Trading Places: Carol and Dale Whilden and son Jordan outside the offices of the Australian paper The Ocean Grove Voice. Its editor, on that day, happened to be in Ocean Grove, N.J.
By Charles Layton
My cyberspace pen pal, Alan Barber, edits the local newspaper in our sister city, Ocean Grove, Australia. He just sent me a link to an article he published this week. It describes his visit to our town in mid-December.
As we reported earlier, Barber stopped by here during a vacation in the U.S. And just by coincidence two of our townsfolk, Dale and Carol Whilden, along with their son, Jordan, were on that same day visiting Barber’s town on Australia’s southern coast.
While there, the Whildens showed up at the office of Barber’s paper, the Ocean Grove Voice. One of the staffers there took their picture.
We’ve already posted a story telling you what the Whildens thought about the Australian Ocean Grove. So now I thought I’d let you read Barber’s account of his visit here. We seem to have made a favorable impression. He devoted a great deal of space to his article about us, including a generous display of photos — of the Barbaric Bean, the Great Auditorium, our damaged beachfront and more.
Alan Barber. Photo by Mary Walton at the Barbaric Bean
He concluded by writing that “in a short time I learnt that although we live so far away we certainly share one really important trait — both Ocean Groves are friendly, welcoming and really interesting towns… I’ll certainly return to visit.”
Come back any time, Alan.
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To read his article, go to http://www.oceangrovevoice.com. When you get there, click on the “our latest edition” box at the top right corner and use the side arrows to navigate to pages 12 and 13. You’ll have to left click on the pages to enlarge them enough to read.
To see our previous article about Barber and his visit with us, click here.