Summer Bay

Hey there folks

Well Gav is away working in a place called 'Yas'(bit of a weird name!) this week and has left me with the task of posting on our blog. So what have we been up to in the last couple of weeks? Hmmm, working, working and more working. However, we have had time to have fun and have been to a lovely wedding to see our new Oz friends Jen and Steve get married. It was a really wonderful day and we were very honoured to have been invited. I have also baked a huge Christmas cake which we will probably have to give out to the street as we will never be able to eat it all. Don't know what I was thinking but Gav seems happy that there will be lots of cake for him. For those who don't know about him and Christmas cake I will enlighten you. When he was a wee boy his mum went to get the Christmas cake she had baked a couple of weeks before Christmas to decorate it but she couldn't find it. Christmas came and went but there was no Christmas cake that year. One day she was cleaning his room and low and behold under his bed she found a half eaten Christmas cake. So don't ever leave Gav alone with your Christmas cake!

Last weekend we took a trip to The Northern Beaches of Sydney which was great fun. The weather was fab and the sea was nice and warm. The big bonus was we went to Palm Beach which is also known as Summer Bay! This is where home and away is filmed and Gav was like an excited schoolkid, especially when he saw the club house with the name A. Stewart on it. He also put on his old labcoat and did a handstand in the sea to celebrate graduating as a Dr. If we had been in Scotland he would have been graduating and so this was how he celebrated.... I didn't ask why, I just went along with it and took the pictures!

Gav and his handstand:


Gav and Summer Bay:


Gav and his trusty lab coat:


Well, till our next blog when the wonderful Gav will have returned from Yas we hope you have a good week.

Hi there everybody.

Sorry for the long time since we last posted a blog, no excuses, we should have been better at keeping in touch. Someone who will remain anonymous (lets just call her Judith McFarlane for arguments sake) told us to get our fingers out (always thought that was a strange saying, what are you going to do walking around with your fingers stretched out infront of you) and get the next blog done. So here you go Miss Anon of Bridge of Allan here is the update of what Gav and Jess have been getting up to! Needless to say the following blog will contain beautiful pictures (not just of the wife) and at least one embarrassing story. So where did we leave you last time? Yeah we were just about to head to Jervis Bay for the weekend. Jervis bay is situated Between Sydney and Canberra, and is a coastal region that boasts beautiful bush walks and beaches, which are said to hold the guinness world record for the whitest sands in the world. On the Saturday morning we woke up and drove along the coast and stopped off at all the little beaches and walked along the white sand (take my word for it, it was certainly white!) and we even went for a swim in the sea (big thing for Jess with her phobia of sharks but having watched many Steve Irwin shows and Crocodile Dundee, one and two, i was sure that anything lurking in the sea wouldn't stand a chance).


We then went for a bush walk in Boodaree national park and we saw our first wild Kangaroo! We didn't realise how big they were and when we were walking through the bush we must have disturbed these two kangaroos and they lept up and bounced off. We got quite a shock when they jumped up and i think i even made my wildlife warning call, I thought that all these kangaroos were meant to be tied down (sport) and not jumping around all over the joint. After this we went to a local caravan park which is full of wild kangaroos to get some pictures, we even saw a mother kangaroo with a baby in her pouch.

On the Sunday on our way home to Sydney we drove back through a place called Kangaroo valley. This was really green and lush which reminded us of Scotland. We stopped off at Fitzroy falls which was a stunning waterfall.

Last weekend we drove to a place called Wiseman's Ferry, which is where the convicts built a road (The great old northern road)linking Sydney to Hunter's Valley. We had a beautiful walk up this road through the bush and gumtree forest. It was really interesting to read from the signs how they had built it and also to see the grafitti that the convicts etched into the stone as they worked their way along (i.e E.W 1871).

Apart from all that we have been working and continuing to meet new people. We have even met a guy called bruce! Its great when you can say G'day Bruce when you see him, makes you feel like a proper aussie. We must invite him to a BBQ where we are cooking shrimps, I think the combination of saying G'day Bruce throw another shrimp on the barbie would be one of the most memorable experiences we could ever have (in our whole lives).
The other thing that we have done is go to a poker night in the local pub. We were invited to go to this event which is a professionally arranged event, but as neither of us have ever played poker before, let alone competitively we were a little hestitant to go. But once it was pointed out that it was free we were there! Having never played poker we had a crash course from our friends what to do and the etiquette that had to be followed. This is probably the part of the blog where you might think something embarrasing happened, of course you would be right in thinking so. There were about 10 tables and you sat down and were given your chips and then play commenced on all tables, if you lost all your chips you were out simple as that and play went on until there was one person out of about 80 left. You were free to move around the tables as long as there was space, but we opted to go to a friendly looking table with people who might show us a bit of mercy. The cards were delt and Jess was really nervous and i was sitting there like i was cool hand look with my poker face on (i had practiced it for days) and i was looking around me trying to pick up tips. Then suddenly people started making bets and it was my turn i just did what everone else did and i quietly turned to my poker playing friend and asked when i was meant to look at my cards, to which he replied that i should have already looked at them. I didnt think i could look at them again so i just kept on nervously betting. Once the 5 cards in the middle were delt the people who hadnt folded had to turn their cards. There was only ever going to be one winner! Mr Mckinley on his first ever hand of poker won with a flush!!! I should have played it cool but i was so overcome by excitment that i announced that i had never played before and i didnt even look at my cards. Whilst i basked in my glory the table was divided between jealousy and disgust. All in all we had a great night and Mr Mckinley stayed in for over 2 hours, one guy even asked me was i taking the xxxx or had i never played before, i told him to decide for himself!
We have nothing planned for this weekend, i reckon we will have a much needed relaxing weekend (we do actually work when we are here, the alarm going off at 5.30am is not always a welcomed noise!) and plan what we want to do in the forthcoming weeks.

The Blue Mountains

Hey folks

Just a short blog as we wanted to show you some pics from the Blue Mountains which we visited last Saturday. We also wanted to report that Thundercat survived her first road trip. So she has officially been broken in and we will now commence our travels!

The Blue Mountains are about an hours drive from Sydney and they get their name from the blue mist that rises from millions of Eucalyptus Trees (also known as Gum Trees) this mist hangs in the mountain air and tinges the sky.

Here are a couple of pics:

The famous Three Sisters - Katoomba


Us at George Phillips Lookout - Blackheath


A view from our Bushwalk to Katoomba Falls


This weekend we are off to Jervis Bay so will blog again next week.

Whale hello there (this fantastic pun will make sense later!)

Howdy doody people.

Gav and Jess here. Might as well get the shocking news out of the way at the start.... we are coming home early. Really haven't enjoyed the weather and the laid back pace of life and the lack of stress and hassle. Aye right you won't be seeing this laddie and lassie for a good while yet! Still having a ball (although not a football, still missing it terribly but i am sure Jess will be able to get through this tough patch). We are both still working hard but we are finding the time to spend together and have those wee romantic times (bag of chips and a can of coke!). We have even taken up swimming together in the local outdoor pool! I haven't swam in years, maybe the last time was jumping in the pool in my pyjamas trying to save a black brick from drowning. But we are getting better and really enjoying the exercise and both having an interest in same hobby.
Last weekend we went Whale watching. We left the harbour and passed the bridge and opera house which was cool but what we were really there to see were the whales. When we first got on the boat the captain and his mate gave us all an info sheet about humpbacks and what to look out for, i.e blows, fins ect and when we saw them we were to shout out. We took the sheets but deep down we thought that someone who had studied Aquaculture and his wife who had long suffered fishy stuff would know what a whale looked like.
Not too long out, Dr Mckinley spotted something in the water not even 10 meters away, with a loud and confident shout i informed my lesser educated shipmates " Dolphin, Dolphin!". My moment of elation was quickly and somewhat cruely cut short by the voice of the ship worker person shout over me "No, it's a seal".
Jess found this hugely amusing and i dropped my head once again to study the ocean...... 10 years of studying children, that's where it gets you.
To cut a long story short we didn't see any whales that day but we did see some albatross. Thankfully the company that we went with allow you to keep on coming back until you see whales so we weren't to upset. Whilst we didn't have a whale of a time the trip had certainly got our seal of approval (yes i have spent the blog building up to that) so we booked to go back out again on the Sunday. Below are some of the pictures of the whales that we saw, they were a female humpback and her calf. What an amazing site it was, although they didn't jump out of the water they did criuse on the surface and then flick their tails to dive down. You will also note in the picture of Jess that there are some Japanese tourists with their heads down, these people certainly didnt have a whale of a time!

Humpback's Whale Tail.. we were not fast enough on our camera:


Jess:


Some ill tourists:


The other bit of news is that we have finally got a picture of our little car that we bought for 80 pounds. This little beauty has a number of very attractive features including a C.D player, electric windows, central locking which sometimes works and a drinks holder on the passenger side. Not bad for a 1986 volvo! But the best part of it is that it has a sports exhaust on it and therefore it purrs like a cat (snores like an asthmatic elephant depends on how you look at it) therefore it is quite the attention puller! Because of it's sound and sleek appearance we have called her "Thundercat".



Tomorrow we are both off and we are going to take a drive up into the blue mountains, from the picutres we have seen it looks amazing. And next weekend i think we are going to head off as we are both off on the Saturday and Sunday to a beautiful coastal region called Jervis Bay.

Gav's first Haircut

I will let Gav tell you about his first haircut in a wee moment but first I thought you would like to see a couple of pics from our Manly trip last weekend, can't believe it was a week ago! We had a wonderful day in Manly which is a suburb of Sydney, but you can take the ferry to reach it. It was lovely to sit and drink hot chocolate looking out at the ocean and hearing the lapping of the waves crash against the beach... blissful! We also did a walk through some of their national park and climbed up to a view point on a cliff. Here is a pic from the viewpoint:



On the way home we got a great view of the Sydney bridge and opera house all lit up. Here is a pic of the Opera house.



Work is going well and both Gav and I are enjoying working. Yes Jude I do have to make coffees and the first time I heard flat white, my reaction was the same as yours.. they also have a long black.. strange people! Gav is already looking very tanned, purely because he is not using suncream! You can gather that I am not impressed!!! He is sitting giggling beside me. However, on Wednesday this week he came home and presented me with a beautiful bunch of flowers,



needless to say I was totally overcome and forgot all about telling him off for not wearing suncream. I can forsee lots of flowers in the future if he intends to try and distract me from telling him to wear suncream.

Right, will hand over to Gav as he has a few stories he wants to tell you.

Gav the builder can he fix it! Gav the builder....... probably not, but he can dig holes, paint, shovel and fetch the morning coffee's. Well here i am once again let loose on the internet, i have to be honest and say that i had mixed reviews about my last blog but i wont let a few hecklers put me down. A lot has happened since i last wrote to you about my now famous ninja skills but as i said i don't want to talk about that. All this shovelling and digging and lifting seems to be paying off as a couple of days ago i noticed what appears to be the start of a muscle. In a flurry of excitment i decided that i needed a haircut to match my now new arnie/rocky/superman physique. I enlisted the help of my wife who has told me now for many years that she is an excellent hair cutter person (great english) but the only victim that i know of her's is her wee bro johnny who walked away with a fringe that appeared to be a result of a tag team cutting by Freddie Kruggar and Stevie Wonder. But as marriage is about trust i finally gave in and accepted her payment of 100 dollars to practice her skills on my golden locks. Here are the results i will let you all make your own minds up about it but i think it looks alright (i hear that denial is normally the first emotion that people who suffer a trauma go through). However the results of an extensive poll showed that i am still the most handsome man walking about on this earth (results gathered from interviewing a Mrs J McKinley).

Before


During


After


Anyway I have one other story to tell you all about. The work that i do is basically turning up to peoples houses and doing landscaping and general improvements like decking, driveways, fencing, stonework etc. In other words i am like a Handy Andy of Oz (or rather the bloke that Andy tells what to do!). I have seen lots of great houses as all our clients arent short of a bob or two, however they seem to forget how to make a cup of coffee! The last job i was on was a farm owned by a family of nut cases. No joking they are real wack jobs who have a huge house and a huge expanse of land in which they are making a kind of farm/zoo. They have three Al pacas (basically lama's but i was told not to call them lama's, it's funny as you know how i forget to do these things.....) loads of chickens, fancy pigeons, fancy turkey things, two horses and a reindeer! I was standing in the middle of Australia stroking a reindeer called bambi ( I didn't want to point out that bambi wasn't a reindeer as i had already mentioned the lamas like three times at this point!). But these guys are notorious to work for and none of our guys want to go there as they are so fussy about everything and watch continually out of their windows at what you are doing. I was told about them before i went to work there, and specifically about their ten year old boy who once brought a lama, sorry Al paca placenta to school for show and tell! The job that they wanted us to do was a really boring job that no one wanted to do so the boss in his wisdom of selecting the best qualified picked me and two others to go and sieve huge mounds of soil that they had got for free. The aim was to remove the stones and then go and fill in any holes in the ground that we could see. If you haven't already picked up on how stupid this is, basically the owners want this telly tubby looking farm with no holes in the ground that originate from the chickens pecking or the lamas and horses running around. They even want the natural bumps and hollows in the ground evened out. Pack of muppets they are, but hey its been fun to compete with chickens who are intent in pecking out the soil that you have just put in. And no the owners won't lock the chickens up when we work, sad as they seem to get covered in soil for some strange unknown reason.....

Anyway must go here as i have a chicken in the oven and lama sauages cooking.

Hope you are all well.

Gav and Jess

Nelson Bay

Well hello there! So whilst I was away Gav snuck on and painted this glorious picture of himself as the fearless spider killer..... if only you had been here to see his reaction. However, he did kill the thing so I can't take that away from him, even if he was yelping!

Another glorious day here in Sydney, clear blue skies not a cloud in sight and roughly around 24 degrees! Bliss!

We thought you might like to see a couple of photo's from our trip to Nelson Bay so here you are:

View from halfway up Mount Tomaree


Our Footprints in the sand at Nelson Bay


Us with some Pelicans


Gav and I are both working now, which is great. Gav is labouring away and he is enjoying being outside and working on his tan. He promises me he will wear suncream but I have yet to find any evidence of this as the suncream bottle is still lying in our draw. I am working at a gourmet sandwich shop which is very different but I am enjoying it. It is basically a bar with lots of different fillings and breads and customers come and tell me what they want on their sandwich and I make it for them infront of them. Lin is letting me use her bike to cycle to work and it takes about 15/20 mins. The past few days this magpie has been swooping down to try and get my hair and it is really annoying and quite scary! Apparently that is common here and so I need to work out a way of keeping all my hair under my helmet.

This weekend we are going to take a boat to Manly which is a big surfing place and it looks really beautiful.

From zero to hero!

Howdy all!


This is Gav making his first ever blog entry all on his own, and for good reason too. In the last post my character underwent a vicious slur and i would like to clean that little matter up before i go any further. As you have all been informed, I was the victim of an unprovoked attack by a beetle like creature which was roughly the size of a small dog. However, what proceeded this incident was wrongly reported. Using my famous ninja like reflexes i let out a mighty roar to ward off the beast and to alert the rest of my fellow gardeners (who are not trained ninja's like myself) to the potential danger. As we are at the other side of the world i forgot that my mighty roar would come out like a screech, but thankfully it worked anyway.

I can only put down the mocking actions of my wife and friends down to post traumatic stress that they incurred during this potentially fatal incident. However i knew that my time would soon come to restore respect within the baulkham hills camp and even further afield.

Not even half an hour ago did this very time arise and i can report that my house mates are looking at me in a new found respect. I had just come into the house from the garden and i heard Jess call out from the bedroom something like


"Help, help, I'm a poor weak woman i need the help of a quick thinking ninja"


Well, immediately i ran to the room in a cross between Steve Irwin, David Hasslehoff and Batman. On arrival i was met by one of the most deadliest spiders in the world - the funnel web spider (before what happened next i had time to take a picture)

On sizing up my new nemsis i grabbed my terminating weapon (designed by ancient ninja warriors) and without any thought for my own safety threw myself at the intruder. By this time my housemates were shaking in the corner (I heard one even between their snotty whimpers cry that no one could possibly save us now) however i was in warrior mode and in the blink of an eye i unleashed a deadly blow to my eight-legged enemy.

I then turned to my shaking housemates and told them to open their eyes, i had taken care of the monster that dared to enter my home that they shared with me. I was greeted with huge applause and even promises that they would all name their first born after me. However, being the type of guy that i am i just whispered in a humble but strong superhero type way "hush, it was nothing, that's what i have been called to do"

Then I walked out the room and dragged the beast behind me and disposed of its limp frame in the back garden.

That's about all i want to mention about this incident, frankly i would like to hear no more of this hero talk. I am just glad that there was at least one person present there tonight with nerves of steel and that no one was injured. The fact that my character has been restored through this incident is meerly just a bi-product. Anyway i must go on now as i need my bed, but one other note of interest is that we bought a car today for eighty pounds! Bargain! Will post some pictures of the chariot when we take some.

Will post soon!

Gav