Art and Culture Week

Sydney has been having it's 17th biennale of art, these last couple of months.-



Louise and I went on Tuesday to Cockatoo Island, which housed the main video installation and sculpture display. It was a fun day out.. although the art was somewhat strange.

I really enjoyed Cockatoo Island -- it's very industrial and edgy with cool underground tunnels used as bomb shelters in the war, and grim convict cells used for solitary confinement. - The historical side of the island really needs it's own excursion, so that will be another day - for now - here is some of what we saw:
exploding cars,
Replica Hubble telescopes:and strange green colender mobiles.
Cool underground tunnels and ancient cranes( not sure if the flag is "art" or not?).

We came home on the ferry via Pier 2 and walked around under the bridge..

Camellias

Camellias are having a bumper season in my garden. I'm so pleased with them!!..and looking very pretty on the kitchen windowsill.

Weekend

On Saturday Lizzie, Marg and I had lunch. (I had a slight wardrobe change --see post below:)

(looking at the pic, it seems to have been the day of the scarf!!)

I spent the rest of the weekend recovering.
Enough said.

Purple People

Margie turned up to go out for our girl's lunch out!!



Fortuneately Megs was home to photograph us! hahaha!!!

(Sure looks strange to me:)

A Good Weekend - Walking, Reading, Friends

It was a good weekend, with just the right blend of social activity, slothfulness and activity.

Friday night(the social activity part), the Kambora girls had dinner down @ Kbilli RSL..passable enough food, GREAT views of course (over SHB, Luna Park and Lavender Bay and always fun to catch up.(so much fun i forgot to photograph it:( )

This was followed by Saturday morning ..the slothfulness part) I have been irritated lately by the amount of reading I'm not doing..book reading that is... (plenty of iphone reading and playing going on), so I spent Saturday morning in bed reading Steig Larsson.. I made great progress, got engrossed in the story and had to eventually drag myself out of bed about midday to do things.

Sunday ( the activity part) Barry and I took a walk. We have a great little book containing 50 walks on the North Side of Sydney. It gives a map, photos and a detailed description of the route for each walk. . I am making it my project to walk my way through the book. We've done 6 so far(in random order)... 44 to go!

This week's walk was along the clifftops between South Curl Curl
to Freshwater Beach

then across the beach, up the steps and along the clifftop again to Queenscliff.


Of course, the walk finished with coffee..

and the weekend finished with Barry's famous seafood pizza:)and the country's latest obsession - Sunday night Masterchef.- a good weekend.

The Friends Part

We had two wonderful days with Lynn and Mike... it's like staying at a gourmet gastronomic resort!! Lynn is a serious contender for masterchef. Dinner our first night was pheasant pie with celeriac mash and green beans..What a treat! - my first pheasant ever!
Over the course of the weekend, we consumed vast quantities of red wine, pheasant pie, crumbed sardines with onion jam on ciabatta,beef rendang and a farewell "big breakfast" of toast, mushrooms, tomatoes, bacon, egg and the piece de resistance .. duck and veal sausages!! O Yum!!! In between all this eating, we ambled downtown for winetasting and coffee drinking at this new hip cellar door. This is a private little stone room complete with roaring log fire, comfy lounge chairs and a selection of board games to wile away the hours.The weather was perfect for a winter break - cold and crisp, but sunny. Frost greeted us each morning - enough of a novelty for me to venture out to photograph it!!- frost on the bark chip in the garden and the frozen bird bath!



We finished the weekend with yet more food and a walk on Brighton beach. Thank you Greenies for a great weekend!:)

The Family Part

Our primary reason for visiting is to keep half an eye on Ben and Heather though I worry that having visitors for just 24 hours wears them out. Heather in particular likes to talk and catch up on the family gossip and what with her asthma and various maladies, I could tell we had worn them out by the evening of our first day in spite of my best efforts to prevent her from doing anything. I think at their age, just getting through the day and doing the necessary is all they can manage.

We spent the evening watching a slideshow of Naomi's wedding and our European adventures. They loved the slideshow and were bright as buttons and so on the ball...even I would have been bored by my copious European slideshow, but they were a great audience!!
It was lovely to see them in such good spirits, and busy planing a family luncheon party and debating whether they would have the energy to make the Christmas Pud this year!:)


BTW - Heather makes a GREAT bacon bone soup -we had it for lunch.

Family and Friends

Had a very happy and relaxed weekend in S.A. visitng Barry's parents in Victor Harbor then friends in Hahndorf. As usual when we visit there, it is a weekend of eating and drinking,winetasting, coffee drinking, and laughing and talking..with a few walks thrown in to assuage the guilt about the eating and drinking!!




Was a glorious morning for our early morning walk around Granite island( though a litlle chilly).





Nothing between me and Antarctica.. maybe my next holiday?? I seem to have the wardrobe...

And after the arduos walk(not), coffee in the sun:)