Slow birthday

It's been a week of heavy rain (nearly 5 inches for Canberra), cold windy weather and two belated birthday celebrations; one for Angus and one for me. I think there is a lot to recommend the slow food and slow travel movements . Drawing out the celebration of birthdays is another excellent way of getting maximum enjoyment out of life!

Before setting out for Angus's party at Monkey Mania on Monday Ella enjoyed playing dress ups (trying a few outfits on Joshy's 30 year old teddy bear was pretty funny!).

But Monkey Mania proved to be an outstanding choice for entertaining a bunch of 3-4 year olds on a wet windy Monday (for over 3 hours).

This was another 2010 Angus birthday cake. Claire just keeps these brilliant cakes coming....she says she's getting far more efficient at the maximum impact for minimum input aspect of birthday cake making.

Josh, Jody and Ella entertained me at a birthday celebration dinner last night, followed by an extended family breakfast this morning-complete with a glass of Majella and bagels with scrumptious fillings.

It was a gorgeous warm sunny day, our first for the week, so Claire only allowed the boys a brief stint playing computer games,

before we headed outside for the usual fun and games with the kids. It got so warm that sunscreen and hats were even required.

Fun with Ros & Pete

One of the best things about our holiday weather was that it prevented Pete from working and left us very few options other than making our own fun together - usually over fine meals with fine wine. We started with lunch at Ocean Noir on Tuesday near where the grommits battled to ride the brown water surf where the ocean meets the harbour in the Rip Curl Gromsearch Classic.

There were fine meals at home together too. We bought fresh whole snapper and local prawns at the marina and enjoyed a wonderful home cooked meal later that night, before settling in to watch Mad Men (episode 10, series 3) while the rain beat down outside. What a wonderful series; I'd never watched it before; thank you Ros.

We found a cafe, full of character and charm at the very top end of the village of Bellingen, Lodge 241, for our lunch on Wednesday. Even the boys were pleased we had taken the time to search this place out, despite all their comments about how hungry they were and how long it was taking to find JUST THE RIGHT cafe.

We saved the best to last, last night..at our favourite Saltwater, right on the beach at Emerald Beach, a few minutes drive from Sandy. This place has won so many awards, we've been there a few times before, but it is still just as good: beautifully crafted food, the best ingredients, and that wonderful setting, overlooking the ocean.

I had swordfish, Ros & Rob had a superlative lamb dish, Pete had a Royal Thai seafood curry. Our salmon ballantine appetizer was gorgeous.

We left Ros and Pete at Sandy Beach this morning. The day dawned very clear and sunny. Pete was off to work to catch up on time lost with the rain. Ros was looking forward to a few days break from work. Our time together had been very precious.

Big Wet

The Coff's Coast had over 300mls of rain from Saturday through to Monday, so we had to negotiate a few flooded roads between Brisbane and Sandy Beach on Monday. The trip took us over seven hours (instead of the usual 4 and 1/2).

This minor flooding near Ballina caused us a 3/4 hour wait. Only a single stream of cars was being let through at low speeds (the sides of the road were too deeply flooded to have two lanes open). As the rain got heavier the closer we got to Coff's we had another major hold up (over 1 hour) at Blackadder Creek near Corindi Beach. That was a scary one to cross - they closed the road altogether later that night, it got so deep.

Tuesday dawned just as wet. We headed to the marina with Ros and Pete for lunch at Ocean Noir and got a wonderful view of the choppy, wind swept, brown water ocean.

Wednesday was wet too. We drove to Bellingen where there was water lying around everywhere.

It was a thrill to see Maxie and Claire's work hanging in the Bellingen Art Prize exhibition in the main street of this pretty village. I managed to get a quick picture of Maxie's before I was "admonished". Ironically, the surface of Maxie's ceramic sculpture depicts the river story - inspired by the impact of our recent devastating drought.

Brisbane eats

Yesterday we caught up with Brisbane family at some great eating places. We started the day with a leisurely breakfast at Anouk on Given Terrace in the very hip and happening Paddington. I enjoyed the privilege of being able to catch up with Matt & Mel while we sampled the great breakfast menu at Anouk (I had Spring whiting omelet with fennel).

Last night, with more storm clouds brewing, we met up with Joel and Imogen at their place to start with before heading out for a night on the town at West End: drinks at the soulful Lock n Load Bistro on Boundary Street and then a wonderful Turkish meal at Caravanserai on Dornoch Terrace. This was a very special night as we don't get to see Joel very often now and meeting the beautiful Imogen for the first time was a great privilege too. They share our love of family, travel, Middle Eastern food, politics and broadcast news (an industry they are both passionate about and doing so well in!!) so we ate and talked and talked while the Brisbane weather grew wilder and more windy as the night progressed. Caravanserai is located in an old, character filled Queenslander and the wind just howled through its open verandah overlooking the river and the night lights of the city. It would have been beautiful on a warm night. We voted it the best middle eastern food we had eaten anywhere.

The rain really settled in today. A drive to Wynnum for fish and chips and a walk along the bay esplanade ended up with us huddling under cover at the Pelican Nest fish & chippery and sticking to a slow drive in the car past the rain soaked Manly Yacht Club and the Wynnum wading pool we all remembered so well from our childhood days in the 50s.

For our last afternoon in Brisbane I met up with my friend Jane in familiar territory at Jetty on Oxford Street at the Bulimba ferry wharf. We enjoyed a relaxed few hours catching up on our news while appreciating our ringside view of the scudding rain on the river and the rolling drama of the storm clouds behind the Tenneriffe Wool Stores as the day drew to a close.

Southbank

Brisbane is hosting the wonderful Valentino Retrospective at the Gallery of Modern Art in the Southbank cultural precinct. We (me especially) were very excited to see this magnificent exhibition of 100 beautiful dresses, including those worn by Cate Blanchett (2005 Academy Awards), Julia Roberts (2000 Academy Awards), the Jackie Onassis wedding dress and iconic dresses worn by Nicole Kidman, Elizabeth Taylor and Princess Grace of Monaco, all very rich, tall and thin women.

The exhibition has been enormously popular. The $75.00 catalogues were all sold out long ago, much to my disappointment.

The Valentino exhibition was not the only joy at this gallery. It was also a privilege to see the Douglas Kirkland photography exhibition. I was stoked to see he's a Canon man now he's gone digital although those iconic Marilyn Monroe, Coco Chanel, Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland and John Lennon portraits and those famous stills for The Sound of Music and the Thriller video were from his Leica days.

We found Brisbane cool and windy today, not at all how we were expecting it to be. We kept getting confused at the way our 35 years ago mind map of Brisbane has failed to incorporate all those office and apartment block towers, the hemmed in Brisbane River and the looping freeways. The old Treasury building and the South Brisbane railway station look like funny little old fashioned toy buildings in amongst all this development.

Travelling North

We're travelling North. First stop was Sandy Beach on the Coff's Coast for some three sisters' time (aren't we lucky!!). Just two nights for now, but enough time for lots of laughs & family talk, beach walks, a couple of whale sightings and some dolphins, lunch at the Park Beach SLSC and time to enjoy Ros & Pete's beautiful home and living environment.

We all drove up to the Yurrawarra Aboriginal Cultural Centre at Corindi Beach, about 20minutes North of Sandy Beach yesterday. We were lucky enough to meet and talk to Alison Williams (a local Aboriginal artist) and three wonderful women artists from the Tiwi Islands on a two week workshop tour of this part of NSW, to coincide with the opening of their print exhibition at the Grafton Art Gallery.

Those are not mobile phones that Alison and the Tiwi artists might look like they're holding in the photo above. They are actually clever tools made out of iron wood for stamping beautiful dot patterns on the women's paintings.

Alison's great grandfather was a very significant elder in the local community about 80 years ago when the remaining Aboriginal people in the area were forced to live in an enclosed reserve (in the forest just opposite the cultural centre). The area has a very brutal history obviously including a tragic massacre affecting a large number of local Aboriginal families late in the nineteenth century.

We loved Alison's art work in the exhibition at the cultural centre's gallery. We have bought this wonderful monoprint/drawing that tells some of Alison's peoples' story.

Spring

Ella and I really enjoy our special place on the hill above our house. There is an outcrop of big boulders that seem to inspire some very intense imaginary play. Ollie & Angus love to pretend that Spiderman lives there, but Ella and I love to play at being Cinderella and the Prince in our separate castles. This week Ella told me that the stepmother and stepsisters had died so that got rid of a few complications in the story, allowing us to focus on the more fun aspects of the Cinderella story. Our Cinderella and Prince had a pet cat called Jimmy Choo. They also have "sleep overs" and eat croissants together and have macaroni cheese for dinner.



Ella broke her arm two weeks ago (just a "small" break from landing the wrong way on a big trampoline jump) so some of her favourite games are very awkward at the moment. We had Rob's compact camera with us on the hill and she took a great sequence of shots of me. I could tell she was really using the viewing screen and pointing the lens to get the right shot!

This has been our best Spring in many years. The grass on the hill is almost knee deep and emerald green. The wattle is blazing yellow and Canberra dams are 79.1% full.

Even with a broken arm Ella is getting better and better at catching and throwing small balls.