Remembering this saying from my Greek days, we drove no more than 25 kilometres to spend a day at the Moruya Markets and have a lunch of grilled fish at the Moruya Bowling & Recreation Club.
At the open-air markets we bought some pretzels and 'Lebkuchen' from a Swiss baker with a heavy German accent and baklava and Turkish bread from an Eqyptian with an Australian accent, and Malty and Rover sniffed and barked at a dozen different dogs before we visited our favourite second-hand shop.
At 10 cents a tape, I couldn't help myself to add to my huge library of video tapes with a copy of The Last Husky, the story of the final journey of Antarctica's sledge dogs; Riverboats Remembered, a documentary of the Murray River's paddlesteamers; and Windtalkers about the Navajo Code, the one wartime code never broken by the enemy.
My book collection got a few additions as well: Empire of Sand about T.E. Lawrence; Russia: Which Way Paradise?, an insight into the old and the new Russia; The World from Islam, a journey of discovery through the Muslim heartland; Islam in our Backyard, a part-novel, part-essay in which the author explores the conflict between the 'Islamic' East and the 'Christian' West; and Goodbye, Mr Chips, the story made famous through the film of he same name, too short for a book and uncomfortably long for a short story. However, whether book or not, it was, as the cover suggests, too good to be borrowed - it should be bought. And so I did.
