Winter days

We've been taking Abi to her horse riding lesson most Wednesday afternoons, after school. This has been a cold, wet, muddy winter here in Canberra so most of her lessons have had be in the indoor arena at Forest Park. It's still freezing cold in the arena because it's open on all sides, but at least its dry. Two weeks ago we had a fine sunny Wednesday afternoon for a change so Abi's instructor took the class on a trail ride - great excitement! I took these pics of Abi and Wally the Shetland cross getting ready for the ride. Its fair to say that Abi enjoys the saddling up process (and the unsaddling process) just as much as the riding!

Wally is an older pony, smaller than some but a real trooper - and a more cooperative pony than most of the others at Forest Park (IMHO). Wally grows a very bushy winter coat at this time of the year.

They make a very cute couple ......

We had another sunny Wednesday this week too so in the morning braved another walk with our two-legged friends Judy and Jurgen and theire four legged pups Charlie and Poppy.

We stayed close to home and found our way to the historic old Duntroon Dairy just off Kelliher Drive in nearby Russell. The building dates from 1832 (although rebuilt a number of times) and is believed to be Canberra's oldest building. This dairy was one of a number of buildings that became home to several generations of families that worked on the original Campbell Estate. There were still signs of these other buildings in the grounds around the dairy. It was hard to believe that in all the years we've lived in Canberra we've never visited this site before.

I took this pic from the site of the old family "tennis court". It shows how close the farm buildings were to the Molonglo River.

From the old diary we followed a track up to the lookout of Mt Pleasant, to the rear of the property. It was a gentle climb compared to the killer Mt Ainslie, but still gave us beautiful views over Canberra.

The cannon guns at the lookout are part of the Royal Australian Artillery National Memorial.  

With more beautiful views of the Molonglo River to the East.

Meanwhile .......

There's nothing much going on here, while we wait and watch the latest COVID outbreak numbers and signs of things improving (or not). There aren't many places we can go or plan to go at the moment. It hasn't helped that Canberra has had a very wet, very cold and very cloudy winter this year - not very mood lifting some days.

However, upon reflection there have indeed been some bright spots over the past two weeks here in (currently unaffected) Canberra ....

We took Jody and Ella on our weekly Mt Ainslie climb in the last week of the school holidays (while Abi was at horse riding camp). Ella didn't find the climb too challenging but she found it hard to understand why we walk it when there is a perfectly good road up to the summit - to drive up!

The same day, approaching home, after picking Abi up from horse riding we had this most amazing sunset experience. Abi remarked that the sky looked like scrambled eggs (on fire)!

and then reflected back on to the Carillon and Aspen Island ......

We get to see a lot of our lake - our bridge to bridge walk is our main outing most days. Rob captured the shifting fog this morning a week or so ago while we enjoyed our coffee ......

And I tried to capture our view of the dusting of snow on the distant Brindabella Mountains on this morning's walk, but I think I was too far away!

It felt a bit daring to travel towards Bowral during the week and stop for lunch at Bendooley Estate. We did it - it was lovely - but maybe we shouldn't have??

Surprisingly, there were plenty of other people there having lunch too. It wasn't against the health directions for us  - but probably not advisable with all the uncertainty around. The Bowral area is getting pretty close to the Greater Sydney defined border!

A lovely (safe?) thing we were able to do was attend a members only (guided) viewing of the new Know My Name (Part 2) exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia last Friday night. Ewa Pachucka's fibre art "Landscape with Bodies" was probably one of the most distinctive works in the space ........

but this "Fear Eats the Soul" neon installation by Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley is probably what is most relevant to the current times!

Winter depths

Any spare time we had in June was spent doing final preparations for our long awaited trip to the Top End of Australia (Darwin, Kununurra, Broome and Karratha (Murujuga NP). Our departure date was Sunday the 27th June - the day that everything went pear shaped all around Australia in terms of border closures and lockdowns. This was the drastic response to a small number of Delta variant COVID cases escaping from hotel quarantine in Brisbane and overseas traveller transmission in Sydney. Our trip was off - indefinitely - and at such short notice!!!!

This picture taken from our front windows on the 24th June - it sums up our mood pretty accurately - we've had lots of these foggy, rainy mornings lately.......they're drab and a bit dispiriting.

Luckily Ella and the fam got in a quick day trip to Sydney JUST before all hell broke loose there (COVID wise) so she was able to complete some birthday wardrobe purchases. It was great fun to see what her choices were (mostly from her fave Culture Kings just off Sydney's Pitt Street Mall).

Those very desirable Air Jordans are so clean and new - and perfect!

And we loved the story behind this T-shirt - a satirical take on Elon Musk and the dogecoin phenomena - typical Ella sense of humour!

As well as the letdown of our cancelled trip (at very short notice) we're even in a heightened state here in Canberra with mandatory mask wearing as of this week (although not outdoors or at home) and a range of other restrictions. We have no cases here but there is concern that we're so close to the Sydney region and all the breakouts there!

But one nice outcome of missing out on our trip is that we're around for the Winter school holidays. We were lucky to have the young ones over for lunch during the week and caught up on all their news..

This pair are probably the tallest kids to ever use our Hassett Park swings ...

the North Melbourne supporter!

All the kids are loving that our small creek is flowing better now - thanks to all the rain and the efforts of our Park weeding group.

Some very special pics of these funny, gorgeous kids and their Mums  .......

Abi's had some quiet one on one time with us too. She loves getting the paints out and doing a bit of creative construction when she's here. This visit she made a wonderful horse float from a box I'd saved for her. It was very involved and took her a few hours of concentrated work ......

But it was perfect when she finished!

May means ..........

We got back to Canberra on the 3rd of May, just in time for what is our favourite month in Canberra .... and this stunning view from our North facing windows .......

beautiful foggy mornings ........ (view from our Mt Ainslie walk on the 10th May)

and quite a few frosty mornings too!

Rob now has a new iPhone 12 after a lifelong commitment to Android - and even he can see the improvement in ease of use and quality of picture taking - how about this portrait bokeh???And just to prove it has clarity too .. the same scene (taken from our fave morning walk coffee spot), without the bokeh .......

While Abi's horse riding happens every month of the year, not just May, this May is the first month we've got to take her to after school lessons on Wednesday afternoons. It is such a joy to see her enjoying something so much, learning so much and gaining so much from it!

Beautiful May weather entices everyone into the outdoors. Judy L organised us all to have a lovely cafe breakfast a week or so back, at the beautiful old Clementine Bakery in Yass. In the fifty years (almost) we've lived in Canberra I think it is the first time we've had a stop over in this beautiful little gem of a country town - only 60klm from Canberra. We vowed we'd do it again soon!

The 14th of May, always means its the anniversary of the WW2 sinking of the hospital ship Centaur. This year it was the 78th anniversary, which we commemorated at the short but heartfelt Last Post ceremony at the Australian War Memorial. These are such sad events and we're always so conscious of the tragedy of the great loss of life yet thankful for the miraculous escape by Rob's Dad when so many others were not so lucky.

And last but not least, May always means its Ella's birthday. She turned fourteen on Friday and we were lucky enough to be invited to a special meal to celebrate the happy event. Everything on the menu was Ella's choice - and lovingly prepared by hand by Jody. As always Ella is our absolute ray of sunshine - and she doesn't even need a birthday as an excuse!

And Abi is a growing girl too and loves her protein (and hamburger carbs) whether its a birthday meal or not.

My birthday cake making days seem to be over these days. Abi made a surprise icecream cake for Ella this year. Three layers, chocolate, vanilla and strawberry and lots of sweet goodies folded through each layer..

Abi is at that "love of lighting fires" stage!

especially fires on cakes .........

But what about me, says Ella!

A funny pic taken by Abi showing a typical moment at our family dinners: Ella holding the floor, riffing off Joshy, in the process mimicking one of my various foibles (hilariously) while covering 10 topics a minute. OMG what will she be like when she's fifteen???

But we all know we're so lucky to know this wonderful, funny, talented, ray of sunshine!