Kawana Island’s Jenny Wood counts her blessings
Flashback: Jenny Wood performs at the Seniors Superstar final, which she won, at Caloundra RSL.
Jenny Wood of Living Choice Kawana Island is an acclaimed soprano singer and has published books. She reflects on how she is coping during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
What do I like about living here? “Living Choice” is what it is called and perhaps very appropriately so! When we first moved in we were just so thrilled to be here! A lovely big lake facing us and room to move inside - what more could we want?
We are having a very serious crisis at the moment with the advent of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Somehow we are all surviving and so far, no-one here has serious symptoms. But our Prime Minister and Government are equal to the task of keeping us safe and obedient to the rules which can keep us out of trouble. We live from day to day and all do our best to manage with the restrictions in place. We all hope that one day soon we will be free and able to live normally. It will come.
More people have moved in, some have moved on, and we now feel well settled with many friends living near us, part of this big apartment complex. The wonder of it is the lovely smiles we continue to receive. We swiftly learn the names of our new friends and can greet them happily. When a car passes we always wave and smile.
Before COVID-19 we had many functions in the Leisure Centre. The most popular is the weekly “Happy Hour” provided at 5.30pm. Here we can sit and converse with whosoever we like, or perhaps move about visiting this person or that and learn their names.
We have many social occasions and put our names on a list to attend whatever we decide to go to. We are lucky enough to have two buses which we share with our other Living Choice village – a small bus and a much bigger one capable of holding at least 20 people. Thus, we are usually able to get to outside events very comfortably.
For some years there was a big annual competition “Seniors’ Idol” and subsequently “Senior Superstar” which some Living Choice residents participated in. I was lucky to be the winner one year and “runner up” for several years. I also entered into another event when my novel “Voyages” was published and we had a big “book launch”. These were early days but I was glad I had success in these things.
Today I am looking out again at the lake from our big verandah and thinking how lovely it looks from our second floor apartment. I can see myriad little boats, kayaks etc. and the odd big motor boat chugging along. I thought – this is not too bad at all…
I am feeling glad for everyone who has moved into this apartment complex. There are "villas" too. It is a great place to live and very handy to everything such as shopping centres, pharmacies, restaurants etc. We are so lucky to have been able to buy here and be part of this mixed group of people who now call this home. What a good choice we made to come here!
