Garden Party

I was invited by my local MP, Tony Windsor, to a garden party today at his home 'Cintra', just south of the little township of Werris Creek. That's about 170km south of Armidale, so that made for a long return trip of getting on for 340 km. Dot was to accompany me, but unfortunately had an engagement in Canberra. So, instead, I took a family friend, Jane Stening, and she enjoyed the outing considerably.

Tony is one of our excellent independent MPs representing the 1x Federal and 2x State seats in New England. The conventional parties are unrepresented! And the independents are hugely effective in defending our regional interests, extracting policy concessions, and raising the tone and quality of debate on key issues. I also see eye to the other Tony on many policy issues and have helped him and our State independent, Richard Torbay, retain the seats at many successive elections.

The pictures show Tony, and his wife Lyn, welcoming us and then he giving us a brief speech on aspects of federal politics. Mostly we talked among ourselves as we had a lovely barbecue lunch, though I also discussed several important policy isues with Tony. The demographic was on the loder side and distinctly prosperous. Most of the men, though not me of course - I'm a contrarian, were dressed in R M Williams outfits and Akubra hats (or similar) as befits millionaire owners of farm properties.

Tony's homestead, Cintra, has been beautifully landscaped over the years by Tony himself. He constructed lakes, timber decking, barbecue areas, paths, rock walls and so on - as pictured, rather like Winston Churchill did with Chartwell. By the way, it was hot today, but very pleasant travelling in our new well air-conditioned RAV4. Armidale reached 30C and Werris Creek an estimated 38C.

AS