Late November - Early December

We’ve done a few walks over the last few weeks, in spite of the awful weather. The first was around Hunter’s Hill, to see how the other half live. And let me tell you, they live pretty well! This is one of the houses there – not sure what the meaning of the cow is, but Joy is quite taken with it.

There were also some lovely stained glass windows.

But some people really should do something about the rubbish in their front yard.

From Hunter’s Hill, you can see the tents where you can stay on Cockatoo Island. There are so many of them! And they are all a bit too close to each other in our opinion.

Late in November we visited our friends in Maitland, and also went up to Muswellbrook to visit the spot where the ashes of Les’ Dad and Mum were scattered. Now, in case you have been on a different planet, you should know that there has been a bit of rain lately. We sure knew about it when we got to the Hunter River at Muswellbrook. Normally we wander down to the river, which is maybe 5m wide. This is what we encountered this time…

That bushy thing top left is normally on the same side of the river as we are!

After our trip to Muswellbrook, it was back to Maitland, then off to Newcastle for dinner with our friends Wayne, Margaret and Michael. Les had booked a restaurant (Mangrove Jacks), which is on the Honeysuckle Foreshore. We were all looking forward to a lovely evening, eating seafood and enjoying the view and ambience. What we found when we got there was that the restaurant had been booked by a transport company for their Christmas party. But because we had booked before they had, and the company were happy for us to be there, they kept our booking. So it was us, in a corner table (we did still have a view), surrounded by 100 people at their Christmas party! Not sure why they didn’t call us to check that we were OK with that. Food was good, view was good, company at the table was good, but ambience left a bit to be desired. And because it was noisy, it was difficult for us to chat to each other easily. Oh, well – it gives us a good story.

Our next walk was in the Lane Cove National Park. Joy was in heaven – flannel flowers AND grass trees!!!

The walk took us through a variety of vegetation. Some beautiful angophoras

And lots of flowers still out. Just from looking at the surroundings, it is hard to imagine we were in the middle of Sydney. Unfortunately, the sounds of Sydney can’t be left behind – cars, planes, people.

We had a couple of encounters with wildlife on the way. We had a drinks stop at an oval, and there were heaps of magpies all over the oval, feeding. Lots of them were young ones, whinging at their mothers to feed them. There was also a kookaburra (sitting in an old gum tree).

And at lunch, we were joined by a few cheeky water dragons.

At one stage, one of the dragons chased another dragon directly towards us. Both of us are wimps, so quickly lifted our feet off the ground (didn’t want the dragons mistaking us for trees and climbing us), and they ran straight under us and our table!

Lately, Joy has been on a bit of a health and fitness kick. As well as the walks to places like Hunter’s Hill and Lane Cove, we try to walk around Henley Park each morning. But in an attempt to push herself a bit more, Joy has taken on the challenge of the Kurnell sand dunes. She has done them twice now, and in spite of almost throwing up the first time, seems to want to keep on doing them. The dunes are massive (well they seem that way when you know you have to get up and down them). This should give you a bit of perspective.

Les goes with Joy, but while Joy is on the dunes, Les goes for a more sedate walk and takes lots of photos.

We celebrated our 1 year anniversary of retirement on the 9^th December and went to Sydney Rowers Club which is right on the water at Abbotsford. It was very busy and we parked about ½ km from the club but we got a little table with a view up the harbour to the west. Les had originally booked us in at “The Cove” at Drummoyne where we had our retirement lunch a year ago but they screwed up the booking and had a private function on but only let us know 2 days in advance. Les has decided that Joy should do the restaurant bookings from now on.