Tidbinbilla

Trevor took a day off on Wednesday to join us (Amy, Audrey, Eli and Amy's parents) on a visit to Tidbinbilla (a nearby nature reserve) just outside of Canberra. We'd only been once before and had been drenched, but Wednesday's weather was perfect. To top it off, there was also a complete absence of flies which can be a pain during summer months.

As it was midweek there were also hardly any other visitors. We enjoyed a barbecue in the company of a family of emus (who fortunately kept their distance) and spotted a large mob of over 20 kangaroos. After lunch Audrey enjoyed a refreshing dip in a cool babbling stream. Here's a few pics...

I'm older than yesterday

It was my birthday on Saturday and so together with Amy's parents, who are staying with us at the moment, we ventured out for a birthday picnic at Black Mountain peninsula.

Amy had made me a lovely chocolate cake and we had rolls and cake near the lake.

There was a big fishing competition going on (a Carp Out) dedicated to ridding Lake Burley Griffin of carp. Ivor, Audrey, Eli and I walked the banks looking at some of the monster carp that some of the fishermen had pulled out of the depths of the lake. Sweetcorn and bread appeared to be the bait of the day.

A friend of mine, Chris took some family pics of us. The blog doesn't really do them justice as they're great shots. (in case you're wondering the one on the picnic rug is one of mine!) Eli was far happier after Chris had gone home!!

Canberra Balloon Spectacular

On Saturday Audrey and I took a trip to Canberra's annual balloon festival. We got there a bit late (6.50am) and a fair number of the balloons take off at 6.30am, nevertheless we saw quite a number getting airborn.

Ballooning seems a nice (if eccentric hobby) and there were the usual ballooning folk together with hoards of Canberrans, a band (which Audrey danced to) and the obligitory sausage-sizzle.

I'm not sure who funds the festival (it runs for a week). There had been relatively strong winds all week, so I'm pretty sure the balloons only went up a couple of times (Thursday and Saturday). I do wonder whether they have to maintain the festival as practically every bit of literature encouraging people to live and work in Canberra contains a shot of 3 or 4 balloons flying over Lake Burley Griffin.

Baby Elephant Story

There's a nice story in the papers at the moment about a baby asian elephant born recently in Sydney's Taronga Zoo. Whatever your view about zoos it's still a nice story.

Porntip the elephant was thought to be dead when he was delivered earlier this week, but when he was actually born, quite remarkably he was alive and had been in a coma during the birth. You can see pictures etc by clicking here.

Objet d'art

Amy very kindly bought me a birthday present of a glass-blowing class at Canberra's fine new(ish) Glass Works in Kingston.

The Glass Works themselves are fantastically situated in an old 1920's power station, so it's really atmospheric being in there during the evening working with hot moulton glass.

It's a four week course, taking us through fairly basic stuff (paperweights) through to bowls and maybe a plate. The two instructors are great and really enthusiastic and the other students are a good bunch too.

Here's my effort from week 1 a (slightly lopsided) glass paperweight. It's also handy having a 2½ year old daughter, who I persauded over breakfast to tell me that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life!

Sydney Weekend

Driving the last 30k back into Canberra with the petrol gauge light on was the least enjoyable part of an otherwise very enjoyable weekend in Sydney.

We had journeyed up to Sydney to visit Tim and Hayley and their two kids Alex and Ted. They've just moved into a really lovely house and we drooled over their place which bore virtually no similarity to the shack we live in in Canberra.

It was great to see them all. The kids all got along really well (Audrey and Ted particularly so!) and we spent Sunday at Dee Why beach which was very relaxing. Audrey paddled and Eli nearly lost his hat in the waves. It's a bit corny to say that children 'grow up so quickly' but they really do. Hopefully we'll see them all again before too long. Thanks for such a nice time.

Amy, Audrey, Alex, Hayley and Eli on Dee Why BeachEli shows off his jockey skills in the park

Ted and Audrey heading back from the park

James May TV

Australian TV it has to be said, is pretty poor. Admittedly British TV is itself stuffed full of soaps and dancing/singing/skating/cooking talent shows, but nevertheless BBC and Channel 4 are cerebral feasts compared to Channel 7, 9, 10 etc in Australia.

The commercial channels here are apparently targeted by an age demographic, if they are I’ve never noticed. Mostly they contain American cop shows or re-run films interrupted with increasingly annoying regularity by adverts. There’s also a good dose of border security type programmes and advertorials.

The only saving grace in amongst the trash are channels SBS (which itself seems somewhat dedicated to showing Japanese cooking programmes) and ABC (who show a fair proportion of BBC re-runs) or copycat BBC news and current affair programmes (Question Time becomes Q & A in Australia for example).

Over the last couple of weeks though both ABC and SBS have been showing a huge assortment of James May programmes. So many in fact that I actually checked Wikipedia this morning in case he had died. There I learnt about his early career sacking from Autocar which is superb. Click here to read

On Australian TV at the moment we’ve got Top Gear, for which he does a good job as an affable host alongside the hideous Clarkson (shown twice weekly). Then we’ve got James May’s Toys, James May’s 20th Century and Oz and James big wine adventure. You can quite literally watch James May every night of the week.

Fortunately, he seems a nice bloke, and it’s preferable to the other option of watching Two and a Half Men, starring wife beater Charlie Sheen which is shown round the clock on one of the channels and must have run to something like 10,000 episodes. Apparently the show is no.1 ranking programme in America, which says something about the USA's take on 'comedy'