New Years Day

They weren't wrong!! The weather reports that is! A blistering hot 44 degrees today.....and boy was it a hot start to the new year.

We took a tactical decision to camp in the bedroom for most of the day where we have the air conditioning. Whenever we opened the door we had a quick reminder of actually how hot it was. Imagine turning the oven on to 250 and after an hour or so, open the door and that blast you get...well that's what it was like all day.

We spent most of the day organising the blog and sifting through photos of last night. At about 4pm I was getting a bit stir crazy and wanted to go somewhere and at least top the day off with a refreshing swim in the sea.

Lisa suggested we go to Waverly Cemetery, which has been a spot on the map we've wanted to go to for a while. We heard it was a beautiful cemetery on the cliffs overlooking the sea....and hoped it would distract us slightly from the heat.

We thought that being by the sea on the cliffs would give us a cool sea breeze, but we were wrong on that front! But our consolation was that it was indeed a beautiful place.

Looks like it's been around from early 1800s and some very old stones were dotted around. But the view topped it off as a spectacular place to visit.

We stayed for a short while until the heat got the better of us, but not before we took a few photos. We'll be back to this place though, maybe a little earlier or later in the day to get more of a contrasting light. Definitely lots of material here to take photos of.

We decided to head to the beach, and as it overlooked Coogee that was the perfect spot. Only, thousands of other people had the same idea and we found it difficult to park. So difficult in fact that we had to go somewhere else!

As beautiful as the city beaches are, they are generally extremely busy, and finding somewhere to park is always tricky. So we headed for our favourite spots and went north of the harbour to Chowder Bay. By the time we got there it was after 6pm, but it didn't take long before I was swimming in the sea and Lisa was lazing on the beach, still nursing her poorly knee from Flint and Steel Beach.

We stayed until the sun went down and the swim had certainly done the trick and worked up an appetite. So what else but a curry on New Year's Day! Yum Yum. Our favourite curry hole, the Darbar on Glebe Point Road! The end to a very hot day.

Happy New Year!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

What a fantastic evening!! Seemed very fitting to the end of what has been a truly brilliant year. Hopefully 2006 will prove to be just as good and dare I say it......even better!?
Well as promised, I'm updating the blog actually on time. We woke up this morning just in time to send text messages and do some phoning for friends and family in the UK to be experiencing the countdown to their new year. Of course most were out or drunk but the messages got through!!

Any way last night we gathered at the Botanic Gardens at around 6.30pm. It seemed there were different grades of tickets and looked like we were in the middle section. This offered a great view looking out onto the Opera House with the Bridge in the background and what amazing and memorable photo opportunities this would provide.

We took our space on the lawn which was very civilised and ultimately was base camp for the next few hours leading up to countdown. If it's one thing that we are learning about being here, is that every event focusses around a picnic!! Down the beach.....picnic, to the park.....picnic, to the concert......picnic. Tonight was no exception. Rugs of all different colour and sizes defined everyone's little patch of territory on the lawn.

The first set of fireworks was at 9pm. This is the family fireworks and a little teaser for what was in store. There were just over 2 hours to kill before the first show and it became obvious that this was the feeding frenzy. Taking a look all around us and every one was eating and drinking wine and tucking into their picnic.

It was a lovely warm night and t-shirts, shorts and flipflops (thongs for the Aussie interpretation) was the order of the night. The sun gradually went down to begin a new day back in England. On any day this is a great spot to be in the city; water in front, city and skyscrapers to the left, park to the right and Opera House and Bridge straight ahead. As the light fades the Opera House generally bathes in a beautiful golden light catching the last of the rays, providing just a few photo opportunities along the way.

It wasn't long before 9pm was on us and the ferries and boats moored in front were all giving their horns in excitement. Not sure how they knew it was coming, but they were the perfect countdown to the start of the first fireworks.

Fantastic!! These were set off somewhere in the middle of the harbour and provided a great back drop to all the different yachts and boats moored up to get the best view. The fireworks ended all too quickly and the smoke drifted overhead towards the city.

More time to eat and drink. At this point we also noticed that the heart on the bridge was getting bigger. It was constantly beating but had now grown in size. For the next 3 hours we chatted and drank and ate, chatted a bit more, took some photos, drank, ate.....you get the picture! The time seemed to go so quickly and before we knew it, the boats and crowd were starting to get excited. Lots of horns and cheering and whistling and then the countdown to 12 o’clock had suddenly arrived.

Boom!! Off they went and they certainly weren't disappointing. Igniting from all over the frame of the Bridge, highlighting it's full shape and the Opera House in the foreground. Any way I'll shut up and hopefully these photos will do the display some justice.

However much we wanted them to carry on forever, sadly they had to end. The Opera House was engulfed in the smoke from all the fireworks, but it gradually cleared as it drifted towards the city. This was the cue for every one to pack up and leave; making their mass exodus from all the great vantage points they held, through the city and home.

The city was amazingly packed, full of people of all shapes, sizes and nationalities in various states of drunkeness. It was all good humoured as the only thing on people's minds was firstly, to wish every one a happy new year and secondly, to get home.

After weaving our way through the throng, feeling like a salmon swimming up stream, we managed to get on the tram. It was nice and air conditioned and made the last of the journey home a little easier!

So now it’s New Year’s Day and most of you lot have just finished celebrating the start of your New Year. It's a little sticky today. 43 degrees as a few people have said, and with all the doors and windows opened, the breeze that comes through feels like a hair dryer blowing hot!!

So we wish everyone a very HAPPY NEW YEAR!! May this year prove to be a good one and we hope to see a few more people out here with us. You're all so very welcome.

And if you want to know how fantastic it is.....ask Linda and Chris! :o)

New Years Eve

It's been a blisteringly hot day again today. Apparently tomorrow is gonna be a heat wave!! Early 40's or something! The only thing to do in these situations is head for the beach!
Anyway, tonight we have our tickets for the Botanic Gardens, which offers a fantastic vantage point looking over to the Opera House and in full view of the Bbridge. Which is where the fire works are blasting off from! To get really excited, here's a few photos from last year, which we didn't take because we were in full throws of selling the house and shipping furniture and cat!

Last year included a big light sphere which hung from the bridge, and on our arrival, we kept seeing the ball for the first few weeks.

So 2004 has a significant time frame for us, we didn't get to see the fireworks, but we were making preperations to see the ones in 2005!! Starting to get excited now and preparing cameras, 'esky' for the wine and nibbles and our well used picnic stuff.

Will talk again in 2006. Maybe a New Year's resolution will be to try and update the blog more often!! :o)

Au revoire

Well, the day finally had to arrive for mum and dad to leave us and I had been dreading it. To take our minds off it, we carried on regardless, taking them to another sight! As if sharing my mood, the day was a bit overcast.
We took them to The Gap, a fantastic view from the top of the cliffs that are the eastern-most point of the South Head. The view was still spectacular!

We returned home for some lunch – a good English fry-up!! Then it was a case of gathering the last of their belongings and trying to stuff them in the suitcases! It was panic stations for about 20 minutes when they couldn’t find their passports, but of course they turned up!
The drive to the airport wasn’t very enjoyable and went quicker than expected as the roads were completely empty. I think the majority of people leave the city over Christmas. There’s no point in dragging this out longer than necessary – it was very painful to say goodbye, much worse than when I left them in England.
We’d spent almost every minute with mum and dad and our time was packed with such enjoyable moments, visiting loads of our favourite places. We had such an absolutely brilliant holiday with mum and dad. Thank you so much!!

Sydney to Hobart

The Sydney to Hobart boat race takes place every Boxing Day, so this was the first time we’ve been able to see it. We’ve been told that the best place to view it is from the water on a boat. However, we don’t have a boat (yet!), so we were restricted to land.

This year 117 boats took part, ranging from a 31 to a 98 footer and the winner was Wild Oats, taking 1 day, 18 hours and 40 minutes!
We decided to watch the start of the race from Bradley’s Head, as well as a load of other people, obviously, but it wasn’t as busy as we expected. We’d settled down (with the picnic as usual), but discovered from a ranger that the best view could be had from the beach just 2 minutes down the road. So off we trotted! The view point was much lower down, closer to the water, but you could see more – no trees in the way!

It was another scorcher of a day, so we had hats, shirts and sun cream. [As a side note, I caught the sun yesterday, even though I spent the majority of the day in our sun shelter – amazing!] There were hundreds of boats of all shapes and sizes – it was incredible to see so many together. We were a little behind the starting line and as soon as the horn went, all the boats disappeared into the distance following the those in the actual race.
Then we went back up to Bradley’s Head just to finish off the picnic and the usual……relax!! After a while, all the spectator boats started to come back into the harbour, which was quite funny.
Once all the snap was gone, we packed up and headed back to the city. We wanted to show mum and dad where we first started off in Sydney – at the Wharf, Woolloomooloo, so made a little detour there on the way home.

That evening, we went into Darling Harbour for dinner at Nick's Seafood restaurant. We had a fantastic meal overlooking the harbour. This was the last evening in Sydney for mum and dad, and it finished off the day and their stay wonderfully.

Hot Christmas!!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS to everyone!!!

We’d been completely racking our brains over which beach to go to on Christmas day. The shortlist was Chowder Bay or Chinaman’s Beach, but then at the last minute, we changed our minds and decided on Balmoral Beach, as there’s a little more to see (it’s bigger), better parking & facilities and a slight chance that a coffee shop might be open!! We’d obviously done our food shopping early on and had our champagne that we bought from the Hunter. We had a couple of disposable barbeques, as ours at home wasn’t exactly portable!!
Everyone quickly settled into their personal routines (we’d had lots of practice by this point): mum in bikini laid out on the beach; dad exploring, fishing and sunbathing; me in the shade (I do normally swim, but my knee was still poorly) and Dean in the water. Ben and Em & baby Leo joined us after a short while too. They headed straight for the water and a quick dip, before settling down to their tucker.
This next bit will be disputed by the rest of the gang I’m sure, but hey, I’m writing this and I like to think I’m pretty fair anyway. It was decided that the food would be cooked up on top, off the beach. Now please bear in mind that for the last few days there had been a total fire ban in New South Wales due to the extremely hot weather. These disposable bbqs are quite small and basically touch the ground (the ground here being dried bark mulch and general tree waste)! You can see where this is going?! I was extremely worried to say the least. I could see the headlines: ‘Irresponsible poms flaunt fire ban causing havoc on Christmas Day.’ When the bbq was first lit, the flames shot straight up, looking like they were searching out the bark of the tree we were camped under! I couldn’t take any more and retreated back to the beach, abandoning my family! After a few minutes I thought I’d check it out again. The flames had disappeared so I bravely sat down and tried to relax. Our Christmas picnic was delicious, but I was so on edge I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as could have. And guess what – my worries were justified in the end. I spotted smoke curling up from underneath the foil tin – it was charring the dried bark bits and soil. We sprinkled water on them and put the bbq out with sand! I was so relieved!! We moved once again to the beach and finished our champagne and strawberries!
It was definitely an unusual Christmas, the first any of us had spent on the beach. I’m not sure that it will ever really feel like Christmas to me, being so hot, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy it still – it’s just different!
Sorry there aren't many photos, but we were too busy doing not much at all. With an important accessory (hat) from dad, Ben made this excellent sand version of a snowman, which sums the day up for me!!

Another day, another beach!

We were trying to pack in as many beaches as possible to impress mum and dad and we knew The Basin would be a good one to do that. We had been here once before – the hard way! It’s situated in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, on the east coast and we drove there the first time, which then involved a walk down a very steep track. That’s not so bad, but obviously walking back up at the end of the day isn’t quite as enjoyable! So this time we decided we’d take the ferry from Palm Beach across Pittwater – much more civilised and relaxing! We had the essential picnic and beach gear ready for another hard day! The ferry ride was enjoyable in itself. There were quite a few people taking all their Christmas supplies over as they were camping at the Basin over the holidays.
We had our lunch on a picnic table while a bunch of lads decided to have a game of cricket, well it resembled cricket a little! These guys didn’t seem to take it too seriously though – they couldn’t catch the ball very well with a beer in one hand and I don’t think the beer guts helped them move quickly either!!

There are resident wallabies and monitor lizards wandering around and this monitor took off up a tree, being a little put out by the laddish behaviour emanating from the cricket game.

The lagoon here is incredibly calm and clear and very shallow around the beach. There are small fishes that swim around your legs. We saw some sea eagles and another bird of prey that I don’t know the name of, as well as pelicans that share the water with you. Swimming here is just so relaxing. When you’ve had enough of that, there’s always laying in the sun on the beach or playing in the sand building dams as Dean and dad decided to do (Dean had to rebuild his after a couple of 8 year old hooligans trampled all over it!).
On the way home, we called at Bradleys Head again to catch the sunset. It wasn’t as dramatic as the last one, but still beautiful. We arrived in plenty of time after calling at a bottle shop for some wine. So, me and mum cracked it open and settled on the water front with our cameras while the ‘boys’ did a spot of dusk fishing.
Such a relaxing way to end the day – you can’t beat it! Cheers!!

Christmas - what's that?!!

[Dean writing] I had the sudden shock realisation that it was the 22nd December with only 2 shopping days left to Christmas! As we had been off on ‘walkabouts’ and not paying any attention at all to the fact that it was the Christmas season, we now had to do some shopping!!
A brief tactical get-together resulted in Lisa and Linda going off shopping in the city, while Chris and I went to buy the fish for Christmas lunch on the beach. That says something about no matter how sophisticated we become, it always comes back to hunter gatherer scenarios!!
The fish market is only a 10 minute walk from our house. So we soon arrived and stocked up on the local catches of the day and also had time to wonder around the stalls. It was good reference looking at all the massive varieties of exotic fish that we will never catch!! I will never tire of the weirdness of ‘Moreton Bay Bugs’ and that they look like they should be on the set of Alien!!
After our successful hunter gatherer trip we took the tram into Darling Harbour ready to meet the girls! Realising they will be a little while longer, we took a detour to the Outback Centre to watch one of the daily didjeridoo performances. The 30 minute show was actually pretty breath-taking and the guy playing the ‘didj’ was amazing! Well worth a detour for a free show.
We returned back to Glebe for some lunch where I made a quick getaway to do some shopping myself! Not my favourite past-time but managed OK. I returned home to a feast of buns and tarts of all descriptions that Linda had been baking in the afternoon, the one and only time that Linda was allowed in the kitchen (apart from the previous mini-baking session)!! They were soon devoured though and a job lot were also taken round to Ben and Em’s for them. We had to behave ourselves and not dip into them while we babysat for Leo that night. Ben and Em were let out on a well-deserved cinema pass. I think Linda was disappointed in the end, as Leo spent most of the night asleep upstairs. She only had one chance at a cuddle when he briefly woke up.

Flint and Steel Beach

Flint and Steel is a very special place to us! So it was nice to share it with mum and dad (and hope they think it’s special too!). The beach is in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, so we set off north again. The first stop was lunch at West Head. The views here just blow you away!

You look out west onto Pittwater towards Barrenjoey Head and north across Broken Bay, which is at the mouth of the Hawkesbury River. We set up our picnic under a shady tree when a big monitor lizard strolled along the path. Luckily he went after someone else’s lunch!

Then on to Flint and Steel Beach and the 20 minute steep descent through the ‘bush’.

Arriving at the bottom, we found another group who promptly packed up and left. We must have crowded their space! Too right – this is our beach!! So we had the whole beach to ourselves…..like a desert island!

The afternoon was spent in total relaxation; swimming, drinking, fishing, taking photographs and exploring the amazing rocks. Hope the pictures do it justice.

I managed to slip on the rocks and cut my knee pretty badly. I hobbled back to base camp with blood pouring down my leg and received loads of sympathy!!

Dad and Dean spent a lot of time fishing from the rocks, and quite a successful trip it was too.
[Dean just wants to add that the fishing took the usual pattern of himself catching 2 little fish at the start – beginner’s luck – followed by no fish whatsoever and dad catching 7 or 8 in quick succession!].

The day ended all too quickly and it was time to head back to the city. It was another day that we just didn’t want to end and Flint and Steel still retains it’s magic for us!

To top it off wonderfully, we saw an amazing sunset from Bradley’s Head. We made a quick dash to the waterfront and dad managed to take this fantastic photo before we got kicked out of the park!

Hunter winos

Wow, what a brilliant idea! We drove up to a cabin in the Hunter Valley that me, Dean and Phil had stayed in last year. We noted that they offered tours of the region, which we intended to participate in, sometime in the future. That time had arrived and we highly recommend it to anyone, it was excellent value.
There were only the four of us and we really did receive personal treatment. We were taken to two wineries, a champagne house, a chocolate shop and a cheesery (this is what they called it)! At each wine boutique we had our own personal ‘wine guide’ who produced about 10 wines for us to try, starting with light whites through the rosés and reds to finish with the ‘stickies’ (the Australian term for sweet after dinner wines and ports). The champagne house was the same sort of thing and we tried pink and red bubbles for the first time. It was an excellent afternoon and proved to be a bit too much for me – I crashed out on the sofa almost as soon as we got back. Mind you, everyone was in bed by 9.30 that night!!
Here is the cabin we stayed in - very peaceful:
Mum awoke the morning after to a glorious day and was just about to go out on the veranda when she saw this local wallaby with a joey in her pouch. She quickly grabbed the camera, still blurry-eyed and manage to capture this great photo.

Culture & glug

We thought we’d be a bit cultural and visit an exhibition. We went to the Australian Museum where they show the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. There are some spectacular images and some taken by teenagers – really amazing!
We thought we’d treat mum and dad to one of our favourite yum cha places – Bodhi's, which is next to the Cook & Phillip Park. I think that was a hit! Dad was starting to get withdrawal symptoms from fishing, so Dean took him to Bradley’s Head on the north side of the harbour, looking across to the Botanic Gardens and the Opera House and Bridge!! He was able to redeem himself here and actually catch some fish (they both did, apparently!). Meanwhile mum made some delicious Sicilian Christmas mince pies while I updated my CV for a job application. We were going over to to Fredrik and Marie’s that evening, who had very kindly invited us for some Scandinavian delights and glug (mulled wine) – super yummy!! We ended up very much in the spirit of Christmas, even though it was around 30 degrees outside!
Glad Julen!! (Happy Christmas in Swedish for those not in the know!!)

On to Jervis Bay

After leaving our B&B in Leura, we stopped off at a great spot called Euroka Clearing which Libby guaranteed would have Kangaroos – it did and we took loads of photos!

Ironically we drove through Kangaroo Valley, which didn’t produce one Kangaroo!!

We arrived at Jervis Bay around 5pm and immediately went down to Hyams Beach for some relaxation and to take in the last rays of the day – bliss!!

This is the cottage we stayed in. It was so peaceful. There were lots of lorakeets and rozellas squawking and flying around. They were quite timid to start with, but Dean soon had them eating out of his hands - literally!!

The next day was mum’s birthday and dad surprised her by taking her on a dolphin watching cruise. We all went along – didn’t want to be left out!!

There were loads of dolphins dotted around the Bay, frolicking and jumping about. As you can imagine though, a bit hard to take good photos of them!!

We finished the day off by going for a Thai meal in Huskisson and almost blowing mum’s head off with a ‘hot’ chilli prawn dish – sorry mum!
Sooner than you expect, Friday came around and it was time to head back to Sydney. On the way we called at Booderee National Park and we spotted these two fighting over a piece of bread. As expected, big bully Kookaburra won in the end!!

We stopped at the blowhole at Kiama on the way up the coast, but unfortunately the tide was out, so no show there! But it still had a lovely coastline to view.