Organising blogs

Decided I need to seperate out our Aussie adventures and my more work orientated thoughts.

So I've picked up a blog I started a while back for posts on online experiences, sites I like, product management thoughts etc http://nickijb.blogspot.com/. Finding it really interesting to compare the industry here in Aus to back in the UK, many different factors involved, creating some similar needs and some very different.

The big barbie

The coal barbie Sam gave us has been doing well, and will be great for camping trips, but we thought we needed something a bit bigger to really get into Aussie culture!

So we bought our 4 burner gas BBQ with heating area, hot plates and lid for roasting! Adam is getting quite into chef mode.

Tried it out last weekend with Will and Rachel, and tonight will be trying out the hot plate with the shrimps with Adam's brother Matt!

Hunter Valley

We spent a few days in the Hunter Valley wine region after NYE.

Adam had booked a lovely cottage for my birthday present. The people who owned the farm we stayed on were really friendly, and had a funny labradoodle who wanted to play all the time; we were her friends forever after we gave her a bit of bacon in the morning!


We went out to a few of the vineyards a did a bit of wine tasting and bought a few bottles! Found one lovely estate, the Wandin Valley, which we might join as members. There's no joining fee, you just buy 6 bottles every 3 months for a discounted price, then you can stay there for free for a few nights a year. They also invite you up to pick the grapes and stamp around on them which sounds like fun! The Fatso's Revenge red we particularly liked - tasted nice and I always like a bottle with a nice picture on the bottle ;-)
It is quite an isolated area though, you definitely need a car to get around (or book a bus trip if you're going to taste a lot of wine!) . But there are a lot of tourists and we realised to late that we should have booked in somewhere for Saturday dinner.



I really enjoyed the horse riding at Hill Top. We saw loads of grey kangaroos in the fields which felt proper Australian. We tried trotting a few times, I'm sure mine was galloping though, it felt very fast to me! ;-)

NYE in Sydney

We were invited to a brilliant cocktail party by some friends just down the road for new years eve. Their flat is a bit higher up and futher along than ours so we had a brilliant view of the fireworks.

there were 2 sets, one at 9 and another at 12 - apparently 5 tonnes in all! they had 4 different sets going off at the same time on the bridge and then on barges up the river, really amazing although my camera wasn't great at get pics of it.

The party was particularly unique because of Will and Rachel's chinese lanterns which we set off at midnight, really beautiful. Thankfully the people in the flat downstairs were able to catch mine and set it off again before it started burning down the houses. Will's BBQ skills have to be noted too!