Wedding

A cool and cloudy day dawned in Adelaide and with no particular schedule this morning, a brisk walk up to Burnside village for a few grocery essentials was made after breakfast with a view to being back to the Tretolas in time for Naomi Penn to visit.
Naomi and her late husband Gary have been friends of ours for many years since they moved to Australia from South Africa with their 3 young children in the late 1990’s. They came to Sydney for a week at that time with a view to possibly living there but eventually settled on Adelaide as their Australian home.
We had stayed in touch with them ever since and apart from our connection through the Christadelphian community, Gary was also a private pilot which gave us an extra level of camaraderie.
Just before Gary fell ill in 2022 with gliobastoma (brain cancer) Gary had excitedly rung me to tell me that he had just resumed his refresher pilot training (as he had let his licence lapse) and he was thinking of buying a used light aircraft to do some cross country trips and renew his aviation passion.
Just a few weeks after this call Gary fell ill and received his diagnosis and sadly Gary succumbed to this disease while Loriene and I were in the UK earlier this year.
We spent a lovely hour or so with Naomi this morning reminiscing with lots of laughs and a few tears and I was very touched to receive as a gift from Naomi Gary’s almost brand new aviation headsets that he had purchased when he resumed his flying last year.
These headsets will now have pride of place in VH-MWD and will be a lovely reminder of Gary each time they are used.
Grace then whipped up some lunch for us and it was time to get ready to go to Phoebe and Jonny’s wedding - the central purpose of this trip . . .
The wedding was beautiful in every way, we caught up with lots of people we knew and made some new acquaintances as well. It was a wonderful occasion and the weather was very kind to them for their outdoor ceremony.Les mer