Abi is 13

Our AbiGirl is now officially a teenager - full of sass, witty one liners and enough knowledge of horses to fill at least a dozen Wikipedias.

When she turned over her first decade I created a tribute blogpost which was fun to take another look at on the occasion of her 13th birthday yesterday.

https://purplefig.blogspot.com/2022/02/abis-ten-years.html  So now its time to give an update on the three years since then...

So we'll start from August 2022 .. and Abi is back at her favourite place then - Forest Park Riding School, on one of their school ponies ......... 

By September 2022 Abi had become the proud lessee of Harry the Brumby pony, whose home was at Redlands out Womboin way.

Christmas 2022 was made complete by the gift of a mini Les Mieux horse. Abi named him Rio! At that stage Abi had a name for all her animals, including the birds, spiders and worms she found around the garden too.

Christmas 2022...

By January 2023 Abi was growing fast and eating full size meals to suit. This was her intense carnivore year too ........

Abi's 11th Birthday in February 2023......

In March 2023 we had a belated celebration of Joshy and Rob's birthdays at Bennelong in Sydney - a fabulous night of feasting we repeated in 2024.

We love our Easter stays together at Narrawallee too. This pic of Abi was taken on our second Easter visit.

In May 2023 Abi was helping out with the beginner riding lessons out at Redlands ...

By July 2023 Abi was ready for a bigger, younger horse to ride. She took over the lease of Ringo then, a 16.2 hand gelding - 600kg and an ex racehorse .... We thought he looked huge, but Abi managed him easily (or so it looked to us).

Ringo enjoyed the showjumping that Abi was getting increasingly interested in ....

Abi, quite the socialite, at a rooftop bar in the Rocks, in Sydney - October 2023

Abi graduated Year 6 at the end of 2023. We loved her graduation party style .....

Seen in Sydney with sister Ella in January 2024 ....

Ringo was the recipient of most of Abi's 12th birthday presents in February 2024.  Best dressed horse award in the Canberra region...

In March last year we were back in Sydney for another Bennelong dinner - the girls were dressed and ready for our big night out in this pic .......

We spent Easter at Narrawallee in 2024, memorable for Abi no doubt because she had new braces fitted on the day before Good Friday. It cramped her Easter egg eating style quite a bit that year.

We took these beautiful pics of Abi and Ringo at Redlands in July 2024 - just as their one year lease was coming to an end.....

Lunch with Granny at the iconic Tilley's Divine Cafe in Lyneham also in July last year.

By September 2024 the search was over and Abi finally had her own horse - Sam (Sammy) a 14.1 Welsh Arab pony .... her new love .... He's based at the beautiful Freshford Equestrian Park along the Point Hut Road on the southern outskirts of Canberra's suburban sprawl - a beautiful bushland setting that we're all enjoying on our now regular visits.

Abi agreed to a weekend away from Sammy in October last year so we could celebrate my birthday in Sydney (dinner was at Queen Chow at Manly Wharf).

But this is where Abi is more often found these days.... This pic was taken in November 2024.

We celebrated Christmas Day 2024 in Ubud at our fave The Indus Restaurant. This was Abi's 6th holiday in Bali (after a 5 year break from their last visit in 2019).

Abi in full celebrity style mode at The indus, Ubud Bali ....

Joshy has captured the best pics of Abi and Sammy in full flight in the paddocks around Freshford. Taken January 2025.....

Abi with the extended fam in January 2025.

In the last three years Abi has grown into a very special teenager - full of character and sass yet with authority and leadership too - so evident when we see her in operation as a rider and carer with her beloved Sammy. We have been so lucky to share these years with her. Happy 13th birthday dear AbiGirl!!  

Port Fairy break

With Rod's slow recovery now stabilising we felt it was ok to head off over the weekend for (a shortened version of) our now annual visit to Port Fairy in SW Victoria - where the Moyne River enters the Great Southern Ocean. 

We set out last Thursday afternoon after a full on meeting with Rod's medical team at Canberra Hospital - and made it as far as Benalla in central Victoria, a few hours drive north of Melbourne. Benalla is a busy small town during the day but let me tell you there is not much happening around town after 7.30 - other than this very pretty sunset over the Broken River.

We got to Port Fairy around 1.00pm on Friday in time for a leisurely lunch and catch up with dear friends Judy and Jurgen and James & Fiona - before starting to explore all the delights of what is one of the sweetest small towns in this part of Victoria.

There is always a lot going on here over the second weekend in February - including the Port Fairy Jazz Festival and the Commonwealth Sheepdog Championships  - but more importantly it's where we all choose to meet up to celebrate friendship, the Jazz, doggies ......... AND LOBSTERS!!

This is James, on Saturday, with our lobster haul, straight off the boat, freshly caught by Port Fairy's local (cray)fishermen.

This is the legendary pair that makes this weekend happen. Judy and Jurgen, lobster lunch experts of many years standing now .... We're so lucky to know you!!

We all contributed to the lobster lunch feast on Saturday. Rob and I were given an easy job this year in recognition of our time at the hospital with Rod - we made a simple appetizer to serve with the obligatory glass of Majella Sparkling Shiraz to kick off the feast.

It was so good to catch up with beautiful Fiona this year too and hear her perspectives on family, work, and carving out a new life in Geelong .......

James and Fiona's friends, Mark and Christine, joined us for lunch too. They contributed dessert - a fabulous apple pie from a King Valley baker served with custard and icecream... a fitting end to our fabulous feast.

Fiona made these beautiful salads, Judy and Jurgen foraged for local potatoes (grown locally in the region's rich volcanic soil) baking them and then serving them with sour cream and chopped spring onions - a superb complement to the seafood.

My favourite meal (and wine) of all time!

It doesn't get better than this ...

I bought this beautiful bunch of foliage and flowers at Port Fairy's Community Market on Saturday morning. We saw eucalyptus with these intense scarlet flowers all along the roads into Port Fairy - I think its called a Corymbia ficifolia tree!

We carried over the feasting to Sunday morning when James and Fiona prepared a slap up breakfast for the 8 of us - another chance to celebrate our last day all together!

In between the feasting we kept up with highlights from the Jazz Festival program which ran for about 12 hours each day on the weekend, across a number of distinctive Port Fairy venues. The winds off the Great Southern Ocean can make Port Fairy a cold, blustery town at times. This weekend was one of those times.

We love the way the whole town gets behind the festival. There's music playing EVERYWHERE all throughout the day and the nights!

We spent both Saturday and Sunday mornings at the Commonwealth Sheepdog Championships and enjoyed watching these highly intelligent dogs doing what they're bred for and what makes them truly happy.

The Guardian newspaper ran a story on the Championships - these photos are from that story. If you zoom in on the grandstand picture you can see our group sitting there as spectators on the right side front.

We all love the ABC's Muster Dog series so its always a thrill to see one of the stars of the show, Mick Hudson and his champion dog Rabbit at work.

The streets of Port Fairy near our Air BnB at 2A Wishart Street in the evening light ........

Port Fairy has an interesting colonial history but I specially admire its honest acknowledgment of the tragedy of First Contact times.

Port Fairy has a beautiful bookstore too ....... Blarney's Books. I would love to have a spare afternoon to spend there one day, browsing through its shelves, settling into one of its many couches for a quiet read and taking the time to examine all the local art works (most with literary themes), lining the walls.

The doggies and their owners started to leave town on Sunday night. We packed up too, ready for an early departure yesterday morning, and the long (920klm) drive back to Canberra. 

We've all decided we're definitely making it back to Port Fairy again next year to have another go at this fabulous weekend full of friendship, food, Jazz ...... and the doggies!