The Australian Open!

Bob and I are still recovering from our crazy weekend!
Heather was back in town from last Wednesday to help me with our second wedding dress shopping trip, this time into the heart of Melbourne city. A very strange shop with a very strange European dress lady who would not take no for an answer, regardless of how hideous the dress was! Everything was beautiful, even the horrid grey puffy number. Hmmm. She even stuck me in a swan lake type frilly thing because she’d never seen a tall girl in the dress before. Leave me alone, argh! So we made a quick exit and went back to High Street to try on the dress I liked from before! It was a size 8 so had to squeeze myself half into it again but it was much much better than some of the hideous ones I’d tried on earlier. Could it be ‘the one’?!?!! Topped off the day with a well deserved Italian meal in Federation Square before watching some telly on the big screen and then finally heading for our train home
Friday, Kelly and Alan arrived from Sydney and so it was an early start on Saturday morning to get into Melbourne for the Australian Open tennis! A mad dash for the train got the hearts racing first thing, but once we were on, we calmed down and entertained ourselves with several games of Mallet’s Mallet (the old ones are the best!) 80 minutes later, we arrive in Richmond and disembark with a huge crowd to get to the grounds. We attempted to get some tickets for the Murray match later that day, but they were all sold out and no one had returned theirs as of 10am. Ah well, no worries, let’s have a quick wander through the show courts then find a spot in front of the big screen to watch. On a trip to the beer tent 2 hours later, I decided to ask the wee ticket woman again and yes, she had two spare tickets! Yee ha! So we bought them and took it in turns every half hour to go in and watch the tennis in the Rod Laver Arena. Excellent atmosphere, but not such an exciting match, bit of a walk in the park for Andy! Face paints were out and the Scotland flags were on cheeks. We almost got ourselves on the telly but the camera men found the bananas and gorillas much more entertaining...long story!
A super hot day, sunscreen slapped on every 15 minutes, eventually we had to make a cave out of the free ANZ groundsheets they were handing out and some tables and chairs. We like caves. Watched some Clijsters tennis and some doubles before heading back to Drouin for a BBQ and to watch Nadal take on the 18 year old Australian Tomic – we weren’t expecting the poor lad to be any good and so when we suggested doing shots of vodka red bull for every game Tomic won, we were somewhat worse for wear at the end of that match! That called for a trip to the local Commercial Hotel, otherwise known as The Mersh, for some irn bru WKD’s and some cheesy dancing to John Farnham. Rock ‘n’ roll!
Sunday morning was a lazy one, followed by a rubbish wedding fair in Melbourne which was abandoned for more wine and tennis watching in Fed Square and Southbank by the river. Scorching sunshine, sunglasses on, marvellous day was had by all. Home to bed once we’d said cheerio to Heather and dropped her at the hotel. She is home now after a horrible flight home, think she is rather woozy today!
Australia Day today – no work, hurrah! Not sure many of the Aboriginal folk will be celebrating....we popped round to our friends Lisa and Barry’s house for a BBQ and some pavlova, and managed to catch some of the Murray match at the same time. Triple J’s hot 100 tunes from 2010 was on in the background, think this is a tradition for Australians to listen to, as I write this at 7pm we’re at # 20! Not long to go.
I’ve been asked to co-coach the A grade Dusties netball team with my friend Liza and so she is coming round on Friday night to talk tactics over a bottle of wine. Excellent! Hopefully we can win the pennant this year! Go Dusties!
Enjoy the photos, speak soon xxx

Sun, sea, surf.....and more!

Hello one and all!
It has taken some time to recover from the festive season what with the blazing sunshine and humidity! Slightly different to the chaos in Queensland at the moment, apparently 75% of Queensland is a natural disaster zone. Very sad to see the coverage on the news, not expected in Australia but also not the first time this has happened (apparently similar flooding after a cyclone hit in 1974). There has been a small amount of flooding in Victoria but not anywhere near us, and certainly not on the same scale as the east coast.
However, we certainly enjoyed the holiday and we had absolutely perfect weather. Perth is definitely the place to be! When the rest of Australia is having thunderstorms you can always rely on Western Australia to pull the sunshine out the bag. Having had a great holiday, the return to work was tricky, trying to get back into some sort of normality was harder than expected having had almost 3 weeks to do as we wished. Having said that, I only had a three day week to contend with before the weekend which was a nice way to start the year!
Bob started his new job with Baw Baw Shire as a home and community care assessment officer which started rather quietly and has now progressed to being a little more interesting. He also has a company car for the commute to and from work (he could walk in 5 mins!) and so Harry the Hyundai (even though it’s a piece of cheapness) is now living in the carport and poor Jimmy has been kicked to the kerb, quite literally! Overall work is going smoothly for both of us.
We have had visits from both Heather and Sally. Heather arrived on Monday 3rd Jan, and headed off to Tasmania, Sydney and Canberra on the 6th. She is due to return to us on Wednesday 19th Jan until her departure back to the UK on Monday 24th. Sally has returned from Perth and Tasmania and has been staying with us from Friday 14th until Tuesday 18th at which point she flys from Melbourne to Borneo before heading home. Lots of travel stories to tell!
Unfortunately for Heather, the poor girl’s plans for sightseeing have been replaced with lots of wedding chat and dress shopping! We started gently at Wild Dog Winery on the 3rd Jan, with some wedding mags and lots of wine in the sunshine, a relaxing and most enjoyable afternoon. I’ve missed my best bud! On her second day in Australia, she is accompanying me to various bridal shops on the High Street in Armadale, near St Kilda! No complaints however, it appears she is quite excited about her bridesmaid duties and she is keen to give me rather honest opinions on the meringues, puffs, lace and veils that are being thrust upon me by rather enthusiastic dressmakers and retail staff. We only encountered one scary woman who was rather abrupt but we did encounter many strange dresses including plenty net curtains and a few flamenco swan like dresses. A few meringues too! Back for a repeat trying on session this coming Thursday - hurrah!
We have had a fun weekend with Sally, beginning with a trip to the MCG for the 20/20 cricket match between the Aussies and the Poms. The Aussies managed to snatch a victory by 4 runs, a much needed victory given that they have lost on the last 9 occasions to the English. The “booos” given to poor Kevin Pieterson were quite spectacular, poor lad! I wouldn’t say that cricket is the most exciting sport to watch, however it was an experience to be in an awesome sporting atmosphere and it got quite interesting towards the end. Even though we were up in the back of beyond, we still had a good view and the telly that was in front of us helped to keep up with the score. Maybe next time, an all day match with a picnic and a few beers would go down a treat.
Feeling a little bit sore today as yesterday we took Sally to the beach at Inverloch for some beach, sea and surfing action! Bob and I both got a lesson from excellent instructors – we both managed to stand up at least twice, in fact Bob was the star of the show, he managed to surf all the way into shore 4 times in a row! The knees are holding up marvellously and he is chuffed to bits that he has mastered the standing up part. Now all he needs to do is find some bigger waves and stay up for longer! We shall be back in the next couple of weeks I think. There is already talk of buying a couple of wetsuits and surfboards.....watch this space. Surfing day finished with a BBQ and a beer. Very Aussie stylee!
Today we ventured to Mount Worth State Park, ½ hour from Warragul. Despite trekking through, at times, rather dense forest with the potential for spiders landing on my head, it was a beautiful day with absolute silence in some parts. A definite good spot for picnicking! Sally was on the hunt for a tawny frog mouthed bird (owl?) but unfortunately it was rather good at camouflaging itself and so we didn’t see one. We got further interesting environmental and wildlife facts from marine biologist Sally as we walked along – she is a handy person to have when you have no clue what you are looking at! Stopped in at Wild Dog Winery (again) for some wine tasting on the way home then onto Middels bar for a beer, or in Sally’s case a humungous piece of honeycomb caramel cake. Yum yum.
What else has been happening? Bob had another victory at the golf club with a gross score of 75 last weekend. He also took me for a golf lesson which (unsurprisingly) ended in a small tantrum. I am determined to master this game! More practice required. We are looking forward to Heather returning and Alan and Kelly visiting from Sydney next weekend for the Australian Open on Saturday 22nd. I believe the draw is out now, just need to check and see when Andy could potentially be playing! Better look out my Scotland sunglasses!!!!
Also planning a small engagement gathering in February and trying to get a final number for the wedding list (think we are on the 7th draft) – it’s all go at the moment!
Having loads of fun, so nice to see some old friends.
Miss you all back home, lots of love, Mo and Bob xxxx

2010 - Out with a bang!