We had a splendid night out seeing Hamlet at the Newcastle Civic Theatre last night. The production was excellent and the venue itself is fantastic, a Spanish Baroque style theatre complete with marble staircases opened in 1929. 
The evening out almost didn't happen for a number of reasons. It took us a while to realise that most performances only come to regional theatres like ours for one performance between their stopovers in the bigger cities so you have to be quick off the mark to book if something good is coming. I missed being able to get tickets for a play about Ned Kelly and Miriam Margolyes' one woman show before I twigged what the problem was. However, once we overcame this obstacle and were eagerly looking forward to Hamlet. Then, last Sunday, I was laid low by a nasty bout of flu and as the days passed I was worried I might not get better in time but finally seemed to be on the mend by the end of the week when disaster struck, Ian came down with it! Luckily he was not quite as bad as me and, when Saturday evening arrived, we armed ourselves with bottles of water and cough sweets to guard against coughing fits, and had an enjoyable evening.
Before the illness struck, Ian was venturing into thespian territory himself this week. A new footpath has just been completed at the Tilligerry Habitat and the team there wanted to mark the opening in a memorable way so decided to re enact the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. 
When the bridge was completed in 1932, the dignitaries, led by New South Wales Premier Jack Lang, gathered for the grand opening. Just as Lang was about to cut the ribbon, Francis De Groot, a member of the right wing New Guard of Australia, galloped up on his horse and sliced through the ribbon with his sword, declaring the bridge open 'in the name of the decent and respectable people of New South Wales.'
As you can see, Ian took on his role as De Groot with enthusiasm!

We are still working away on various bits of the house. Ian is still terracing the sheer drop that is our garden, while I am painting the balcony. We don't seem to have stopped since we got here and I am reminded of my Dad who, after he retired used to say he didn't know how he had ever found the time to work!
It was a gorgeous day today, 20 degrees even though we officially still have one week of winter left to go, so we decided to give ourselves a, well deserved, day off and we set off on foot to do a bit of exploring. Although we know our little town and the neighbouring ones, there are countless footpaths and trails around these parts that we have not walked along yet. We plumped for a fire trail (a man made break through bushland for controlling bush fires) and walked along to the next township, Mallabula, which is home to one of our favourite local beaches. Monty loves running around on the beaches and, whenever I have a pang of guilt about shipping him all that way in a crate, it goes away when I see him enjoying himself so much.
It was so peaceful watching people fishing off the jetty and one man standing up in his kayak fishing, when Ian and I had a kayak we had enough trouble keeping it upright when we were sitting down so we won't be trying that!
We followed the shore around and then tried another new footpath on the way back, all in all a round trip of about 15km, very pleasant indeed.
Our next project after the terracing is the solar installation. It is crazy not to have at least solar hot water in a country with so much sunlight and we have decided to go for the whole lot so have been to Stand Up For Solar meetings, pestered neighbours with solar about their experiences and had reps visiting from all the major solar companies and Ian has been carrying out the boring task of photographing the roof from all angles every hour so the panels can be positioned correctly. It is quite an exciting prospect to be able to be partially self sufficient powerwise, I feel like we should be on Grand Designs.

It is really starting to feel like the beginning of spring now, the light is changing making the sunsets more interesting, the birds are pairing up and building nests and the koalas seem to be a bit more active (this is not difficult, mind you, as they would struggle to be much less active) and Monty has dragged himself away from the radiator. One koala we see fairly often put on a real show the other evening by perching herself way down her chosen tree at eye level (they are usually much higher up). She does not seem afraid of much, probably because she had to live in the koala rescue on a couple of occasions when she was very young, it is a bit worrying really because not everyone keeps their dogs on the lead in the koala reserves even though they are supposed to. However, we enjoyed seeing her close up and, to cap it all, we saw a second one at the end of our walk! We have never seen two in one go before.
We are working hard terracing our garden at the moment. We thought we lived on 
a steep slope in Rickmansworth but it was nothing compared to this, at the moment it is like trying to mow Everest so the retaining walls we are building should make it easier and stop the slight erosion that is inevitable on a sloping site like this.

It was a bit of a dark garden in winter but that all started to change a few days ago. The house next door is a deceased estate and has been empty for some time, it was very neglected and had about ten huge trees in the back garden, making ours very gloomy. Last week, however, work began as the relatives decided to spruce the place up to sell it and they took down at least six trees in the back garden and about four out the front thinning out the rest, as you can see in the before and after pictures. It is amazing to watch how the tree specialists take down these giants in a small space and it must be costing them a fortune, these guys work really hard in very dangerous conditions and whatever they are paid cannot possibly be enough. You have to have permission from the council to be able to remove a tree and must prove it was dangerous, so hopefully they did all that first. The gum trees can grow to 120ft or more and are not as strong as other big trees, branches do drop off without warning (they are known as widowmakers) so it is as well not to have them hanging over the house. It was a shame to see trees go and we can now see a few more buildings but it opened up a second vista of water views form our balcony and we now have a nice light garden, so probably increased the value of our house considerably.
The sheer size of the trees in Australia took my breath away and even Ian had forgotten how big they are. At the moment he is classifying native trees and plants for the Tilligerry Habitat website and comes home from working there armed with fascinating facts, the latest being that the Hunter Region (where we live) has more varieties of species of plants and trees than the whole of Europe!