Bruce no longer has to worry about going to work and is finding life very relaxing and stress free. He is now going to get much more involved in Veteran’s golf and go to as many Country Veteran’s golf games as possible. He has also set up a website to store the history of Margaret River Golf Club and the Veteran’s.
Part of the Veteran Golf is the working bee after each game. We have a good group of old guys who go around and pick up sticks, clean up fallen branches and clear up areas that are becoming overgrown.
Rosie and Bruce went off to the Australia Day golf game, which Laurie and Patsy sponsored. We were all very patriotic and made sure we had the right flag up at home for the occasion.
Now that Bruce is retired, he is also taking Liam off to a few brewery lunches to investigate the various options that our guests could go to. It is a hard job, but someone has to do it.
We were going to do a few holidays overseas this year, including a wedding in the Phillipines but then Covid hit and everything got shut down. Luckily, we were only locked in for a month in WA before they started to ease the restrictions and it wasn’t too long before we could travel anywhere in Western Australia, but not outside of our state. This was great for our little business and for Western Australian tourism, but not good for operators of luxury tours.
In July, Jim, Anne, Rosie and Bruce went to Augusta Golf Course to play a 4BBB competition. Augusta is a beautiful golf course and would be one of the best in the state if it had grass greens. Unfortunately, they don’t, so they have a small, aging membership. I would like to say we played well, but we came last and second last.
In August, Bruce joined the Country Vets trip to Kojonup and Katanning. These are both sand green courses and Gary, Jim and Bruce took their camper vans to Katanning for three nights.
It was freezing in Katanning so we spent a bit of time at the Exchange Hotel, where the food was good, the fire warm and the locals entertaining. We drank a lot of wine to compensate for our very average golf. We loved these few days and look forward to doing it again next year.
In August, our good friends Jim and Anne became Australian Citizens. It was a lovely ceremony and we are all pleased they made this decision, Jim is now supporting Australia in the rugby, which must be hard for him.
To celebrate their citizenship, we all went on a holiday to Geraldton to play golf.
We played Geraldton GC and then went onto Kalbarri, where we joined in the MidWest Veteran’s competition. This was a bargain, $10 for the game and a sausage. We also met up with another few Margaret River members who were on holiday there.
We did the usual tourist sites in Kalbarri, taking a walk along the ocean bluffs to see some magnificent cliff scenery. We also went to Kalbarri National Park to see the gorges. We also caught up with Merv and Robyn who were touring the area at the same time.
After Kalbarri, we dropped back into Geraldton to catch up with Johnny and Nola before travelling down to Dongara for a couple of nights to play at Dongara Golf Club.
On the way home we dropped into Northampton, since the bakery served the “best” vanilla slices in WA. You had to be quick to get them since they were going out the door quickly, in trays.
After the last trip, we decided to upgrade our cars. Bruce’s ute was not practical and Rosie’s BMW was getting old and having a few problems. It just happened that both cars became available on the same day so we went up to Perth in October to collect them.
Bruce originally was buying a second hand VW but when he went to pick it up, it wasn’t exactly as described so he went to another dealer and asked whether they had a new one, since they were on special. They only had a red one left so he bought it.
In October, Veterans golf has there two day event in Denmark and Walpole so Jim, Anne, Rosie and Bruce all went to Denmark to stay before going onto Albany.
In December, the school acknowledged that Bruce finally had retired. Since he had been at the school for over 30 years, he was presented with an official photo that we then hung in the staff room for posterity. It was all pretty subdued, but you must expect this, since Bruce had been a bit annoying for the past few years at school.
We had an early Christmas celebration at our house this year since all Sophie’s family were all going North.
Janet and Tom sent us a Christmas photo of their family, we stayed with them a weekend in 2009 while we were on Exchange to Toronto. Bruce first met Tom and Janet in Campbell River in 1991 when he was on Exchange to British Columbia.
