Bohemians, Football and Kangaroos

I quite liked an article that I read the other day wondering why a football club from Prague has a kangaroo on its badge. Apparently it dates from a tour set up in 1927 for Prague's AFK Vrsovice to tour Australia. It took the Czech team 4 months to travel by boat to Australia via the suez canal and Indian ocean. They won the majority of their games (15 wins, 3 draws and 3 losses) and returned from their tour with two live kangaroos which were given to Prague zoo on the team's return!

Football (proper football) is subheaded 'The World Game' in Australia, and that's obviously been the case for quite a while!

To read the article click here

Audrey and Eli in Rodney's Cubby House

We like Rodney's Garden Centre. Near Canberra's airport there's a row of about 7 or 8 large garden centres. It's a bit odd really having garden centres (and a couple of farms) neighbouring the 'international' airport. I often wonder what impression Head's of State must have as they touch down in Australia's capital and have sight of hens, chickens, llamas(!) and a street full of garden centres.

Now we're in Spring the tills were ringing in the garden centres and so we went along to poke around at the flowers and pots. Our favourite centre, Rodney's, has a nice children's playground and here's a picture of Audrey and Eli in the cubby house.

Hopefully the cherry tomato plants we bought will bear fruit sometime around Christmas!

Japanese Nara Festival

It had been a lovely warm Spring Saturday in the garden on and so in late afternoon we decided to head to the Japanese Nara festival in Canberra's Nara Park. It's a lantern festival celebrating Canberra's sister city relationship with Nara. The festival promised loads to do with masses of food stalls, a kite flying display, Japanese sword fighting etc. I didn't see any Sumo wrestlers, but I'm sure there would have been some there (probably queuing at one of the food stalls).

There were hoards of cars and people and we struggled to find a park in the nearby car park of the Chinese Embassy which was still an empty building plot, with only a signpost saying what it was supposed to be.

Unfortunately as the sun dropped (about 5.30pm) it grew colder and colder and the wind whipped up off Lake Burley Griffin. We'd wrapped the kids up a bit, but we were pretty much unprepared for the sudden 10 degrees drop in temperature.

In the end we only stayed for half an our or so, which was a shame as the festival looked good but we chose instead to grab a few sausages from the obligatory sausage sizzle (they came with Teriyaki sauce) and head home.

Here's a few pictures of Audrey looking cold and grumpy. Some days it's hard when you're 3 years old and your Dad drags you to some freezing cold park (without slides) to watch people making origami animals.

Not an award winning picture of Audrey and kites (note the size of the bottom lip)

Me and Osher (Andrew) Günsberg

Here's a picture of me and Osher (Andrew) Günsberg. I was lucky enough to go along to the opening of his new photography exhibition, "365" at Mart Gallery in Surry Hills, Sydney. He's a really nice and down to earth guy. Takes good pictures too.

Justine Clarke plays Queanbeyan

There's no denying that we are huuuge Justine Clarke fans. She's a children's entertainer that we first came across on Play School. Describing her as a children's entertainer really does her a disservice, she's an actor a singer a musician. Yes, we are in awe.

We were all excited when we found she was visiting Canberra (well, Queanbeyan). It was the second Justine Clarke concert that we'd been to and if we're truthful I think both Amy and I were perhaps more full of anticipation leading up to it than Audrey and Eli. Justine is now 3 CDs into her solo career (all are compulsory listening on car journeys) and the 1 hour set that she played was just fantastic.

Because I'd been hot off the mark with booking tickets we had excellent seats. Every child in the place was enthralled (for the first 15 minutes). Eli in particular didn't seem to be able to believe it he sat frozen and agape. Once the initial spell wore off everyone was in various stages of dancing/crying/singing. Justine is a fabulous entertainer. Roll on the next tour!

It's a Great Big World!

What a Load of Rubbish!

As Spring cleaning goes our day spent cleaning out our garage was pretty significant.

We'd put up with boxes that reached to the roof for nearly 2 years, but now it looks as though we're going to buy the house/shack that we've been renting we took the opportunity to clear out some junk.

What was slightly galling was that much of the debris that ended up in the skip was stuff left by long gone past tenants, we'd lived around it or put more junk on top of it. Now we were nearly owners of the ancient junk we decided to clear it out.

I suspect that the skip will be the first of many we hire.

As well as the broken down tele and two old desks we came upon an old oil drum rusting in the hedge, an old spring bed (umpteen cockroaches), and probably most surprisingly a possum and its baby nesting in the furthest corner of the garage. With two big pairs of eyes starring back at me it was impossible to deny that possums are definitely cute, but apparently can be nasty when cornered. I tentatively moved the box/nest out of the garage in the hope that we could all go our separate ways but still remain friends.

Later that evening with the two possums still entrenched in the box it started raining and I felt guilty (almost to the extent of dragging them back into the garage). Fortunately though at some point they must have sloped away on their own.

Audrey and Eli at Amy's Party

No, not THAT Amy. Audrey and Eli have a friend called Amy who turned three at the weekend so we were back to Kambah cottage for an excellent party. Here's a couple of picture of our kids enjoying themselves...

Audrey's Art

Here's a few works of art that Audrey has produced recently..

A tree (Audrey described the roots and the leaves at the top)TigerAbstract!