Newcastle hosted the Classic British Car Show at the weekend. We love a car show and so do our friends Tim and Virginia so they came up from Sydney in Tim's Triumph Dolomite Sprint and off we went to the show.
It was in a fabulous setting on the foreshore at the mouth of the Hunter River overlooked by Nobby's Head lighthouse and Fort Scratchley and the location set the cars off beautifully. There were heaps of cars, far more than I expected, with most British classics represented with rows of glorious E-Types, Austin Healeys, Jaguars, Minis and so on. Tim and I spotted the cars we learned to drive in, mine was a Cortina and his a Ford Anglia which was also our first family car when I was a child.
The cars looked even better because we are having a run of sunny, warm days which are making us feel like spring is around the corner, I hope it stays this way because we have a steady stream of friends from the UK visiting in August and we want them to see the place at its best. 

This is a wonderful time of year at the Tilligerry Habitat where we volunteer. We were there manning the information centre yesterday and had a three koala day! This is unusual because koalas are not social and the males in particular give each other a very wide berth, there tends to be one alpha male in each location and he sees off any travelling males who might happen to wander in, we think we have a male at each end of the Habitat with a female or two dotted around but they are mysterious animals and nobody is sure. So it was great to be able to send visitors off with their maps and be pretty sure they would see koalas because they are difficult to spot and we have days when we can't find any to show off. However, there is plenty to look at even if the koalas are in hiding and this time of year is rather special.

The walk around the Habitat is beautiful and tranquil all year round but at the moment the wattle is flowering (yellow fluffy blossom on acacias), banksias have huge bottlebrush blooms and grevillas are in flower. Many of the birds like to eat these and I spotted a pair of black cockatoos, one standing guard while the other was having a real feast. They are very shy birds in spite of being massive - much bigger than their white cousins, they look like Lancaster Bombers when they fly over - and we often only know they are around by their distinctive cry. The locals say they are only seen and heard before it is going to rain and the Aboriginal story is that the black cockatoo came into being when a white cockatoo fell into a fire, was burned black and flew out crying for water which is why they call out for the rain.

Ian and I are now the proud holders of New South Wales boating licences. We passed the theory test a few weeks ago but could not obtain our full licences until we had been out on the water on three occasions demonstrating our skills, or lack of them, to an experienced skipper. 
A friend and her husband who both meet the criteria bravely volunteered to take on this task, but the weather has not been kind from a boating point of view. We have had fine, sunny days but it has been quite windy so our trips on the water were quite choppy affairs. Although we are in a bay, it is bigger than Sydney Harbour so can get a bit of a chop up when it is blowy and after a few days of chickening out, we decided we had to go for it or we would not have our licences in time for Eddie and Archie's visit next month.
One of the more scary thing you are required to prove you can do is taking the boat 'over the plane'. This is revving really high so the boat rears up but then settles to aquaplaning across the waves. Non licence holders are not allowed to do this as they have to keep under 10 knots at all times, so the first time you brave it is under the watching eye of your assessor and it is doubly terrifying if the water is a bit rough. However, like most things, the first time is the worst and it was all plain sailing after that and we were fully signed off and picked up our licences at the end of last week.
It is pretty windy still so we decided to go over to Nelson Bay today to check out a historical walk we thought our forthcoming visitors might enjoy. After stopping to marvel at the 24 hour live bait vending machine, we picked up the brochure from the visitors centre and went in search of the numbered posts in the guide. Well it was a lovely walk but, of the twenty odd information posts promised, only one was still standing. Once we realised this was the case, we worked out where each one should be and read the guide to see what was there only to find that every stopping place, whether it was a fisherman's cottage, boat jetty, ocean swimming pool, first church in the bay, first post office etc, etc had all either been washed out to sea, destroyed by the elements or knocked down to make way for the new marina in 1987. We will be complaining, especially as we had to pay for the guide book. 
It was a fabulous walk though with great views over Nelson Bay Marina, which is very beautiful, even though it is responsible for the destruction of all the local history and we enjoyed checking out some of the interesting houses we would never have found if we hadn't gone on the walk. Afterwards we comforted ourselves with a Red Ned's pie, Australians love a pie and Red Ned's are exceptional, Ian had a prawn and scallop (though he usually favours the lobster and barrimundi with ginger) while I tucked into a buttered chick pea curry pie, they certainly went some way to making up for our disappointment.
Spring seems to be in the air here, the birds are pairing up and Ella, our resident koala has an admirer. She doesn't seem very interested but he is hanging around hopefully so, watch this space!

While all the political turmoil has been going on in Britain, it has sort of slipped under the radar a bit that we were having a General Election in Australia. Even here on the run up, the TV news appeared to be concentrating more on Brexit than on the possible change in government of their own country as it was expected to be a close run thing.
Voting is compulsory here so election day is quite different, it is held on a Saturday and has a touch of a party atmosphere about it. Unlike in Britain, where people drift in as and when during a long day, the polling stations close at 6pm and are crowded and most have a sausage sizzle. When asked to sum up the forthcoming election in six words, more members of the public answered 'Looking forward to the sausage sizzle' than anything else. 
Mind you the electorate need sustenance when they are voting here especially as this was a double dissolution election - meaning votes had to be cast for both the upper and lower houses. Also, because there is preferential voting here you don't get to tick a box then go home, you have to number preferences on both papers and could spend all day racking your brains in your little booth. Alternatively, voters can choose to go along with the preferences of their chosen party so, for example, if you were voting for the Greens in our district of Paterson and wanted to go along with their preferences your choices would go;
1) Green Party
2) Australian Cyclists Party
3) Animal Justice Party
4) Voluntary Euthanasia Party
5) Socialist Alliance
6) Labor
The ballot paper Ian is holding up in the photo is for the Senate and the paper lists all 151 candidates for the 12 available New South Wales seats. You have to number at least 1 - 12 but can number all the way through to 151 if you so desire. I can't vote yet, otherwise we might have been there all day!
We bought our snacks for the evening ready for an all nighter watching the results pouring in and switched on the TV for the election results show only to find the programme finished at 10pm with the announcement that counting would resume on Tuesday - they were taking 2 days off!
Anyway 9 days later, the Liberal/National coalition limped over the line (don't even get me started on the fact that there is a permanent coalition) by this time it was a bit of a damp squib and most people had lost interest, as I am sure you have reading this.
Being in government limbo didn't stop us pressing on with our renovations and Ian is currently putting the finishing touches to our bike shed. We try, whenever possible to use recycled materials and this has been built almost entirely from pallets (take note Mark Pulsford). It looks rather good, I think he is taking his design influence from the opera house.

While Zoe was staying with us we took the train down to Sydney to see Vivid, where selected buildings have magnificent light shows played on them after dark for a few weeks. We set off early to make a day of it and, instead of taking the train all the way into Circular Quay, we got off a couple of stops short and walked in over the Harbour Bridge. The views from up there are sensational though I imagine the brave people we saw setting off on the bridge climb would see even more. These little groups of climbers can be seen all the time if you look carefully at the bridge. They are not easy to pick out because they have to wear boiler suits which make them blend in with the bridge so as not to distract drivers. I have the greatest respect for them, my knees turn to jelly just walking across on the footpath.
Ian has been set the challenge of finding us a different bit of Sydney to look at every time we go and this time he chose Barangaroo Point Park. This is a new park that has been developed on the harbour in an area which used to be home to old freight docks, the rest of the space is going to be taken up by a massive Crown Casino complex, but the park is delightful. It is a really peaceful place to walk, cycle or just eat your sandwiches and watch the boating activity on the harbour. They have made a marvellous job of it, planting the whole area with native trees and shrubs, it is a really neat addition to Sydney Harbour.
We shuffled back to Circular Quay via the Botanic Gardens, which are always worth a visit, and got ourselves into position with a Hungry Jack's in hand to wait for Vivid to start (Hungry Jack's is what Burger King is called here).
Vivid was good last year but even better this time. The display on the Opera House took about 20 minutes to get through its full cycle, my favourite bit was when the, astonishingly 3D, turtles were walking across it. The Museum of Contemporary Art was incredible too with blobby paint in all different colours cascading down the building, the pictures don't really do it justice.
After a visit to the Hunter Valley the next day, Zoe flew back to Melbourne and we settled down to study for our boat licence test. We bough a boat a few weeks ago (Bunny II, Ian's family had Bunny I when he was a child) but have not felt up to taking it out until we passed the theory part of our test. The boat licence test has two elements, theory then three trips out with an experienced skipper (anyone who has held a NSW boat licence for two years or more).
We were surprisingly nervous about the test and set off to the Marine Rescue headquarters with mounting trepidation, it was ok though, we both passed. You can take your boat out before gaining a licence but cannot go above 10 knots, so we ventured out for the first time this week to get the hang of the controls so we don't look like complete idiots when we go out with the experienced skipper assessing us.
It didn't go too badly. We chose a quiet time midweek when we thought nobody would see us making fools of ourselves at the boat ramp but, of course, it turned out to be surprisingly busy so we had a small, amused audience. We managed to launch it without too many dramas or arguments and took a slow trip up the creek and back. When we came to put it back on the trailer (a procedure we were secretly dreading) one of our neighbours appeared from nowhere walking his dog, so we had an audience for that too! It was all fine however, and we are now confident we will be up to speed by the time our friend Eddie and his son Archie come to visit from England in August.