The Gee Family Website
has been set up to inform our relatives and friends of our activities, to
publish material which we believe may be of interest, as a medium for the
display of photographs which are easer to access from the web and to consolidate
family matters in one place. It became possible to
do this through a negative. Our internet service provider decided to
increase the cost of the fastest available broadband by a considerable amount.
It is relatively easy to change an internet service provider, but there is the
inconvenience of having to obtain new email addresses and communicate this with
our friends and relatives. It appeared that there was one domain left on
the web which included the name gee which had not been taken by other people.
This is the address of this website,
www.gee.net.au Our email addresses are now david at that domain (gee.net.au) and helen at the same domain (gee.net.au). I have not written the
address out in full because of the threat of spam.
We will try to keep the website up
to date. At the moment it is very much in the construction phase. Below is our 2004 Christmas letter. Christmas letters from
previous years can be accessed
here or on the links section on the left.
CHRISTMAS 2004
Christmas greetings and our best wishes for a wonderful
2005. How quickly 2004 has flown—this retirement state is certainly a busy one,
‘though we feel that in many ways we are better described as ‘failed retirees’.
The opportunity for choices is something we have both grasped; our only regret
is that there is still not enough time to do all we’d like.
Very briefly, this has been our year:
David beginning the year with part time work at the
University of New England in the school of Professional and Development Studies,
and finishing with a short term contract full time (including conducting a
weekend school in Hong Kong)
Helen working a few hours per week with individual students
who have literacy difficulties
Both of us quite heavily involved in community work—music,
catering for musical functions and assisting others. Then there is the garden,
University of the Third Age, Zonta, family history, our Opera subscription
series in Sydney and travel.
Our travel opportunities this year have been fantastic. In
April four American cousins (from the McWhirter family) visited us in
Australia. This was the first time we had met and was an amazing experience.
We travelled together for 6 weeks, first in a mini-bus then in two cars, from
Melbourne to Fraser Island. A highlight was the gathering together of most of
Robert Carnie McWhirter’s grandchildren with the American cousins for two days
in the Hunter Valley. During the time in Armidale David conducted the Armidale
Symphony Orchestra in The Last Night of the Proms. This was a very different
experience for our American relatives who were warmly welcomed by the Armidale
community, and rather surprised at the flag-waving audience participation
frivolity.
We had a short holiday relaxing in Queensland in July,
returning home to get the garden in some sort of order before we set off for a
return visit to the USA and Canada in September. We began our trip in Chicago,
moving on through Amish country to Michigan where we met relations from America,
Canada, Greece and Scotland—90+ in all— at a clan gathering. This was an
overwhelming and wonderful experience. We then travelled—with at first three
and then two—cousins to Niagara Falls, then New York State, Vermont, New
Hampshire, Maine, New Brunswick, Novia Scotia and Prince Edward Island, to
Boston, San Francisco and Yosemite National Park. It was a tremendous seven
weeks.
We were home a week when our Austrian friends arrived from
Germany to stay with us for the term. Our next big adventure begins on
November 16 when we return to Bhutan for a month to continue the work we
undertook last year in evaluating the monitoring and support system for the
Bhutanese Department of Education. This was an absolutely amazing experience
and we feel so privileged to be invited back. We will be home just in time to
go to Melbourne to spend Christmas with Judith and Will and their Melbourne
family. We have had a really great year!
We are fortunately both healthy (although David was not so
well early in the year, developing pneumonia and asthma) and trust that you are
also well. Good health is a very high priority at this stage of our lives when
there is so much to enjoy. We hope to visit Scotland and Ireland to meet more
of our family in 2005, but are also leaving room for the unexpected delights
that we are sure will surface. Let us hope that our paths will cross. We send
you our love and wishes for good health, joy, peace and contentment. We look
forward to hearing of your 2004 doings and plans. We find email a really good
way to stay in touch—you will note that our email addresses have changed—and
would like to add your email address to our address book if you have one.
Again we wish you a very happy Christmas season and hope to
hear from you soon.
Christmas