I Be Paintin'

Barossa Valley

Last weekend Andy and I ventured to the fabled Barossa Valley wine region for a special birthday treat. Since it was a long weekend, due to Adelaide Cup, we went up Sunday and came back Monday. We enjoyed some delicious wine at Peter Lehmann's and a delightful local produce platter for lunch.
After checking into the hotel we thought it would be a shame not to visit Jacob's Creek, like the original one, and sadly we were very let down. The wines we tasted were not very good and the service and just whole experience was cold. The only positive was the emus they had in a enclosure on the way out!
The next day we meandered back to Adelaide and I spent the day laying about while Andy baked me a Snickers Cheesecake that was incredible!
That afternoon we went to our local pub to bet on the big Adelaide Cup horse race... sadly none of our horses won. Booooooooo. But I suppose that's what I get for putting money on a horse named 'Guyno.'

@ Peter Lehmann

Andy the Emu whisperer at Jacob's Creek 

That's Jacob's Creek behind me 

Snicker's Cheesecake!

February In Photos

Feb Summarized pictorially.

Brighton Jetty Classic, Sunday 5th February, 2011

I saw an ad in the local free newspaper for this 400m jetty swim the following weekend and was intriged. There was free open water training session the weekend before (that the Brighton Surf Life Saving Club had been offering since November... Brighton is about 3 or 4 suburbs down the coast from where we live, about 10km) so I went to that to see if I could still swim... it had been over 13months! I ended up really enjoying it and signed up for the race and felt so confident that I entered the "Fast Lap" swim aka the elite heat (Did I mention there was $600 in cash prizes at stake for the fast lap?? haha). Well. I was very nervous the morning of and when I went to line up at the starting line suddenly felt as though I'd made a mistake- two of the girls had the now FINA banned Speedo LZR suits on and the others, well they were definately not over 2 years into retirement like I was. I can honestly say that it was the most painful swim I've ever done. Worse than the 13th long course 400IM in a row, worse than awful 300s set we used to do 5 or 6 times a year, worse than Swim-a-thon, worse than any swim/race/practice. BUT I didn't come last and I went faster than I thought. So next year I'll train more than one hour and enter in the my age group heat and go for the prize hamper instead of the elite one. Here are the pics, photo credits to Andy B:

 Back in my favorite Nike training suit almost 2.5 years later.

 The marshalling area and start line

Off we go! 

 So far, so good... I'm in the white cap.

I thought I might drown soon at this point 

 Almost done...

So done.

Aunt and Uncle Visit Weekend in Sydney, 11-13 February, 2011

Andy's Auntie Pat (also his Godmother) and Uncle David were in Sydney for a week, about to set off on their 10th cruise (this one to Tasmania and New Zealand) so we flew over last minute to see them. They put us up in a nice, 5 star hotel views of both Sydney and Darling Harbour, took us out for a few meals, and we had a fabulous big city weekend... that lacked pictures haha.

 Sydney Harbour

Darling Harbour

Dades and Faye Wedding Weekend in Sydney, 25-27th February, 2011

Damian (Dades) is a friend of Andy's from back home. They went to school together and along with his twin, Dades and Andy's older brother were also in a band together. Anyway, the twins have been in Sydney over 5 years now, and last weekend Dades got hitched! (To an English girl, not an Aussie). It was an all out wedding, the venue was spectular, the food amazing, and company terrific! The Friday night prior to the wedding I also got to do a lot of Sydney things I'd previously missed out on, namely drinks at the Opera Bar and  crocodile, kangaroo, and roast duck (they were out of Emu) pizzas at the Australian Hotel at the Rocks. I also got Starbucks twice, just a drip coffee, since we don't have one in SA.

 Friday Night Opera Bar

Waiting for the water taxis to take use to the venue across the harbour

The ceremony

Sunset over Sydney

January in Pictures

A summary of January in photogs.

Cleland Wildlife Park in the Adelaide Hills, 3 January, 2011
Close to the Moutn Lofty Summit, this wildlife conservation park has enclosures with all sorts of different Aussie animals. You can buy a bag of feed and most of them eat right from your hand, emus included- a little scary- but some are off limits like the wombats (I guess they bite?) and the tasmania devils, oh and the dingos. However, there was no warning about not feeding the Magpie geese even though one tried to eat my finger.

Big Red

Little Grey

 Tassie Devil!

These ones bite! Magpie Goose

Innes National Park, Yorke Peninsula for Andy's Birthday weekend, January 21-23, 2011

Andy wanted to go fishing for his birthday so I arranged a charter "Unreel Fishing Escapades" out of Marion Bay and Innes National Park at the bottom tip of the Yorke Peninsula (about 300km from Adelaide). Andy's friends Sean and Liam were in town so we all hopped in the car for a weekend of camping and fishing. After having the charter moved from Saturday to Sunday because of 25knot winds we spent Saturday poking arounf the park, saw some wild emus and a few kangaroos. Then Sunday morning we packed up the tents and went out on the boat for the day. I ended up being sea sick three times, but still caught the biggest fish! We caught the limit on Nanigai aka red snapper, a few regular snapper, a few big Blue Morong aka Queen snapper, and some other weird things like leather jackets and some kind of parrot fish. Unfortunately the photos I took on the boat are forever lost as the camera was later lost before I'd had a chance to upload. It was great weekend that almost ended in disaster as we were running out of gas in the car on the drive back and the little Yorke Peninsula towns were all closed for the night (almost everything closes at 5pm on Sunday everywhere in Australia). We ended up finding the pub in the town of Minalton open and were quickly helped out by the very friendly locals. Close call though, phew.
 

 Our site

 Emus

 Steadfast Bay Jetty

 Pondelowie Bay

Southern Ocean

 About a quarter of our catch

 Post Charter filleting

Full Freezer

Australia Day 2011 One Day International at the Adelaide Oval, AUS v. ENG

A perfect Adelaide day

Andy is one of few with an England top on this time...

Enjoying some sort of weird Aussie Day Parade during the break

Incredible sunset over the Oval

Of the seven One Day Internationals the one on Australia Day was the only one the English won.

Bad Blogger

I've been a bad blogger. No updates for nearly 2 months, eeekk!! I'm getting a big summary together of the last two months, promise!

In other news: In January free to air TV in Australia got a new channel: Eleven. They show old American shows like Roseanne, Cheers, and the Brady Bunch. Right now I'm watching 7th Heaven!