More surfing!

Battered, bruised and sunburnt after today's surfing, but really enjoyed it still!

Think I am improving too, stood up for at least 2 seconds today ;-)

Have decided Narrabeen is my favourite place to surf, we've been there a couple of times now and although it's a bit further out, it is pretty much empty compared to Manly and there is loads of free parking.
The surf was breaking quite close to the shore and it was low tide so we were able to stand in the water and just jump on when we saw a good wave. I am using my new technique for getting up when I remember, and it seems to be working a bit better.

Australia Day surf rowers!

We had an extra day off this week to celebrate Australia Day!

According to http://www.australiaday.vic.gov.au/history.asp Australia day "celebrates the anniversary of Captain Arthur Phillip unfurling the British flag at Sydney Cove and proclaiming British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of Australia on 26 January 1788".

There was lots going on around the city, big BBQs in the parks, music performances, and a few aborginal ceremonies too.

We went over to Dee Why beach and had Australia Day breakfast with lots of bands playing, flipflop (thong) throwing competitions and everyone dressed in aussie colours and flags.

Then we headed over to Freshwater beach to see a different side of it. Freshwater was hosting the finals of the NSW Australian Surf Rowers competition. Really fun sport to watch, you have 4 people rowing and 1 'sweep' steering the boat from the back. They're rowing directly into the surf to a buoy and then back to the beach, which means no matter how well a team has done so far, a wave can come and push them over or push them back ahead of the others. Sometimes they all get knocked out of the boat even! There were teams from all the NSW beaches there. Apparently if you're in a surf rowing club, you also have to do a certain number of hours of lifesaving duty on your beach, and you have to train every morning 5am. That's some dedication!
lebrates the anniversary of Captain Arthur Phillip unfurling the British flag at Sydney Cove and proclaiming British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of Australia on 26 January 1788

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!

Blue Mountains - Wentworth Pass

We went on a trip up to the Blue Mountains - about 1 1/2 hours from Sydney in the car.

They are called mountains but they'remore like canyons and gorges, from the bottom of which the top does seem quite high! It's called the Blue Mountains since the pines make a kind of blue-ish haze, very dense jungle type areas and lots of really beautiful waterfalls.

We went to an area called Wentworth falls and walked along the Wentworth pass to Empress falls. The first part of the walk is quite touristy by the falls, then you start to go down some extremely steep stairs and ladders to get to the bottom of the canyon. They're the reason for the 'hard' grading in the walk book I think, the rest of the walk is not too bad and only about 6k. It takes about 3 hours though with all the ladders and having a paddle in the pools and the bottom of the falls!

A map of where we went is here, but bewarned the stairs are quite tough!