Dralion Cirque de Soleil

On Sat 25th October we saw the Cirque de Soleil perform Dralion, it was a nice evening but a little chilly, it was good to be in a big tent and we had really good seats thanks to Erica booking them as soon as they came on sale!

There was a comedy routing that kept us entertained beyween the amazing acrobatic routines.

The characters in Dralion

Many balancing and amazing bendiness feats!

We particularly liked the trampoline routines where some of the characters would throw themselves off backwards from the top of the curved wall onto the trampoline below then bounce and walk them selves back up the wall again! Very amazing to watch!

The view of the grand Chapiteau from across Lake Burley Griffith with Parlaiment lit up.

High Commission Ball

In aid of Cancer research we attended a High Commission Ball on Friday 17th in the War Memorial, as we arrived the silent auction was on one side of the hall (which is a bad thing when one has had a number of fizzy wines!).
The hall is dominated by 'George' the Avro Lancaster B1 bomber which was built in 1942 and saw service with the No. 460 Squadron R.A.A.F. whist in Britain and flew 90 operational missions until its retirement in 1944. The missions are represented by bombs being painted on the side of the cockpit, certain pilots distinguished their missions by adding symbols such as a 'saint figure' for Flt Sgt Sant-Smith a pair of cherries for Plt Officer 'Cherry' Carter. Our table was beneath one of the wings.
The food was great:
Entree
Prosciutto and grilled asparagus with oven dried tomato, crispy ciabatta, babay leaves and olive tapanade
Main
Garlic and thyme marinated lamb rump, mash potato, roast carrot, watercress and redwine sauce
Dessert
Chocolate velvet pyramid with white chocolate creme anglais and macademia brittle
Coffee
wines -
Seppelt Fleur de Lys (VIC)
Benchmark Grant Burge Semillon Sauvignon Blanc (SA)
Benchmark Grant Burge Shiraz Cabernet (SA)

We had a band to dance to 'the Funky Fedoras' a very good evening indeed!

Governor Generals reception

Last Tuesday we were invited to the new Governor General's abode, Her ExcellencyMs Quentin Bryce AC http://www.governorgeneral.gov.au/governorgeneral/ for a drinks reception, we arrived on three coaches but were a tad early so had to wait a while on the driveway, which wasn't too bad as the view was great! A lovely view of lush green lawns sweeping down to the lake Burley Griffith and the Black Mountain in the background.

Ms Quentin Bryce made a speech then toured the room meeting people for the hour, unfortunately we were not one of them.

We were taken on a short tour of the house, the house has a number of English antiques and the work from famous Australian artists including painters and cabinet makers, for which we were show the secret pair of drawers!

The house has a relaxed feel and the formal dining room has views of the lake.

We then decided to go out to dinner, so off to Manuka to the Iron Bark cafe a restaurant that specialises in traditional Aussie ingredients including Roo, Croc and Emu as well as fish and local veggies, very nice!

Aussie friends

It was great to catch up with two teacher friends who had been on exchange in UK but are now back in Brisbane even though it was only a quick visit.

We had an extremely early flight back to Canberra so that Justin could ready himself for the Scott 24 hour race on the Saturday. He was in a four man team so 6 laps of 16km had to be done!

This is the sight that greeted me at 0830, obviously a 'hard days night'!

The last lap Hooray! So now finishing off 96km! Well done.

Noosa

We stayed in the very nice Bella casa apartments on Hastings Street, which had a very unusual use of space, a small cupboard like area along one of the corridors had a roller shutter covering it which when pulled up had 2 bunkbeds neatly tucked in!

It was nice sitting outside on the balcony for breakfast every morning.

We walked around the National Park and saw a Koala and 2 brown snakes luckily they were quite small and only interested in sliding off the path! However just after seeing the second snake a piece of bush brushed my leg and I jumped out of my skin! (very ferocious eucalyptus they have in Noosa!) The picture is of another of the animals we saaw on our walk a rather large lizard.

Along the walk to Sunshine Beach were a number of idyllic beaches that we stopped and rested on. There was some rather unusual and unexpected wildlife on one of the beaches....the nudists (they always seem to be men, with hands on hips striding around!)

If you are going to ever do this walk I suggest carrying more water (ie more than 2 litres!) and snacks than we had with us, we staggered into Sunshine beach and both drank our bodyweight in water and munched our way through some of the great cafes there!

Sunshine coast pt2 Brisbane

When we arrived in Brisbane (very early) we decided to drive a little of the area before heading into the main sights, we pootled along the coast around Manly and saw these chaps out with their radio controlled yachts having races around the bouys.

The Bougainvillea arches on the Southbank Views of Brisbane the Queens gardens with the Commissarat Stores building 1829, a large statue of Queen Victoria stands in front of the building.

Sunshine Coast pt1

The plan was to go diving again possibly Vanuatu however the wrist situation put a stop to that one so we thought about a lazy beach holiday in Fiji which became too expensive as the Island resort we wanted was full, so we turned to the sunshine coast just north of Brisbane, we landed in Brissie airport at 0900 it was already 19 degrees (nice) and we spent the day sightseeing and then in the pool of the hotel, the follwoing day we walked the southbank with the lagoon and the market so many people using such a brilliant free facility, there were families having parties with the undercover seating and BBQ areas decked out with balloons.
On our way up the coast we visited the Glassmountains an group of pointy hills the remnants of extinct volcanoes, quite amazing really.
That evening we stayed in 'Aussie Bush Cabins' in Longthorne which was an interesting experince the cabins were nice and very isolated, the dust on the road ways showed the prints of a few animals that had crawled their way through the bush.
We got up relatively early to go to Crikey! Australia Zoo, which was fun we managed to stroke a very large Wombat (who was being led round the zoo on a leash) and a Koala who probably didnt even know what was going on as he was fast asleep! the Crocodile and bird shows were good in the Crocoseum the Crocmen's singing and dancing entertained the tiddlers in the audience until they bought out the crocs for the main show.

Politics Aussie style

Just as we were leaving Belconnen Fresh Food markets, (where there is a great organic butchers and a fantastic fish shop), we were handed this flyer for the upcoming elections in Canberra, I will say no more!