We love Byron – an essential back-packer stop over on the ‘east coast of Australia’ trip that the vast majority of young travelers take. We may be getting a little bit older now but we still love the laid back feeling, the beautiful coastline with stunning surf beaches. The hinterland is also beautiful, hilly and almost mountainous – it includes spectacular national parks. It’s a great part of Australia – even if Byron itself is perhaps not quite so laid back as it used to be, with it now being a full on tourist hub.

View Larger Map

The other reason we come here as often as we can (which, unfortunately, is not very often) is that there is a big rock poking out of the ocean a couple of kilometers or so off the coast. This rock is called Julian Rocks and is one of our favourite dive sites in the whole of Australia (well, out of those that we’ve dived at least!).

It was a long weekend in Australia this weekend – we had Monday off for, wait for it……… THE QUEEN’S BIRTHDAY! Yes, whilst most Poms are blissfully unaware of the queen’s birthday, Aussies put aside their talk of becoming a republic and embrace the Monarchy for all it’s worth! And who are we to complain?!

So we took a couple of days off work and drove the 10 hours to Byron on the Thursday, leaving bright and early! The weather was beautiful and sunny but, unfortunately, that was soon to change according to the forecasts. The whole of the east coast of Australia was due to get a monumental soaking – we were just hoping that the diving wouldn’t get cancelled having driven all the way up!

Diving at Byron Bay is always fantastic – even in not-so-great conditions. And not-so-great conditions is what we found on our first day of diving on the Friday. Vis was not great being a little murky, but at least the sun was out. Water temperature was around the 20-21 degree mark which is not too bad, in fact that’s a pretty good temperature for Sydney in summer, but the air temperature was pretty low too. The whole of the east coast was cold and heavy rain was working it’s way up towards Byron. In fact the temp in Byron was certainly no more than in Sydney, 10 hours south, and Sydney was several degrees below what it should be at this time of year too!

Diving in wet suits means that you’re soaking wet between dives, that combined with a fresh southerly wind on the open ocean mean that we were shivering constantly between dives! Added to this was the fact that my wetsuit is on it’s last legs and I had a hole the size of a dinner plate in the small of my back. Nic had to keep apologising to fellow divers because of the ‘builders bum’ scenario playing itself out before us. This was the last weekend diving with this wetsuit, now happily retired for spare neoprene patches if required in the future!!

Byron is just so great because of the shear diversity of marine life to be found on ‘the rock’ and this changes throughout the seasons depending on the water temperature etc. During the warmer months leopard sharks and eagle rays frequent the area. We arrived just after the transition to the ‘colder’ water and this meant the arrival of Grey Nurse Sharks which prefer this cooler water. We can see Grey Nurse Sharks around Sydney but they are the kind of large, graceful animal that you can never tire of seeing. They had arrived in numbers and were also BIG!

So we had several fantastic dives – added treats included seeing the whales migrating north whilst out on the boat. We had a couple breaching in front of the rock so the skipper gently trundled over to have a look. Then, with the engines off and drifting off the rock, we had one of the whales surface no more than 4m off the boat. And it just say there on the surface for a couple of minutes – it was fantastic!! Of course, that was the dive I didn’t have my camera on me but it really happened!! On the way back we also saw a Manta Ray on the surface! We’ve never seen on of these underwater (it is high on our list of “want to see’s”) but I guess it doesn’t really count if we see it from a boat…

The weather turned much wetter over the next couple of days but luckily the dives weren’t cancelled – all in all a fantastic weekend with great diving. We are already planning to go back in the summer, or later spring, so that we don’t shiver so much. I might even have a new wetsuit by then, sans big hole!!

Have a look at the video page for a little compilation including the grey nurse sharks!!!

So here’s a round up of the BIG TRIP back ‘home’!

As you may or may not be ware, I get no holiday. Well, that’s not strictly true – I get the same amount of holiday that the majority of workers would get. It’s just that Nic gets lots, lots more. She works an extra 30 mins here and an extra hour there and all of a sudden she’s got another 3 weeks to use up. Somehow.

Hence the surprise trip back last year.

I works an extra hour here, or two hours there and gets a ‘see you tomorrow Midge’.

Anyway, I’m not bitter. So Nic left for the UK a whole week earlier than me and did ‘the rounds’ a bit – seeing a few friends etc.

Once I arrived it was straight of to the cottage in the Peak District for Mum and Dad’s 40th wedding celebrations! And what a lovely cottage it was! All of the family were together with all wives and grandchildren present and correct (big thanks goes to Martin for providing grandchildren – I owe you at least a beer for that!).

We had plenty of room, an open log fire, fantastic food and a beer or three (sorry Mum!). I think the bins were overflowing with recycling by the end of our time there – no one can say we don’t care about the planet!!

The weather was absolutely beautiful for the first few days – imagine the perfect English countryside scene and you’d be spot on. Spectacularly beautiful (but we still prefer Australia !! But the UK being the UK, the weather soon turned on us – it provided a good opportunity to hole up in a free-wifi coffee shop/bar for a while though – even if the coffee was terrible!

We also had lots of fantastic food with everyone taking turns to cook – Dave and Hanka even tried to kill us all with an excess of spectacular curries!

After leaving the cottage Nic and I headed to Colin and Karen’s for more food! Nic had planned a fantastic 7 course degustation menu for Dave’s birthday (Gemma’s Dave that is!). Of course this in no real surprise as Nic just can’t help herself when she’s near a kitchen!

Course 1
Anchovy Lollipops

Course 2
Foie Gras Parfait

Course 3
Egg yolk salad

Course 4
Tuna Ceviche

Course 5
Savoury Slow Roast Beef Profiteroles

Course 6
Epoisse Cheese with Maple Syrup

Course 7
Chocolate Potts

Course 1 didn’t go down too well with all the guests, with Karen gobbing out one of the anchovy fillets lovingly prepared by her daughter onto her plate in disgust! It was no real surprise however as this is the sort of behaviour we’ve come to expect from Mrs Abinett senior! Luckily the rest of the meal went much more smoothly – even the egg yolk salad which involved cooking egg yolks in cling film at 65 degrees (sounds weird but it’s something to do with setting the protein). It all went swimmingly and was very, very tasty!!

Attention then turned to a certain younger sisters 30th birthday! A multitude of people were invited to a surprise BBQ – and the amazing thing was that we all actually managed to keep it a secret from the birthday girl! Incredible!

Nic had yet again arranged a big spread of food, spearheaded by a huge lump of very slow roasted pork which went on at 6am! Even Graham managed to BBQ the home-made burgers and marinated chicken without burning/overdoing/poisoning anyone (I think!). The weather held out on us and a great time was had by all!

The very next day Nic and I had to hire a little car and get ourselves down to London village for a ‘meat-up’ (geddit?) with a few of Nic’s fellow cyberspace charcuterie bloggers!! (By the way check out niccooks website for all her food exploits if you haven’t already!). A bit weird meeting people you have only talked to on forums etc., but we have done it before with some success (in fact one of our best friends in Australia we met via a forum!) – and also some failures (but I won’t talk about them!) but it went really well. It may have been a success because we all met at a great restaurant in central London village called St John which was fantastic!! A proper ‘foodies’ place! This is the sort of place which really makes the most of the whole animal – ‘nose to tail’ eating they call it – bone marrow, ox heart, snails, tongues, liver, trotters and more were on the menu. Most importantly they had Jersey Royals for potatoes – very hard to get hold of in Australia! Very tasty it all was was too!!!!

Then it was off to Stansted for the trek to Malaysian Borneo and the scuba diving we had booked! We were off to a area around the island of Sipadan off the coast which has some of the best diving in the world.

We were staying on a converted oil rig – now painted pretty colours and used solely for diving! It was a really good experience – like a big liveaboard boat but without the swaying!

The diving was awesome – we managed to squeeze in 22 dives in the 5 days we were there – even pretty much foregoing lunch on one day to get another dive in underneath the rig. We saw turtles-a-plenty, sharks, schooling barracuda and jack fish along with lots of amazing small stuff including angler-fish, ribbon eels, jaw fish, many different types of shrimp and even tiny sea horses!

The main ‘draw card’ of the area is the island of Sipadan itself which is a national park. It is a pinnacle of an old volcano where the drop off’s are awesome. You can walk off one of the beaches into waste deep water and then the ground drops away 600m into the depths! It means that it has fantastic wall diving (normally drifting with the current) and attracts all sorts of marine life due to the nutrient rich upwellings from the depths! The government only issues 120 permits per day for people to dive around the island to try and keep it in ‘good nick’ so we dived it 2 of the 5 days we were diving.

We had a few boat dives each day and on top of that we had unlimited diving beneath the rig itself. Even under there we saw lots of really cool stuff. There were strong currents on a couple of dives which was interesting though – of course it’s not like on one of the ‘wall’ dives where there’s a boat to pick you up at the end of the dive, under the rig you have to get back to where you got in! On a couple of occasions people got swept off! But it was ok – they got plucked out of the water soon after!

Nic and I also did our ‘Enriched Air Nitrox’ course whilst on the rig. It is a course we had been meaning to do for quite a while and when the opportunity came up on the rig (not to mention the fact that it was 1/2 the price of doing it in Sydney!) we jumped at it to get it under our collective belts.

It basically means we are certified to dive on ‘Enriched Air’ – that’s air with more than 21% oxygen in it. During our time on the rig we were a diving 32% oxygen mix mainly. What this does is allow you to dive at depth for longer before you get ‘the bends’. It’s funny – we met so many divers on the rig who were apparently ‘experienced’, but who didn’t have the first clue about the effects of nitrogen on the body when diving. Nitrogen is what can cause the bends if you a) Absorb too much into your blood and b) surface too quickly. This is lesson 1 when learning to dive!

Anyway, no matter how we tried to explain it to many of our temporary diving buddies, they all though we would be able to stay underwater for hours! No idea – which was a bit of a worry.

The food was excellent and the evenings were very pleasant – spent with a beer going through photos of all the creatures we’d seen. Click on the left for a small gallery of some of the things we saw, and click on the right for a small gallery from the UK leg of our trip!

Well I have been without a motorbike for nearly a month now!

It started having problems when we went on our momentous trip down to see the motoGP near Melbourne when it wouldn’t start.

In the pouring rain.

On the freeway.

Not 2 hours out of Sydney.

Anyway, I’m not bitter – I love my bike and doesn’t seem to do anything wrong, up until now. So anyway – long story short – my bike broke. Regulator/rectifier (whatever THAT is), alternator, battery. All dead/burnt out. Parts needed to be ordered in from the UK (it’s a Triumph, after all) and nearly 4 weeks later here I am. Still on the bus.

In fact I thought it was all over today as they had the main ‘problem’ bit (the alternator) had arrived and been fitted – all good – or so I thought. Just as I was walking out of work to go and collect my bike (with a big smile on my face), I got a call from the shop saying that my battery was dead and I needed a new one. But they wouldn’t have any until tomorrow!! So I turned on my heels and headed for the bus again!

So tomorrow, I am told, I will get my beloved bike back. And about time too. I’m getting pretty fed up of having to rely on public transport to get me to and from work.

Anyway, the point of this blog. Well I have a friend at work who brought in a little remote control helicopter – and I was hooked! So I had to go out and get one, such good fun whilst my other toy is off the road!

Here’s a video of me having a go!

This is another of those things I’ve been meaning to do for months, but the Charcutepalooza challenge gave me the kick up the backside to do it.  We finally made it to the Eveleigh Markets last Saturday morning to seek out some top quality, humanely raised meat.  I’m not quite sure what the definition of “close to home” is, but Eveleigh is a 60km round trip away, however, in the grand scheme of things, when you consider the size of Australia, that’s pretty close really!

Now Eveleigh is a foodies paradise! Every stall specialises in seasonal, locally sourced produce and most allow you to sample the goods. And even better there are a few stalls that are there to sell their food to snack on whilst you shop. One of these stalls being Billy kwong, and most Saturdays you’ll actually find Kylie Kwong serving the customers and making the dishes from scratch. I absolutely didn’t mind queuing for my dumplings as it meant I got to watch the master at work, and this week, Matt Preston was also sampling the delights right next to me, genuinely a foodies paradise!

The only slight downside to Eveleigh Market is it’s a cash only destination. We knew this before we arrived, but hadn’t quite budgetted for all the amazing things we just couldn’t resist buying, so we had to trot off down the road mid shop to collect more cash. But we found some, and successfully managed to purchase pork and beef – both organically produced and one coming from rare breed animals; some amazing washed rind cheese – only after we’d sampled everything that was on offer from that stall of course; some organic beetroot – we had difficulties choosing between the traditional purple and the more unusual golden variety; exotic mushrooms – pick and mix from about 10 varieties; some King Edward potatoes – the most amazing find.

For all of you reading this blog in the UK I can hear you shouting, “but I buy King Edward’s every week in Morrisons”. Well, I got very excited because this is the first time I have seen this variety here in Australia in the 4 years that we’ve been here.  I thought maybe it was the sentimental, grass is always greener me that thought King Edward’s make the best roast potatoes, but with the cool change that came though on Sunday afternoon, it allowed us to put the oven on and test the theory, and accompanied with the duck fat, they really were the BEST roast potatoes we’ve had in 4 years! I can see Eveleigh Markets becoming a regular date in our diaries!

So we all know that Nic just LOVES to cook, that’s no secret at all! But she has now got ANOTHER project on the go!

She is still doing the Nic and Jamie project and if you are following the progress you will know that she has finished the first book and given her appraisal (!). She is now onto book two (The Return of the Naked Chef) and blasting her way through it!

Anyway, she now has a new and very exciting project on the go – CHARCUTERIE! – which includes all sorts of cured meats.

She has started a new blog called niccooks.com which is now devoted to her food exploits, currently being the charcuterie challenge, CHARCUTEPALOOZA – have a look on the website for an idea of what’s going on. But basically Nic is part of 300 other bloggers across the world who are completing a monthly charcuterie challenge, followed by blogging about it on the 15th of each month. Completing all 12 challenges means you are in with a shout of winning a trip to France to go to a cookery school, amongst other things! The winner is picked on the quality of the blogs (obviously they can’t taste the produce) – but it’s all good fun!!

Anyway, round to the title of this post – curing meats requires very specific temperature and humidity, which means my (un-official) beer fridge in the garage has been commandeered to be a curing fridge! Nic bought a gadget which maintains the fridge temperature at 16 degrees (or whatever other temp you want) so it’s warm beer from now on…..

Not that I am complaining mind you (I may find another fridge on ebay…), she has already completed the first challenge which was home made bacon. She’ll be blogging about it on niccooks.com on the 15th of this month so make sure you check it out!! All I can say is, she (well, we) thought that it hadn’t worked, but it was spectacular!!! THE BEST BACON EVER.

Till next time…

Well, well, well. We can’t keep them away – the Abinetts decided to descend on Sydney for Christmas/New Year and who were we to complain! Always a pleasure to have Colin and Karen to stay. I mean – now they’re gone I miss the exclamations of ‘Jeeepers!’ at anything slightly out of the ordinary (such as a warm day) and the amount of coffee Karen gets though (it really is unnatural!).

The holiday was almost a carbon copy of the Midgley’s trip last year, almost to the day. We also did a few things that we did with Mum and Dad M last year.

First on the list was a long weekend trip to the Barrington Tops National Park to stay at a fantastic, fairly secluded place called Mudaridge. It is a great place to stay, several km’s down a dirt track, kangaroos hopping through the garden in the evening, plenty of space to spread out etc…. A cold snap came across NSW when we were there which meant cool days and cold nights (although not quite as bad as the rain we had with Mum and Dad M last year!) – but it was an excuse to spark up the camp fire most nights. Very nice indeed! Especially for ‘cub scout Graham’ who cannot resist playing with fire. Especially with a glass of wine in hand!

Of course, heading up to the Barrington Tops meant that we were pretty much driving past the Hunter Valley – a famous wine region in NSW – so it would of been rude of us not to call in and try a few… Nic and I are members of a wine club up there called Mount View which makes really, really nice wine. We get a case 4 times a year but delayed our last one so we could go and taste the wine with Colin and Karen and pick what we wanted. Luckily the winery was busy when we got there with a group of drunk backpackers on a tour from Sydney (!), which meant that (as they knew we were members) we got a free, impromptu tour of the winery and a private tasting session from the winemaker himself! This is the guy who decides when the grapes are ready for picking, what should be mixed with what, how long it should be in barrels for etc., etc. He was the main man – and very nice too!

Christmas brought a trip to the fish markets to get, well, fish obviously. But we thought we’d try something new for Christmas Eve and get a live crab and lobster. Until we saw the price, then settled on crab and a Marron (kind of a small lobster). It was an interesting experience buying them – having never bought live stuff before we didn’t really know how to look after them etc. but the guys at the markets gave us some tips (we only needed to keep them alive for 24 hours after all!).

So the moment came to get the crab into the pot for dinner on Christmas Eve, a quick 15 mins in the freezer to put it to sleep and then into the pot with you! Except the pot wasn’t quick big enough… Woops! Back into the freezer with dozing crab and a bigger pot was ordered to be filled with boiling water ASAP!

Luckily ‘buster’ fitted in this time (just about – give or take a leg or two), swiftly followed by ‘Marrion’. That’s the Marron by the way. The meal was very nice, but we decided that it probably wasn’t worth the time, effort and expense to do again any time soon!

Christmas day was a mixture of a fantastic spread of food for lunch courtesy of Nic (who else?!) – including lots of lovely Asian nibbles, lots of time in the pool in the afternoon with lots of time for ‘keepy-upy-volleyball-type-thing’ with the blow-up ball! We also had decided to cook a whole suckling pig on the BBQ this year! Wooo! We borrowed a big spit from a friends Dad (who has lots of cooking stuff like that!), ordered the pig a few days before and got in lots and lots of charcoal for the big event. Nic had done her research and had a good recipe for the pig – so we boned it (rib cage, spine), stuffed it with a beautiful meaty, spicy, fruity stuffing, sewed it up (literally-much to the horror of the lady in Lincraft who sold us the needle), shoved a big metal stick through the length of it and roasted it over hot coals whilst we paddled in the pool with cold drinks! Ha!

After nearly burning the deck due to the heat from the coals, we got it under control and it was looking good! Really good!!! Once it was done we couldn’t wait to dig in – the meat was absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately the crackling wasn’t actually crackling. We later deduced that this was because the poor little blighter didn’t have any fat on him! More like tasty chicken skin that crackling – but good all the same. We will DEFINITELY be doing this one again – so nice!

Following Christmas we had a few lazy days in the pool, followed by a couple of days at Wiseman’s Ferry, an hour north of Sydney where some of our friends parents have a lovely house on the river. Literally, on the river. It was lovely spending some time there and getting a little tour of the locale in one of the neighbour’s boats!

We had a couple of lovely days at the beach – one at Palm Beam – AKA Summer Bay from Home and Away – and the other at Manly where we had a lovely breakfast and stroll round to Shelly Beach.

New years eve was great! We did the same as last year – setting up camp at Mort Bay Park in Balmain (near where we used to live). We got the ferry round the corner into Circular Quay for a spot of lunch and to soak up the atmosphere in the sun. It was a warm day so we took it easy. Heading back to Balmian at a decent time so we could claim our spot on the front row and chill out for the rest of the evening!

Beer, wine, books and take-out fish and chips was the order of the day. However we were sat next to a group of young back-packers who clearly had no idea where they were (I’m pretty sure they knew they were in Sydney and it was New Years Eve, but apart from that they didn’t know much!) which provided much chuckling to ourselves – especially Nic who couldn’t get into her book because she was ear-wigging too much!

The fireworks were spectacular as always, and the weather was lovely and warm – a perfect way to see in the new year! New Year’s day was a stinker – high 30′s centigrade and definitely a pool day with a few drinks and lovely food.

Good time all round – till next time Abinetts!!

Make sure you check out the gallery for some more pics!

We’re very, VERY, busy eating and drinking and watching cricket ‘n stuff but we’ve managed to get a small gallery up of our antics on Christmas day! We will get some more stuff up soon.

Hope you all had a great Christmas too!! Click below for a small gallery.

Well a few (3!) of us decided it would be a great idea to do a road trip to see the MotoGP (the formula 1 of motorbike racing) at Phillip Island on the south coast of Australia.

So some time ago we bought our tickets and got the camping booked on the island – the count down was on! For weeks and weeks emails were flying around between us getting more and more excited about the prospect of a long trip on the bikes. Much more fun than the odd Saturday morning ride around the local roads.

The plan was to leave work on the Tuesday afternoon and get a couple of hours out of Sydney where we would stay with Bill’s brother at Moss Vale. The ride out of Sydney was slow until we got to some nice twisties and we were at Bill’s brother’s pad in no time.

Early the next morning we got up for the big push down to Bairnsdale over 600km away where we had a motel booked.

Well we woke up to the sound of rain, and the rain pretty much didn’t stop all day! We had a brief dry spell somewhere in the middle which was nice, but the rest of the day was very, very wet! Luckily we knew it was going to be like this so had sort of prepared ourselves. I had bought a waterproof over-jacket a week earlier in preparation. I have a jacket which has an insertable waterproof liner. It’s ok for commuting but if it rains the actual jacket gets wet. Not ideal for a long trip. The waterproof over jacket worked really well, the best $30 I’ve spend in a while that’s for sure because I arrived at Bairnsdale easily the driest out of the three of us!

Gerry was convinced his ‘dryrider’ jacket had kept him dry – even as he was taking it off at the first fuel stop on day two he was proclaiming how dry he was! Until we pointed out that, in actual fact, he was soaking wet.

Other incidents on day two included Bill running out of fuel, in the pouring rain. His bike had the smallest range at about 180km (none of the bikes are really designed for long distance riding, but particularly Bills!) and he ‘knew’ there was a fuel stop at a town called Collector. Well, we pulled in to Collector and it quickly became apparent that the petrol station had now been converted into a cafe!

Doh!

So we just had to plough on and hope that we would find another station. Soon. Unfortunately that didn’t happen – soon after Collector Bill’s bike died a slow death. He hoiked it onto it’s side to get a bit more fuel from the tank down to the pump (I think he may have been in this situation before!) – that got him another 5km, but no petrol station was in site. So I left Bill and Gerry at the side of the road, in the rain, whilst I charged onwards to the first petrol station I came to – a further 20km down the road. I filled up and bought a 5 litre gerry can which was also filled and strapped to the back of my bike as best I could.

A quick charge back down the road, punching the air as I passed a very soggy looking Bill and Gerry on the other side of the duel carriageway. I managed to find a gravel track to cross to the other side of the carriageway not much further onwards. Much laughter was had as we filled Bill’s tank (actually, 5 litres wouldn’t be far off filling it!!), but that laughter soon stopped when MY bike then wouldn’t start!! Now I’ve never had any trouble whatsoever from my bike and it was very strange that it wouldn’t start. I can only put it down to the shear amount of water around – it really was pouring. I think some water had got into the electronics so it thought the clutch wasn’t pulled in or something (you need to pull the clutch in to start). Anyway – there we were, not more than a few hours out of Sydney and we’ve run out of fuel and had a broken bike!!! Quite funny in a way! We managed to bump start my bike (a first – never jump started a bike before) and carried on our merry way. What a start!!

We had some great roads on the way down and had great fun, despite the rain.

We arrived in Bairnsdale in pretty good time and pulled into our motel, in the pouring rain (of course), at around 6pm I think. The whole town was full of bikers, all with a story to tell about there trip so far and all with lots of wet gear to try and dry! There was such a big number of bikes in this particular town because the next day (Thursday) was the Barry Sheene tribute ride to the race track a further 280km down the road.

Thousands of bikes do the ride, which is a properly organised and police escorted ride. This means thousands of bikes riding two abreast, straight through red lights, straight through towns where seemingly everyone was out waving flags to see all the bikes pass. Whole schools and old peoples homes were out on the pavements waving us through – is was absolutely spectacularly awesome. The weather was much, much better than the day before which also helped. It was a really, really good day and a great way to arrive at ‘The Island’ as it’s affectionately known in Australia. We also registered for the ride which meant that we actually got a lap of the race track when we arrived. Obviously you are with hundreds and hundreds of other bikes at the time so it was more of a slow punt around – but great all the same.

After leaving the track we headed up to Cowes where we have our camp site booked. So all in all a fantastic trip down, despite the weather on Wednesday!!

The next few days were spent watching the practicing and qualifying. Friday was the first day of ‘stuff’ going on on the track, and the weather was spectacularly bad! Very cold, horizontal rain due to the belting southerly gale coming off Bass Straight. It was truly awful for the riders, and not much better for the spectators!

Saturday was a little better, but not much.

Luckily for everyone, race day was a pretty big improvement. Still pretty cold but at least it was mostly dry, sunny and the wind was no where near as bad as the previous two days.

So we set up camp in our grandstand seats and enjoyed all the racing of the day.

Originally we were going to sleep over on Sunday night and leave early Monday morning for the big, huge, monstrous push back to Sydney. But we decided (very wisely!) that we should pack our bikes up before going to the track, ride to the track and park there so we could leave straight after the races and get a few hours under our collective belts on the Sunday night.

It was a great move and we were off the Island pretty swiftly (it’s great having a bike in situations like this! Traffic just doesn’t matter) and got to Sale where we found a cheap 3 bedroomed motel.

The next day (Monday) was a great, great day riding the coast road back up to Sydney in the sun, stopping at little coastal towns for fuel and food. The weather was great and the roads were mostly beautiful – swift, twisty and smooth.

We came across a stranded rider at one point – sat at the side of the road with a dead BMW. We stopped to check he was ok as there was no-one else with him. “What’s up” Gerry asked, “out of fuel” came the reply. “Ah ok, well my mate’s got a 5 litre gerry can strapped to the back of his bike which he’s been carrying for the last 1500km” quipped Gerry. The bloke just did not believe it. He seriously thought Gerry was taking the mick. Here he is with a big powerful BMW and a guy on a 400cc single cylinder dirt bike pulls up and saves the day! It was great to help him out, I don’t think he could believe his luck! It transpires that his bike was telling him he still had 100km left in the tank, but it was clearly empty. It’s a fault I’ve actually heard of before with BMW motorbikes – so there you go!

The run in to Sydney was pretty uneventful and I eventually rolled onto the driveway at around 7.30pm. Quick feed, long shower and bed ready for work the next morning.

Awesome!

Click on the picture on the left for a gallery – or go to the gallery page.

Well, I like beer. It’s no secret.

I was thinking for a while about setting up a home-brew experiment, particularly as my youngest brother along with my brother in-law both have home-brew set-ups in the UK. Trouble is Nic wasn’t too keen and I also worried a little about the logistics of keeping the beer at a constant(ish) temperature whilst it was brewing – 40 degree summer days do not lend themselves to this unfortunately. Well not without more expense I guess.

Anyway after a bit of googling I came across a place in Sydney, just 10 minutes down the road, where you go along, pick a beer you want to brew (from a list of well over 100), brew it yourself (with guidance). They then keep it stored in their temperature controlled storage space whilst it brews, you go back in 3 weeks (dependant on the brew you picked) and bottle it up yourself – and voila! Perfect, beautiful beer. And much cheaper than going down the bottle shop too! So a few of us at work clubbed together and tried it out.

Our first batch was/is so good that we have already booked in to brew some more – double quantity next time! We were amazed. This is the future!!

Here’s a video from our experiment at The Beer Factory!

The Beer Factory Experiment from Graham Midgley on Vimeo.

Well, it’s spring time downunder – which means it’s time to get that bloomin’ garden finished and get some stuff planted. I don’t care what it is, just get it planted! Weather is lovely and it’s not long until the Abinetts descend on us so we better get cracking!!

The second raised bed is well underway – in fact, pretty much finished as of this weekend. It just needs the ‘decking’ finished to the top and, of course, the sides clad and painted to match the first one I built. It’s at least finished enough to plant the poor, poor trees we bought nearly a year ago and have been sat, suffering, in their pots ever since! We still need some more soil (which will be ordered tomorrow) but we had enough ‘good stuff’ to get the trees planted. You could almost hear them sighing relief!

We also got the raised bed No 1 re-planted with some herbs (this is going to be ‘herb bed’ – with the new one ‘veg bed’!). We learnt alot from last year so we’re spacing them out a bit more and giving the basil etc much more room! Plans for the veggie bed include cherry tomatoes, leek, courgette, potatoes and carrots.

We did try to plant seeds in the ‘herb’ raised bed a couple of weeks ago but the cats did a good job of digging them up. So we decided we needed to grow some in small pots and then plant them when they were big enough to stand up to Molly and Myrtle!

Fingers crossed….

Oh! And on a side note we have FINALLY managed to plant something in the three pots from Mum and Dad M!!! It’s only been 9 months! We found some lovely succulents which have gone in them. See left!