After saying goodbye to Julia at the airport last night, there was now, unfortunately, no excuse to keep us away from grading the Monash exams. So both Rita and I sat down this morning to make a good start. But there were always other things to do. For example, with all the work happening on clearing the trees from under the Cacor Aqueduct, there was a lot of debris floating down the river and congregating around the barge. So, I figured I should go outside every now and again to check and to clear away the gathered driftwood. But it wasn’t only dead wood that was gathering around the barge, but also dead ragodin - I moved him away slowly, hoping he wouldn’t explode )-:

After a few more hours of grading, we decided we needed to go shopping, since we would soon be going down river to the Garonne and would need an inflatable dinghy to get to and from shore, if needed, or use it to clean around the undersides of the barge. So we headed up to InterSport in Castelsarassin, and had a look at a few options, before finally deciding on a 1-person inflatable dinghy for the grand price of 29euro. Will be fun to see how it goes.

During the afternoon, in an intermission from grading, I was reading an email exchange with an Australian who said that instead of registering his boat on the Australian Register of Ships (which is voluntary for boats under 25m) he had registered his boat with VicRoads (just like you register your car). This is compulsory in Australia, and gives a registration number and proof of ownership. He said that on the occasions he had been stopped in Europe, he had showed these registration papers and they were deemed acceptable. Given the differences in price for the two systems (currently, about $1100 for ARS and $70p.a. for VicRoads), it raises some interesting questions as to the relevance of each method for registering small Australian barges which are cruising on inland waterways in Europe.

That evening, we had dinner with Don, Laura and Jane up at the house. We had totally forgotten that we had showed Don & Laura the house last week, but they seemed to enjoy it again, while Jane was in awe. We then had dinner with them up on the Belvedere.

As always, they brought their two little dogs (Ruby & Annie) with them, and they proceeded to join us under the table, escaping the heat on the cool concrete, but perhaps also waiting for scraps.

Don and Laura brought us a lovely housewarming card (bearing a painting of their boat Largo) and also a housewarming gift which has solved a long-standing problem for us. From now on, the area on top of the garage will be called the Terrasse des Amis, rather than the Belvedere (which always seemed a little pompous to me).