smelling the roses (and staring at the bridge)

piero lives in the present. i don’t.

i live in the tomorrow.

lots of ‘happiness’ gurus say living in the present is one of the best strategies to ensuring you are happy. and i think i agree.

living in the tomorrow has its advantages though. when you have 4 friends crashing at your place, you think about practical things like linen, towels and toilet paper. but even typing that sentence re-enforced the gurus theory: towels, linen and toilet paper don’t equal happiness.

at doyle’s fish and chips (watson bay), we had a magnificent view of sydney harbour,  the city skyline and the bridge. it was powerful. it was stunning. i was blessed to own it there and then. i could of sat and stared and it for ages but... part of me wanted to move on. to go and do the next thing. wanting to experience new things isn’t bad – it's a trait i rarely see in dull people – but not appreciating what you’ve got is.

fortunately, despite my internal discomfort of sitting and staring at the beauty for a long time, one of my dining companions asked to stay longer. they too enjoy experiencing the new, but they were wise enough to know the value of living in the present. 

it’s hammer(ilton island) time

a weekend on a tropical island.

it’s an emotive phrase. andrea from italy said it was a must on his to-do-in-australia list. dave from the uk said much the same thing.

for me... mmeeehhhh... not so much. you see, growing up in hot-and-sticky-brisbane, i dreamt of europe. i had a map of the world on my wall and i used to lie on my bed and stare at the old continent. i wondered what it looked like, what all those languages sounded like and i imagined all the battles that those countries had fought against each other over the centuries. it was completely foreign to me. it seemed so magically wonderful.

for my friends from italy and uk - and i guess most of the world’s population - however, it is the tropics that are foreign.

while andrea and his mother, maria pia, were in town, we spent four days on hamilton island – a resort island in the whitsundays off the coast of queensland.

without the urging of foreigners, i think i would have quite happily lived me life without going... but that would have been a mistake.

hamilton island is beautiful. absolutely stunningly beautiful. i won’t lie and say the resort was perfect (seriously – fix your food offering people), but it was a magical four days. 

where are the kangaroos?

our sydney friend jason promised us and our italian guests (maria pia and andrea) a tour of kangaroo valley, south of sydney. mentally i ticked the ‘show our foreign guests some wild kangaroos’ box.

it was then with some surprise i heard jason say: ‘oh, you wont see any kangaroos. cows. lots of cows. but not any kangaroos’. i felt like i had been missold.

i was wrong. kangaroo valley was magnificent! i was gobsmacked by just how beautiful this part of the country was. it was lush. it was green. it was beautiful in a way that reminded me of england.

having travelled to new places in australia since i’ve been back, i realised how much of my country i just don’t know. i think i just always assumed that australia looked like the south-east corner of queensland where i grew up.

come to think of it, i didn’t see many kangaroos growing up either.

the waterfalls

on the way to kangaroo valley 

bundaberg dreaming

when i was in london, i moved flat/house/pad 9 times. i hate it. i hate packing up my stuff. i hate unpacking my stuff. i hate carrying large, heavy, odd-shaped objects through smaller, rectangular doors.

given this, i was surprised then when i found myself telling my brother i was heading up to bundaberg to help him move house. in fairness, i think he was surprised too.

i can’t say i enjoyed the moving, but it was a great weekend. i got to see the first house my little brother bought, i got to spend time with my gorgeous nephew jack and i caught up with my brother, sister-in-law and mum (who decided to join in the house moving fun).

now, back in sydney, i get to see what changes they’re making to their house through the medium of facebook. and best of all, when my sister-in-law texted me to tell me jack took his first step, i knew exactly where he did it.

andrew, loan, jack, mum and dave

escaping the eastern suburbs

in march, mum flew from brisbane to spend a week with us in sydney. i was excited to show mum my sydney and i think mum was equally as excited to re-discover her birth city.

until mum’s arrival, i hadn’t left the eastern surburbs – sydney’s glorious middle class bubble. with mum as my tour guide, i took my first steps out of my bubble and in return took mum to a few of my fav sydney places.

some of the highlights were: 

• catching the ferry to watson bay and finding out more about the dunbar shipwreck
• exploring balmain’s food strip
• taking mum to my favourite sydney restaurant, smiths of bayswater – butchers and wine merchant  
• walking around luna park – an amusement park that overlooks sydney’s cbd
• finishing up with lunch at icebergs overlooking beautiful bondi beach

coming together

sometimes, it all just comes together.

the players: piero’s mamma (maria pia) and fratello (andrea) are visiting from sardina. they have our spare room. crashing on our living room floor are our london friends dave and marta.

further up north, jaimee has touched down in brisbane for a mad 10-day visit of family, friends and home.

touring victoria are cynthia and gez – part of the london gang who now live in sydney.

the challenge: i want to catch up with jaimee, but i’m entertaining guests in sydney. gez and cynth want to catch up with mutual friends dave and marta but are holidaying in victoria. and piero needs to show his family some australian countryside.  

the solution: move everyone to the hunter valley wine region. and add a few more friends to boot!

i hired a 7-seater and drove piero, maria pia, andrea, marta and dave to the hunter. on the way, we picked up jaimee fresh off her flight from brisbane.

on saturday, cynth and gez arrived to take part in the day’s wine tasting. that night they headed back to sydney with jaimee who got her 9pm flight back to brisbane to continue her whirlwind adventure down under. perfect!

along the way we were joined by good friends emily, katie and melanie.  

was it worth that much coordination? i think the pics answer that!

the hunter valley highlights:

• we stayed at splinter's guest house in pokolbin
• we ate at botanica and mojo’s
• wineries i would rate are: scarborough, mistletoe and ernest hill.
• heading there, we drove the tourist route from sydney and on the way back we went via lake macquarie (the actual lake that is, not the town), the entrance and showed our european mates something they don’t always see: the pacific ocean.



changing seasons

the symbols of winter appeared. overnight. unannounced.

i found myself stopping. looking. mentally taking stock. the seasons were changing. was i ready?

you see in london, the approach of winter is fearful. my birthday always fell during that awful october week when british summer time ended, the clocks went forward an hour and darkness fell at 430pm. around the corner lurked winter chill, long-lasting colds and an unforgiving blip in london’s joie de vivre.

today, i sat at tigers bakers cafe, pondering the above. and then it hit me: i’m in sydney! winter isn’t to be feared. the lead up to winter is beautiful – the chill arrives with a freshness, leaves turn a beautiful orange and the sun still shines. truly, one of life’s greatest pleasures must be sunshine on your face during a winter’s day.

on the way home, i passed the symbols of winter which kicked started this entry; they are the rugby posts in the park opposite. you see, back in high school, after the easter holiday, the oval’s prized cricket pitch was left to fade while rugby posts were erected at either end of the field. until i saw them in rushcutter's bay park i had no idea i associated them so strongly with winter. i guess they are just another lifelong spill over from my five years of higher education.

the rugby posts in rushcutter's bay park

sunshine on a winter's (ok... autumn) day