Back in a month

Married for 10 whole years so we are off on a long long holiday - Fiji without the kids and then Skiing with them (if there is any snow left).

Don't do anything I wouldn't do whilst I'm gone.

A bucket of prawns in the sun.

New Years Eve was spent with mum, Alex and the kids enjoying the tunes belted out by a local chick in the beer-garden under the country club. It has a casual beauty, sandwiched as it is between the bowling green and the golf club car-park it overlooks the ocean, dunes and lakes, kangaroos pause in a mob around the t-off just below the fence and a strong sea breeze brings a briny haze. A few locals are trying to make a go of a burger business, barbecuing up the scotch fillet stakes for filling the local fresh "still warm from the oven" focatcia style buns, the local market gardens providing the salad so fresh it still drips sap.

Entree is a bucket of prawns, literally. Enjoyed with a chilled sav blank and a Coopers or three.

It's a picturesque 3k walk back around the lake to mums house.


This is country.

It's bark is worse in this light

Eucalyptus saligna forms a continuous hybrid with E. pilularis

The three 50m trees in our backyard are probably slightly towards the saligna end of the spectrum as the branch forks are more open than the pronounced, upright V's of the blackbutts and the perminant bark just covers slightly more than a quarter of the main trunk. The rest of the smooth bark (an infra-red reflecting adaption to frequent fires) sheds annually.
Why the science lesson?:
Our backyard is covered in a substantial layer of bark.

These photos were taken the day after we mowed - less than 24 hrs.

Off on holls down the coast - I'll take some photos for you so you know what you are missing out on.

Any way, Merry Xmas, and a 'appy new one.

Chat next year.

Cheers

A few days down at the beach house

We were going to go up to Fingle Bay for a friends 40th but the starter motor on the $x$ carked it and couldn't be replaced in time so instead we headed south to the beach house at Rosedale. We copped a fair bit of rain and a huge swell - and me w/o my board :-(
I made do with the old shark biscuit and managed to catch a few although the swell ended up being so big I was too tired to fight it and ended up missing even the easiest of waves. Photos for those inclined or with a fast connection are here else these ones are prolly the best:
I love the look on his face when I try to catch him

She smiles most of the time regardless.

Me on the esky lid

And finally a shaky cam of me not catching any waves - too busy watching the dolphins swimming past. The surf here was about 1m, through the day it built to over 3m of pounding crunching nastiness.

Skiing

It's all a bit busy here to post. Second week of semester, packing, organising my 40th etc.

Taking the kids down to the lodge next week - A week on the snow (what of it there is) should be good. One of my good mates is coming down too. He's a boarder tho' - guess he can't help it.

Expect photos in a week and a half or so.

Camping - Indian / Diamond Head

100 km of sand to ourselves (nearly)

Back

Hope you had as relaxing a week as I did.

.. but I doubt it.

Bloody Brilliant

The official beach safety report - Conditions: Bloody brilliant mate, water temp - as good as it gets.

Dolphins of Tuross

Last day of hol's, goin'-ome tuhmorra

The last few day's have been a blast.

Take today for example:

Today I managed about two hours surfing and a few more body and boogie board surfing whilst mum and dad built sand castles on the beach with the kids.

Surfing - If you haven't I can't explain the feeling. Waves, powerful enough that given time will wear down headlands and reshape coastlines. Powerful enough to smash you teeth as they pile drive you arse through your neck if you fuck up. But awesome fun to play with dancing on a 6' length of pointy fiberglass bristling with blade like fins. Surfing is big, for many it is life. There are the finer points of wax selection, of etiquette, of leg rope selection - the culture and fashion, wave selection, fitness, your skill, pin tail or wedge. It goes on and on - if you are not initiated you will never find a way in.

Today I had one of the rarest surfing experiences - fantastic waves, a peaky steep right, all too myself. I had the joy of ride after ride of consistent waves in crystal clear water, of being underwater watching my reflection in the surface whilst duck diving under 1.5m curls.

My base of my ribs are sore from paddling and my arms are sore from dragging the board through the surf - but it is a good kind of sore.

After surfing and lunch on a picnic rug in the park, where the kids and I devoured a few hamburgers, with beetroot cauz were Aussie we got back and enjoyed the heat and suffered the view whilst savoring the beer mum dropped in my hand. Had a rest and then drove up the coast a ways to pick up Patrick - a 16 yo school kid who lives on the neighboring property from school in the next town. He took me fishing out on his boat. 6 magnificent fathead later we were heading back in only to be stopped by the dolphins trapped in the lake. (vid later).

Dinner was a sav blanc and fathead fillets in batter - so fresh they were quivering.

Raff is playing a fellow Spaniard in Melbourne whilst I'm sipping the last of the West Australian white.

How was your day?

holidYAYs

On holidays again
down the south coast at my mum and dads place.

I haven't been posting enough for you to miss me but I'll post soem picks soon so you know what you are missing out on by not living here.

Happy Australia day for tomorrow everybody - I'll be spending mine on the beach.

Port, Wauchope, Upper Roland Planes and that tree.

From Point Plomer we continued to drive up towards Crescent Head then back towards Port through the hinterland via the Maria River Road. The GPS was trying to direct me through some extremely questionable tracks that I'm sure would have seen us trapped and petrified into bog-men. We caught the ferry back and devoured a plate of pasta each at a slap up Italian joint.

Wednesday we drove down the south coast checking out Bonny Hills, Laurieton and Diamond Head at the north end of Crowdy Bay National Park which has a fantastic camping area I'm looking froward to taking the kids to in future, beach access and lots of wildlife - there were even wallabies were grazing around the tents.

Thursday we packed the car and headed to the farmstay via Ellenborough Falls

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Rereputed to be the largest single drop of water in the southern hemisphere.
The roads are amazingly windy, which induced Annaliese to vomit over everything, including her teddy. Adrian was initially amazed at the bush turkey in the car park but it has undoubtedly been fed by humans and became brazened and the little guy freaked . Please, don't feed the wildlife. They become dependent, get all sorts of diet diseases and die. It's a death sentence. And that includes you Curtis feeding the bloody cockies next door.
The country up on the escarpment is fantastic. Alternating between thick bush and rolling hills with a backdrop of mountains much like you would draw as a child. The dirt road winds from hillside to hillside often precariously winding along ridge tops then suddenly opening out into cleared pasture. We lunched at the Udder Cow Café. In my case the burger was so big I was in fear I would need to be rolled out in a barrow. Given the amount consumed at lunch we thought it prudent to take precautions least the kids vomit on the hundred plus k's of winding roads we still needed to negotiate.
The Farm stay was tucked away in the picturesque valley of Upper Rollands Plains, more or less south west of Kempsy.

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Annaliese and Adrian feed the chooks and the lambs and basically just enjoyed being able to runaround and just be.
Thursday was a little rainy (a sign of things to come) so in the afternoon we took the $X$ off into the mountains for a look around.

I'll post some movies of the tracks later but it is exceptionally pretty, albeit rough country.
We got back in time to visit the local dairy to find out where milk comes from.

And then down came the rain.
Friday, drive home day, my 38th birthday, my nearly died day.
It rained exceptionally heavily most of the night and continued into Friday afternoon. Communities in the area were cut off due to flood waters so were were very careful on the 400 or so k drive home.
Only just out of the farm stay the trip nearly ended when a 15m high dead poplar tree fell across the road in front of us. Eroded by the stream undercutting its banks it blew and bent in the wind like the other trees, then it seemed to hover for a moment and then in slow motion it lay down across the road. It was a huge tree. I had nowhere to go. We were probably doing 60kph but jumping on the anchors, ABS blasting away we caught the tree across the bull bar. It exploded. Showered us with fragments of kindling. It took about 15 minutes to pull branches as thick as my leg out from where they were jammed in the wheel arches and clean out and check the radiator and break lines, fan belts and everything else I could see. So far it seems that the only damage is a twisted and smashed IPF fog light - so much for the bullet proof hardened glass lens. I'll have to get the steering checked and wheels realigned but we were lucky. A tenth of a second later on the breaks and the tree would have been through the cabin rather than caught on the bull bar. That's one tough ARB bar - best 2K I ever spent.
About 5 minutes after we hit it a council truck ambled over the hill, cleaning fallen trees and repairing washouts in the road. I'd walked back to try and clean up the bigger bits and make it safer for following vehicles. The first worker jumped down from the truck and immediately asked if we were all right, had we run into the tree? - I replied that it had fallen on our car - hit the bar
1^st council worker- 'FarrrrrrrK'
1^st council worker to 2nd council worker- 'Tree fell on 'em'
2^nd council worker- 'Farrrrrrrknelllll'
2^nd council worker to 3^rd council worker, rolling a larger bit of trunk back and forth under his foot as #3 steps down from the truck - 'Farken tree fell on this blokes car'
3^rd council worker - 'Jesus fucking Christ, you ok, anybody hurt, you still able to drive, you need a lift or an ambulance" as he looks at the branches and bits of lumber up and down the road "farrrrk - that must have been a fucking big bang - lucky it was dead or we'd be cleaning you up with a broom".

So there you go - that was my holiday