Birthday celebrations

We were lucky to have the young ones join us in Coogee this past (long) weekend - three days of good times together and an opportunity to enjoy a celebratory dinner to mark the occasion of my 75th (yikes!) birthday.

Ella, being on Uni break, was able to come up with us last Thursday. We experienced the fiesta like atmosphere of The Spot at Randwick that night - a regular occurrence apparently on the second Thursday of every month. There were hundreds and hundreds of people around, eating and drinking on tables set up along St Paul's Street with a soundtrack of great hits from a rockin' live band.

...... and a small army of street performers .....

Our fave old Randwick Ritz was serving up a bit of old school nostalgia that night too.

Friday morning dawned perfectly clear and sunny - but with a strong NNE wind the waves off Coogee Beach were a bit wild.

We walked from Coogee around a more turbulent than usual Gordon's Bay, to Clovelly Beach.

.... where it was calm and beautiful ...... calm enough that Ella couldn't resist taking a dip and then putting up with a wet cozzie while we did coffee and a pastry at Tuga Pastries on Clovelly Road.

Josh,Jody and Abi got to Coogee on Friday in time for a late lunch by the beach at the Coogee Bay Hotel - a great way to start our official weekend of fun times together.

Saturday morning started out raining heavily - for a few hours ..... but by 11.30 it had cleared and we set out for the beach ......

.... back to Clovelly .... where Ella convinced Abi to brave the fresh conditions (that water is barely 19oC) and have a swim.

Abi is just as happy to be back in one of her favourite childhood haunts - exploring the Clovelly rock pools - finding octopus, starfish and all sorts of other sea creatures.

Saturday night was booked for our big night out together. So I had the chance to do my annual photoshoot with this beautiful family outside our Coogee apartment block on Carrington Road.

Just look at this pair!!

....... and this amazing pair too!!

We made our way to the iconic Bondi Icebergs Restaurant for dinner ....... initially for an eye popping (and mercifully short) drinks session at the Icebergs Bar (along with a few too many glammed up and primped up residents of the Eastern suburbs).

But then we were shown our table in the restaurant - a proper, old school, Italian fine dining establishment - and very glamorous, yes - with the location (and view) to die for!

It doesn't get better than this!!

We had the BEST night - superb food, attentive service, the best wines - with my favourite people in the world - and THAT VIEW!!!

And there was even a birthday candle for me - thank goodness there weren't 75 of them.

We had a few stories to tell after our night at Icebergs, mostly about the other patrons frequenting the bar. But that all adds to the fun!!

Abi, Ella and I just stood together on the balcony at the end of the night and took in this most amazing view of this special part of the world, at the end of a very special night together.

Both mornings we started the day with breakfast in our tiny little kitchen. Abi cooked on Saturday. Ella cooked on Sunday. I enjoyed watching them bring together a full breakfast feast for the 6 of us in this tiny little space - with such confidence!

There was time for one last swim at Coogee Beach before the young ones had to head back to Canberra on Sunday afternoon. I love watching these two sauntering down Coogee Bay Road together - looking so like sisters don't they?

This was the first swim for our family at Coogee Beach since that shocking shark attack back in June. The beach has a drone patrol now, tandem helicopters flying overhead and lifesavers patrolling on boards just beyond the 30metre line off shore. Probably a very safe time to swim at this beach.

There was also a small army of volunteer surf lifesavers on duty this morning too.

Aside from all that the beach was looking its absolute best!!!

It seemed very quiet once the young ones left that afternoon. We're having a few more days here and a touch more excitement (more on that later!) before the week is out while they get back to Sammy, school and Uni and all the other demands of their busy lives.

In the meantime we're going to enjoy living in this 'hood for a while while i think back on such happy times we had this year celebrating being together on my birthday!!

Coogee again

We've managed to squeeze in another 3 night stay in Coogee just to make sure this month finished off as busy as it started.

The weather didn't look great as we drove off the M8 on to Gardener's Road (near the airport) on Sunday ......

But it was perfect weather for getting a few DIY jobs done at the apartment - in time for more extended family visits in October.

We think our newly framed Evonne Rraraypum "Yam Dreaming" painting from Bula'bula Arts in Ramingining (Arnhem Land) looks right at home here in our Coogee kitchen .....

And our old 80s(?) era Ikea (or was it Freedom?) pine shelf unit works well for extra storage alongside the fridge.

Levelling up the shelf unit on our very uneven floor boards proved to be the biggest challenge...... but we did it!

And last job on the list, we installed a chargeable light (no cords) above the "desk" in our new tiny office ...... all in all a very good effort on a rainy afternoon we thought.

So Monday being fine (but quite cool) we had some time to enjoy ourselves. ........ We always love to start our day with a walk to the "Honeycomb" in South Coogee.

..... and this morning, with the tide quite low and very little wave action, we were able to spend some time looking back away from the ocean, towards the towering sandstone cliffs over the honeycomb rock platform - we thought it looked particularly photo worthy this morning!!

Late that afternoon we met friends in the city for a meal at Pandawa - a local Indonesian haunt, very popular with the locals. But before we made our way there Rob was able to capture this pic of the new Ai Wei Wei installation outside the Museum of Contemporary Art down near Circular Quay. Titled "Mushrooms" it comprises 500 cast iron combat helmets in ten uniform rows - Wei Wei says the idea for this work originated when Germany offered 5,000 helmets to "aid" Ukraine just before the country was attacked by Russia in early 2022.

Yesterday we took ourselves out to the end of the L1 Light Rail line - to Dulwich Hill in Sydney's Inner West.

Our Sydney explorer days always focus on lunch - and today's did not disappoint........

Proscuitto, truffle, ricotta, black olives and rocket on focaccia made fresh in store.... a very yummy lunch from the very authetically Italian Deli - Xioso on Marrickville Road.

Followed by just as yummy, and authentically Lebanese, pastries and coffee from the Dulwich Hill branch of the famous Abla's Pastries which we've visited before on Railway Parade in Granville.

We can pack a lot of fun into even a quick visit to our little place in Coogee, Sydney can't we!

A busy month

This month has been busy and fun for all of us. Abi and Sammy tried someting new at the weekend, two weeks ago - joining a "cattle working" workshop with Brett L. on a property on Windellama Road out past Tarago.

 

Both Abi & Sammy took to working with the animals - doing tricky maneouvres between the gates and yards - like they were born to it.   

This looked to be the most challenging exercise - cutting one cow from the pack and then leading it around the hats, in figure 8s, when all the cow wanted to do was get back to the pack!

It was a very enjoyable few hours for all of us watching the animals in action - and their clever riders - in this rather beautiful rural setting just an hour and half's drive from Canberra, near Lake George.

By way of contrast Canberra's Floriade is not new for us - but it's always worth a walk through especially because we live so close. This is how Floriade looked a week after its opening on the 19th September.

Visits to the National Gallery aren't new for us either but we were pretty excited to see the gallery's long awaited new cafe had opened on our visit there last Friday. It's called the Oculus Cafe for obvious reasons and will open from 8.00 every morning - a boon for us early morning lake walkers - woohoo. The cafe's beautiful timber furniture was apparently made by Rolf Barfoed, a local Canberra artisan who's done work for us here in our little apartment too, back in the day. Go Rolf!

Rolf made this small jarrah shelf unit for our apartment entry - installed late 2020 - in between the various Canberra lockdowns that year. I'm glad Rolf has gone on to much bigger and better things since he did this small scale job for us!