This is our next door neighbour's bird feeder, nearly as exotic as my sister Gill's! We see a lot of Rainbow Lorikeets, Galahs, Eastern Rosellas and Kookaburras here and have seen Sulphur Crested Cockatoos and Black Cockatoos but always when I don't have the camera with me.
Ian has excelled himself with the furniture making, I wasn't aware he could do this kind of thing I'm very impressed. The renovations are going well and we should be on target to rent this place out by about the middle of March and set off on our 'Big Lap', we can't go before then because that is when all our worldly goods arrive from the UK and we need to sort what we are taking with us, what will go into this house and what will go into storage.
I should complete on the second house next week so then we will have an income as that house already has tenants.
Went for a swim in the sea today, keeping one eye open for the Great Whites that are hanging around these parts at the moment, one of them is 5 metres long and weighs 1700 kilos! Luckily our beach has a netted off ocean pool although I'm sure a determined Great White could munch its way through the net without too much trouble.

We went to this last night, cinema under the stars in Nelson Bay. Port Stephens is home to whales in the winter and the whale watching cruises leave from Nelson Bay so the film was quite an old one about whales (I suppose there are only so many times they can show Free Willy). It was a very pleasant way to spend an evening. There was a bit of a delay as various people were called over to try an work the equipment then, just as the film was about to start, hundreds of Rainbow Lorikeets started to gather in a huge tree above where everyone was sitting, they then had an almighty punch up complete with deafening screeching which carried on for the first half hour of the film, it was pretty funny, the organisers must have been tearing their hair out.
I went to a talk on gardening in sand at Bunnings (like Wickes). It really is sand here, not sandy soil, just sand! It was free, there was free coffee and cakes and we were all given a pen and it was a pretty useful talk. I can't believe how good the customer service is here, not just in Bunnings but everywhere. Zoe was saying the same thing, even while you are wandering around the supermarket, every assistant you pass looks up from what they are doing and says, "how are ya?". It's a bit unnerving to start with because you don't quite know what to reply but very refreshing once you are used to it.
Ian has excelled himself making benches for an outside seating area we are creating at the back of the house. Of course this has involved the purchase of several power tools and multiple visits to the hardware store but he has completed the first one. I wondered why he was in such a rush to get it finished.......

Monty's shipping container has started a new life as a workbench as we continue with the renovations (rennos, I'm getting better at understanding the lingo but that one had me stumped in the hardware store).
The grubby little house is now clean and starting to look a bit more presentable. I am sure you will all be delighted to hear that it rained all day yesterday which forced us to start working on the inside, so the bathroom tiles are all now off ready for the arrival of the new bath and shower.
Zoe is now safely back in Melbourne, it is great to be able to chat to her without trying to work out what the time will be where she is. Hopefully she will come up to visit for a few days soon, it's only a short flight from Melbourne and Newcastle airport is about a 20 minute drive from us.

We gave ourselves a day off today because it has been 36 degrees for the last couple of days and the house renovations have been hard work. So we took ourselves off to the Hunter Valley for the day and thank goodness we did because it actually reached 40 in the end. It is less than an hour from us and easier to get around than the wine regions I have visited in France. There are loads of wineries one after another in quite a compact area (by Australian standards). Most of them run tours and they are all very generous with the wine tastings.
We went on a tour at the First Creek winery but the most interesting one we visited was the Drayton Family Winery. The chap who started it was a farm hand who came over from Lincolnshire in 1835, his wife and two of his children died on the voyage and he was left alone with a four year old and a new born baby. Undeterred he set off for the Hunter Valley, planted a vineyard and built a winery. How did he manage that? And how did he know what to do or where to do it? The early settlers really were made of much sterner stuff than us!
In the picture of the vines you will see a rose bush at the end of each row. This is an early warning device, if there are any nasty bugs around that will damage the vines - the rose cops it first, the same principle as the canary down the mine.
Got the good news today that Zoe and Shaun have arrived safely back in Melbourne so hopefully we should see them quite soon.
Looks like we could be in for a thunderstorm later, there were bush fires in Adelaide and Perth last week but today every state except Tasmania has fllood warnings and someone has already drowned........Dangerous place Australia!

As you can probably guess by the recent lack of blogging, it was impossible to get our internet access sorted in time to Skype families on Christmas Day, in fact it has only just been sorted today so the communication blackout is over.
We had to make do with phone calls over Christmas but it was still a great deal easier (and cheaper) to get in touch than when Ian first came to Australia 33 years ago. We used to write every week using aerograms - remember them? Hardly surprising the relationship didn't last!
Christmas was strange, apart from being hot and missing our families it was odd to have prawns for lunch and to not feel stuffed to capacity for days afterwards. Delicious as the prawns were, I can now see why ex pats and second generation Australians still swelter in the kitchen while it is 30 degrees outside and then proceed to eat the same quantities of turkey, roast potatoes, piggies in blankets, Paxo stuffing, mince pies and Chrismas pudding as they would to stave off the cold in the UK. I suspect we might be doing the same next year.
A couple of days after Christmas we had our first visitors, Tim and Virginia came for a couple of days. We have known Tim since Wood End Junior School days and he has lived in Australia for 30 years. It was really good to see a familiar face (and make a new friend) and their visit made me feel much more at home. They brought Tim's dog Monty the Schnoodle, yes he really is a schnoodle called Monty just like ours, the naming was a complete coincidence, and the two Montys got along great!
Had big news the other day, because of the floods in Malaysia Zoe and Shaun are coming back early and will be arriving in Melbourne on Friday. It will be wonderful to be living in the same country as my daughter again!