Rowing Club

This is our Rowing club, Australian N something, on the river close to our house. It's around a 5 minute drive away, which is the maximum distance i'm willing to travel for 5 am training sessions. Hugh is doing a learn to row course at the moment, which is 5 Sunday mornings being taught how to handle yourself in a skull. It's very good, and he is showing promise, except for falling in on lesson 2. Lesson 1 was on land. He was, however, trying a turning method that I avoid myself as it's pretty unstable.

Australia Day

We went to see the fireworks over the river in Perth last night. They were brilliant! They lasted for aroud half an hour and as the grand finale hundreds of fireworks went off all over the sky sparking of a huge cheer from the crowd watching from the riverbank.

All the fireworks we fired from barges or boats tied up in the harbour. They must have been the biggest firehazard in the world. I imagine they looked like a cartoon, little boats piled 20 feet high with rockets pointing out in all directions.

Truckers

Hugh and Richard the work machine gardener have rented a 3 tonne truck today to remove all the rubbish, scrap and green cuttings from around the yard. There is absolutely loads of stuff to move. There's an 8 foot tall pile of plants and trees, a big pile of bricks, our whole driveway is covered in scrap metal, and various other bits and pieces. Our washing line in the yard doesn't turn any more as it's pinned in on all sides by mountains of debris. They have a hard day ahead of them!

Guinea Pig!

We found a little guinea pig on our porch this morning. He/she looks exactly like this little fella. Almost entirely black with a few little ginger lines. It's incredibly cute. Hugh is phoning around today to find an animal shelter that will take it. If we can't find one though, I gues we'll keep it.

It has a beautiful shiny coat and looks well looked after. I picked it up wearing a few pairs of thick gloves incase it was a rabid biter, but it was very tame and just a bit scared. The poor little guy. Also it took ages to catch. Hugh is an expert guinea pig herder, but it's very quick. we can try calling around to the neighbours this evening perhaps. Google says guinea pigs don't wander far, so it's probably belonged to someone in the area.

Cute Zoo Animals

There is a petting farm section in Sydney Zoo and they have lots and lots of silkie hens and chicks. Adorable! You can just see in the back of this picture a white silkie hen with little white chicks. That's what Gandalf is going to look like. Cool!

And this is a little baby elephant. He was born in mid December, so is only a couple of weeks old here. He is very playful, and this picture was just perfectly timed to catch him landing on his nose after getting his foot stuck in a tyre. There are always lots and lotsof people around looking at everything he does. A star.

And this is a lazy koala. I think he pretty accurately portrays the locals here. Pretty chilled out. This poor fella nearly fell out of the tree at one point but woke up in time to save himself. Apparently lots of koalas die in the wild from falling out of trees in their sleep. I can see how.

Operation Chook

Our chickens are wonderful, but to put it politely, they are soiling our yard. Therefore, they need to move out of the people garden and get their own little chicken garden. Now that the garden is nearly clear, we are going to fence them off a nice big corner behind the lemon tree. We have built them a nesting box and are going to finish the rest of the roost as soon as possible. This is the coop workshop, otherwise known as the dining room. Also bike shed.

This is some of the scrap metal that Richard has collected from around the yard. There is absolutely loads of it. These are a mix of tubes of sheet metal and rolls of lead. We are hoping that one of the art colleges will come and take it as material for their sculpture students. Fingers crossed! Else we'll have to make it a feature of the garden. "Ah yes, very modern, we have a section of metal deconstuction art beyond the pergola".

Sydney

This is us in Sydney. We went for a week just after new years. This picture above was taken in Sydney zoo. There is a great view of the whole city as it is high up on the opposite bank. We spent a whole day there, it is fantastic. The animals have plenty of space and seem to be happy.

We went south one day to visit Doris and we had a beautiful dinner in this fabulous fish restaurant overlooking the beach. She is in fantastic form and still running around like a teenager.

And here is a mandatory picture of the Opera House. No trip to Sydney is complete without it. 

Wonder Gardener

We've been having trouble finding time to tackle the garden, so we finally caved and now have a gardener helping us out. His name is Richard and he is truly amazing. In one day he has cleared more of the garden than me and Hugh did in the last 3 months.Check out the size of this rootball he dug out. It's absolutely massive, and spiky all over.

This area at the back of the garden is now completely cleared out, so we will start to fence it off for the chickens. I should have takena  picture of what it looked like before. It was so overgrown we didn't even realise how much space was back there.

 We made this corn post for the chickens then this morning. It's an idea stolen from Sydney Zoo. They had a great big one of these in the farmyard animal section and it kept the chickens busy. It's a pretty clever idea. Instead of pecking eachother, they can wear themselves out pecking the hanging corn. The dark red hens are Clancy and Matilda, and the buff one is Ted. Ted and the other priests are nearly as big as Clancy and Matilda now. When fully grown though, they will be much bigger.

And here are the babies. Unfortunately Merlin took a trip to the great coop in the sky, but the other are still going strong. Even Gandalf is getting a little bit bigger. They are still in the cage as they get pecked massively by the others when they mix.