Visiting Victor Harbor

Last weekend I took a day off work and flew back to SA to spend time with friends and family.

I did the rounds on Saturday - breakfast at the markets with Megan and Troy, a visit to Casey and Andrew in their new place and Megan and Clint's housewarming party in the afternoon. I then went down to Victor to spend the rest of the weekend at Mum and Dad's.

They have new neighbours...

I think the black one looks like the evil pod racer from Star Wars: Episode 1.

 The agave is flowering and I think that also looks like an alien creature. The agave had fallen over at the weight of it's leaves and the flower is still growing upright. I think the flower is probably around 3.5 meters tall. It's huge.

This is what it looks like up close.

I hope Mum and Dad send me a photo of what it looks like when all the buds open up.

A few of the baby agaves that have sprouted out of the base of the main plant are also flowering. It's obviously agave breeding season.

Of course there are lots of other things in flower at Mum and Dad's. Here's the swirly-ness of a grevilia flower opening up.

And a flowering gum.

 

I didn't spend the whole time taking photos of the flowers in the garden. We also had a coffee with Granny and Kate on the Sunday and visited Ross and Sue at their new cottage, which is very cute. They had brought their cats down to spend time there and so I got to meet Brian and Henry, the Burmese Boys.

Brian:

 

Henry:

On Monday, the painters started work at Mum and Dad's house for the ultimate livingroom refurbishment, so we all had to spend time in the study. The boys (Marco and Oscar) were not amused. Marco spent time pacing and then eventually hid on top of a book case. Oscar also sought refuge up high and made sure that his disapproval was known.

Does anyone have a lolcats type phrase for this photo of Oscar??

As always the weekend went much too quickly, but it was great to spend some time relaxing with the family. I can't wait for Megs to visit us soon :)

I’m Off to Catch Me a Stingray

The last couple of weeks were pretty hectic. We’ve been packing for the holiday and trying to get the house ready for open inspections. I’ve also been frantically trying to leave my work in a state where my replacement doesn’t have to tear their hair out trying to find out where the hell I got up to and how on earth they tackle the project. Needless to say, it’s been a little bit stressful, but we managed to survive.

I also somehow managed to fit in two trips to the theatre to see the Melbourne Theatre Company. One play starred Noni Hazelhurst, who anyone my age would remember fondly from playschool, but whose acting career has since taken off. It was called Madagascar and was a moving play about the effect of adult “runaways” on their family and loved ones. It was set in Rome in one hotel room 5 years ago, 2 days ago and at the present. The different scenes were interwoven and the story of a young man’s disappearance, the circumstances surrounding it and the devastating consequences slowly unraveled. It did move quite slowly, but I found that the plot was interesting enough to keep me hanging on waiting to find out what happens.

The second play was called The Swimming Club and featured a number of minor stars from Australian stage and screen. The idea of this play was quite charming – a group of people who met in Greece 25 years ago and then meet up for a reunion in middle age after marriages, divorces, children, affairs, etc. The acting was great, but I found this play did move too slowly. It didn’t keep me enthralled and I didn’t really identify or sympathise with the characters. It was fun and entertaining though, so not a complete waste of time.

My last day at work was a bit of an emotional one. I was sad to leave the girls who I’d become such good friends with, but I was happy to be moving on to try something new. The group had bought me a gorgeous present, written beautiful things about me in a farewell card and even said lovely things in speeches. I’m sure they can’t all be true! Although my baking skills are exceptional, so I’ll give them that one. Hehehe! We’ve already arranged a time to see each other again, so I’m sure we won’t lose touch for a while yet.

Early on Friday morning – before the crack of dawn even, Paul and I bundled Myf into the back of the car and set off for Adelaide. We stopped around 3 hours into the drive at Horsham for Myf’s first toilet stop and the first driver change. Then we stopped at Nhill, about an hour later for a coffee top up. Our final stop was at Keith for the last driver change. As with all road trips, we feasted on junk food for the entire journey; breakfast was cookies and cupcakes left over from my work farewell party and lunch was hot chips from Keith.

We arrived in Goolwa at around 3pm to drop Myf off with my Aunt and her puppy, Tuppy. Myf and Tuppy are still trying to work out who’s the boss. The older Myf, or the home owner, Tuppy. They go through periods of playing happily and sleeping next to each other but will occasionally give each other warning growls to let the other know that they’ve had enough or they don’t appreciate what the other’s doing. I’m sure it’s all natural and as they’re both such sweet natured, friendly dogs, they’ll have it all figured out soon.

On Saturday, I went to another cultural event. I saw the Chooky Dancers performing “Wrong Skin” as a part of the Fringe Festival. They were great! There was a Romeo and Juliet style tragic love story, woven between bouts of their fun, free and entertaining dancing with influences from modern video clips, old movies and bollywood. It was refreshing to see a bunch of people up on stage obviously having a ball with what they do. Check out this youtube clip and check out the chooky dancers if you ever have the chance.

Sunday was a full day. I had brunch with friends who had been in London for 2 years and had just moved back to Adelaide. We ate at the Tin Cat Café, and the food was really good. I had eggs benedict and the ham was thick and tasty and the eggs were cooked perfectly.

In the afternoon, I caught up with another friend, whose 30^th I’d missed earlier in the year. To make it up to her, I took her out for high tea at the Intercontinental. YUM! I recommend this to all the girls out there. It’s not as expensive as some of the high teas that are around, but you get champagne on arrival, as much tea and coffee as you want and a great selection of tasty afternoon tea foods. Savouries on the bottom, petit fours in the middle and scones up the top. The service was great too.

This now brings me to my title. This afternoon Paul and I fly to Coffin Bay where we’re meeting up with my parents. We’re spending 10 days there fishing, reading and relaxing in general. Last time we were in coffin bay, almost a year ago, we had such a great time, we begged to be allowed back. We spent quite a lot of our time fishing out in the boat and caught a large number of squid and had a reasonable haul of KG Whiting and Garfish. Much more interesting than that, however, was Paul’s battle with the stingray. On three separate occasions he managed to hook a stingray. We didn’t see the ray, we only know through Dad’s expertise of what stingrays do to fishing lines, rods etc that that was what was on the end of the line. So this time Paul has vowed to land that sucker. Let’s just see how successful he is. Haha!

Now all that remains is for me to bid you all farewell. I’ll be sure to fill you in on all the fun that was had and bore you with hundreds of pictures upon my return. I hope you all have a lovely couple of weeks.

Cheerio!

And Other Stuff

This post is to sum up the rest of my trip to Adelaide that didn't fit into the last two categories...

I got to spend quality time with Mum and Dad, which was nice. I miss my family, living halfway across the country, so it's good to be able to spend time with them just relaxing and catching up. Mum and I even managed to fit in some pampering and got a manicure each on Friday afternoon.

My lovely friend Casey volunteered to act as chauffeur for the weekend, so I also was able to spend some quality time catching up with her while she drove me here there and everywhere.

The reason for going to Adelaide in the first place was Megan's 30th birthday. That's Megan the friend, not Megan the sister. All photos from the birthday celebrations are up on facebook.

Megan had hired a house at Carrickalinga which had a great balcony and a lovely view. It was a shame that the weather wasn't better for it! Stage 1 was a family friendly dinner with her folks and mine, plus myself and Casey on the Friday night. This was such a fun night. It was very relaxed and I'm pretty sure I spent 80% of the night laughing. Lots of wine was drunk and we had a lovely bbq dinner cooked by Megan's dad.

Stage 2 was on Saturday night and was the party night. We had another bbq dinner, where Megan managed to cook enough sausages to feed a small army. They were very tasty though, as was all the food. We got a bit boozy and played a music quiz and Singstar on the playstation. As usual, I sucked at both, but the fun is in the participation, not in the winning. I'll just keep telling myself that. Haha!

I also managed to fit in a lunchdate with Skye, who I met on a wedding forum over 5 years ago and have been chatting with online ever since. This wasn't our first meeting, but it was the first where we could chat just the two of us. We kept chatting for such a long time that Skye almost missed her next photo shoot and I kept poor Kristin waiting for our photoshoot. Kristin is a photographer and needed some subjects for her portraiture course. The pics turned out great and you can some of Kristin's other work here.

I met up with Skye in the botanic gardens, so I'll finish up this blog with some pics I took in there while I waited for her to finish up with some clients.

The Garden Through My Lens

Mum and Dad have a fabulous garden that they work hard maintaining. My second Adelaide post will be a view of their garden or at least what I see when I walk through it.


Much of Mum and Dad's garden is comprised of gum trees. They have lots of different types; short, tall, bushy, leggy, scented, flowering, old and young. Mum and Dad know the common and latin names of all of them (I think) but I struggle with even the common names, so you'll have to put up with my crude description of them and some guesswork instead. I'm hoping that none of my readers are avid botanists so it won't matter.

One of my favourites is this big old gum. He's a grand old gentleman sitting slap bang in the centre of the garden. His trunk is gnarled and full of character and birds roost in his craggy branches.



The gums were in different stages of flowering when I was there and here are some of them shown below.

This is the bud of the fuscia gum. Its flower, underneath the cap, is yellow and the gum is the same red colour of the bud.


Here are a couple of different types of gum nut. They're both so different in size and shape.



You can see flower, bud and nut in this picture


Another yellow flower but from a different tree. This might have been either a lemon scented or a lemon flowering gum, but that's just a big stab in the dark.


Yet another yellow flower. I have no idea which gum tree this is from. I like the shape of the cap which you can see just about to pop off the flower in the centre. It's rather phallic (teeheehee) but also very unusual.


And finally a pink one.


The bark is another awesome feature of gum trees and again can vary so much. This is a really cool white gum tree.


I'm pretty sure this one is the lemon scented gum.

The trunk is so tactile. You just want to run your hands over the smooth part and crunch the peeling bark between your fingers.


What does this knot remind you of?



Mum and Dad have a lovely rose garden in a sheltered spot in the garden. Usually I take lots of photos of the roses, but only a couple this time.

This is Samantha. A friend gave her to me as a housewarming gift once. I had her in a big pot, but when I moved again, she couldn't come with me to the flat with no balcony, so I sent her to the farm and Mum and Dad planted her out in their garden. She's flourished there.


This Agave is pretty old and fell over recently from the weight of the head. And now loads of babies are sprouting out of the stem. It's pretty amazing.


The foliage on this plant is a silvery colour and the new growth is purple. It's a very cool colour combination.


The Geraldton Wax was full of flowers.




Banksias are a really tactile flower. The flowers are so soft, like cotton buds and the leaves are so hard, crunchy and pointy.



This is a native hibiscus. It's very pretty and delicate and not the sort of flower you'd think of as a native.



These little purple flowers (of unknown name) were attracting quite a few bees. I only managed to get one in a photo though.



I have no idea what this bush is called, but it is seriously cool. The photo doesn't really do it justice at all, so I'll have to try and explain. All of the branches a curvy and they twist and turn in different directions. It's hard to describe, so you'll just have to trust me that it's a very cool looking bush.



Mum and Dad have recently planted some Yakkas. I hope they flower soon as they're very striking flowers.



There was a rainbow on one of the days I was down at Victor. It took me too long to get my camera, so it had just started to fade on one end before I could snap a photo.



I'm finishing with another of my favourite features of Mum and Dad's garden, the pond. Paul and I were married in front of this pond. It's changed so much since then. It looks more like a natural feature now as the pond weeds and grasses have established themselves and the lilies have multiplied.

The pond is home to plenty of wildlife; two turtles, one a murray river and the other a native long necked variety, many frogs and tadpoles, native fish, and a number of bugs and insects. It attracts wading birds and other wildlife. It's such a great feature.

The Gentlemen

The first of my posts about my trip to Adelaide on the last weekend of November will be about my parents cats, Marco and Oscar, aka 'The Gentlemen".

The boys are very cute, although a little aloof. Marco loves his tummy being rubbed and Oscar likes being picked up by Mum and Megs, but didn't take to me. I think I was too eager. Next time I'll play it cool and play hard to get. Then, he'll cuddle me. Haha! I say that now, but as soon as I see their cute faces, I'll just pick him up and he'll run off. lol

Consequently, I have more photos of Marco than I do of Oscar.

Here's Marco:


He's lying upsidedown on the chair and putting his head through the hole under the armrest. I've flipped the following pics so his head isn't upsidedown.



It is very important that a Gentleman stays clean at all times.


Marco's tail has a kink in it that makes it bend 90 degrees towards the tip. This is not curled, it's how it is naturally.


Anything makes for a fun toy or sleeping place, such as this pillowcase


This is Oscar:





Marco likes to play in his red cube. Lots of hide-and-seek style games can be played in there and it's a great vantage point from which to view the world and pounce on unsuspecting passers by.









If there's one thing that the Gentlemen really excel at, it's relaxation. They know how to sleep. They can do it just about anywhere and in almost any position. Here are some fine examples.

Marco:






Oscar:

Yes, he was asleep here and not just trying to get away from me!

Together:



While I was there, we had a visit from Kate and Granny who brought along Tuppy, The Gentlemen's new cousin. It's fair to say that Oscar isn't Tuppy's biggest fan

They both kept a watchful eye on her for the entire visit, but fortunately no blood was shed!


And here's Tuppy herself. She's very sweet natured and has such a cute face.





Tuppy with Granny and Kate:



So now you've got to know the Adelaide branch of my furry family. They're all very loveable and photogenic, as pets should be.