We spent a whole day at Ulladulla, visiting our favourite op-shop, lunching at the bowling club, swimming a few laps in the heated indoor pool, and visiting our German friends, Heike and Siegfried.
I also visited the local Government Service Centre to claim a small $36 Medicare refund on my visit to the skin specialist some months ago. I had to stand in line with dozens of professional entitlement-seekers lodging their regular claims for the dole, green- and purple-haired girls with nose rings collecting their single mother's pension, and a colourful mix of equally nouveaux pauvres drawing housing subsidies and an assortment of other Government largesse.
Looking freshly washed and shaved, wearing clean clothes, and being totally devoid of bodily adornments such as tattoos, razor blades and metal studs, I felt like an alien in another universe. If I ever have to lodge another Medicare claim (small as it is given that I'm paying thousands every year in Medicare Levy and private health insurance), I shall do so by mail. It's a lot faster and a lot less smelly!
The visit to the Salvos' op-shop netted me a few more interesting books: Eden in the East - The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia; a slim volume of Poems by Hermann Hesse; a humourous Mustn't Grumble - An Accidental Return to England; a beautifully bound Off the Beaten Track - A Traveller's Anthology; a small book of Tales from Paradise - Memories of the British in the South Pacific; and a much-read Slow Travel - Sell the house, buy the yacht and sail away ... which will be read even more by me.
And all that on top of the dozen-or-so books I already have on order from Booktopia and The Book Depository!
I think, for the rest of the day I shall engage in some Slow Travel and cross that imaginary barrier which so often keeps us in our ruts.
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