Back to Rosedale

We spent a night at the south coast this week, catching up with friends at Rosedale after a long break away from this beautiful part of the world.

North Rosedale was devastated by the New Year's Eve (2019-2020) bush fires and rebuilds have been slow given the scale of the losses and the hold ups and shortages of the pandemic years since.

Rosedale Beach itself is as beautiful as ever though .....   

... and this familiar walking track through the gum forest to/from the beach looked just the same as we remembered it .....

I took this picture of one of the burnt out properties on Yowani Road about 10 weeks after the fires in 2020. It was the same level of devastation all along that road, including the loss of Judy and Jurgen's beach house (which I couldn't bear to take a picture of at the time).

We met up with the old Rosedale crew for dinner on Wednesday night at Sawaan (Thai Restaurant) on Beach Road in Bateman's Bay - a reprise of a night out at the same venue in March 2020 (but in those days it was a Japanese Restaurant). 

We were impressed with Sawaan!

We stayed overnight at Malua Bay - right on the beach at a perfectly located hotel with beautiful views and terrible design and environmental standards (!!!)

..... and checked out John and Linda's house at nearby Lilli Pilli - the site of so many happy holiday stays when Joshy and his cousins were little ............

....... before heading back to Rosedale to check out progress on Jurgen and Judy's rebuild on Yowani Road.

It was all excitement this morning as a team of tree loppers was there clearing the fire damaged gums on the neighbouring property.

These old spotted gums are enormous at Rosedale - super dangerous in their fire damaged state and super dangerous for anyone trying to cut them down. It was nail biting at times watching the guys in action.

The tree/mulch grinder did a sterling job after that tree felling effort.

Just when we thought the show was over this guy started work on an even taller more dangerous looking tree, right near Judy and Jurgen's on site caravan...... yikes!

We thought the tree guys had a most unusual, but adorable, "ute dog", anxiously keeping an eye on proceedings.

The footprint of Judy and Jurgen's house is there in place, the steel frame is ordered; there's been huge progress in the last few months after all the delays. Judy and Jurgen are predicting it might be ready to move into by Spring next year???

We drank to that!!

The morning cuppa at Rosedale pic reminded me of another pic taken in October 2013 - same people, very different location (Chanoud Garh - a 300 year old fort/palace near Jodhpur in India).

Beautiful Rosedale!

A week of nature, drama, music and food

We've crammed a lot into the past week. It started with a day in the outdoors last Sunday .... and the thrill of getting up close and personal with one of our favourite birds (Gang Gang parrot) on our morning walk around Campbell......

 .... then the afternoon out at Freshford, enjoying quality time with Sammy and Abi and gaining more confidence leading Sammy around those long trail ride tracks.

Then we were off to Coogee on Tuesday - and an unexpected drama within minutes of our arrival when these two cars crashed into each other at the intersection outside our apartment. Luckily no one was hurt. It ended up a drama with a few acts however with firies, police and two tow trucks in attendance over the next few hours!

Our friends Judy and Jurgen joined us late on Tuesday night ready for three days of fun together enjoying a full program of musicals, plays, cocktails and great meals. All the good things that Sydney offers.

First stop on Wednesday's program was a pre-matinee bowl of seafood and noodles from our fave Malay Chinese on Sussex Street....

... followed by Bell Shakespeare's production of "The Lovers" at the Theatre Royal - a thoroughly modern (musical) uptake on "A Midsummer Night's Dream" written by Laura Murphy. We loved this show - it had so much energy and heart and a wonderful live band to deliver the killer soundtrack.

The four lovers: Demetrius, Hermia, Helena and Lysander .. they all had great chemistry on stage....

We were lucky to have this school group sitting near us. Their teacher had been to see the show THREE times and was a great source of background info at interval as we were all a bit rusty on our Midsummer Night's Dream plot lines.

The actor playing Puck did some schmoozing outside the theatre afterwards - giving us a close up view of the intricacies of the show's fabulous costumes.

Before the next show there was time for some pre-dinner cocktails at the Zephyr Bar on the rooftop of the Hyatt Regency.

There are great views up this high, over Darling Harbour.

Then it was on to our pre-show dinner at The Little Snail in Pyrmont. We've been to this restaurant before and really enjoyed its classic French menu - all done superbly well. 

We saw Back to the future on Wednesday night - probably the big ticket show of the week, but one that left me somewhat underwhelmed. This was such an iconic movie as Joshy was growing up and we'd seen it many times. Unfortunately the musical didn't add a great deal to the movie experience; and it certainly didn't extend the musical possibilities of the original film.

We had a slow start to the day on Thursday but found the Belvoir Street Theatre in plenty of time for the matinee performance of Meow Meow's The Red Shoes. Meow Meow is a superlative cabaret performer and the show was pretty extraordinary, especially considering we got seats in the front row - only a meter or two away from the hard working, extraordinarily talented performers.

We visited a very old favourite Polish restaurant in Crown Street afterwards for a late lunch. Rob is looking very pleased in this pic with his mashed potato pancake (fried) stuffed with goulash!

... and Jurgen looks very pleased with the dessert offerings. We were pleased that Alchemy is still serving the same unpretentious but authentic (and delicious) Polish food that it's been doing for the past 23 years.

Our cocktail stop on the way to that night's performance was at the Intercontinental Hotel on Phillip Street. None of the harbour facing bars would give us a table at short notice!

Thursday night's show was "The Shiralee" at the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre. We all thought Kate Mulvaney had done a great job  of adapting D'Arcy Niland's book, set in 1950s Australia, into a powerful and engaging play with a lot of contemporary relevance.

Friday was not as tightly planned. We had no commitments all day, right up until our cocktail booking at the beautiful Pier One Bar facing on to Walsh Bay. After a drink or two it was only a short walk to Jounieh, our chosen dinner venue facing out to Pier 8 at Walsh Bay.

We loved the elevated Lebanese dishes on the menu at Jounieh - and the location was just perfect.

We saw "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" on Friday night, just over the road from Jounieh, in the Ros Packer Theatre. WAOVW is an epic 3 hours and 15 minutes long production, with only 4 actors - and we all found it remarkable! We'd set a demanding schedule for the past three days involving very late nights and long days, but WAOVW held us spellbound for the whole performance - all three and a quarter hours of it. It was a great show to end off our three days of fun, drama, music and food (and cocktails!).

Although the walk back from Walsh Bay around Campbell's Cove heading towards Circular Quay was very iconic too!

Rob and I stayed on in Coogee for an extra night, taking the time to meet up with some Campbell neighbours of ours and enjoying a night out together at ANOTHER restaurant in Barangaroo. You can never have too much of a good thing they say.

Geelong Time

It's been almost 5 months since we last travelled down the Hume Highway to Geelong to catch up with Ros and Pete. In that time Pete has recovered well from his second immunotherapy treatment (and its devastating impact) and, at the moment, has no evident symptoms of the various cancers he's been under treatment for, for the past decade or so. So, life is good for Pete for the time being, thankfully.

Last Friday Ros and I took the train from Geelong into Melbourne CBD for a leisurely day of shopping, browsing and lunching together. We enjoyed exploring the lively laneways and Melbourne's character filled arcades and a delicious lunch at "Journal" on Flinders Lane, just outside Melbourne's glorious city library.

Our vote for best shop of the day went to the Alpha 60 Chapter House concept store (we think it is in one of the spaces that would have been part of St Paul's Cathedral at one stage or other). Isn't it just beautiful?

Our walk through the gorgeous Cathedral Arcade was a first for me, although when I found the Flinders Lane gallery up on its first floor I realised I must have passed by here at some stage or other.

The historic Block Arcade never fails to impress ......

We walked up as far as Drewery Lane in the afternoon, a very cool, gritty corner of Melbourne between Little Lonsdale and Lonsdale Streets.

Friday night Ros booked us in for dinner at the Wool Store in Geelong's trendy Newtown precinct. We loved this refined dining experience with bold, smoky flavours a feature of every dish. We are always so impressed with the foodie scene in this city!!

We set out on Saturday morning for our favourite early morning ritual in Geelong..

... a walk/ ride along the river and coffee, pretzels and a pastry at the wonderful Born and Bread.

Sunday dawned cloudy and quite cool. Pete took us on a drive from Bell's (Beach) to Barwon (Heads), stopping to admire the rolling waves and hundreds of surfers off the beaches along the way.

It was a drive with a purpose of course - and we enjoyed our lunch at the Barwon Heads Hotel in between rain showers.

Back at Highton we made quite a thing of finding just the right home for a few of Maxie's sculptures in Ros's beautiful garden. These pieces needed a new home now that Rod's Minda Place house has been sold and we've moved everything out. We think these pieces look perfect here in the garden with Ros and Pete.

We were lucky to get a visit from John and Erin and the kids on Sunday afternoon - all looking happy and fit and full of plans for the end of year.

Another treat was being part of the regular Sunday evening chat with London Joel and Kay and Vincent and Jazzy. They're due to arrive in Australia in just 5 weeks, another exciting and slightly alarming sign of how quickly we are all hurtling towards Christmas and the end of the year. But of course it will be so exciting to see them here!

Our three day stays in Geelong are always wonderful. This one was one of the best!