Holiday snaps!

Above is Teddy getting too confident on his boogie board, we are worried that he will keep swimming to New Zealand! Right is the remnants of an easter egg picnic which Jane the cat wanted to join in on.

The 3 September girls all matching.Mum(10th) and I(18th) were surprised by turning up in the same clothes, so we matched Sienna(4th) too.

Below, Nic and Sienna play singstar after a potluck dinner at friends, Raewyn&Mal's.

Having Mum, Dad and Nic here has made me get out and enjoy this island for a few hours a day with them. That was what we loved about living near Noosa, another holiday town, was when friends and family came up to stay, we enjoyed being "on holiday" with them, and revert to doing the tourist thing, it really makes you enjoy what you have around you.

So I brought out my new underwater camera and cautiously allowed it to get wet, as Nic, Mum and I went snorkelling.WOW! I am so glad that I have it, now I can share the underwater world that I love so much with you.

Nic and I swam to the pontoon in the middle of Emily bay and had fun taking these shots, there are also photos of the side of my head as I adjusted my mask and snorkel, but you wont see those ones here.

Here are a few of my playmates, I have been playing with them and their family for years, it is nice to see them each time I come back here.
Of course, a few hours at the beach has to include collecting a small bag of beach glass, we were all on the look out, and had a great treasure hunt, especially for the rarer green'Emeralds'.

I now have a large bucket of family collected beach glass. so many beautiful sights, above the water and below! Hope you can come and see them for yourself one day.

Arrivals

We have been very excited and counting the sleeps until our first family visitors arrive.
My parents, Sally and Roy(Granny and Poppa) are coming and bringing my 10 year old nephew Nicholas with them.
Teddy was so excited that he couldn't even put his shoes on before leaving for the airport, he just kept running laps around the house, it was NO MORE SLEEPS!
We saw their plane appear out of the sky and then land, which sends Sienna running to me with fear of the noise of the reverse thrusts. We thought she would be used to it with the amount of time we spend watching the planes take off.
Then the plane cruised up to the terminal, we all waved madly, not sure what side of the plane they were on, It turns out they could see us all anyway.
Teddy was glued to the door of arrivals waiting, and then came the huge running cuddle, he really has missed his cousins and grandparents. Nic of course was all beams too, he has always loved his cousins.
We all came back to our place, where I could proudly offer my homemade lemonade scones with cream and guava jelly I also made.
There was much exchanging of supplies and Easter egg gifts and hugs and catching up, then we were off to Mary and Bernies, where my cousin John was cooking a fish fry for dinner. There were lots of extended family members coming tonight, so it was a big catch up for everyone.

Mary and Mum sitting together with Digby the dog.

Mum(Sally) with Basil the cat. Nicholas with the fish that is too yummy to give Roany the dog, but I am sure he got a few tidbits, as did the rest of the dogs.

It is lovely having Family together.

Farewell sweet Pamela

We will miss you our lovely friend,
You will never be Forgotten.

Up in the CLOUDS

It was a nice surprise when my cousin Charles came to our door on Easter Sunday afternoon and asked if I wanted to go up in the ultralight plane that he co-owns, as there was not a drop of wind. YES,YES,YES.
Brandt went up in December and we somehow never got around to my turn, but now it was, but when we got to the airport, there was already someone up in it, so we met back in half an hour(the airport is 5 minutes away at the end of the street, so no problem to go back and forth)
When we met back, it was well and truly 'the golden hour' and soon to be sunset, I knew there would be some lovely photos, but harder to choose which ones to put on this page.
At the end of flying over the island, Charles flew over Fletcher Christian apartments, so I could take some photos of them before landing a minute or two later and as we touched down, Charles said,"that was too good" so he accelerated to take off again with another view of Kingston's historic buildings and Emily bay, I loved it, what a unique way to view this lovely place, and the end to another perfect day.


This photo on the left shows Mary's Devon house(large red roof)the dormer windows in the roof is the loft where we comfortably lived for 8 weeks. The smaller red roof behind is Devonside, which is Charles and Kim's house, the green roof on the right is Devon cottage where John lives and the two big sheds are John's joinery and Charles' Hardware. Then follow that road for a minute up to our place.

Here is Fletcher Christian apartments in the main street, our house is the Grey T shaped roof at the back with all the lovely trees. The large green roof near our green water tank is the RSL club and if you look very closely, you may see a well worn path between our house and it that Brandt may have made.

The close up shows the pool, 4 original units opened in 1965, behind them, the green roof of the bbq, then our house and garage, then to the right, the long building of apartments and my office.

The brown 'roundabout' garden at the entrance is our new proud work of art, and there wil be a new blog about that shortly.

Easter comes early.

By a special request made to the Easter bunny to come a day early on Easter Saturday as the motel had a big turnaround morning where more than half our guests were flying out and were replaced an hour later with more guests.
Well he certainly complied with our request, and even though our children like to sleep in,I have heard stories of Children getting up really early on Easter morning to be delighted to see what the Easter bunny had brought them, But I wasn't prepared when I was woken up at 11:30pm on Good Friday, by a very excited little voice in my ear and strong waft of chocolate on his breath, Ted was whispering, not able to contain his excitement...."Mum, the Easter bunny has been and he left me a big, medium and small egg next to my bed and Sienna's bed!" I ushered him back to bed, trying to avoid the Easter egg trail that The E.bunny had left for the morning, when we got back there was the big and the small egg, but no medium, that explained the chocolate breath.
In the morning, there was more excitement again on the egg hunt, a yummy dippy egg breakfast in our new egg cups and then some cooking.
Teddy and I made Easter nests with the same recipe as chocolate spiders, on the back of the Changs fried noodle packet, they were delicious and a good gift (with my guava jelly I made last week) for our family dinner tonight and for all the Easter Sunday helpers here cleaning apartments.
We also made some banana leaf cones to put some eggs in for our guests, they added a nice subtropical touch to our Easter holiday makers.

We even had time to pop into the local toy shop, where it was a huge surprise to see the Easter bunny himself, and to give him a big Thank you cuddle.
Another delightful day.

P.S, because everything that comes to Norfolk is by sea or air freight, it sometimes gets a little expensive, so flat packing is the way to go, I had to laugh at the ultimate, A flat packed Easter egg, all you have to do is follow the instructions, melt it, pour it into a mould(not included) wrap it in foil and you have an Easter egg, provided, you don't eat the flat pack version first, which we promptly did! DELICIOUS.

Fish on Good Friday

We have always associated Good Friday with fish, well we did on this good Friday.
we bought a fish tank out of the local papers for sale section last week and had heard about some good catching spots around and thought we would give them a try.
So after a family picnic on the cliffs over looking Anson bay(That was the 1st photo on this blog.) We headed off to watermill valley and Kingston.
It was a bit muddy around the edges, and Ted had already got his shoes stuck in the mud, so we called in the professional, Brandt who was quickly transported back to his childhood, took the butterfly net in hand and in 3 scoops, had filled a few small buckets with almost 60 fish.
When we got them safely home and into the new tank, we were pleasantly surprised at how pretty the neon guppies are.
I suppose that if we got the same 3 scoops from back in Queensland, the majority of guppies would be cane toad tadpoles. (no frogs here or Lizards or snakes or venemous spiders either.)
Anyway, we have set up the tank with pebbles and coral and you guessed it, beach glass, even some marbles which Teddy bought at he carnival to put into the tank.
Well, we have all enjoyed our new living tv ever since, they are amazing to watch.

Easter carnival

The Easter weekend celebrations have begun! I have had 3 different Christmas's in Norfolk, but this is my first Easter, that I can remember.

The Island has been a buzz with even the service station attendants asking, are you going to the carnival?

It is amazing in such a short time, how many people you can meet in a small community and how fast you can become part of that community.

I was buying raffle tickets for the big Easter hamper, when the seller quoted my name, address and phone number to the helper writing it on the ticket, I shouldn't have been, but I still find the personal touch a surprise.

Well, the community was out in full swing, and we came to enjoy everything on offer.

What a magical evening....... it had turned a touch cool for the first time in the evening, but there were plenty of warm up activities and food on offer, like jumping castles and kettle fried fish and chips.

Teddy loved the blow up dinosaur that you crawled into his mouth, went down an internal slide, and walked through its bowels to come out of the tail, when Ted disappeared into the mouth, I asked the Dad manning the ride how much it was, he replied 50 cents, so when Teddy ran out of the tail and back into the mouth, I walked back over to the attendant and tried to give him another 50 cents, when he told me, it was 50 cents for 3 minutes! BARGAIN!

At the merry go round, run by the lions club, it was only 20 cents a go, I felt like I was in another era, those prices haven't been heard on the mainland for about 30 years, even for school fetes.

it was a wonderful night, we didn't win any raffles, but I got some great kids toys and books at the rummage sale and have lots of happy memories.

We had a good laugh when Brandt pointed out, that only on Norfolk Island would they put the dart game in front of the jumping castle, luckily no one missed...............

Angels in the Golden hour

There is a lovely time of day here, late in the afternoon for about an hour before the sky starts to take on its sunset colours, I call it the Golden hour.
The whole atmosphere for this hour seems to glow. It is hard to describe the ethereal quality that is in the air, I have tried to capture it on film, but the best place to view this special time is at Kingston, where the salty mists rise up in the late afternoon.
As Brandt was having a surf and I was playing with the kids among the rock pools(with my camera in hand) I asked Teddy and Sienna if I could change them into their good clothes to take photos of them in the golden hour Ted agreed which amazed me, and they played beautifully, and I am really happy with the photos and have organized a few to be blown up for my walls, hope you can come and see the golden hour with us sometime.