To K'gari

We headed north last Tuesday - with an overnight stop in Coogee - followed by a long day's drive along the M1 to Kirra Beach on the NSW - Queensland border. 

Nothing feels better after 10 hours in the car than stretching out on a beautiful beach in the late afternoon light.

We had a five and a half hour drive ahead of us on Wednesday, further north to Hervey Bay and the ferry port to K'gari (Fraser Island) for our two night stay on the largest sand island in the world.

But first we had to make our way through the slow moving traffic (6-8 lanes of it) on the highway between the Gold Coast and Brisbane. It was very slow moving and frustrating at times but at least we had no major hold ups on this particular morning.

But it did feel like quite a relief to get to the ferry port at River Heads (in Hervey Bay) in plenty of time for our 1.00pm departure to K'gari. We found a nice breezy spot facing out to sea, while we waited to embark.

The crossing over to the western side of the island, over the Great Sandy Strait, took about 50 minutes. It's a slow trip but really helps get you into relaxation mode........

We were immediately impressed by the beautiful Kingfisher Bay Resort in its natural bushland setting - and we loved our room 125 with its very private deck overlooking the lagoon pool.

This award winning resort was built in the early 90's to strict environmental standards. Its design aesthetic has really stood the test of time ........

We were rewarded with this sighting of a lace monitor wandering around the grasses below our deck within half an hour of our arrival.

The resort has other lovely features too - like drinks and snacks on a shady, breezy deck overlooking the pool ......

The sense of space in the central resort building, its harmony with the bush setting, the extensive use of timber and high quality finishes have all stood the test of time.... We are so impressed with this place!

We headed down to the very rustic Sunset Bar on the jetty to catch a magnificent sunset over the beach on our first night on K'gari.

We know we're going to love our two night stay here!

Back to Rosedale

We spent a night at the south coast this week, catching up with friends at Rosedale after a long break away from this beautiful part of the world.

North Rosedale was devastated by the New Year's Eve (2019-2020) bush fires and rebuilds have been slow given the scale of the losses and the hold ups and shortages of the pandemic years since.

Rosedale Beach itself is as beautiful as ever though .....   

... and this familiar walking track through the gum forest to/from the beach looked just the same as we remembered it .....

I took this picture of one of the burnt out properties on Yowani Road about 10 weeks after the fires in 2020. It was the same level of devastation all along that road, including the loss of Judy and Jurgen's beach house (which I couldn't bear to take a picture of at the time).

We met up with the old Rosedale crew for dinner on Wednesday night at Sawaan (Thai Restaurant) on Beach Road in Bateman's Bay - a reprise of a night out at the same venue in March 2020 (but in those days it was a Japanese Restaurant). 

We were impressed with Sawaan!

We stayed overnight at Malua Bay - right on the beach at a perfectly located hotel with beautiful views and terrible design and environmental standards (!!!)

..... and checked out John and Linda's house at nearby Lilli Pilli - the site of so many happy holiday stays when Joshy and his cousins were little ............

....... before heading back to Rosedale to check out progress on Jurgen and Judy's rebuild on Yowani Road.

It was all excitement this morning as a team of tree loppers was there clearing the fire damaged gums on the neighbouring property.

These old spotted gums are enormous at Rosedale - super dangerous in their fire damaged state and super dangerous for anyone trying to cut them down. It was nail biting at times watching the guys in action.

The tree/mulch grinder did a sterling job after that tree felling effort.

Just when we thought the show was over this guy started work on an even taller more dangerous looking tree, right near Judy and Jurgen's on site caravan...... yikes!

We thought the tree guys had a most unusual, but adorable, "ute dog", anxiously keeping an eye on proceedings.

The footprint of Judy and Jurgen's house is there in place, the steel frame is ordered; there's been huge progress in the last few months after all the delays. Judy and Jurgen are predicting it might be ready to move into by Spring next year???

We drank to that!!

The morning cuppa at Rosedale pic reminded me of another pic taken in October 2013 - same people, very different location (Chanoud Garh - a 300 year old fort/palace near Jodhpur in India).

Beautiful Rosedale!

A week of nature, drama, music and food

We've crammed a lot into the past week. It started with a day in the outdoors last Sunday .... and the thrill of getting up close and personal with one of our favourite birds (Gang Gang parrot) on our morning walk around Campbell......

 .... then the afternoon out at Freshford, enjoying quality time with Sammy and Abi and gaining more confidence leading Sammy around those long trail ride tracks.

Then we were off to Coogee on Tuesday - and an unexpected drama within minutes of our arrival when these two cars crashed into each other at the intersection outside our apartment. Luckily no one was hurt. It ended up a drama with a few acts however with firies, police and two tow trucks in attendance over the next few hours!

Our friends Judy and Jurgen joined us late on Tuesday night ready for three days of fun together enjoying a full program of musicals, plays, cocktails and great meals. All the good things that Sydney offers.

First stop on Wednesday's program was a pre-matinee bowl of seafood and noodles from our fave Malay Chinese on Sussex Street....

... followed by Bell Shakespeare's production of "The Lovers" at the Theatre Royal - a thoroughly modern (musical) uptake on "A Midsummer Night's Dream" written by Laura Murphy. We loved this show - it had so much energy and heart and a wonderful live band to deliver the killer soundtrack.

The four lovers: Demetrius, Hermia, Helena and Lysander .. they all had great chemistry on stage....

We were lucky to have this school group sitting near us. Their teacher had been to see the show THREE times and was a great source of background info at interval as we were all a bit rusty on our Midsummer Night's Dream plot lines.

The actor playing Puck did some schmoozing outside the theatre afterwards - giving us a close up view of the intricacies of the show's fabulous costumes.

Before the next show there was time for some pre-dinner cocktails at the Zephyr Bar on the rooftop of the Hyatt Regency.

There are great views up this high, over Darling Harbour.

Then it was on to our pre-show dinner at The Little Snail in Pyrmont. We've been to this restaurant before and really enjoyed its classic French menu - all done superbly well. 

We saw Back to the future on Wednesday night - probably the big ticket show of the week, but one that left me somewhat underwhelmed. This was such an iconic movie as Joshy was growing up and we'd seen it many times. Unfortunately the musical didn't add a great deal to the movie experience; and it certainly didn't extend the musical possibilities of the original film.

We had a slow start to the day on Thursday but found the Belvoir Street Theatre in plenty of time for the matinee performance of Meow Meow's The Red Shoes. Meow Meow is a superlative cabaret performer and the show was pretty extraordinary, especially considering we got seats in the front row - only a meter or two away from the hard working, extraordinarily talented performers.

We visited a very old favourite Polish restaurant in Crown Street afterwards for a late lunch. Rob is looking very pleased in this pic with his mashed potato pancake (fried) stuffed with goulash!

... and Jurgen looks very pleased with the dessert offerings. We were pleased that Alchemy is still serving the same unpretentious but authentic (and delicious) Polish food that it's been doing for the past 23 years.

Our cocktail stop on the way to that night's performance was at the Intercontinental Hotel on Phillip Street. None of the harbour facing bars would give us a table at short notice!

Thursday night's show was "The Shiralee" at the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre. We all thought Kate Mulvaney had done a great job  of adapting D'Arcy Niland's book, set in 1950s Australia, into a powerful and engaging play with a lot of contemporary relevance.

Friday was not as tightly planned. We had no commitments all day, right up until our cocktail booking at the beautiful Pier One Bar facing on to Walsh Bay. After a drink or two it was only a short walk to Jounieh, our chosen dinner venue facing out to Pier 8 at Walsh Bay.

We loved the elevated Lebanese dishes on the menu at Jounieh - and the location was just perfect.

We saw "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" on Friday night, just over the road from Jounieh, in the Ros Packer Theatre. WAOVW is an epic 3 hours and 15 minutes long production, with only 4 actors - and we all found it remarkable! We'd set a demanding schedule for the past three days involving very late nights and long days, but WAOVW held us spellbound for the whole performance - all three and a quarter hours of it. It was a great show to end off our three days of fun, drama, music and food (and cocktails!).

Although the walk back from Walsh Bay around Campbell's Cove heading towards Circular Quay was very iconic too!

Rob and I stayed on in Coogee for an extra night, taking the time to meet up with some Campbell neighbours of ours and enjoying a night out together at ANOTHER restaurant in Barangaroo. You can never have too much of a good thing they say.