We heard back from the Westpac branch manager at Yea that she had managed to get the SMS Protect Code removed from the BPAY payments from our account. That was the good news. The bad news was that, as a result, Westpac had lowered the daily limit on BPAY transactions to $1500. This makes it pretty useless if we are wishing to pay OzForex for currency transfers for work on the house renovations, which are usually over $10,000. Westpac are becoming as good as French banks who are very happy to take your money from you, but keep finding new restrictions when you want to get it back from them. For a while I thought we would never be able to pay our bills over here, until I figured out a workaround. For our TUTI business account with Westpac we have a key which generates a random code whenever you wish to do a large payment. Luckily, that key still works. So if I want to do a large payment over here, I first have to transfer money from my personal account into the TUTI account (luckily that doesn’t require any security clearance, yet), and then pay by direct deposit (and random number code) into the account of the beneficiary. Luckily this system works, because with the end of the financial year approaching, there were a number of large payments I also had to do for end-of-year settlements.

Given that Julia was leaving today, we had saved the best for last, and so we headed down to the Tarn River to take her on a cruise up the river. As we cruised up river beyond the road bridge, we noticed that the military camp on the right was a swarm of activity with soldiers building a pontoon bridge on top of about 7 canoes.

Once we reached the old chateau on the bank near the weir at Ste Livrade, we turned around, then headed out to mid-river and turned off the engine. The quietness, apart from the birdsong, was enchanting. We then let the boat drift with the river flow and the wind, occasionally turning the engine back on to make minor corrections in position. After a while, the boat achieved a stable equilibrium, with the downstream river flow balanced by the upstream breeze. The boat stayed in the same position in the river and so we settled down to a drifting lunch.

Eventually, however, we had to interrupt this idyllic lifestyle, since we had to get Julia to Toulouse Airport this afternoon for her flight to Frankfurt. So we started up the engine again, and started motoring downstream. As we approached the military base, we saw that the pontoon bridge had been finished and was now being cruised along the river (at considerable speed). By shutting down the engines on the canoes on one side, the “pontoon” was able to change direction quite easily. When they started doing figure-8s and then slaloming around the bridge pylons, I knew they had done this sort of thing a few times before.

As we came under the Cacor Aqueduct, we noticed that the dredge and excavator that had been cleaning the river near the double-lock was now being used to clear all the tree trucks and branches that had accumulated under the arches on the left bank. However, as it picked up the larger branches, it disturbed a lot of the smaller branches which then proceeded to float downstream. As we were to discover later, most of these branches then tended to come to rest among the barges moored along the quai on the river.

Having returned to our mooring, we then took Julia to the airport for her Frankfurt flight. I’m sure she will have memories of today’s cruise for quite a while.

When we returned from Toulouse, we settled down on board for a relaxing dinner and watched the sun setting slowly in the west. The view of the river, the quai, the Pont Napolean and the Moulin de Moissac was stunning.

It became even more stunning a bit later as the sky darkened further and Venus and Jupiter became even more obvious.