Sydney, Australia!

So I recently went to Sydney for a weeks work. Got a couple of days off over the weekend to see a few of the sights!

Sydney Opera House, this was a pretty amazing building. It was made using the science of geometry and utilising parts of a sphere. I'd always thought that it was just one building but in fact it's made up of four separate buildings. Probably better described below.

I wandered around the rest of the city on Anzac Day, 'Australia New Zealand Army Corps', the day hundreds of aussie and kiwi soldiers fought and died at Gallipoli in WWII. There were lots of men in full army regalia walking around, unfortunately I missed the march itself

:(

I have to put a picture of these guys in they were acting out a play in front of the opera house & I have never seen anything like it before, they were swaying themselves right over to each other & back again so naturally. As Amber is silly I have to explain that the poles are attached to the floor & they can't walk around - I think she thought they were on stilts!!

Here is the Harbour bridge, taken from next to the Opera house. It is quite a fantastic bridge that spans across the harbour which was filled up with lots of different types of boats, from old pirate ship looking boats to Jet boats.

So I wandered over the Harbour bride & took a photo looking back towards the city.

The things that I really liked about the city was the number of parks dotted around the city & the versatility of the buildings around the city.

So that was my day out & about in the city. I am looking forward to heading back there again soon!!

Dad

So a couple of weeks back we went up to Maungawhai Heads to stay in a batch with the old man and his girlfriend for a couple of days. The weather was impecable for 4 days straight, not a cloud in the sky.

Dad took us over to a group of massive sandhills for a picnic the first day we arrived in his motor boat (the wee orange thing in the background of this pic) Good thing about dads picnics, they always involve a good proportion of booze. And I was too polite to say it at the time, but yes, the peanuts were stale as all hell, they were dated past their use-by in '97 or something dad.

White sand, just stretched for miles and only accessible by boat so we had the place to ourselves...well, untill we were leaving...then another boat pulled up asking us for spare petrol. There ensued a conversation involving lots of phrases i didn't get 'only got two stroke mate', 'won't ruin me chugger will it?' yadda yadda yadda. All very civil, then the guy says, problem is, i ain't got no cash to pay ya for it. Dad says no worries, guy says, is there anything I can do in return, dad says, 'well mate, you can kiss my arse', guy says, 'bend over mate', at which point I felt it my duty to intervene.

Next day we drove ten minutes round the coast to Langs Beach, cracking day, brilliant surf, shame pete had left his board at the batch. We drank wine under the manuka trees, soaked up the sun and watched the surfers. Despite the look of calm behind pete in the pic, dad nearly drowned that day. Breakers coming in close, rising up a metre over your head before crashing hard onto the sand. Suffice to day dad got caught in the first of a rolling six and by the time I yelled across to him if he was alright his eyes were wide and blue with terror and he was gasping on all fours with the next wave rearing up behind him ready to crash on his back. Michelle was ripping off her tee on the beach ready to come in and luckily I, and then pete made over to him in time, hauling him up under the arms we staggered up the beach as the next wave smacked the shoreline with all the ferocity it could muster. We were lucky, the old man lives to fight another day ;)





Pete doing a Matilda impression.

cute as a muffin.







So second to last day we went to Te Ari point, excellent surf beach so we'd heard and pete strapped his board to the roof of the honda city. The sets were amazing, I can't say this because I have any experience surfing but because their were loads of surfers out making it look easy.

Bit of a distant shot but Michelle managed to get a couple of snaps of us up on the board, officially my first attempt at surfing ever and it was thoroughly brilliant.

pete surfing the white water.

Me surfing some white water. Mum said it looks like my board is just sitting on the sand, for the record, my board is not sitting on the sand.

Heads down, bums up a'cocklin. High on Pete's list of NZ experiences was to get some fresh shellfish. The best we had up at Mangawhai was some wee cockles so we dutifully trudged out on the second to last morning and picked up enough for a couple of shellfish fritters for tomorrows breakfast. Perfect way to end a perfect break.