Visiting Aukje

It was definitely time for a visit to the new place of Aukje, Arthur and the girls. They moved into their new place in Cockatoo in July and we couldn't find the time to travel to Victoria and a weekend we were both available any sooner. We flew into Avalon airport which is quite far from their place, but luckily Aukje picked us up in her new Hilux.We had a very relaxing and also tiring weekend.

Friday we had to pet the chickens, walk the pig, look at the horses and explore the boundaries of the property. We could unwind with a very nice BBQ afterwards.

    
       Lunch                          Walking the pig, SillyToes

    
The gumtrees on the property    Bregje and Arjan             

Chickens!
         
          The house                   Aukjes famous entree

Saturday was a very warm and sunny day. After the morning ritual of feeding  all the livestock, replanting the avocados and playing hide-and-seek it was time for brekkie. After that time for serious business, we had to catch Yabbies at a local yabbie-farm. It turns out you catch them by throwing a line with some meat on it in the water, and carefully watch it (just like fishing). If something is eating from the meat, carefully reel in the piece of string and put a little net behind the meat (they walk forward and swim backward); then scoop up the yabbie. After a while we caught 3 yabbies amongst the 7 of us, so unfortunately not enough for a decent meal. So we just had to go to that nice restaurant in Beaconsfield Upper.

    
Arthur and Hans' joint effort    Now that's a big yabbie

    

Sunday we thought we might as well have breakfast in the local teashop (less eggs to cook for Aukje), so we drove out to Gembrook where they have a monthly sustainable market. We strolled the market, bought organic asparagus, tapenade and pesto. The steam train, Puffing Billy runs a regular service to Gembrook as well, a must see in this village. After all the excitement it was time for more nature, so we went for a bushwalk in Kurt Kiln park. After we were all tired it was time for some final drinks and dips before Arthur drove us back to the airport.

    
Puffing Billy in Gembrook      Petting Zoo at the markets    

We had a wonderful time and cant wait to go back again for a lazy weekend in the countryside.

You can also read the story Aukje wrote on her blog (in Dutch).

our Truck !

Since summer is coming and we definitely want to go and see some more of the Australian countryside, we decided the time has come to get ourselves some wheels. After an intensive search we found the ideal city-car: a Nissan Patrol.

It's a 2002 Nissan Patrol GU III DX, with a 3.0 litre Turbo Diesel with Intercooler. It has a Bullbar with electric winch, a towbar and sidesteps, differential locking and manual transmission (no problems for us Europeans). It has a fuel capacity of 125 litres of diesel divided over a main and a sub tank.

Now we need to find some good places to take it for a ride.

    

    

Spring is in the air !

September 1st is officially the first day of spring in the southern hemisphere. That day was a really nice day already but now it looks like the weather is really improving.

    

Together with Jan-Jaap we took a walk from Bronte to Bondi. At Bondi we sat on the beach, did some more shopping and had dinner. Jan-Jaap went back to Shanghai the next day, and is moving back to Europe a few days later.

    

Brissie

Because our friend Jan-Jaap was over for 2 weeks, we decided to take a long weekend off and fly towards the sunshine. We decided on Brisbane because it was a long time ago we had been there. We just did some shopping, eating, going out and sightseeing.

Brisbane and the river

One day we drove to the sunshine coast and visited Bribie Island, Bribie Island is a large sand island in the northern part of Moreton Bay. The island is separated from the mainland by the Pumicestone Passage, named by Captain James Cook, who noted small floating pieces of pumice.

     
          a Kookaburra             the beach at Bribie Island

Life is hard, eating King Crab again !