Early Autumn lobster lunch

The onset of perfect Autumn weather (the best season for seafood at the South Coast) and two birthdays to celebrate, means it's time for our yearly lobster lunch celebration at Rosedale (thanks to the hospitality of Judy and Jurgen).

This year Judy and Chef Jane had decided on a "tropical" theme so with great expectations we all got into the party mood with our favourite starter-the Majella Sparkling Shiraz.

Wayne and Jenny could only stay for the afternoon - the grapes are ripening fast at Murrumbateman and they had to get back to do "bird patrol". Flocks of starlings can wreak a lot of havoc during vintage. They don't need this as crops are already under threat this year from the dreaded damp, cool weather fungi.

Wayne makes a start on canapes: pork and black mushroom wontons with home made sweet soy sauce and fried sticky sesame rice balls stuffed with pineapple chilli jam.

The rainbow lorikeets and James and Fiona's dress up efforts helped us get into a "tropical" frame of mind.

It's amazing what Chef Jane and partner Louise (Slick catering) are able to produce out of the Rosedale kitchen.

It wasn't just us oldies this year. The "children" are fast growing into gorgeous young people. (Maggie, the Jack Russel fits in anywhere there is an available lap.) The young people's menu, by special request, included Panko crumbed calamari and chicken with shoestring chips with sour cream and sweet chilli sauce and noodle salad.

Our entree comprised a trio of Clyde River oysters - natural, pickled ginger and wakame and tomato and lemon grass granita. Luscious!

Washed down with a Catalina Sound Sauvignon Blanc (from NZ) - nice and grassy and citrusy, not too sweet.

But the highlight is always the fresh lobster, just superlative this year, served with toasted coconut sambal, fresh lime salt and chilli. The banana leaf plating reminded me so much of our dining experiences in Bali - tropical indeed!

...and served with green papaya salad, sweet potato salad with ginger and tamarind dressing and peach and roasted macadamia nut salad. We are in foodie heaven!!

The two birthdays are a perfect excuse to bring out Chef Jane's famous Bombes (Alaska) adorned with sparklers and lots of theatrics. The young people enjoy choc mint Bombe Alaska.

and the grown ups get a 3 layered Bombe: comprising coconut sorbet, Pina Colada ice cream and pineapple sorbet served with roasted pineapple slices with palm sugar glaze.

and that luscious swirly feather light meringue that is Chef Jane's speciality.

A late afternoon walk to beautiful Rosedale Beach, and a swim for the young things in the soft afternoon light was a perfect ending to this most perfect dining experience we are so lucky to share with our friends. Thank you to both Judy & Jurgen and a very Happy Birthday to Judy and Sophie in 2011!

Sydney parties

First of all we had to check on "Don's Party", David Williamson's play about the August 2010 election, revisiting characters we first met 40 years ago in his play about a 1969 election night party.

"Don Parties On" is about regret, remorse and includes lots of polemic. We know a lot of people like the characters in the play so some of it was a bit squirm making, but funny too. It was our first visit to Sydney Theatre, in the buzzy Walsh Bay arts precinct.

We enjoyed finding a Fratelli Fresh grocers and bistro/bar (what an inspired combination of services) near to the theatre, so we could indulge in a pre-theatre Pinot Grigio or two.

Walking back into the city centre we couldn't help but notice all the preparations in place for Saturday night's iconic Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade......lots of hairy (sometimes) men in tutus and body paint everywhere.

and other gorgeous outfits....

We mingled with the gorgeously attired ones in Hyde Park for a while (the parade assembly area), absolutely charmed by the positive, inclusive, supportive and celebratory party atmosphere. We were surprised by the hundreds of Indonesian young men all sporting the transgender look. This beautiful young man looked particularly arresting.

But the Gay Sydney Nudists (GSN) for Gay Adoption were my personal favourites. They foresook the glitz and went straight for the message! The pink shopping bag guy's placard says "Me I'm Not Rude"!

And there were lots of young (and not so young) women involved too.

I was expecting the focus on same sex marriage support but I was surprised at the number of other issues raised by the "paraders". Mardi Gras started as an act of protest - it's great that it has kept (gentle) activism at its core still.

The yellow ballet tutu guys turned out to be campaigning against battery hens: "Queers Agree Set the Battery Hens Free".

On Sunday we were lucky enough to meet up with Joel and Imogen for lunch at the Kazbah on Darling (Balmain). We were looking forward to finishing off with pastries from the divine Adriano Zumbo Pattisserie on Darling Street but were shocked to see lines of people waiting in queues to be served and all the display cases looking absolutely thrashed. Oh no, now the world has discovered Zumbo and we are left out in the cold. It was never like this before he created that memorable macaron tower on Masterchef.

Although disappointed we drove over to Balmoral Beach to finish off a lovely few hours with J&I hearing all about their dramatic start to the year covering the Brisbane floods, cyclone Yasi and then the Christchurch earthquake for ABC news. We made plans to meet up next in London and swapped family news and holiday plans for our respective OS trips in April May.

First go at The Show

Ella's Mummy and Daddy agreed to us taking her to the Canberra Show, her first visit to The Show, and our first visit for many, many years.

With no real idea of what The Show was all about Ella was quick to establish her goals for our Show outing! She wanted a ride on the "teacup ride" (like the little "Mad Hatter's Tea Party" ride at Floriade) and she wanted to try fairy floss (an amount the size of her hand-her Mummy's rule). The fairy floss goal was probably my fault as I've done a lot of fairy floss talk trying to get her to have a more positive attitude to the spiders' webs festooned all over our garden.

Our goal was to show her the "country to the city" experience that we think is the best part of the Show for kids. Accordingly we walked her straight past the rides and sideshow alley and up to the farmyard nursery for our first stop.

As expected she enjoyed about two hours here getting to feed and pet some adorable baby farm animals.



including the baby pigs in the outside enclosure

and some very sooky donkeys who loved having their ears scratched.

After checking out some big cows in the judging ring ("They are bulls, Banny", Ella corrected me)and the beautifully groomed horses and riders in the dressage events we sat and ate our lunch under the shady trees (all wholesome and all brought from home) before heading down sideshow alley in search of the teacup ride.

Ella found the dodgem cars too tempting however. Rob was amazed at her ability to channel her speed fiend Daddy on the Go Kart track. She did all the steering (mostly) and laughed with delight the whole time even when the teenage boys' cars bumped her.


And just as much fun was the steep, speedy but soft ride down the inflatable shark(??) which Ella repeated over and over and over and over again, all with this look of pure delight on her face. Getting her off this ride in the end was the only thing we came close to having a disagreement about all day.

She ate her handful size clump of fairy floss and was generous enough to offer Rob and me some microscopic size pieces too. We bought it for her right at the end when she was so exhausted she didn't have the energy to notice that we'd quickly stuffed the rest of the fairy floss pack in the bin when her handful was all eaten.

When I asked Ella how she'd rate the Canberra Show out of ten she counted up to 50 for me and then announced she'd give it 101!

Back to normal

It's been a very busy two weeks for us with Shane the painter busy in one half of the house and then Tim the carpet layer finishing off our house reno late last week. We were sick of moving things, sorting things, packing and unpacking things, and trying to find vital bits and pieces we'd forgotten the location of, in our late night pack ups.

Ella had no trouble coping with our house in chaos. She found it all rather exciting and really enjoyed the company of Tim the carpet layer. We all agreed he was one cool dude with an awesome set of tools and very nice blue eyes.

Jody went back to work this week so we were lucky enough to have Ella's company for two days of high energy, non-stop action and in depth conversations about just about everything known to man or woman.

Ella has a very busy schedule this term: two mornings a week at proper play school (conducted at a neighbourhood Preschool), swimming class on Tuesdays, dance lesson Wednesday afternoon (Claire takes this class!), lunch with Daddy one day a week, and then two days with us. So far she seems to be thriving on all this intense activity!

We really enjoyed Canberra's Multicultural Festival this year, joining around 100,000 other people in the City to enjoy being crowded (unusual for Canberra), experiencing a cacophony of sound and movement (unusual for Canberra) queuing for food (unusual for us) and meeting up with almost every other Canberran we know doing the same thing.

I had a chat with Constable Kenny Koala and tried to teach him one of Ella's favourite sayings from "Fireman Sam" (uttered by an Aussie fireman character with a broad Australian accent): "Flying Koalas..... its raining sideways" except you have to say it: "Floi - ing Koi -ahlahs...it's roi-ning soide-woiys"...Ella can do it perfectly!

Unfortunately Kenny Koala didn't seem to find it as funny as I did. I think he was trying to maintain his Constable Plod decorum.

Highlights of the festival for me were getting to talk to the Director of the French Film Festival which opened in Canberra on the 18 February with a screening of Potiche (Gerard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve), finding out about the Australian Cuban Friendship Society and their low cost work and study tours to Cuba, checking out the chef's moves at the Moroccan tent and getting to catch up with some of my favourite ex students (sisters) at the Palestinian tent. They are both going back to the Middle East early next year with their family, after a four year break. I wonder what they will find!

We ended off our multicultural weekend on Sunday evening with a French film: Marriage a Trois. We were amazed to see so many people get up and walk out in the first hour. Were they surprised that the actors all spoke French, that nothing much was happening and that the characters talked endlessly and in circles about their feelings and their relationships?...yes, it was a French film! All the more enjoyable for us because we hadn't seen the work of the wonderful Julie Depardieu before (Gerard's daughter).

During the week before we'd gone to the opening of The Sapphires, a musical story of the real life experiences of an Australian Aboriginal girl band in the sixties and seventies. They'd travelled to Vietnam to entertain the troops and experienced a lot of love, joy, heartache and racism along the way. We loved the show and really enjoyed the after show party and the chance to meet with some celebrities (everyone from K. Rudd to Casey Donovan) including cast members, and other Aboriginal friends and colleagues.

Baby blogging

This proves it's never too early to start blogging!

Sweet dreams darling Eddie Arthur - now one and a half weeks old!

Ballets Russes

Our National Gallery has a bigger collection of costumes and accessories from the Ballets Russes than any other institution in the world. It's been 10 years since the collection has been on show at the NGA so we didn't want to miss this exhibition, which includes restored costumes we've not seen before.

Seeing the exhibition with Ella and experiencing it according to her world of fairy tales, princes and princesses, scary wolves and mythical beings, dress ups and dancing was very inspiring.

We spent AGES together afterwards in the exhibition's activity centre, playing with patterns...

dancing in space age tutus to Russian hip hop music.........

constructing towers with brilliantly coloured blocks.........

and drawing MANY beautiful dancing ladies on strong black paper with those gorgeous German made graphite pencils.

We decided that purchasing a set of those pencils was the best souvenir of our lovely time together at this exhibition (although Ella did her best to persuade me to buy her the $150 pale pink satin leotard with crushed organdy frills as her little memento.....it was just the right size too!)

Baby Peanut

We're thrilled to be celebrating the arrival of this little cherub (aka Baby Peanut) at 3.45pm Monday 31 January (London time - early am Tuesday 1 February E.A.S.T.). He is a chubby little fellow (8lb 11oz), and now delivered safely to our London Cath and Davey.

Of course there was great excitement at this news over here, with much texting, phoning and Skyping allowing us to share this amazing news (and the photos) as events unfolded.


As soon as Ella heard the news about new baby Peanut she organised her BEST OUTFIT for some serious partying with the rest of the Oz branch of the family. The green and purple mermaid dress is perfect for swirly dancing, ballet arabesques and general fairy-ing around, such as you do when a beautiful new BABY has arrived.


Angus was so excited about the news of his brand new cousin he was prepared to bust his best Michael Jackson moves for the camera (usually a complete no-go!).

There was much sharing of photos (all so beautiful too, thanks to Davey's and Mal's camera skills) and discussion about whose nose /eyes / cheeks / dimples Baby Peanut has inherited. We all can't wait to see him (and have a cuddle)!

Birthdays are always celebrated with a cake in our family, so of course we had to ensure Peanut's birth day was recognized with one of Flute's finest pear and chocolate creations.

..... And share a toast to a wonderful future together for our new London based branch of the family. With all our love, best wishes and special thoughts to Cath, Davey and baby Peanut and many congratulations to the four proud and happy grandparents too.