I would ever walk more slowly and approach it cautiously. I tried mimicking the guttural cry once and though it was a poor attempt the bird looked at me and stayed a little longer than the others before flying off. Near the shore end I was able to stand next to one of the birds a pace away. It turned and casually walked past me in the direction I had come from. Just after that I came to a family with two dogs and keeping the same attitude of spirit I let the dogs explore me until they trusted me to pat them. The two women and their children were friendly too so we exchanged greetings and moved on. It had been a beautiful walk on the jetty.

Hey! Look at the strange creatures we have in Brisbane! I was really happy to find these three lovely creatures in George Street, Brisbane. The sculptor, Chris Trotter is very good and you can see more of his work on his website http://www.trotter.com.au/homepage/index2.html  Have a look. I always enjoyed the street sculptures in China and have been pleased to see that Brisbane has progressed in that area since I have been away.

Most urgent in my mind again is getting my house in order. It has become messy with the arrival of four of my boxes from China. I despaired when I saw the condition the boxes were in. They had been subjected to very rough handling indeed. I’ll put a photo on the blog. Part of it was that the Australian Customs Service had opened one and not sealed it up again very well but every box showed signs of having been thrown around and all were torn in some place or other. It was a big relief to find that most things were undamaged, particularly my most precious items. I was amazed that an ornate teapot set I bought in Shanghai had little damage. Five out of six little cups are unbroken and the teapot is intact. A pottery ockarina I bought in Beijing is broken but I was unable to play it and I had little attachment to it. I knew I had not packed it with care as one of the last minute additions and am not surprised it did not make the journey complete. One thing I am a little sad about is an ornament one of my first students gave to me for Christmas. It is a metal ‘Chinese gate’ with three bells hanging from it and a small hammer to ring them. The inexpensive metal it was made of broke under the handling the box received. Perhaps I can glue it but it will never be the same.

I rejoice that my most precious things among those which have arrived are intact. The lovely carved map of Hubei that Amy gave me and The china rabbit given me by Rita. My lacquer screen bought in Xi’an is no worse than when I packed it. It is in need of restoration but I don’t know where I can have that done yet. Pictures rolled and put in long cardboard boxes have travelled well. My books are safe and so are my Chinese learning CDs although one case has fragmented. Two nice bowls given to me by Catherine are in good condition as are my two Korean metal chopstick and spoon sets.

Lots of clothes arrived but most are suitable for winter in a more severe climate than Queensland’s. I have put them in a backpack which also arrived. I had to reassemble it and fit the metal frame back in it. Now it is stuffed with jumpers and jackets. The remaining two boxes have my Guan Yin statue and tripod but they mainly contain my lovely minority cloths. It should not be long before they come. As I write one of the last two boxes has arrived, but not at my home yet. I expect the other to arrive this week and my son will bring the two over here together. Then I can find ways to put beautiful cloths on the walls, it’s something I love in my homes.

OK my friends, it’s time I let you all know that my medicine is doing a great job of keeping me well and that the long process of moving into my home and organizing all my stuff is almost complete.

I am living in a lovely bayside suburb of Brisbane and can walk out of my house, stroll down to the end of my block and walk along the foreshore for kilometres, or as far as I want to go, looking at the sea. For those of you who don’t know the area, Brisbane sits on Moreton Bay, a large Bay whose outer boundary is formed by North and South Stradbroke Island and Moreton Island, islands largely made of sand in a very unusual natural phenomenon. Not far north is Fraser Island whose unique landscape is formed exclusively of sand. There are other smaller islands within Moreton Bay. This is part of the sea and sky scape I watch in wonder as I stroll along finding relaxation, peace and healing from the visually jarring urban landscape, unhealthy air and noise of Wuhan. My soul and body are finding healing here and it is not just the exercise and medicine that is doing it. Even though I am in a suburb of a city of over a million people it is a healthy place.

I also love the smell of incense (xiang) and often burn scented candles, use scented oils in an evaporator and  burn fragrant incense. The best incense is made in India and I can buy it very cheaply in this area. I am sure the scent is also a healing and restful influence in my life lately.

My home is full of furniture and goods which almost miraculously appeared from relatives, friends and from shops at bargain prices I stumbled upon. There are still some gaps but even today I happened upon two bargains, one of which I visualised about two weeks ago as a thing I needed but didn’t think such things were made any more at a price I could afford, a chair that converts to a useful small portable staircase. As I intend to hang some of my lovely Chinese cloths on walls and put at least one more shelf up it is essential. I walked into a second-hand shop today and there was the chair stair I had visualised. Wow! Am I being looked after or what?

Remember my experiences at the Post Office as I sent six boxes to Australia. (Read my blog about it.) Well, it wasn’t three months but it was well nigh two and a half and not all the China was broken but the boxes were a terrible mess. I’ll post the story separately. It’s already written elsewhere as part of a writing exercise I have given myself to keep me focussed.

You might remember my medical problem is a damaged heart that is arrhythmic and promotes fluid build up in my lungs. This is complicated by diabetes that I allowed to get right out of control in China. Now my sugar levels are brilliant every day and I feel almost normal in my energy levels except I cannot lift anything heavy as I once could and I can’t walk as fast or walk all day without stress as I once could. The many pills I take every day are working very well and enable me to keep up a level of exercise that might restore strength and better functioning to my heart one day.

The only setback lately is that I also bought a motor scooter and enjoyed riding it so much I neglected to walk for a few days and today when I started again I became a little more out of breath than a week ago! Daily walks are on again. However, it is great to have some cheap transport. Now I am on a Disability Support Benefit (once called an Invalid Pension) and will learn to manage on that while hoping to pick up a little more income here and there. I don’t believe I could handle even a part time job in any field I have experience in so here’s hoping that one day my writing will change from a hobby to work. It would be ideal as I could set my own timetable and number of hours of work.

Now I have a small backpack again my camera will be going to work, partly for fun and partly as another hope for a small income. Expect photos from time to time so you can see something of this lovely city but for now I will leave you with the assurance that I am back on track health wise and settling in to Australia again very well.

Three more days before I move into my new home. I have been given a lot of household things and furniture but have still had to spend a lot of time reading catalogues, visiting shops, talking to salespeople and finally buying things that are just plain necessary for a householder. I can’t imagine how I would have done if I had no savings at all. By the time I actually move into the place there won’t be much left but I’ll have a place that not only feels comfortable but looks good. That’s important to me. It will have my style stamped on it, even to the extent of disguising the floral pattern of my lovely mother’s good quality three-seater sofa with a couple of Indian cotton bedspreads and a beautiful Yi minority patchwork from China.

I’ll have all the necessities to cook and to eat what I cook and I’ll be able to wash clothes and clean floors. The Queensland government will chip in $200 because I bought a washing machine that is economical in both power and water. However, so far I haven’t arranged for the connection of power and gas and the internet. So far I haven’t been able to make the choice of internet service provider though I have found a site that makes it a little clearer. At least I know that the only company that does a proper national wireless internet service is Big Pond and it is way out of my price range. Now I have to choose a way of getting a home based fast internet service. More research tomorrow as the decision is urgent. After a weekend of arranging my home I will knuckle down and take a professional approach to writing.

The advantage of being regarded as pensionable is that I have a financial base, albeit not one which will keep me very comfortable. That will enable me to build up my writing experience on a hobby level at first and then to the point where I bring in enough money to say goodbye to the pension and become part of the respectable workforce again. There’s the plan, that and being healthy enough to have reasonable quality of life.

My bedroom is furnished and the living room is taking shape. I have two desks but no table to eat from just yet. One of the desks will do at first. I’ll buy a mattress on the day of the move so I’ll be able to sleep in the sheets, under the cool weather quilt, with my head on the pillows that I bought. Sometime next week I’ll be blogging from my new home.

A task that used to be very straightforward has become a complex mental maze today. That is the task of getting a telephone service. It seems to me that Australia’s blind faith in Competition has failed the consumer in this area. The easiest component is the landline, but even with only two service providers competing householders have to find a plan that suits their needs. That sounds good doesn’t it? However, not being an accountant or one of those people who keeps track of every penny and counts phone calls, I have no accurate idea of what my needs are.

It is still worse when one goes to choose a mobile phone service. With numerous companies competing there is a great variety of plans on offer and, frankly, I and most consumers find it a tedious and time-consuming occupation to sift through them all and try to process them so as to truly understand which is the best. Once again, an accountancy degree would be handy. The ability to use a database programme really well might make comparisons easy but unless we have a real understanding of how many local, long distance and international calls and SMS messages we will make in the next year or two there is no way we will finally make an intelligent decision. In the end most of us just find the nicest salesperson to agree with and hope for the best.

As for the strange and supposedly attractive practice these companies have of giving free calls to people who use the same company, do we take a survey of our friends before buying a phone? Yeah, right.

The internet is also a branch of telephony and the situation there is no better. It is still possible to buy a disk that gives a certain number of hours online, but that seems only to apply to dial-up, the slowest way to get online. Broadband can be connected through the phone line or cable and of course there are plans for those two. This time we have to be tech savvy and beaurocratic enough to guess or know how many gigabytes of information we will upload and download over the term of the plan. No way!

I went into a store to sign up for the wireless internet a nice salesperson had recommended the other day and was asked to fill in a form. I had guessed my requirements but the form defeated the seller’s purpose. First I had to put down my home address and my previous address and how long I had stayed there. Four weeks did not seem to be acceptable for the present address. It is only temporary, till I move into my next home. The previous one is in China and they would not understand it if I wrote it. I was required to put down a home phone and did not have one. I have a mobile but for some reason these purveyors of high technology had not understood that some people just don’t want a home phone these days and can be contacted through a cellphone. When I realized that a credit check was required I walked out of the shop. Since I was cheated in China a few years ago I have had a bad credit record, even though I paid my credit cards out as soon as I was financial again it makes no difference.

In the end my question is this. Who foisted this Gordian knot on the Australian people and why? Who is gaining from the impenetrability of the mass of information required to make a good choice of telephone services? How long are we going to have to put up with this unwieldy and unfriendly situation? When are we going to be able to walk into a shop and buy a connection or a phone which will let us make local, STD and ISD calls as we wish, without having to sign up for ’special’ deals and study for days to choose what we want? When will the government realize that the cost of the time taken for Australian people to choose a phone service must run to millions of dollars annually? Let’s change to something simpler.

Author’s note: If anything in this blog does not accurately represent the situation regarding telephony in Australia it is the author’s opinion that it proves his point.

Every day, as I visit shops and go to medical appointments and just wander around, I see people of the Chinese race and always wonder, do they come from China or are they from Singapore or Taiwan or are they Koreans or Japanese or from somewhere else. Brisbane is a pot-pourri of the human race now and so many of the faces that pass me are not European in their origin. I’ve said before that I love this diversity and I feel my life in Australia will be much richer for it. We are located next to Asia and it could even be said that we are just the biggest island in Asia and that the idea we are a little continent in our own right is just a British conceit. Now we are becoming more obviously Asian by welcoming our fellow Asians to join us and transform us.

Much more relaxed and confident than I once was, it is easy for me to greet people with a, Where are you from? It is a good conversation starter and is brightening my days. Occasionally I will meet a mainland Chinese and say, Ni hao. Over the past few days I have clearly overheard some people speaking putonghua (Mandarin) and said, ‘Qing wen, nimen shi Zhonguo ren ma?’ (Hello, are you Chinese?). I had a nice little interaction with a couple in the Centrelink queue and a male student through this question.

I do miss China and my friends there and I hope that I will make some Chinese friends in Brisbane and that they will encourage me to continue with my putonghua and even improve it. When I get into my new home in a week’s time I will set a study programme and try to improve the basic knowledge that can build into conversational ability when I have the opportunity to talk with Chinese people.

The Brisbane bus service is excellent! What a difference from the last time I lived in Brisbane, twenty years ago. In those days it was common to get on a bus and ask what the fare was to your destination and be met with a surly response from a driver who seemed to think you should know how much in advance and have the correct change ready so he could rush on his way. These days the drivers are really helpful and never give you the feeling they are in a hurry. I have seen them get out of their seat to help disabled people and young women with prams. The other day a woman gave the driver her baby to hold while she loaded her pram. The buses have special platforms at the front where luggage or a folding pram can be stowed. Next to those platforms is a row of seats that fold down to make a wheelchair space and there is also a ramp that can be lowered at the front door so a wheelie can mount or dismount the vehicle. I noticed today that there is a special bell that warns the driver that a wheelie wants to get off so he can get the ramp ready. Passengers are encouraged to leave the front seats vacant for the aged and infirm. Drivers drive carefully, without the sudden acceleration and braking that used to throw the passengers around in the past. Congratulations to Brisbane transport for an amazingly effective training programme that has resulted in passengers feeling as though they have been given priority over the timetable. Intelligent improvements to the roadways with lots of exclusive bus lanes has greatly increased reliability of arrival times too. And it is wonderful to sit on a bus again with no one lighting up a cigarette to pollute my air. Wuhan people, just sit and wish you were here!

I have not written lately as I have been very sick but now I am not so bad. Soon after I arrived back in Australia I booked myself into a hospital where they found my heart condition had become much worse. The doctors would not let me go home for nine days, until they had my blood pressure, heart rate, sugar levels, and the level of a substance called warfarin into the normal range. They looked at my heart through a high tech machine and measured its action then told me my heart is operating at one fifth normal efficiency. That’s scary guys! I am going to be the most co-operative patient in the world from here on and take all of my pills every day, eat only healthy food, drink only healthy drinks (even water!) and walk and walk until my heart begins to function more normally and even after that take really good care of myself for the rest of my life.

The main effect on my life is tiredness. I am always at least a little tired. I have found myself a place to live and will move in but I have to ask family members to carry everything for me. I’m just not capable of doing it. If I lift something that would have been no trouble a couple of years back I find myself puffing and panting and having to sit down to get my breath back. There is no way I can take part in carrying furniture up stairs.

Fortunately I have an excellent family who are not only going to help me set up my new place and bring utilities (trucks) and trailers (no not caravans to live in, you Americans, box thingies towed behind a car to carry stuff), but they are giving me so much stuff I wonder where I am going to put it all. What a great new start I will have as I settle in to Australia again.

Australia has a great though often criticised Social Security system and I am eligible for disability support. It is basic but can sustain a person. My hope is to pick up work through the internet and earn as much as I can from home. I am not able to do full-time work but as my health improves through my new lifestyle I should be able to take on more, in stages as I become capable of maintaining the effort.

This blog might make some of you feel a little sad as I have been having a difficult time, however, I am on track for a better future. I will continue to blog and let all my friends who drop in here how I am going. Also I will blog for fun, giving comments and observations of what I see around me and what concerns me or gives me joy in the world.