September

Going for a date with hubby, while the kids were all at school.

Emerald Beach was one of the beaches we hadn’t been on before. Not only the beach was a gem, so was the cafe we found. A beautiful lunch and an amazing playground. We’ll have to go back, this time with the kids.

Quality time, together.

The Sunday afternoon standard...

Tim and Sander have gone bike riding for the last couple of weekends. This time Tim went by himself, to visit a friend an hours ride away.

The track is an old stock route, that rarely gets used these days. Rather rough too!

Both Sander and I grew up riding our bikes, to go to school, sports or visit friends at the age that Tim is now. I fondly remember the 10km ride to a friends place in the next town. We really wanted to give Tim this freedom as well. However this is Australia, there is wildlife to consider, making us a little more cautious. So in went a mobile phone with tracker in his backpack. Right next to the bottle of water and granola bar. At least he can ring us in case something would happen, but we could also check if he took the right turnoffs for his first time solo. Am I helicopter parenting? 

He came back a couple of hours later, with his friends in tow. Ready to jump in the pool.

Although still a bit fresh, the kids have declared the pool open for the season.

 The horses have been enjoying all the green shoots popping up after the recent rain. However with all the wind, it doesn’t take long for the ground to dry out quickly again. They’ll be getting hay for a while longer. We’re hoping for a nice top up of rain. However, we finally have a new date for the cabin builders to start. With my parents arriving on Wednesday, they won’t be ready in time as it is...

Home Amongst the Gum Trees

with lots of plum trees, a mulberry or two and a kangaroo

a parrot at the back. We just need the old rocking chair...

Home is having space to breath, to play, to dream.
The kids spend most of their time outside.

Riding bikes

Playing on logs

Playing hide and seek

And building new inventions

Enjoying a cuppa with company. This juvenile king parrot has been visiting us every day. 

Happy for a chat and a couple of sunflower seeds. Life is good.

My sister rowed the final of the World Championship. All that hard work, jumping through hoops and determination is paying off. Another week and we’ll both be on the plane to NZ!

End of the soccer season

Happy to have survived this first year on the committee. 

A massive learning curve and quite the eye-opener.

Still, we’ve committed to another year for the same positions. However this time around we know what we’re doing and we’re taking charge of the way it has been done all these years. 

Setting new and more efficient systems in place, we’ll be taking it to the next level.

The creamed honey experiments, truely fascinating.

However the weather has turned too warm for a good setting of the crystals. 

To be continued...

This week was a rather smokey one, with a grass fire that started a couple of houses down from us.

Fire trucks kept going passed us for three days. They’ve contained the fire with down-wind back burning and fire breaks. We can still see some smouldering, but the we should be safe from here on.

 This is the back fence of our property. Seeing how close it got is quite confronting.

Saying thanks to all the volunteers at the Rural Fire Service.