Friday farewells

After I went on a morning cycle, Jo and I walked to Peterhead station and caught the train in to Adelaide, then walked to the Botanic Gardens to meet up with David, Lorene and Matt for a spot of lunch. There was a bit of confusion about the exact meeting point but we got there in the end.

Chris' brother Matt was on his lunch hour so his time was limited, but his parents drove us back to Semaphore after lunch, with a quick pit stop at the Lion Hotel, which was a regular haunt for us a few years ago when we stayed in the adjacent apartments. I grabbed a quick photo here as we probably won't see Lorene and David for another year:

We had originally planned to go to Entropy for dinner but, for the second Friday in a row, it was booked - this time for a Fringe show, so, instead we had to pick up something for tea - Jo chose Porterhouse steaks again.

Here's one I took of Chris and Miller playing in the garden:

Today (Saturday), Miller has his swimming lesson and we're heading to the Fringe in the afternoon.

Week 5 so far

It's Thursday evening here in Adelaide now and it's been back to work for Chris and Kelly this week - although Kelly had her usual Wednesday off and today she took another day off to attend her check-up at hospital. We went with her - there was a huge backlog there but Kelly was fine. They are going to continue to monitor the baby's growth to ensure there are no size problems with giving birth. Kelly was concerned about a possible C-section, but it seems more likely they will induce if the baby gets too big.

Jo, Kelly and I went for lunch at Peel St. afterwards - very nice it was too. We did the Miller drop-off and pick-up and also got Kelly's car serviced, so it was a fairly productive day.

Yesterday, Kelly drove us out to the hills again to Monarto, which is sister zoo to the main one in Adelaide. They don't cage the animals in this one, although there are several fenced off areas for each of the types of animals. The effect is to create conditions more akin to the animals' more natural environment - mostly like the African plains. They do rehabilitation work and breeding too. The tour of the huge site is done in a bus and here's some of the wild animals we saw;

and, of course, the wildest one of all:

Tomorrow (Friday) it will be 5 weeks since we left Banchory - just one more week left. We're having what will probably be a farewell lunch with David, Lorene and Matt tomorrow at the Botanic Gardens cafe. The Fringe has started here so we'll probably take in a show or two this weekend as well. What else might be on the wish list for our last week? Possibly a hike up Mount Lofty, maybe a return trip to Penfolds - or perhaps none of the above - who knows?

To close, a further observation about Australia - the birds here mostly seem to squawk, rather than sing. They certainly wouldn't qualify as residents of Berkeley Square (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTeiYN_Vq6E).

Weekend in Carrickalinga

We drove south on Friday morning and settled in to the house that Kelly and Chris have fairly regularly stayed at - in fact, they got engaged on one of their visits there. We were allocated the downstairs double bed again - it wasn't occupied thankfully, but the toilet was:

I'd heard too many stories about Australian spiders to act the hero, but Chris came to the rescue and removed it for me, saying it was just a Huntsman - the same as the one that they used to keep in their house as it eats all the other bugs and doesn't harm humans.

Kelly, Jo and I walked across the road to the almost deserted beach with Miller and we all got in the sea. I'd arrived prepared but the girls had to strip to their underwear, whilst Miller saw no need to be that modest. When he'd had enough, however, he wasn't too keen to put his clothes on and had a bit of a hissy fit when his mother insisted as his skin had to be protected from the sun:

It's a very well equipped holiday house - there's even a kayak in the garage plus 4 bikes of varying sizes, so I went on a short exploratory cycle and trail walk on Saturday morning:

Chris had arranged for us all to meet his Mum and Dad and brother Matt for brunch at a nice little cafe in nearby Yankalilla. Miller enjoyed the hippo ornament in the garden there:

We took Kelly and Miller back to the house for their lunchtime nap and the rest of us then headed for the nice Smiling Samoyeds brewery at Myponga for a couple of beers:

After a stroll round Myponga market, we headed back to Carrickalinga, where some of Chris' friends and their families were arriving to help celebrate his birthday weekend. Brother Matt presented Chris with his gift from the family - a retro board, just like the one Chris used to have when he was young - until Matt broke it!:

It wasn't long before they were all trying to re-live their youths:

We watched the changing phases of the sunset that evening:

The big event of the birthday weekend was the fishing trip planned for Sunday. Four of us - Chris, his Dad David and pal Anthony and I - left the house just before 6:30 am and drove to the nearby port to meet up with 5 of Chris' pals for our day-long adventure. The 20 metre vessel had 2 crew - the captain and "driver" Scott and his mate Josh who was the one that set up the rods and bait etc.

After loading the "Eskies" containing our food and beer for the day, we were on our way by 7:15 am:

It was about an hour steaming time until we got to our first fishing grounds somewhere between Kangaroo Island and Cape Jervis. We were after snapper here primarily. Josh baited the rods with pilchard and squid first time around but, after that, it was up to us. No casting - the rods had sinkers and the fish were bottom feeders anyway.

We only caught 5 snapper between us that run - but I'm happy to say I got one of them. Next stop would be out on the high seas, beyond Kangaroo Island. Whilst the first steam had been a bit choppy and I had initially been concerned that I may suffer from sea sickness, I had remembered to keep my eyes on the horizon and felt OK. Now it was a whole new ball-game however. Suddenly, the seas were high alright and the horizon had shrunk dramatically. Now we were in large swells, but again, I was OK. Not so a couple of Chris' pals, one of whom had retched non-stop since we left port and remained that way during the whole 9 hour trip.

On our second stop, we were still looking for snapper, but also whiting this time. Some of the guys cottoned on quickly and did rather well here, but I struggled. I never got one fish, but they got plenty of my bait.

We steamed off again to what was little more than a jagged granite rock in the middle of the ocean. To me, we went frighteningly close to the rocks, but I guess our skipper knew what he was doing with his boat. This time we were after salmon. No bait required this time - just lures which we fed out from the back of our vessel and let the salmon shoals chase us. They snapped at the lures, which were being towed along the surface. You knew all about it when you got a hit and it took a fair effort to haul them in, but they were plentiful and soon we'd had our fill. This was the best part of the trip for me:

Our 4th stop was an attempt to snare some tuna - not easy. Again, just lures were used. We got one bite from a small tuna, but lost it, so after half an hour or so of this, we headed back to port, arriving there about 4 pm, where we posed for a team photo whilst divvying-up the spoils:

You would think that would be that, wouldn't you? As it turned out, we'd hardly started. Although Josh had gutted the snapper, we still had to de-scale it and, worst of all, fillet and skin the salmon, which isn't at all like the Atlantic salmon we're used to - it was a hell of a job, and cleaning up afterwards took some time too - so much so that the girls were wondering if they'd ever eat that night. We made it in the end, and, thanks to some kitchen ingenuity from Jo and Lorene, we had a very nice meal in the end.

So that was it. Monday morning was just a get up, eat up, tidy up morning and we were back in Semaphore early afternoon. Both Chris and I realised that the trip had taken more out of us than we thought - we were both knackered.

Today (Tuesday) has just been a local day for Jo and I - she didn't sleep well last night and we had chores - washing and shopping - to do anyway, so we just lay on the beach for a while then went back to Sweet Amber Brew Cafe for lunch.