Bali Magic Wedding

We've been lucky enough to be invited to Vicki and Justin's wedding in Bali (it was yesterday). So on Thursday, the day before the wedding, we set out from our hotel in Nusa Dua to find our friend David (Vicky's Dad). Going by the sandy entrance track winding in amongst the scrubby jungle, complete with rangy looking cows grazing on cleared patches, we thought he must be staying in some rough, beach side shack. However when we opened the timber gates to Nirvana Biru this is what we found........

In all our previous visits to Bali we've never been to the West Coast of the Bukit Peninsula. The magnificent surfing beaches of Bingin, Padang Padang, the Impossibles, have obviously attracted the owners of these beautiful and opulent villas, set in seclusion on the clifftops overlooking the ocean.

Near to David's Nirvana Biru we found the Villa Permutih, where Vicki and Justin were staying in preparation for the wedding there, the next day. Another magnificent villa!

We stayed until sunset and could easily understand why this was the place they had chosen for the celebration of their marriage.

We enjoyed a relaxed pre-wedding catch up with the gorgeous Vicki, her Justin, and some of the other younger wedding guests.

The Villa Permutih has a beautiful swimming pool which overlooks Padang Padang Beach.

Yesterday, the wedding day, we arrived a bit before the 4.00pm scheduled start. It gave us enough time to thoroughly appreciate the beautiful detailing in the set up before most of the guests arrived.

There was a perfect fresh white rose tucked into the green bow on every seat. Roses don't even grow on Bali!!

And fresh white rose petals forming the "aisle".

David's partner Vanessa and I were both feeling nervous for David at this stage because he was feeling his F-O-the-B responsibilities very keenly.

But a few drinks in the garden helped settle the nerves.

Vicki looked absolutely stunning.

We enjoyed the ceremony very much, with its inclusion of literary reflections on the nature of love, some Hindu elements, including a ceremonial blessing, and traditional Balinese musical pieces (as well as the usual vows).

Justin is over 2 metres tall, a funny, smart adventurous man of Australian Scottish descent who is into adventure travel (He publishes Get Lost, an adventure travel magazine). Vicki is a tiny powerhouse of a woman, highly skilled in Corporate Law, and of Vietnamese descent. They seem to adore each other!

It was a magical wedding, very stylish and heartfelt, staged in this most beautiful and exotic setting with plenty of Balinese detailing to make it extra special. It also helped that with all the guests contributing a bottle of duty free champagne to the celebrations (you can't get champagne in Bali) it meant all of us at our table were drinking Moet all night.

Cold hands warm heart

I had a lovely social week, finding plenty of warmth in this cold, cold city-which is much more frosty than in previous years because there is "more moisture in the atmosphere" (yay!).

We celebrated the (temporary) return of Gregg and Leigh from Lombok at Mecca Bah last Thursday night. We marvelled at their bravery coming out on such a cold night after their lengthy stay in the tropics. They seemed so happy, especially after their week in Coogee catching up with life in the big city and seeing Jordan and Sam again.


A lunch date on Friday with some work colleagues introduced me to a hidden gem in Canberra. It is hard to believe that after all these years of living here I didn't know about the restaurant at the Pialligo Wine Estate (just around the corner from Rodney's). Even on a drizzly, freezing winter day it was quite beautifully rural and picturesque, with good food and some interesting wines to taste. We will go back!


Saturday we celebrated Claire's birthday with another lively gathering, Jeremy's best wines, some warming soups with Flute bread and Mum's moist and delicious gluten free orange cake for dessert (with a glass of our favourite Majella). Happy birthday Claire!

For the first time Ella has a toy that the boys are very interested in. It has been interesting for us too to see how the Toy Story marketing juggernaut has affected Ella. It has brought back a lot of memories of the Star Wars/Transformer juggernauts of her Daddy's childhood. Oh well, it didn't seem to have bad long term effect on him!

Kevin and Julia

Everyone in Canberra has an opinion on the events of this week: a new Prime Minister, our first female Prime Minister, the swiftness and surprise of it all, the total annihilation of Rudd's support and leadership!

Ella ended the week in fine spirits even though the rest of us still felt a little shell shocked, especially after watching bits of Kevin's excruciatingly sad farewell speech in the PM's courtyard.

We talked to Ella about Julia on Thursday. She likes Julia's name a lot, certainly a lot better than Kevin's. It was as good a reason as any to celebrate with a chocolate cake, made with her Daddy, complete with green sprinkles and a fresh strawberry. I hope Kevin was able to end the week on such an upbeat note too.

Play Sydney

The children's playground at Coogee beats any of the Canberra versions hands down. It has every desirable playground feature including the best ocean views of any of Sydney's Eastern suburb beaches (although I might be a bit biased).

Rob and Zoe found these "stomping on the decking bells" which played out a chromatic scale if you stomped on them in the right sequence!

Zoe played for around an hour and a half on the swings, slides, sand pit, fort, climbing frames etc. I was impressed with her fairly pushy Sydney style as she staked out her claim to territory from the other two year olds!

She was on top of the playground pecking order most of the time although we saw her gentler side a lot too particularly when a dog came on the scene. I thought she was going to hug and kiss Buzz, the fluffy white lap dog, into oblivion.

The Q 2

Just over a year ago Maxie and Claire staged their first joint exhibition at The Q Gallery in Queanbeyan. Last Saturday their second exhibition together, From Little Things Big Things Grow, was officially launched with a buzzy gathering of friends, colleagues, contacts and other interested parties. The event was covered by the Canberra Chronicle (half page spread in this week's paper they say) and the art reviewer from the Canberra Times was there taking copious notes too!

In the background of this shot you can see glimpses of Claire's monoprint portraits-among my favourites of her work in this exhibition (we bought one). Claire produced a richly drawn (but with a print and painting or two) portfolio of still lifes (and a portrait or two), inspired by her domestic environment. They looked amazing.

Maxie's sculptures are much bigger and more ambitious in scope and scale than a year or so ago. Her paired works are beautifully constructed and composed, and obviously popular with gallery goers judging by her success in the Queensland Sculpture Awards last week.

The Q Gallery is a beautiful space and ideally suited to the scale of their exhibitions.

All the family were there. The kids had lots of space in The Q foyer area for dancing, jumping and playing games with Spiderman and Batman. Ella was over the moon to be wearing her Mummy's Scottish "tilt" for the first time. Jody wore her kilt in Scotland when she was 5, but it seems to fit Ella just fine already. I bet Jody looked just as cute as Ella does in it.

I bet this shot ends up in the Canberra Chronicle spread. We are all so proud of and inspired by the artists in our family!

Five years ago in France

Almost exactly five years ago we were in France, enjoying 5 wonderful days in Paris, then a week in a little stone cottage in the Loire Valley, then a week at La Dependance, a little converted stone barn in the hamlet of La Lande in the Dordogne region of SW France. La Dependance was right next door to Chez Hartley where our friends Judy and Jurgen were staying for all of term two to give the kids a wonderful experience of living and schooling in country France.

Our week in the Dordogne was a constant delight of companionship, great food markets, fine dining and wining, lazy games of petanque with a glass of champagne in the Hartley's terrain in the evenings and daily picnics in the gorgeous villages of the region.

Jenny and Wayne, and their two girls, from Murrumbateman joined us for a couple of nights on their way from Paris to the wine regions around Lyon. We had some great foodie times over those few days and loved checking out the noble rot wines around Sassignac and the distinctive Bordeaux wines from St Emilion.

Maxie and Rod weren't there five years ago but have had many French adventures themselves, some of which we shared in our 2008 visit. They were gracious enough to host our 5 year reunion lunch. Most of our meals in France were in bistros and fairly rustic country style cafes. The food was wonderful but we were more likely to be sharing it with well built French tradesmen, farm workers and country folk than with a more elegant crowd. The meals we ate and the wonderful market produce we saw were the inspiration for our reunion lunch.

Judy prepared this wonderful entree of terrine and cherry chutney (to commemorate our first evening at La Lande when Rob and Jurgen both fell out of the cherry tree while they were meant to be there to ensure the safety of the children).

Jenny prepared a gorgeous spatchcock dish for main course with loads of tarragon. I prepared french beans and broccoli with hazelnut and orange, roasted beetroot with chervil and maple syrup dressing and sweet potato and sage gratin. I was trying to capture the brilliant colours of the produce in the country markets and the luscious flavours of our cafe lunches.

Maxie & I discussed her ideas for dessert. I whispered croquembouche, never expecting her to even consider making it. Of course she did; what a triumph!

We had a mixture of French and Australian wines with our lunch and a fabulous French cheese platter to finish off - which no one could fit in unfortunately. In the process of buying my chevre at the Mart Deli (from the Frenchman) I learnt that you have to be very careful the way you pronounce cru in French as it sounds like you are saying asshole if you are not careful.

This was a wonderful way to bring back travel memories we treasure and good times with firends and family.

Before & After 2

With the installation of the mirror earlier this week we can now announce that the bathroom / laundry reno is complete. That was 8 weeks of work by various (mostly excellent) tradesman and quite a few thousands of dollars of expenditure, but something of beautiful simplicity and quality has been created. It was worth it (yes, every dollar, every early morning start, all those visits to Southern Innovations, every vacuum bag of dust)!

It certainly is a step up from our previous eighties era tile job, pasting over the late 60s plumbing and layout.