Mum and Grandad had planned this trip to check out the new Pacific Highway and some of the new bypasses. Aunty Margaret joined in because she wanted to see some of the rellies and some of the areas that Grandad used to hang out as a young one. I went well because it meant a chance to drive on the Tugun bypass, hang out with Grandad and see the sights.

We drove down to Tweed Heads and had a lovely afternoon tea with Aunty Doris, enjoyed a stroll in the garden and the first of many catch-ups.

Then we popped in on Uncle Bob and Aunty Heather at Cudgen and admired a lovley scarf that one of their granddaughters who is an Army Nurse had brought back from the Middle East as well as general catch-up. Uncle Bob is very proud of the fact that he still drives the tractor for a couple of hours a day most days of the week. Once a farmer, always a farmer.

Then it was driving down to Brunswick Heads to stay the night. We had dinner at Dominic’s, the local Italian restaurant. We shared some zucchini flowers (something I had been wanting to try for ages) for an entrée which were delightful. I had Chilli Prawn Spaghetti for my main which was just the right combination of chilli and tomato. What really stood out for me was my dessert, the most delightful Panna Cotta, oh it was bliss. After enjoying a long dinner it was time to retire to our accommodation, The Brunswick Heads Chalet Motel.

Saturday morning arrived and it was time to pack the bags and drive up the road to New Brighton (where we actually would have liked to stay the night) for breakfast at the only cafe in town “Pippis” (if you are getting the idea that there is not much to this town you would be right). As we drove through Ocean Shores South into New Brighton, Grandad started pointing out places where he used to fish or picinic. One of the first things Grandad said when we walked into the cafe was to ask the man in charge if he knew of the ex-cop who used to run the cafe twenty odd years ago. The current owner didn’t know him though. After our breakfast, we did a little drive round the two or three streets of the township as Grandad pointed out places and Mum and Aunty Margaret remembered their time spent with Great Aunts/Uncles. Then we walked down to the Beach and oh what a glorious beach it was. To Grandad it is one of his favourite beaches and when he was younger him and his family spent many Sunday arvos their with a picnic lunch after church.

After we had our stay on the Beach, it was time to hit the road and keep on moving. On our way out of town Grandad pointed into the bush where a river was and said that when the tide and light was right, he and Armand would pick up Crabs as the tide retreated. As we passed near/over creeks, Grandad would pause and look into the water and comment that the water looked dead or not as full of life and flow that it had been in the 1920’s and 30’s when he spent every possible moment in this land.

Leaving New Brighton we headed to Billinudgel on the Billinudgel Rd, a winding dirt road which used to be the main road north. Granadad recalled driving this road with his Grandmother in a horse and sulky when a train roared past below, scaring the horse and taking them for a bit of a bolt. The first building you see coming down onto the Bilinudgel flats is the house that Aunty Lil used to live in. We took a drive up past it and Mum commented that the house was full of knooks and crannies. Margaret commented that it needed re-stumping.

After a drive round Bilinudgel, we went up to the the Pocket, another area which Grandad had spent time exploring in his youth, as the farm (Souldern - named after the village in Oxfordshire from where the Stephenson’s lived before emigrating to Australia) at Yelgun was on the other side of the mountain to the Pocket. He pointed out a creek that him and Uncle Albert once pulled a sugar bag of fish out of.
After a drive round the Pocket, we headed to Yelgun and up Browning Lane to the old farm. It had been a few years since we had last driven up the road to see the farm and in that time the road has deteriorated considerably. When we got up the house “Souldern”, we were greeted by a big barking mutt who didn’t want us to be there.

After taking some more photos we, headed up the highway a bit further to Crabbes Creek where Grandad went to primary school for a quick flying visit before heading up the road to Murwillumbah for lunch with Aunty Colleen.

Aunty Colleen is a legend.

We had pumpkin soup for starters, then salad plates and last and very not least Aunty Colleen’s trifle. This is a trifle that well, they should probably ask to see your ID before you are served. Very good trifle.

We looked at photos. We talked about trips down to the Tweed and we talked about what everyone else is doing at the moment and Aunty Colleens impeding move down south to Gosford to be closer to her children. We collected quite a few photos to get copies of and one of the photos I picked up is of Grandmum, Grandad and Mum very pregnant with me from Uncle Armand’s funeral. It is now on my desk

And we took a family photo.

Then we drove to the other side of Murwillumbah to see Aunty Ena and Uncle Wally and Ian. To look at more photos, talk more talk and eat some more! The first thing Aunty Ena said to me as I walked up the stairs that looking at my face I just look like, I had thought she was going to say Grandmum but instead she said no I had thought she was going to say Grandmum but instead she said Robin, one of Mum’s cousins. I know what I am going to look like at 40 and I know what I am going to look like at 80. Grandmum had three daughters and it is Mum who resembles her the most and since I am Mum’s only daughter well I would be the granddaughter who has the resemblance. That is the fun thing though.

We talked, we ate, we looked at photos and then it was time to head off, stopping at the house at the top of the main street where Grandad boarded through high school for a quick photo. Then it was the drive home and a trip to the Cod Father for tea. So a weekend of food not prepared by ourselves, driving the roads and lots of memories new and old.

And to close it off a photo of the Mandarin tree at Aunty Colleen’s.

Have you ever bitten into a strawberry and feel your entire mouth start to smile? A smile that starts as your lips feel that first drop of strawberry juice and extends upwards and upwards as your teeth close together after the last bite.

That is what these strawberries pictured taste like. Strawberries that you are eating mere hours after they have been picked. Strawberries that you have seen grow and grow since they were first planted a few months ago. Strawberries that are sweet but with a slight tang and the texture is just right.

This is what strawberries should always taste like.

Picking the little red balls. Some weekends we do this in near dark other weekends like yesterday we did it in the winter sun. When I took these photos we had not picked the tomatoes for three weeks we had a bounty on our hands.

We pick the reddest, ripest tomatoes we can find, knowing that they will pack a whole lot more punch when they are dried.

After filling our buckets and trying to avoid the cobblers pegs and pea weed, it is time to clean them. The sink is filled with water and the tomatoes are poured in, washing off the dirt.

We stand there, on either side of the sink, methodically picking up a tomato, plucking off the stalk and putting the tomatoes on a rack to dry.

After they have tried it is on to the fun stuff. Cutting each and every tomato in half and placing it on the rack to go in the food dryer.

Then they dry and dry and dry some more till we have little red discs, typically a bit smaller than a 5c piece. Then we feast on them in salads, pasta, dips, cous cous, sandwiches etc or take photos of them in a vase on the balcony….

The Crowd, Yay Newspaper Hats

First up was Deb Suckling and Craig Spann as

Then there was a band, well they were a band and a half. They were The Danaj Show. The lead singer came on stage with a briefcase. With much lead up he opened that case to reveal a newspaper hat!! This was not just any newspaper had though this was a newspaper hat covered with stars (those stars that you used to be put on your forehead when you were good in class). The crowd went wild.

I had left my Spagetti Bolagnaise LP at home, as I had left I had thought of bringing it with me to wave at the right moment. I decided against it though. As the second band played I kept on thinking about the sign that said Peter would be doing a signing at the end of the night. I rang Matthew and paid him $20 to grab the LP and drive into The Valley to drop it off for me.

I got it signed and you can see the toothbrushes.

After long wait the Juicy Juicy Green Grass Band came out, led of course by the icon that is Phil. Phil, Phil, Phil is what was chanted as he took is rightful seat behind the keyboards. Then they played a crowd rousing tune as the chants for Peter, Peter, Peter got louder and louder. Then our child icon ran onto the stage, grabbed his mike and everything was ok. Peter Combe was on stage, we knew the words, he knew our faces and no one could be happier.

When he played Tadpole Blues, I smiled, for as much as Matthew denies it, that was his favourite song. Then there was Rain, Rain, Rain, my favourite song now. There was the blow fly song, Down in Bathroom, Nutrition Blues, Rock ‘N’ Roll Is All You Need, Chops & Sausages, Jack & The Beanstalk, Syntax Error, Newspaper Mama, Spaghetti Bolognaise, Toffee Apple, Phone Calls Daddy, Jellybean Road (well I think he played this). He has written a song for each of his children and since his son Tom is in The Juicy Juicy Green Grass Band, they played Lullaby (For Tom). The crowd let out a collective sigh during this. No Parcel in the Post though or 12345, that is life though.

Of course the last song they played was Juicy Juicy Green Grass and it was something special

It was the happiest gig of the year, every where you turned people where smiling and singing/shouting/miming along with the words. As people poured out of The Zoo onto Ann St, the smiles were there, people were milling around humming tunes, clutching their new Peter Combe T-shirts and just going yeah I went with Ms Clare and her friend Jackie/Jacquie who was smiling and singing along with me the entire time.

The rest of the photos are here

The Harp Man

One of the things I loved watching was his fingers dart over the strings, it was so magical!

Doesn’t Julia just look so happy to be up on stage?

I love the focus on this one though, sigh nice borrowed glass.

and the rest of the photos are over here in a gallery

Today is Tuesday and I flexed the day off to give me a four day weekend What a day I had, I started off with a long list of jobs to do this morning and now at 21:40 I can cross most of those jobs off. I have changed the address on my drivers licence, bank account, organised insurance (I’ve only been here a month and a dew days…..), re-arranged my wardrobe, did some shopping, took a bunch of cracked lids back to Tupperware for replacing. The only thing I haven’t done is my ironing which I am about to do and to process the photos from the two most recent gigs I have gone along to.

Tonight for dinner I made a delightful salad. It was fennel, salad leaves, beans, carrot, dried cherry tomatoes, some lightly fried capsicum and toasted walnuts with a lemon and Shiraz vinaigrette and a rasher of bacon. It looked good and tasted good, the only thing I might have added was some apple for a bit of sweetness. Since moving out I have experimented a lot more with my cooking as if is a flop it is only a flop for one person or maybe two if Andrea is eating with me. The pork/ginger rissoles were not the best but the dhal I made last week was soooo good. Andrea commented tonight that I am so good always making dinner and as I said to Andrea, it is just because I am too cheap to buy takeout. Friday night I made a tasty apple and walnut loaf which I will make again in the coming days and tweak the recipe a bit before posting it here.

I am very slowly getting used to having the internet again. It is not weird I just don’t have the desire to check out all the sites that I was checking out before I moved out.

Oh I also should probably mention I got my hair cut two Wednesdays ago, I had about 3″ taken off it, about half my hair or more thinned out and I have a bit of a side fringe. It is so weird, my pony tail is sooo skinny compared to how fat it used to be. I like it just not used to having so much lightness with this sort of length.

One of my highlights was “feasting” on wild raspberries with my lunch and ringing Grandad in his hospital bed from the top of the mountain.

It is such an easy walk, I almost felt like running back down the track but didn’t instead I ran my hands over the grass trees, each time, delighting in the rush of the leaves over the palm of my hand.

I had forgotten how much I love the view from the gap. Sitting on a rock looking out over the Fassifern Valley it just looks so nice.

When the walk was over we had a little shop in the very nice Aratula Fruit Market before heading back to Brisbane and stopping in for a little while at the hospital to visit Grandad for a while.

Last night Andrea and I (and later on a friend of Andrea’s) went down to one of “our (new) locals”, to grab a Pub meal and to enjoy a night of fReTfEST featuring amongst others Rob Longstaff (his website seems to be down at the moment) and Georgia Potter, a post with pictures is coming shortly.

Mum and I went to Chermie this morning and I managed to find not only a cardigan which I was looking for but a jacket and a new work shirt as well. I have been very lacking in the cooler weather gear department of items which have more office style than Polartecs. The jacket and the cardigan are both Australian Merino which is pretty nice. I also picked up a recipe book, to start copying recipes from Mum’s handwritten recipe book to my own.

The 2nd Mountain Goats session is finally up on Daytrotter and oh sigh what a fantastic collection of four recordings it is. San Bernardino is such a delicate recording compared to the version on Heretic Pride. I had forgotten how much I loved There Will Be No Divorce and 02-75, what a sweet song that is and well Raja Vocative is Raja Vocative.

Tonight I am going on a boat cruise of the lovely Brisbane River with a large collection of people from work. Thankfully the sky has cleared and the wind has eased a bit! Yesterday, not many of us was looking forward to today!

And because we always need photos here some photos from the last week or so.

The short film set that we saw was Cold Hearts 3, some (a large proportion) were a bit too ahhhh eyebrow rising weird for me but I did particularly love one of the short films entitled I Sing I Swim 2007 mainly because I quite dearly love Seabear which provided the soundtrack for the film and you can listen to the song of the same title on their myspace page.

This Friday will see me at GOMA again

I finally got to to Ikea on Saturday! Only 18mths or so after the new one opened! I had made a promise with Mum that I wouldn’t go to Ikea till I was moving out of home. First weekend out of the family home and Andrea and I hit up Ikea for assorted goodies including

A dirty clothes basket - Skubb (in red) and it has a strap so I can can wear it on my back to go to the laundry!
A washing line - Frost, the cool thing, I can lean out my bedroom window and peg my washing up!
A rug to stand on in the kitchen - Bigum because Lino on brick is not the softest.

and of course we had lunch at Ikea

On the way home we popped into Pennisi Cuisine on my favourite street in Woolloongabba, Balaclava street where I picked up a case of tomato passata… and some dried herbs.

So that is my life at the moment.

Though I perhaps should also mention….

….
That I got accepted into the next round of testing for the 2009 Department of Defence Graduate Program!!! Happy slightly

Toto, this is Wooloowin!

As some as you know, I moved out of home yesterday to a block of flats at Wooloowin - a whole transport zone closer to the city Yesterday was spent packing, unpacking, sorting, rearranging etc etc. I have moved out with Andrea, who is well Andrea, we went to uni together and well is my partner in not so criminal crimes. Here is a little peak of the flat. Still lots of boxes all over the place and mmm where should we put this and mmm we need something to go there and mmmm where did I put that?

I am currently computerless though at Wooloowin as I am been really kind to my dear mother and leaving my computer in my old room for the time been :( :( no computer, Helen doesn’t know what to do! Means I have to come home as well

An overflowing container of cherry tomatoes, a visit with the most treasured man in my life, getting covered in Cobblers Pegs as I lift up the vines gently plucking each little red ball off the stalk, dicing a handful through tuna mornay for dinner. A family table; laughs, love and the hope of tomorrow. Just another afternoon at The Farm. That was how I spent my May Day afternoon.

Mum is now with phone! Due to changes in how Grandad is been looked after, Mum now has a mobile to keep to date with all the happenings that come with the healthcare of an 88 year old.

The last 24hrs have proven most interesting in watching Mum learning how to use her new phone

Matthew of course helped out in Mobile Phone Studies 1001 and of course hid his face from the camera.

However this one I caught him unaware

This photo cracks me up no end.

It is like, the little fella is going, no way am I wearing that bow tie, can’t you see the look I am going for here? Hands in pocket, the top buttons undone? all I need now is a pair of sunnies. Then I would be beyond cool.

Or this one, all three doing their own thing and the smoke alarm with a missing battery.

There was a fair bit of diy at this wedding and as Tim and I arrived at the house, they were all busy doing the flowers.

Or this one, they have just signed the marriage certificate and check out the face on their daughter They were such a happy family it was a crack-up.

Is this car not a beauty?

These two photos are probably my favs, Tim was taking a few family shots and whilst we were trying to muster them, I grabbed these two. I look at them and keep on laughing at the kids trying to escape, the father telling the family to behave as you will treasure these photos in years to come.

We watched the birds, three or four of them fly into to feed the babies and if you stood in the right place in our garden you could sometimes see the little heads poke up out of the nest for a feed. We could hear them all the time though. Each baby had its own squawk and for the week or two when they were there we loved it. Every day as I walked up the street home from work, I would pause in the garden and go “hello birdies”.

Friday last week though, I came up the street and I could hear the squawks and the squeaks but now they were coming from a different place, no longer up in the palm tree. Where had the babies gone? Had they fallen out of the nest? Pabbi and Mum did not know where they had gone.

I went out to look at my herbs on the front verandah (something I do quite often and marvel at the size of the leaves on the lettuce leaf basil) and to listen to the squarks to see if I could find the baby birds. I sat on the steps and listened and listened. Then I saw one, a little downy fuzz ball on the ground beneath the mock orange. I rushed inside to tell Mum and Pabbi. Then sitting in the kitchen we saw the other one in a branch in the middle of the mock orange.
Oh it was quite an evening watching in particular the little fuzz ball as it tried to fly, he would get up somewhere to perch, then he would fall back down. The funniest thing then happened when Ma, Pa and big sibling bird all flew at the fuzz ball and he flew a good 8m to the tree where they were perched.

The next morning, the largest baby was perched high in a tree in our front garden but little fuzz ball was on the fence between our house and our next door neighbours on the topside. There it was perched on the cyclone wire fence. Oh the ache it caused though because they have a dog. In saying that though the kept the dog inside that Saturday whilst the little fuzz ball explored the area, demanded feeding and practised flying. The entire time there was an older Noisy Miner perched a little way away keeping guard, sometimes flying down with food or standing guard whilst the parents flew down with food.

Getting Fed

Perched on the fence

The Guard

Little Fuzz Ball on the tree outside my window.

Come Sunday morning, they were gone :( :(. We still hear the squawks and squeaks of baby nosiy miners in round the street but they are not the little babies who kept us delighted.

Wedding 1, was a small affair at Woody Point on a gorgeous blue sky day.

Wedding 2, was a slightly larger affair at Pacific Harbour Golf Club on Bribie Island on an overcast rainy day.

I know, I know, I know, total lack of words, some wordy posts are coming I have some big news but you all only come for the pictures anyway right?