We were looking forward with excitement to visitors last week. First, our old friend Tim was coming up with Virginia and their dog Monty (yes, our Monty was having a visitor too), then Zoe and Shaun were flying up from Melbourne for the weekend. 
Tim, Virginia and Monty arrived on Wednesday in the middle of a torrential downpour that pretty much didn't stop the whole time they were here. We had fun though, visiting local spots and winning the trivia night at the club by a huge margin! Pommie Monty and Aussie Monty got on famously, although it was hard to tell the difference if they were not next to each other. I do think we

were being a bit hopeful though when we drove up to Birubi Point to see if we could see any whales from the land. We did manage to show both sets of guests a koala (Ella in her usual tree) and a Tawny Frogmouth Owl who famously are so well disguised and difficult to find, if you are lucky enough to spot one, you can walk right up to it because they have such faith in their camouflage, so all was not lost.
The weather was not much better for Zoe and Shaun's visit, although the rain was not quite so torrential.

Rain has its advantages though, while we were showing them around Newcastle on Saturday, the weather became so unpleasant we had to duck into a pub for a beer. In the pub we discovered a complete sub section of Australian society that was previously unknown to us - there was a bagpipe competition going on!
There were posters for the White Heather Club Highland Outfitters dotted about and the room was full of people of all ages wearing tartan and cheering and clapping while pipers,

fully kilted and sporranned, took it in turns to play in front of the judges. There were loads of them all in their different tartan, some warming up outside and others admiring each others pipes. As for the competition it was hard to tell who was in the lead, although there was a frisson of excitement when one chap got up to play.

Some marched up and down a bit as they played but, apart from that, it was a bit tricky to pick out the good ones.
We dodged the showers on Sunday too and, as we drove Zoe and Shaun to the airport Sunday evening, it turned into a lovely, balmy evening and the weather has been glorious ever since.

Well, after what seems like years of research and visits from reps and getting quotes over the phone, we have finally joined the solar community! 
The final stage of the installation took place today and, as long as it all works ok - and it appears to, I would recommend GoSolar Newcastle to anyone. They were frighteningly efficient. They like to do the hot water and solar power on different days so they are not all tripping over each other on the roof so the hot water was installed a week or so ago then we were told the solar power panels would be put on the roof on Friday. The guys knocked at the door on Friday morning at 7.45am and they were finished before 9am, I didn't even have time to get my camera out to get a shot of them all scrambling on the roof for the blog! As they left they told us the person to fit the meter would be due in a couple of days then, half an hour later there was a knock at the door and there he was.
We are now having to change our habits a bit to get the most out of the free power from the sun. The government buy back scheme rate is so low these days that the way to work is to use your power while you are producing it, this means running the dishwasher or washing machine, charging phones and tablets in the middle of the day,for example, instead of overnight. It is surprisingly difficult to remember to do these things, we are obviously more set in our ways than we thought and the one thing I don't think we will manage is cooking while we are producing power, it feels like going back to the 1960s if we eat our main meal at lunchtime.
The most exciting part of all this is the little monitor which tells us how much power we are producing at any given time. I can't stop looking at it and telling Ian how many watts we are getting on an hourly basis, I find it completely fascinating and am becoming a real solar bore.
Zoe and Shaun are coming for the weekend - they have no idea what fun they have in store!

Spring, in this neck of the woods, is absolutely glorious. We are sitting on the balcony at the moment, the temperature is 24 degrees and there are Rainbow Lorikeets, Eastern Rosellas, Galahs and Corellas fluttering around. The koalas are peeping down out of the trees (well we can't see any from the balcony yet but they are only at the end of the road)  and Ella, in particular, is looking impossibly cute. Almost everything seems to be bursting into flower and we are taken by surprise by sudden wafts of scent as we are walking along with Monty. There is one house we pass where the garden smells really strongly of bubblegum but we can't see which plant in the garden is producing the scent, maybe the owners just chew a lot of bubblegum...
One thing I did not expect to see was this Blue Tongued Lizard appearing from under the house while I was painting the side balcony yesterday, it made me jump a bit because I thought it was a snake when I first saw his head poking out. He was about 18 inches long and just sauntered across the garden then under the fence to next door, it was lucky Monty didn't see him because the lizard was not moving very fast and I am sure Monty would have caught him.
We are now part way through our big solar install. The hot water is finished so plenty of long free hot showers now because, although we are pommies, we do shower more than once a week! We are just waiting for the solar power panels to be put in on Friday and, what with that and our free underground water for watering the garden, we will be paying for hardly any of it any more. We won't mention the cost of the installation and the pump for the watering, at least we won't be getting big monthly bills and it should all pay for itself within about four years.

I have been a bit quiet on the blogging front lately as we received the very sad news that Ian's sister Ann passed away suddenly last week. Ann was very supportive and encouraging about my blog and it feels odd writing a post knowing that she won't be reading it. I know she would be the first to tell me not to be silly and to get on with it so here goes;
The koalas seem to be out in force at the moment, this is good news because the local nature groups have been worrying that they are going down rapidly in numbers. The main cause for the decline is loss of habitat. Loads of trees were lost in the big storm and the local authority have now relaxed the rules on tree removal for a year to allow people to get rid of any dangerous ones. You are supposed to prove a tree was a danger to property or power lines but I am sure most people are just taking them down to try and improve their view.
However, we are starting to see koalas more regularly and sometimes two at a time, which is very unusual. Yesterday we walked down to a nearby street where we often see one and she was there, then we were told there was another one back nearer to our house. so we trooped back to try and spot it, luckily the lady who told us had given very specific details about the location and we found it. Two in one walk, we were delighted! As we were looking up the tree taking pictures a couple we have become friends with (well, our arch enemies from the quiz nights really) came out of their house to see what we were looking at and spotted that the koala was actually holding a tiny baby. So, three in one walk, unheard of!
We have made some significant moves this week towards partial self sufficiency or, at least greatly reducing our utility bills. When we first moved here I was amazed to discover all the lush gardens and grass and to see garden sprinklers and hoses being used liberally. I couldn't understand why there seemed to be no hosepipe ban here when, in England, there only has to be a slightly dry week in April and you can't use your hosepipe until October! Also, water is very expensive but people were using it on their gardens without a care in the world. There was also a strange pipe sticking out of the ground at the other house which we could not identify, until eventually someone told us it was a spearpoint outlet. There is underground water here and everyone has a bore and pump put in and, hey presto - free water for the garden! We got our pump fitted on Friday and it has rained on and off ever since (what a surprise).
The other giant leap forward was to finally select the company to install our solar power and hot water. We budgeted for this when we bought the house but it has been really difficult (and incredibly boring) trying to find the correct system and company to install it. What I don't now know about evacuated tubes and micro inverters is not worth knowing! The products and prices vary enormously and it is a bit of a minefield to negotiate. Each time we thought we liked the look of a system, something would get in the way and put us off, even down to basics like a salesperson not turning up or a company quoting a hugely inflated price then pretending to do us a favour with massive discounts. However, we got there in the end and the big install is on 15th September, stand by for photos.

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!