Dublin Cemetery

Now, that's Dublin South Australia - tidy little country town which most of the time the North-South travellers by-pass on the highway or like me call in on, to buy fruit and veg at the well-stocked greengrocery.
Well, on this visit yesterday, returning from my couple of days and nights in Adelaide, I ventured beyond the two or three shops, all the way to the little but well kept cemetery. Spent a quiet 20 minutes reading the headstones and getting a better sense of the area's 1870s onward history. Ate an apple there for an early lunch while walking - yes, and took the core home with me for the compost heap. Then at Kulpara (because I took the inland route) I bought a milk drink and a newspaper at the tourist shop which is stylishly located in an old church building.
The weather was sunny and benign after a mini-heatwave on the Thursday, when a friend kindly invited me to a delicious lunch. The hot day was  followed by a cool and wet Friday.
In Maitland another brief stop at the main store run by the Macks - their son and his wife were my tenants at a house in Samuel Street (since sold) before they bought one just round the corner from mum and dad's shop and it was nicely renovated by family effort. Good example of country town get-up-and-go spirit! Other family members run businesses in Yorketown, illustrating the theme of "all is connected".
In Adelaide at the Nova Cinema I saw the new fine Australian film Summer Coda with its action set in Mildura on the Riverland (an orange-harvesting setting for this "romantic drama" as described in the flyers). Worth seeing. That's my "review" :)
Our informal little sort-of literary group of friends on Friday night took stock and are looking at a dubious 2011 and further future. About half the handful of attenders - me being one of them - have indicated that we are unlikely to remain active next year. Obviously we wish well to all who continue to meet, but the viability of such a small number is compromised. A reliable location has been one diffiiculty: formerly this group - in larger days - used to meet in the Fullarton Park Community Centre. Health issues have been a recurring problem for several people; also unexpected overseas trips; clashes with family events; removal to a South East town for one member and (going back a bit further) to Sydney for another - to live with family. Oh  yes, and the Grinning Reaper here and there.
Nevertheless, our Friday night speaker gave a fascinating insight into the complexities of growing up and living in South Africa through the apartheid era. It would be sad if that evening were to prove to have been the final gathering of this group after nearly twenty years. It "grew"out of a successful international conference held in Adelaide on 1991, but the verb "to grow" no longer applies.
Today's weather is looking placid and I look out through the windows at all the gardening or fixing jobs which I have no intention of doing.