Cocktail party!

The Winter Function aka the 'cocktail party' was held in the Convention Centre in Canberra, easy parking but rather a large venue for what was in the end a smallish crowd. All glammed up and intent on drinking and eating our monies worth!

The event finished rather early 2100 so we were forced onto the streets of Canberra, fortunately for those wearing high heels there was a venue really close by but unfortunately for us all the nearest place was the Casino....Oh no and the disturbing 80's Disco! but bouyed up with our fizzy wine (sorry, Champagne) we 'hit' the disco and as we (3 girlies in all our finery) went ahead of the the main group we were greeted with free champagne (which was nice!).

I had a try on the black jack table (with a friendly guide) and at one point had doubled my money.....however in what seemed like the blink of an eye it all went. So back to the disco and dancing to what I thought were not some of the highlights of the 80s!

Anyhow we managed to last until 3am (Yawning & feet killing!) and then took all Sunday to recover.

England V All Blacks or New Zealand in a weekend!

We picked up the hire car from the centre of Canberra and headed with pizza in hand to Sydney airport (remembering to get petrol before we abandoned the car). The SPV's again caused a problem at check in with the girl at the desk checking with her supervisor who told us to check with immigration before she would allow us to check in! Much faffing later and grumpy faces all round we eventually manged to get the immigration officer to come up to the check in desk to tell them that 'yes it was alright' and 'no we werent illegally trying to get in and out of Australia!'
We needed a beer!
Johns parents kindly met us at the airport and we were ferried to the house in Christchurch.
Saturday the frost melted to give a great sunny day. John played host and drove us around the sights of Christchurch, very picturesque, we drove over the hills to Sumner and walked on the beach then had a coffee with the noisy seagulls! It looked a great place to live.
We had lunch outside in Le Cafe in Christchurch and watched the trams go by accompanied by a cheeky bottle of NZ white (of course!)
After taking in some of the sights we travelled back to the house to 'rug up' in readiness for the game in the evening (but first a few beers in the pub!)
The opening ceremony was all fireworks a Dakota flying overhead and 1940s singing!
the teams arrived and the All Blacks Hakka was a great thing to watch.
Mmmm 44-12 was not really what we had hoped for but the atmosphere in the stand was all good natured.

We went off for drinks after the game and found a comfy spot with a good view over the antics of the drunkards in square, inside our bar Godzilla in Japanese wreaked havoc! or was that Jez and Jus playing tip the beer on the table?!
We found that it is hard to tip toe inside a house full of sleeping parents without being silly!
Beakfast the next day was in Drexles http://www.drexels.co.nz/ Yum! then back home bumping into the England team at the airport! who were all a bit quiet, Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall slummed it on our jetstar flight.
We picked up the smallest hire car and squeezed in for the trip back to Canberra. A good weekend (very decadent though!)

The Red Centre

We flew out from Sydney to Uluru (Ayres Rock) on Friday 6th June and landed with a great view of 'the rock'.

We picked up our hire car from the airport and drove to the resort.

We set off directly for the rock, it was an imposing sight amoungst all the flat terraine. Respecting the wishes of the Aboriginal people we did not walk up the rock but instead as we had time before the sunset, we walked around it, a 9.4 km very pleasant walk with many angles and faces of the rock not imagined from the many pictures we had seen before. Nearing the end of the walk we had to pick up the pace as the sun seemed to descend at an alarming speed. The sunset that day was rather a cloudy one and did not give off the great orange glow we had expected so we decided to return another day.

We stayed in the Outback Pioneer Hotel but awoke with arms and shoulders covered with bites, mozzies we thought....oh how wrong we were.

The following day we travelled to Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) which were again an impressive sight on the landscape, here we did the Valley of the Winds walk as well as the Walpa Gorge walk 10km in all, the whole area was very peaceful and very scenic.

we stayed to watch the sunset with our flask of red wine!

On Sunday we decided to get up early for the Sunrise on Uluru and were rewarded with a superb sight. We then travelled to Kings Canyon approx 300km away, the day was warmer but still only 19 degrees C, very pleasant to walk up and around canyons! there were some great drop offs and rock formations created, we did the rim walk 6km with some scambling up rocks required, the views made it well worth the effort.

More photos to come!