Southern Highlands

We had a great long weekend in the Southern Highlands a couple months ago and we didn't post much about it. Here are a few pictures of our time there. We would definitely go back, essentially, it is very peaceful and full of nature. In addition, there are beautiful gardens all around. It reminded Tom and Ellen of the UK quite a bit, especially the gardens and a couple really charming pubs.

OK, well, this was in Sydney, not the Southern Highlands, but I ordered this champagne/rose drink that was just fabulous at the wine bar in Surry Hills. Lovely place and great drink.

This is the Southern Highlands and the view from our house, so peaceful.

 This is Dan and I at a really charming pub we found.

 Check out Tom and Dan on the side of the road--we passed this truck and had to have a pic.

 I was getting over something back then, so didn't go, but Tom, Ellen, and Dan went to the falls and got some fabulous pictures.

 This is one of the many pictures they got of the beautiful gardens.

We would definitely go back, lovely time.

Catching Up

Well, it's been awhile. Not sure what's changed, but we have been very busy lately. We decided we wanted to post some things and 'catch up' so to speak on some of our recent adventures, although most of you have probably heard of some of these things by now, so we are admittedly quite behind on the archive of our lives in Australia.

It seems like we have settled in to just living here. While we have some good trips planned, most days here are just like a regular day--go to work, make dinner, back to work...that kind of thing. Sometimes people think living in Australia would be like being on vacation all the time. You really just settle in. I think we are starting to take advantage of our location by planning some trips outside of Australia, so I am glad we are fulfilling that goal.

Last weekend, we went with some friends to Katoomba for the Winter Magic Festival, which celebrates the winter solstice. While we enjoyed the Blue Mountains, I'm not sure I'd go back to the festival again. We had a really fun time, nevertheless. It is about 90 kilometers away from Sydney, although with the slow speed limits and roads here, it still takes about 1.5 hours to drive there.

This is called the Three Sisters, one of the most famous vistas in the Blue Mountains.

They are called the Blue Mountains because of the blue-ish glow put off by all the Eucalyptus trees. It smeels really nice too.

 Here is Tom, Ellen, and Dan, and I.

 On Sunday, we shopped a little in a small town called, Leura. Ellen and I loved all the shops. I bought some jewelry. We found the perfect bench for Tom and Dan--see the sign : ) They weren't so thrilled with Leura and decided they would find a pub next time Ellen and I want to shop there.

We will try to post more often and may try to catch up on a few older trips. Off to more mundane tasks for the weekend...

Jervis Bay Trip

It's been awhile since we've written. I have been sick, yes, again, and then working like a fiend. Dan's been busy networking and starting to look for jobs. He's even had a couple of interviews. With Christmas around the corner and rainy days seeming never ending in Sydney (yes, it is unusual apparently), we decided to take a family trip and head down the Great Pacific Drive for a trip south to Jervis Bay.

We took the doggies and headed about 140 km, or a little over 70 miles. It was a gorgeous drive! It was a slow drive too. The speed limit is 100 max, or about 50 miles per hour. Usually, you are going slower. I think our average GPS speed said 65 km, or less than 40 mph. Anyway, it took us several hours and we enjoyed the drive, but were very glad to see where we were staying. It was a house just down the road from Hyam's Beach, noted in a world record book to be the whitest sand in the world.

Here is the view from the living area.

This is a picture of the beach right in front of our house, the whitest sand in the world. It was a partly cloudy day, but the water was so clear and the dogs enjoyed walking on the rocks! It was too cold to swim, about 70 degrees, but we enjoyed the beach every day.

We also thoroughly enjoyed watching the cockatoos and lorikeets from the porch every day with a glass of wine. Here are some of our favourite pictures of them. There were even black cockatoos there, but our pictures didn't turn out as well.

We spent two days resting and exploring Booderee National Park. It is breathtaking. We stopped at multiple beaches and spots, including Murray's Beach, Green Patch, the Lighthouse, Cave Beach. We loved them all. We will definitely come back here. Here are a few pictures. We did actually see about 10 kangaroos by a campfire BBQ, including a red one, but didn't snap a picture.

Before we even got to Murray's Beach, we saw an echidna. He looks kind of like a porcupine, but has a bill like a duck (kind of). He is a little hard to see here.

 These are 2 black cockatoos, also right outside Murray's Beach, hard to see how cool they are.

This is our first view of Murray's Beach...aaahhh!

Just one example of the interesting little caves and things on the beach.

 Here I am near a big piece of dead wood.

The water was crystal clear on all the beaches except where it was so deep that it looked almost black.

We seen kookaburras a lot in Sydney, but this was an especially close up picture.

Something slimy and weird that washed up...maybe some kind of algae? Kind of pretty.

This is what all the rocks in the water looked like.

These are the little snails on parts of these rocks under water.

These are the little jellyfish on the shore.

This is me trying to get pictures of surfers and missing them all!

This is Dan near the lighthouse where the track ends.

The views from the lighthouse were breathtaking for 180 degrees.

And, on our way back from the lighthouse to our house on our last full day, we hit the motherload! A roo very close to us! We got one shot of it and the lighting was a bit funny, but here she/he is!

This was an amazing place and one of the most beautiful I've seen in the world. We will definitely be back here again!

Almost home!

We are very excited that our goods will finally arrive from customs this week. It will be great to get rid of our rent a centre funiture and to have a better bed to sleep on, as well as to get all of our dishes and cookware. And, the doggies will be here next Sunday, so we should be able to get the house all set up prior to them coming home. So, hopefully it will feel like home to them.

Here is the link to the dog walker who has provided them visits while in quarantine. They have been amazing and you'll see the dogs seem to be having a lot of fun!

Dan is calling home to his folks right now and we begin our ritual of morning phone calls home. We miss home, but have been getting a dose of it on the cable we now have installed. I'm watching the View right now and watched the US today show yesterday. It's a fun reminder of home. However, we are enjoying a few Australian shows and some of the British shows, as well. In general, there is not as much choice in cable as we have back home.

We'll post some pics after we get our house in order next week!

Are you OK?

I was sitting on my deck out back reading a good book this morning and look what I saw...Are they asking me? Haven't seen skywriting since I was a little kid, I think. I thought when it started that it was going to be a marriage proposal or something, but then it was just a simple question. I wonder who it was meant for?

Anyway, we have had a very nice Saturday. We went to the Orange Grove Farmer's market this morning. Here in Australia most neighborhoods have small markets on the weekend in the school parking lots. We are lucky enough to live 2 blocks from an organice one and we really enjoyed it today. We bought some great natural lotion, lemon pepper goat cheese, some mandarin oranges, flowers picked today, lime hummus, feta/rocket/rosemary chicken sausages (yes, you can get rocket in everything here), and some great looking asian salad mix. We are definitely not ordering produce from Woolie's anymore. There is so much great stuff at this market! This will definitely become a Saturday ritual for us. We walked to the local coffee shop, Divi, and then went to the market. Definitely a good thing to eat before you go there! So many yummy treats. Can't wait to go back next week!

And, other good news, Dan bought a completely overpriced, but said to be amazing, grill today. So, our deck is all set up with umbrella, chairs, and BBQ now. He even got the overpriced accessories to match : ) He'll have fun cooking those sausages for our friend, E and T tonight - our first visitors, by the way. Looking forward to playing some games with them tonight, like Uno and stuff like that. Dan made some amazing margaritas last night, so we may have to repeat that tonight! I just made a salad with our salad mix, goat cheese, some tomatoes, mushrooms, and onions - can't wait to eat it.

Here are the pretty fresh flowers we got. Dan made the vase out of a water bottle that he cut! No, our crate has not yet arrived. Forecasted to be here Oct 4. And, that's our new little dining set it is sitting on.

This is our new outdoor set minus grill, since Dan bought it later.

Here are some of the plants we were lucky enough to get that the owners left for us - fresh herbs, basil, mint, thyme, sage, cilantro.

The dogs are in quarantine now. Dan will go see them on Tuesday. Apparently they are doing well. The dog walker starts looking after them on Monday, so we'll have a link to post of them for you to see. We're definitely settling in. We are OK. Thanks to whoever asked.

New Stuff

This is sort of a short, random list of stuff...Good news - dogs are finally on their way! Then, they'll have 30 days of quarantine, so they should be home with us by about October 9. I had my first domestic business trip in Australia, traveled to Melbourne. Can you imagine leaving your house at 6:15 am for a 7:30 flight and being able to catch an earlier flight?? This is my new travel life and I am loving it. Domestic air travel is a delight here. And, I have no status on Qantas, yet could fit my bag on...And, they gave me breakfast for a 1.5 hour flight...It is quite lavish this Australian travel, so I'm a big fan already.

We are in the new house, have a real phone, no internet or TV yet...long story, but we should have it soon. Even though we are on a Rent a Centre bed and sofa, it is still better than our hotel room. I was invited by several co-workers for lunch, coffee, drinks, etc. I must have passed the secret 4 week test...not sure. So, on all fronts all things going fairly well. Will post some pics of the house when it looks a little nicer. We have 2 guest rooms for you friends and family!  Will post when dogs get here safely. We have someone we've paid to look in on them every day, so that is really nice.

Pasta!

Another of our favorite things is food. We had a wonderful day at our friend M's house yesterday making pierogis. Now, I know she has a very detailed blog coming out that has some great detailed pictures and instructions, so I won't steal any of her thunder, but wanted to share a little bit of our experience from my perspective.

First, a pierogi is a Polish pasta (at least that's what I'll call it) that is kind of like a ravioli. Ours was stuffed with potato, cheese, garlic, and carmelized onions (YUM!). So, the brialliant idea behind M's party was to have some friends over, most of us who are also ex pats, and teach us the original Pierogi making process. So, thanks to her for such a brilliant idea! The other outcome was to make sure each of us had quite a few of these delish treats to take home. And finally, at the end of our hard work day, we all got to sit down together and eat these treats with brown butter and carmelized onions over them and baked with real Polish kielbasa (YUM YUM!). Yes, the husbands participated in the eating part. They seemed to enjoy that part very much!

This was such a fun day. We started at about 11 am and were there until after 10 pm. Much of it was spent (by the women, at least) putting together these tasty delights. I learned that I really enjoyed using the hand pasta machine. I see one in my near future! I was really not good at getting the filling in the dough. We kind of worked an assembly-line type process for the final two batches and got pretty efficient.

It was a very fun day, and we have truly made some great friendships with these folks in a very short time. For the women, it felt very old fashioned to be working together so closely on a mutual task, while still chatting it up and learning more about each other. It felt as if we could have been a group of sisters making a big holiday meal or something together all day. So, we have already committed to a similar engagement for Christmas cookies, although do we really want to do that in December, ladies? I guess I can volunteer since we will have air conditioning. We look forward to having you all over and reciprocating such a generous gesture.

And, for those of you out of town, we will have 2 guest rooms (and a study) starting next Saturday! You may want to wait until later September for when we get our crate, though, so you will also have a bed to go with the room! Doggies fly over next Wednesday. And, we're going to sign the papers for the car today. We are getting settled in.

Entertainment

Those of you who know us know that we love our TV, movies, and music. I thought I'd share a little about what we are enjoying here. If you are expecting some highbrow activites, please discontinue reading this post : )

We are really enjoying the TV here. It makes US reality TV look very minor. Our new favorite is called,  The Farmer Wants a Wife . The premise is kind of like the Bachelor (which I never watched before). There are several eligible farmers, even one older good looking man, and they choose 5 or 6 girls and the girls somehow pick them and then they go on dates. This week, the girls all go on the farm! Anyway, we are really enjoying this one. Another one we haven't seen yet is "Are you Fitter Than a Pensioner?" I think this may be British, but we haven't seen it. Presumably, it is seniors competing in physical contests with younger people, maybe out of shape ones. Anyway, I think that could be fun. My father-in-law is 95 and could probably beat me in a race!

Today, we are headed out rental hunting again. We really hope we find something. We're a bit tired of the hotel style living. And, other good news, the doggies get to come out next week. From there, they will go to quarantine for 30 days. Eastern Creek Quarantine is where they will be. Scroll down on the link and you can see some pictures. Dan can go see them on Tues and Thursdays. Bye for now!