We flew over for 6 days to visit Eileen and Craig - we were looked after and didn't even have to build and paint rooms! thanks you two!
We had a beaut holiday, browsed around Fremantle and cruised up the Swan to Perth city.
Had a wonderful day looking at the majestic trees of the south west. Went to Pemberton to climb the huge Karri called The Gloucester Tree and on to Walpole-Nornalup National Park to the Valley of the Giants!
Walked the treetop walk through the whopping Red Tingle trees - a fantastic day! Well worth the 900km round trip - thanks to Craig for nearly all of the driving!
The house is coming along great, kitchen and bathroom all done. It'll be a winner when all finished.
We had a visit from Liz and Mateus in their van! Which powered up the mountain no worries at all! If the road was all intact we could easily have driven right up and round the mountain patch.
The mangoes are flowering happily here - and see the foggy morning yesterday!
We flew direct from Brisbane - that was great. Could see the familiar shape of Tassie (!) from the air as we approached the north east corner - from 11,000m the horizon is a long way off. Stayed at the Old Woolstore Hotel - not bad - all built within the walls of the store with the huge old sliding hardwood doors still in place and the saw tooth roof line. Standing around in the foyers are bails of merino wool, prize ribbons from woolclassing and even an olden day wood and steel woolpress or cleaning machine or something.
We did the on-foot Hobart - walked for miles over the few days. There are starfish on the bottom of the boat harbour! Took the tourist bus to the top of Mt Wellington (we were the only passengers) and walked down for two hours via the stone tracks. That generated nicely noticeable calf muscles for the rest of the holiday! Its beaut on top at 1270m - there was frost in the shade on the ground even at midday. The shrouded tower is a transmitter protected from clumps of ice forming and breaking or crashing down.
The winter solstice festival was on if you looked for it. We liked the fact that there were not many signboards or billboards around at all. The Hobart connection with Antarctica was being celebrated and that was very interesting. We had to have a second visit to the museum to try to get through a bit more of it. The penguin and albatross candle lit night parade was good.
We went looking for a bit of winter and we got some!
We had a stall at the Pumpkin Festival this year - our first time there. I don't know how much business we'll get from it but we enjoyed the day. A beaut country fair. Had to be there at 5am when it was pretty cold.
In September we managed to zip over to northern BC to see Willow and all the family and the life they have over there. Had the biggest thrill since Lizabel was born to see the baby. Well done Kerstin and Mars, great job on getting this far and what a good job you're going to make of parenting by what we saw so far! And thanks to the Sjodens for letting us stay in their motorhome - hope you can visit us as well so that we can return the favour!
G&E&I did a hike up Mt Beerwah at the sunshine coast on 31st december - it was great. E could have made it all the way up with the right shoes on! But we got to the top at 564 metres - its the tallest of the Glasshouse mountains.
