Dan and Amy

Australian Open 10

This is our second year of making the trip down to Melbourne for the Australian Open. We had tickets for the Saturday evening and Sunday day (round 4) matches. Megan (federer's #1 fan, she'd happily bump off his missus), was most disappointed that he was playing the Saturday day time, so we agreed to go down on the (really minuscule) off chance that there were some tickets still available for the Saturday day matches. We approached the ticket booth and low and behold, three tickets (must have been refunds just given) were available in some pretty decent seats. here's how happy Megan was to see Fed (and other tennis matches that followed)....

Show us your guns Rafa

Murray

Venus & Federer

We took Steve and Cari to the Saturday night match, expecting some big action as Baghdatis was playing Hewitt (the last match they played on Rod Laver was the 5 hour match, that finished at 4am a couple of years back!). Unfortunately (or perhaps this was because they were just making up for the extra long match last time), it only lasted 35 mins - Baghdatis retiring with injury.

Oh well, we enjoyed some beers and Greek with Steve and Cari to make up for it (lamb souvlakis from Stalactites, mmm).

Melbourne laneways

More tennis at Federation Sq.

Fairy penguins at St Kilda pier

Dufton

A small update from England, we're travelling like crazy, trying to catch up with everyone this week and next; but we managed to squeeze in a couple of days of relaxation at a lovely cottage in Dufton, Cumbria. It was beautiful, had some great pub lunches, saw some beautiful wildlife (including the rare little red squirrel above!) and we even had a dusting of snow too.

Kickboxing : Blue Singlet Level!

4 months of kickboxing at the end of last year culminated in grading night. After many scrapes and losing lots of skin off my feet it was time to get something for my efforts! Grading was 4 x 2 minute rounds sparing. The first round I was unlucky and got the one of the trainers, he didn't go easy, he made me work for that blue singlet! Fortunately the other rounds went much better.

I wore the singlet to work the next day with a pair of shorts, Scott commented "That's the most unprofessional I've ever seen you dressed Dan"!

Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to get back into it this year, but I will.

Bird i'th hand

The lorikeets have been coming for what feels like years now, we've fed them from containers before, but never from our hands. Thanks to a tipoff from Clo, we now have them eating out of our hands! (The tip was to avoid leaving the sunflower seeds, the equivalent of lorikeet crack, around and only give them from our hands!)

Sometimes their claws hurt a bit though (yes, that expression is a mix of pain and excitement, that just ended up in an open jaw!)

Last Noosa camping of the year?

As always it was fantastic, great friends, company and food!

Amy went off for a walk with the camera, the swamp behind the campsite:

She stumbled on a huge roo!

Mariana was kind enough to let me borrow her zoom lens, just long enough for me to fall in love with it! Here are some of the shots I took.

Whle Darryl and Stacey were body boarding, Rej buried the kids!

A Brahminy Kite:

And finally, this is seriously photoshoped but I still like it:

Can't wait till next time, noosa northshore has yet to disappoint. Thanks Kate and everyone :-)

Mouses House

The Mouses House is a fantastic rainforest hideaway up in Springbrook National Park, Gold Coast Hinterland. Sam and Paula recommended we visit a while back - we had to book 3 months in advance to get in at the weekend, but it was well worth the wait!

Springbrook NP is on the Plateau of the Scenic Rim - which was formed by an ancient volcano- Mt Warning is the remnant of that volcano today, as seen in these couple of pics. We climbed Mt Warning in 2005, I could not walk for days afterward (but it was a great view from the top!). Good for some exercise guys if your Byron trip comes off and you fancy a hike!

Mt Warning in the morning

Mt Warning in the dusk

The Mouse's House is set back from the main Springbrook Road on the plateau and is made up of 11 cabins in peaceful, tranquil rainforest; fabulously relaxing (especially the spa bath!)

We didn't relax all the time, there's a few great walks in the National Park and plenty of wildlife to see.

Crimson rosella at Rosella's Cafe

Rainbow Falls, not far from Canyon Lookout

Twin falls walk

Top of blackfella falls - great lunch spot

Lyrebird

Couple of waterdragons

best of all lookout

path to the best of all lookout

And of course there were the night time visitors. We got told to bring plenty of fruit and veg...turns out even that many hungry possums can't eat 5kg of carrots (Dan!).