Big birthday party, trip of a lifetime now just memories

Image: Steep Point, as recorded on the camera of fellow blogger Lindsay.

A BIG family and dozens of friends had a fantastic lunchtime celebration this month when Cecil Pellow, of Birkdale, turned 80.
About 50 people converged on a Raby Bay restaurant on Cecil's birthday - Sunday, November 4. Cecil came from a family with six kids who grew up in the NSW grain and sheep country at West Wyalong.
All but one of his siblings – a brother who was too sick to travel from Melbourne – were there on the big day.
Another brother, Barry, applied his photographic expertise to record the celebration but almost three weeks later, the party guests are lamenting the loss of the camera.
The party ended mid afternoon, Barry and his wife Carole caught a taxi to their Cleveland motel, only a few hundred metres from the restaurant.

ABOUT half an hour after arriving, he realised he had left the Canon camera, which has a black case, in the taxi.
He has posted a reward in the Lost & Found column saying "memory card very important" but no one has responded.
"The camera can be replaced but the memories can't," Barry said from Hervey Bay, where he and Carole are staying in a van park as their new retirement home is getting finishing touches. "The card has about 1200 pictures."
The couple, formerly from Gladstone, has been among the grey nomads for almost a year, travelling around Australia.

THE lost pictures have documented their experiences during the past six months, mainly across the Top End, south to Perth and through the outback regions – from Kununurra at the edge of the Kimberley region to Perth and back to Birdsville in Queensland's far south west.
Barry considers them the most stunning images of the couple's time on the road – especially those of the most western point of the continent.
He and Carole breathed the sweet air of the Indian Ocean as they looked over the majestic cliffs of Steep Point after a tough stretch on a rough road.

THE trip has been a dream come true for the couple. "We have looked forward to this for about 25 years," Barry says.
They were well prepared with a robust 4WD and a comfortable van.
A highlight has been meeting some "lovely friends", Barry says.
He still has a slim hope that the person who found the camera will at least post the memory card to him.

This column has appeared in The Redland Times.