2025   

living in two places

Since 2020, when the Covid Pandemic restricted life as we knew it, we live in two places.

We have a nice little flat in Balmain, an old harbour suburb of Sydney  and also a beautifully refurbished cottage at our daughter's property at the outskirts of Bellingen on the Mid-North-Coast. 

And there we are most the time now . It is much easier for very old people like us to live close to one of the children and get that bit of extra help. 

And there is a garden too, a great joy for me.

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                                                                         2024

This year we will be 70 years together.

Maybe I should select some photos

of memorable moments of our life over seven decades.

 

After living 18 years in the Blue Mountains we made again a change. One of our daughters who also had lived in Katoomba with her family moved to the Mid-North Coast. So we decided to move back to Sydney and live in the little flat we owned in Balmain right at the waterfront. Now we were closer again to the rest of the now big family. We went often for extended periods to Bellingen, a beautiful little town near Coffs Harbour, staying with our daughter. When Covid restrictions made life in Sydney difficult we moved into a beautifully refurbished granny-flat on our daughter’s property. And I started a new garden.

Our 4 children and families, 11 grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren visit us often.

And here we live now happily in our very old age.  

And why not retire early? Good idea! 

So 54 / 57 years old we were self-funded retirees. 

We enjoyed looking after the ever growing family, went on many more trips overseas, often going bush. The long held dream moving to the country became a reality in a limited sort of way. We did not like city life but also did not want be too far away from the children. A large house edging on to bushland in the Blue Mountains was the ideal solution. After a few bushfire too close for comfort and being almost a decade older we moved to a smaller cottage in Katoomba. The big garden there was a welcome challenge after next to no gardening in a bushland setting. And we still did lots of extended bush walks.

Returning to Sydney after the 3 years in PNG many things had changed. We had sold our nice home in Narrabeen and had bought an old house in Neutral Bay close to the city as rental property. Not finding easily a suitable place for our family we moved in. Years of alteration and renovations followed. Hart worked as teacher again and I in the administration of a teachers college. Our children moved out soon after finishing school and the two of us enjoyed then the easy life as a couple. We went often overseas to visit our families in Berlin and travelled to many interesting places. After the Berlin Wall dividing East and West had fallen  our relatives visited us too. And we went on many most beautiful bush trip. Best our family grew. Soon we had grandchildren bringen lots of joy into our lives.

Life was good.

 

Then a great opportunity came: a position as lecturer for Hart in a Teachers College in Papua New Guinea.  So we moved for 3 years, 1972 -74, to Goroka in the Highlands. It was an exiting time full of challenges and rewards. Being there when a once underdeveloped colony was to become independent self-governing country within a few years was extraordinary.

Working with young enthusiastic students and living among villagers still with lots of very old traditions was an amazing experience.

  

On the day six years after we left Berlin we got the keys for our first own place. After all that hard work and strict saving we had the deposit for a place of our own. A 3-bedroom cottage with a big garden in Narrabeen, a northern beach suburb of Sydney was now our home. Also Hartmut had finished his studies. We felt now save, belonging and were very happy.