New Car

Yes indeed, eagle eyed S&N readers will have picked up my earlier clues that I have finally bought a car. My budget was very limited and for the price (£700) this was head and shoulders above the others on offer, although not necessarily my first choice looks wise. But hey, it has four wheels and an engine that works (for now) so I am going to make the most of it! Hopefully this Swedish beauty should cope well with the cold, retain her beautiful exterior (galvanised body don't ya know) and run and run for ever. We will see, but for the moment it is a whole lot of fun and convenient in for the bargain. With the help of my man on the inside track of the car world (my very own brother) I was steered in the right direction; away from all that French rubbish; and given confidence that it probably wont all go wrong at once and if it did, I can probably fix it for not that much either. I am planning to buy a Haynes manual for the simple stuff, but have the number of the garage in my phone now... just in case.

I did my first supermarket shop ever with my own car since I moved to Southampton and it was liberating to know that I didnt have to consider if I had room in my backpack for that extra banana, and still have the energy to cycle home with it all afterwards!


The chap I bought it from is a Prof at the university I work at, and after meeting him I was filled with confidence about the purchase. Full service history. Four new tyres. New exhuast last year. Bah, its all luck in the end I think, and I have read many Saab forums where guys claim they have a 9000 with well over 250,000 miles on the clock?! Here's hoping I can get that far! He had advertised on Ebay too but I signed the deal before that really took off. More pictures available on the Ebay site. This incidentally is not the registration as it is his private plate and my car has reverted back its original P plate.

Hopefully the first pictures of my first of many adventures in her soon.

Jazz and Trumpet

Off roading adventure

These are from Jeff's camera documenting the off piste walk that we
did after seeing the Three Sisters... some of it, as you can see from
the pictures, was a little bit improvised. We had to scramble up
quite a few odd cliffs and piles of dead branches. Kelly did very
well and managed the whole walk without a single complaint or request
for a helicopter.

Damn flies!

More random shots from Sydney trip

These were some shots from the Blue Mountains trip with Jeff and
Kelly. Pictures of the Three Sisters and some nice fleurs by Jeff
with his fancy SLR.

Fantastic Young Export.... from NEFYN!

Ya ya, I know... I've got to get back into blogging and this is the ideal springboard. I was listening to Radio1 on the radio in my car (see later post) and I heard this song that I liked. Of course get home and look it up and it turns out she is was born in Nefyn and lived a lot of her life there! Anyway, her name is Duffy, and a video of her on Jools Holland's show (a high accolade in itself) is below.

Xmas Wildlife

Hello all, apologies again for the prolonged break in transmission from S&N but rural Australia has barely come to grips with the cappuccino revolution let alone high speed internet. I have been coping with my cold turkey withdrawal by climbing trees to get a good enough signal and sneaking glimpses of my gmail account from my mobile phone. Its amazing what lengths an email addict will go to. Anyway, back in Sydney now but still none of my friends have the bandwidth that I crave. I have to resort to dingy internet cafes with the rest of the plebs. Resizing photos becomes an issue and uploading more than 1Mb is apparently illegal in this state, but we got there in the end.

Jeff and I drove 3 hours south of Sydney to Lake Conjola where Meg and her twin sister Gen have a holiday house. We undertook the 4 hour mammoth expedition to stock up at the supermarket in Nowra on Xmas eve... bad idea I know... but we had no choice... and then bunkered down for the next few days of bbqing and drinking.

There are lots of surrounding areas and track to walk, beaches to explore (and pick up rubbish) and the lake to paddle about in with the kayaks from the garage. The weather wasnt baking hot but thats OK for a pasty white boy like me and the torrential rain held off until the 27th.

Meg and Gen on the ocean side beach at Conjola

If one of these babies lands on you you'd certainly know about it. Although it looks like something out of a bad 80's film it is actually a cicada which spend most of their time either underground or in trees. They are very noisy buggers too and really symbolise the 'sound of the jungle' to me. They obviously don't swim too well as we found this one washed up on the beach.

There we were just minding our business on the balconio and along pop some Rainbow Lorikeet and Crimson Rosella. These are a favourite of mine as they are such inquisitive and brash little birds. They came right up to us for our food but luckily we had bird seed close at hand for them to munch on. Then as quickly as they appeared they seemed to all know that the fun was over and moved onto the next lucky people.

Our final guest in the wildlife theme was Mr Huntsman. Jeff found it hilarious to tell me on the way down that last time he was there, he found a spider so big that it could be barely contained by the colander which is specially reserved for containment and relocation of these furry friends. The one in this shot is only a baby really and had decided that under the toilet seat was going to be his hidey-hole. Thankfully Meg and Gen discovered him before I did, but after that my bravado for simply sailing in an out of the bathroom like a true Aussie had disappeared.

Xmas Day

Xmas day was a quiet affair. Moet first thing to line our stomachs (Meg and Gen don't drink either), then Santa presents from everyone with a limit of $20. This was actually pretty difficult to do, especially with my shopping handicap and limited time. The star present was from Gen to Jeff in the shape of a mini radio controlled helicopter. I think there may have been some $20 rule breaking going on, but without receipts and credit card statements being produced we all just had to agree that the fun outweighed the rules.

Spot the helicopter

...and again.

After the mornings frivolities we ventured out to the next beach along from Conjola where there are regularly large fevers of stingrays. They feed off the fish guts thrown back into the ocean by the fishing boats that come in up the boat ramp on the beach. Unfortunately we missed feeding time at the zoo so had to do with a quick walk around the rock pools and back along the beach.

Jeffrey sporting some of the glow sticks I got from Santa whilst enjoying our Xmas dinner which consisted of BBQ marinaded spatchcock and lamb with roasted veggies and salad, followed by Xmas pud with cold brandy custard. And a gallon of wine.

Pebbly Beach - Boxing Day

Boxing day was spent at one of my favourite beaches, Pebbly. It is only a short drive from Conjola and with a simple BBQ lunch in the boot we were set for a great sunny.

Jeff in the surf... he was the only one brave enough to take a full dip... the ocean is still a bit cold after Australia's dubious summer so far.

More grad photos... will it ever end?

Hello all you lucky people... I have more graduation day piccies for you to enjoy. These were taken my PhD buddy Jenn who snapped a load of pictures after everyone else had gone and the campus was quite empty. This central area of the campus is built on a big steep hill with a nice new 'winged' building at the top called the Scientia. Ever since I started doing my degree at UNSW I always imagined taking graduation photos here and luckily the sun was shining and sky was blue...