A New Year and a Milestone

Roger and I have not only made it through Christmas and New Year 2013, but we have also reached a bit of a personal milestone and are taking the time to reflect on all that we have achieved, as well as of course, as breathing deep for some new year's resolve.  January 2014 heralds the anniversary of the re-opening of The Blue Bird for meals and a rekindling of the business.  It might not have been as dramatic a year for the Shire of Lockhart as 2012, there were no floods in 2013, but it was a huge year for us.

The winter was long and hard to undergo our first year in business but we made it through and now we can say that we have seen all the seasons and seasonal changes.  We will know better what to expect in the coming year.  A tremendous learning curve and we are grateful that we have been able to roll with the times.  Spring arrived after a good rainy winter and the canola bloomed its butter yellow early.  The changeable spring with unfortunate late frosts was not kind to the farmers or their crops but Lockhart pulled through better than other areas and harvest took place earlier than usual to make the most of the crops that were left undamaged.

In December we suffered an early heatwave.  After the mild previous December in 2012, Lockhart had lulled me into a false sense of security.  Here I was thinking that it would not be as hot as people had warned me.  We sweltered for four days of temperatures that tipped over the 40 degree mark, followed then by sticky humid rain.  It wasn't so much the heat that distressed me as the multiplying bugs.  They might have been little but they learned over the week of their life span, to bite and be very, persistently irritating.  Tiny insects that pestered me day and night, attracted to light coloured things like our vehicle, our toilet and our skin.  The local Banjo frog was a welcome visitor in our back garden as they enjoyed a marvelous feast of insects.

Fortunately the weather cooled just before Christmas and it has since been a couple of weeks of lovely temperate 30 degree, fine days and cool nights so we have been able to get some sleep.  Christmas Eve presented a picture perfect sunset and since then we have been busy, busy, busy in the cafe as the traveling families make the most of the nice weather to trip around and stop at The Blue Bird.  Of course, I am having the same feeling that I do every year I work through the Christmas/New Year season.  I envy everyone else who is on holiday when I am not.  But it is a case of 'making hay' for us as we build up our business and we will be hopefully be able to stand back some time in the future and see the rewards of our hard work.

I terms of new year's projects?  Well, we are enhancing our collection of milk bar memorabilia and working on researching more of the history of The Blue Bird, Greek-Australian cafes and milk bars.  We have known all along that the most important part of what we are doing here is preserving a precious part of Lockhart's and indeed Australian history and the more of that history that we can share with the world, the better.  So here's to 2014 and its place in history.