CAT KARMA

I have always had bad cat Karma, as a child I was scratched and bitten, I couldn't explain it as I was such an animal lover. Even in my early twenties, while visiting my Nana in hospital I had a cat from the nurses quarters fly out of nowhere, land on my head and bite me.

Now after no new cat injuries for at least 10 years, I feel like a little window is opening up from my own early childhood and I can see where my bad cat karma began..........

Sienna is also a animal lover, she loves them too much, and as I spend my days saying "Sienna, put the cat down", "Sienna leave Jane alone" and "please don't pick the cat up by her head"

It is all feeling very familiar to me.

I still want to give dogs and rabbits and cats and guinea pigs etc big cuddly squeezes to let them know that I love them.

End of the mystery of my cat karma as they don't like to be squeezed or picked up affectionately by their heads, they must have sent the message around to all their cat buddies Australia wide.

I remember one particularly nasty scratch that I received on my cheek from Gloria and Bob's cat while on holiday with them in Corowa, I may have been about Teddy's age or about 7.

Gloria was my Mum's childhood pen friend when she was still living in England, Ironically, as I write this, I am preparing for Bob and Gloria to come and stay here with us next week.

In the meantime, it looks as though the cat karma has passed through to the next generation, even after a few scratches, hisses and bites, Sienna still insists on carrying our poor long suffering and very patient inherited cat around with with her.

until Jane finally escapes.

Growing up so fast!

Sienna at 22 months with a giant photo of herself at 3 months of age, in the same cot at my parents place.

Can you believe it, I blinked and my 'little' girl is turning TWO in 3 weeks time.

This was our little Teddy when we came to Norfolk Island in December 2004, he was only 18 months old then.

Now at 4, he is still our little man which can only enjoy for such a little time before he is grown up in a ready to start school kind of way.

Sienna surprises us constantly with what she picks up and learns from everywhere, most people are so genuinely surprised that she is still only one year old.

Teddy has been riding his bike up and down our long driveway and around and around the roundabout garden, he has become so confident on his bike which is great,

Little Miss Confidence herself, has no fear and tried to ride Ted's bike down the driveway alone, at least she put his helmet on first.

Next time I blink, they will be riding off to school together.

A Wonderful winters day!

Norfolk Island has no frosts during winter, but lovely warm and sunny winter days, with the occasional cold wind blowing in from either New Zealand or Australia and sometimes a downpour of rain or two followed by brief grey skies or low cloud and mist shrouding Mount Pitt.

But there was none of the variable weather changes on Thursday, just sun and a slight breeze on the water.

Some of our lovely guests here at Fletcher Christian took Teddy out with their 4 year old boy, Joel, to go fishing from the Pier at Kingston.

Sienna and I caught up with them at Emily bay, after both boys had had a splash in the water with their clothes on and were now wearing nothing but a towel.

When Teddy saw me coming, he took great delight in dropping the towel and streaking across the beach, followed by Joel and then by Sienna trying to tug her clothes off too.

Can you believe this perfect winter day, no one on the beach except for our 3 children running bare and a group of tourists on the glass bottom boat looking at the tropical fish and corals.

Hope these pictures warm up your winters day.

A football kind of week.

Brandt is really enjoying his time playing with the Creaky old Convicts in the Golden oldies Rugby competition. Usually the boys have their usual training session down on the playing fields at Kingston, but this week, we had 2 visiting teams from Queensland, one last weekend, the XXXX team from Brisbane, named after their sponsor and doing their sponsor proud by drinking the island's supply of it and this week it was the Bundaburg Rum ruckers.

I haven't gone out with the team tonight, but Brandt is there giving me a chance to catch up on some blogging.

Last weeks game was a fun event, written up beautifully by MAD DOG from the XXXX team and published in the local paper.

XXXX Golden Oldies take on the Creaky Old Convicts
The XXXX Golden Oldies from Ballymore travelled to Norfolk Island to challenge the Creaky Old Convicts to a game of Rugby.
Wednesday 25 July and the bags are packed, cab booked for a short trip to the airport and as usual the M1 has had a major and traffic is literally going backwards. What is normally an $18.00 ride turns into a $41.50 ride. This is not looking good for a trip to a South Pacific Island made famous by Lieutenant Phillip Gidley King – first Governor of Norfolk Island, one time Governor of Australia, and third Governor of Norfolk Island (well some folks just can’t make up their minds where they want to be). Anyway the Goldies meet at the airport and first order of the day is 27 gold stubbies thanks!
NorfolkAir welcomed us aboard and in true naïve style placed us all at the back of the plane – nearest the toilets and also the bar – big mistake. The loveliest mannered hosties (oops – cabin crew) looked after the tour party of 27 like we were royalty. They were so nice they could have been someone’s (younger) sister.
We arrived in style and the cabin crew really looked after our Cyril (Cyril Andrews played for Australia in a rugby match against South Africa in 1938 – so at 92 and rather deaf he is a gentleman but can be a handful) during the 120 minute flight.

As we cleared customs we were met by members of the Creaky Old Convicts and their partners as well as Lettuce – the tour operator and his driver – Rat Guard and Pip the great lady who has settled for a French Bloke. The festivities have started.
Wednesday evening a game of touch was organised to loosen up tight muscles from a short well appointed air ride followed by a sumptuous bar-b-que dinner all washed down with volumes of our sponsors thirst quenching ale. Thursday we took a complimentary half day tour of the island and gained the high and higher points of a paradise in the South Pacific. Thursday afternoon we broke away and all did a bit of our own things followed by a meeting at the local Lawn Bowls club for a game of barefoot bowls – and just a word to the wise the bar staff were exceptional and scoured the island for alcohol as we tried our best to drink the place dry.
Friday we filled up the day with an early morning bush walk though sub-tropical rain forests followed by a brilliant breakfast cooked on a bar-b-que by Rachel and her 20 day old son. After this we took a farm and industry tour and devoured the wines at the island winery followed by a farm visit and polished off at the island Liqueur distillery. It can be said that at this point the island economy was beginning to prosper very nicely. Friday was rounded out with a Fish Fry – a local tradition and the food was brilliant which requires a big thanks to Truck and his happy band.
Saturday morning was free to allow us finely tuned athletes to focus on the game ahead – most were found at places where alcohol was sold, something very unexpected. After extensive advertising over the local radio about this game of rugby being one of the highlights of the season we meandered towards the historic parade grounds of the second settlement – made by convict labour, usurped by officers and now enjoyed by the descendants of convicts and mutineers – there is some justice in this world, rough justice HOWEVER justice all the same. The lush green fields, with temporary posts in place made a resplendent view much photographed by the Brisbane players who have been suffering drought conditions for some 4 years now. Most had forgotten to bring long tags so we were adapting the game plan as we went.
Now the Creaky Old Convicts were mustering at one end near a very old stone building and we were open to the elements – beautiful warm winters days with clear blue skies and golden sunshine – temperature somewhere
8
near the mild 19’s C. The wives and partners on tour had prepared and formed as a cheer squad and ironically as it may sound their chant sent shivers down the spine of every XXXX Golden Oldies playing this game – it was along the lines of No Win – NO SEX. Now I have had coaches place pressure upon a team before but this was ridiculous. After a rendition of the Australian national anthem sung by highly agitated players, all full and a bit of adrenaline running wild we took the field.
Now it is easy to see why the mutineers were never caught – they have passed down the fleet of foot necessary to evade capture and dodging a tackle was child’s play. A fantastic fast and solidly contestable game ebbed and flowed. The XXXX Goldies were at the ebbing end and the Creaky Old convicts were on the flowing side. All was made memorable by Cyril Andrews, fully decked out in kit including moulded soul touch boots made a cameo appearance. At 92 the old winger / centre carved up the convicts, scored under the posts and then to add insult to injury converted his own try – much to the delight of the large crowd who had formed a ring around the grounds. Maybe just maybe the Australian convicts were a bit tougher, especially in the old days!!

The game finished with who knows who was playing for who – many had swapped sides and we think this was the islanders ways of being able to take a “legal” swipe at someone – especially the local policeman who had joined the ranks of players. This was a rousing game full of run and ruck, with fantastic good nature every across the paddock.
Trading of trophies and then the obligatory “sharing of a drink” before we were whisked off to the local club for dinner and song. The Norfolk blokes made brilliant hosts and are keen to welcome anyone from around the world to their door. We have to thank Gary Dowling and Mal Tarrant for organising the game, Ewan Wilson (CEO of NorfolkAir) for great flights and in-flight service (and if we had only known he was on the field we may have taken it easy on him – Nah, just kidding) as well as Lettuce (Les of Bounty Tours) and Juliette from Burnt Pine travel.
WE have agreed that we must all return – merely to recapture our honour – not to relive the best 5 day tour ever!!
Written by Mad dog.

Also this by Gaelene in the other local paper Norfolk windows online....

Visitor of the week
This week we have on island the Ballymore XXXX Golden Oldies football club from Queensland. The team came over to challenge Norfolk’s Creaky Ol’ Convicts in a game of Rugby League.
Twenty players and eight their supporters arrived on Wednesday from Brisbane for a few days holiday, and to play football. We were able to catch up with three members of their team for a quick interview down at the Kingston oval on Saturday after their game.
Cyril Andrews is 90 years young and the senior member of the team. Cyril has been playing football since his school years in 1928. He was born and raised in Brisbane and has lived there all of his life. (photo L shows Cyril kicking a goal)
When Cyril left school there weren’t many jobs around and he completed a six year boot making apprenticeship. He worked for one week as a boot maker then gave that up to work in the building trade. However, Cyril made is own football boots to play Rugby against South Africa in 1937. Cyril played football for Brisbane for six years, and has been a member of the Ballymore XXXX Golden Oldies for many years. They travel all over the world, with a London trip in 1984 fondly remembered. They are planning a trip to Scotland next year. Cyril hopes to be a part of the team when they come back to Norfolk in 2009.
This is Cyril’s first visit to Norfolk. He has always wanted to come here but never got around to it. What does he think of Norfolk now that he has finally made it? “Beautiful. A bit cold. It would be good to live here. It won’t be the last visit”, he told us. Cyril said they had been well looked after, and added that the tour guides at Bounty Excursions, Les and Steve, were fantastic. He strongly recommends the half day tour, fish fry and the Farm and Industry tour.
We also caught up with John and Elaine Marsh. They are friends of some of the team, and when they heard of the trip to Norfolk, John and Elaine both chose to join. So John was nominated water boy for the team, but by his own confession, he was not a very good one. John was able to take lots of photos for the team from the safety of the side lines.
They have thoroughly enjoyed Norfolk. “Its very nice, but this trip was too short” says John. “The people have been lovely and made us welcome wherever we go. You can just chat to people”.
The tours that they went on, including the breakfast bushwalk, the Farm and Industry tour, and the fish fry at Bedrock were excellent. The weather was better than they expected, and it was great to see rain as they haven’t had rain in Nerangba (which is where they live in Queensland) for so long.
Both John and Elaine grew up around Cornwall and Devon in England and have only been living in Australia for a year. They thought that Norfolk was like it was when they were growing up in the villages in England. “So friendly, we have spoken to more people in one week on Norfolk than in the whole year in Brisbane”.
“We would like to thank everyone for their hospitality and welcome. It’s been unbelievable. Love the waves from people in their cars. We will be back for a longer stay and will definitely be recommending Norfolk to others”.
We took our own children to the Friday night football, Norfolk style, it was all the juniors playing and Sienna and Teddy couldnt wait to get into the action themselves, but made do with some of the practise bollards.

The adults were serving fresh fish and chips cooked in the kettle drums, So it made for a good night out and a good way to support the local young fellas.

Todays golden Oldies match ended for us spectators with a down pour of rain, we saw it coming toward the island, and when the cloud covered Philip Island, we knew to start running to the car, I got some slightly soggy kids into the car, but left to go home and get them dry. The game however continued on.

A magical trip to the ZOO.

Well, it was a long awaited highlight of our trip to 'the mainland' and on the last day, we ventured off on our much anticipated trip to Taronga zoo, getting there on public transport was half the fun, as us small island folk got to travel on 2 trains, a ferry and a bus.

When we paid to get in to the zoo, we were given a map to follow, Teddy was more fascinated by the map than by any of the animals to start off with.

Aunty Mandy asked the kids to say hello to the monkeys for her as they were her favourite, Sienna got a chance to do that personally with a very special kiss through the glass to a lovely,wrinkly chimpanzee, It was love at first sight, I only saw the tail end of the love affair as I wormed through the crowd near the large windows, to follow the sound of Sienna's delighted giggles.

Our next stop was the seal show, where every trick the seal did, Teddy tried to imitate using the stairs for support, he even tried to stand on his front flippers, of course he doesn't have any.

Ted wanted to see the African animals(probably from Madagascar the movie) especially the giraffes, which we were lucky enough to see being fed branches of leaves with their slug tongues they shared their pen with 3 lovely zebra's. Teddy favourite African animal that he saw, surprisingly was the little pygmy hippopotamus.


I loved the Elephants, watching them in their new home was truly magical.

At the end of a tiring, but well worth it day, we caught the last cable car ( see how excited Teddy and Aunty Jenni are) then a wonderful ferry trip back to circular quay, as the city was turning from day to night.

We had a REAL hot chocolate at the Lindt shop on Martin place, where they actually pour melted Lindt chocolate with frothy hot milk, tooo yummy.

Sienna fought and fought on the train not to fall asleep and end our lovely day,

but finally................