After a sumptuous lunch at the Milton-Ulladulla Bowling Club, accompanied by two tall glasses of the sommelier's best, I presented myself in high spirits to my favourite dentist, Grant Brodie. "Do you want an injection?" he asked.
Being a card-carrying trypanophobiac, I replied, "No way! Just go ahead and knock yourself out; I already am!" During all his drilling, I didn't feel a thing, testimony to my excellent choice of both wine and dentist.
Of course, no visit to Ulladulla is complete without a visit to the op-shop - of which Ulladulla has three! - where I picked up some excellent books and a pile of DVDs, some of which I will give to my even older friends across the river, fittingly both series of "One Foot in the Grave".
I always enjoy Ulladulla. There's a distinct country town feeling about it, with people smiling and good-humouredly stopping to talk to each other. "I could live here", I thought to myself. "But could I've done so for most of my life, and could I've worked here?" I thought some more, as I walked past a chartered accountant's office where some obscure clerk was balancing the books for some obscure mum-and-dad business.
In today's so much more stratified world with all its black gown-wearing and academic cap-throwing graduation mumbo jumbo, my accountancy-by-correspondence-course qualifications would be very much second-rate. They were already slightly second-rate in the 70s which made me take assignments in third-world countries where I was paid several times more - and with lower or no income tax, and a car and accommodation thrown in for free. Instead of Ulladulla, it was Rabaul, Bougainville, Honiara, Port Moresby, Lae, Rangoon, Singapore, Tehran, Apia, Penang, Jeddah, and Athens for little accountancy-by-correspondence-course-qualified me! And so I left Ulladulla until I could enjoy it in retirement!
The road less travelled has worked for me!
P.S. Not that Ulladulla has been unaffected by COVID! Even their local pool had to be reconfigure to conform with social distancing rules:
