A Kitchen Down Under

Sydney ….. undeniably one of the great cities of the world – stunning views and stunning architecture. Who in the world has never seen or heard of those great Australian icons - the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge? Tourists, disgorged from luxurious cruise ships, throng The Rocks and Circular Quay to enjoy the thriving cafe culture, shops, restaurants, bars and art galleries. This is the place to be and, I suspect, this is the Sydney that blog readers will assume that Sandra and I will have been enjoying - they could not be further from the truth.

We have now been in Sydney for nearly six weeks with not even a sniff of an icon never mind dipping our toes into cafe culture, restaurants or art galleries. Our life has been bound by three parameters – Steven's kitchen, IKEA and Bunnings (the Australian version of B & Q) We had offered to help with the installation of a new, and badly needed, kitchen in the new house and had completed our trip a little earlier than intended in order to crack on with the work.

Whilst I have, a long time ago, installed a couple of kitchens I am by no means an expert – in fact thinking back on the results of these past DIY adventures I would rate myself as little more than an unaccomplished amateur. Thank goodness I was not to be the lead operator on this little operation. I saw my role as having some minor input at the planning stage then ripping out the old units and appliances, carting the IKEA flat packs back to the house and helping to assemble them. The bulk of the actual kitchen fitting was to be carried out by Steven's neighbour, who had casually informed us that he had installed many kitchens. I thought that my time was to be spent acting as gopher to the professional - handing up the appropriate tools, general lifting and carrying and supplying mugs of tea at regular intervals. How mistaken can one be?

The expected help never actually materialised, certainly not in the form of any hands-on input to the project and, other than the lending of a few tools, the “professional” was notable by his absence. In some ways this was no bad thing as, reading between the lines, he seemed a little uncertain about some aspects of kitchen installation - aspects which I considered fairly important i.e. the plumbing and electrical work. However, to give him his due, he was able to put me in touch with both a plumber and electrician who both eventually did a good job.

The last few weeks have been slow work. With the design morphing every few days as Sandra and Ana kept changing their minds, there were endless trips to IKEA – initially for planning purposes and then to pick up flat packs and starting to assemble them. High on Sandra's list of priorities was “cockroach proofing”. Most houses in Sydney have, to a greater or lesser extent, a problem with cockroaches and Steven's was no exception with many of the loathsome creatures putting in an unwelcome appearance. Sandra's theory was to block up as many holes in the kitchen as possible to keep the little buggers out. As anyone who knows anything about cockroaches will tell you this approach is unlikely to be successful – however, despite my protests, I was detailed to secure wooden battens supplemented by tubes of a substance known as “No More Gaps” around all the skirtings. Time will tell if this approach has been successful – I hae ma doubts!

Anyway, a picture is worth a thousand words as they say, so here follows about 16,000 words worth of pictures.

The kitchen was pretty grim and needed a little renovation

Ana, a miniature powerhouse, taking out the old sink unit with a wrecking bar



Steven lying down on the job

Sandra checking up on my "cockroach proofing"

The new units starting to take shape

What the elegant kitchen installer is wearing in Sydney this year

"Hurry up with that photo, I can't hold this forever" 

Slowly but surely - then we took them all down again for the next photo

Hoping that the brushed aluminium backsplash stays glued to the wall

An inspection from Ana and young Jasmine

Steven and Ana proving that marriage is a partnership - despite bloody IKEA!

Ana always wanted a sliding corner carousel unit - Steven is not so sure

With a whole tube of silicon round the sink there better not be any leaks

Starting to look the part with dishwasher in place



Sandra and Ana preparing for the first dinner party

The finished article, with Johann and Stretch as honoured first guests

And now, after almost six weeks of slow but steady work on the kitchen, it's time to relax for a few days before heading back to the Scottish winter next week. Our work is done here, we can be pleased with what we have achieved - or so I thought - Sandra and Ana are now deep in discussion about an apparently much needed new bathroom. I think we may be back sooner rather than later!

Despite rumours to the contrary we are still alive and have arrived back in Sydney

A month, or perhaps even more, since I last managed to post a blog – where has the time gone? Fearing disaster, blog followers from all over the world have inundated me with blog comments and emails seeking reassurance that we haven't fallen foul to any of the natural disasters which beset unwary travellers in Australia. I am happy to announce that, apart from a severe case of renovators exhaustion, Sandra and I have survived our trip around Australia and are now safely back in Sydney.

My last post saw us leaving the old schoolhouse at Lynch's Creek. On our travels, as well as this blog, we record our progress through the country on a map, with Sandra carefully marking our route in black ink. Anyone viewing the map covering the Brisbane to Sydney section would be forgiven for thinking that it had been completed by a drunken spider leaving a random trail of inky footprints weaving in and out between coast and hinterland. We had decided to give the coast a miss and headed off inland where I found, and not for the first time, that our route had been engineered to coincide with a craft shop – this time at a place called Stokers Siding. As (good) luck would have it, the craft shop had been rather over-hyped and thankfully Sandra found little to whet her interest and we quickly moved on – but inexplicably somehow set off back to the coast heading for Byron Bay.

It was whilst in Byron Bay some 15 years ago we got the news that Rhoda, our Rhodesian Ridgeback bitch, had an inoperable brain tumour. Our next dog, another Ridgeback but this time a big male, was given the name Byron – so we felt some affinity towards Byron Bay. However, we never got there. Finding ourselves in a queue of traffic moving at snail-like pace on the outskirts of the town we finally lost patience and said “Bugger Byron”, did a U-turn and headed back inland again. Eventually, with light fading and very little sign of a decent campsite for the night, we ended up at little more than a roadside stop at a place called Crooked Creek.

Camping was pretty basic with no facilities, although perhaps that was not quite the case, there was a toilet. If you refer back to my last posting there is a photograph of the “thunderbox” toilet which Sandra refused to use – in retrospect this was pure luxury. The Crooked Creek toilet was of similar construction and had once been a “longdrop” toilet with several feet between the seat and the final resting place of deposits. However, decades of use and no maintenance had seen the “longdrop” metamorphose into initially a “shortdrop” and finally into a “hardly any drop at all drop”.

Not for the faint of heart

An extremely strong stomach and the ability to hold ones breath for the duration were essential toileting skills for this type of loo – once again Sandra was unable to come up to scratch and decided to hold on for more cultivated facilities.

A quick visit to Tenterfield to pick up directions (and cultivated facilities) then saw us heading for yet another “Scottish” town called Glen Innes – stopping on the way to visit Bald Rock – “the biggest single lump of granite in the southern hemisphere” and to photograph a Dalek which just happened to be standing by the roadside – strange place Australia! (For the full Dalek story Google - DWater dalek

Two big lumps of granite at Bald Rock

Yet another granite lump

Strange what you bump into in the outback

Glen Innes purported to be a Scottish, or perhaps Celtic, town and as such had a “genuine” crofters cottage tea room standing next to a stone circle allegedly based on either the Standing Stones of Callanish in Lewis or possibly the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney, no-one seemed to be quite sure which.

 

Crofters Cottage in Glen Innes

The Standing Stone Circle

Whilst nearby a large single stone with a sword embedded in it (presumably Excalibur) defeated the combined Douglas efforts to release the sword and thus proving worthy of ruling the kingdom – so we left to scour the streets looking for the many street signs in Gaelic – yet another unsuccessful venture.

 

Personally I don't think she was really trying!

 

That night was spent once again in splendid isolation camping at the waters edge at Copeton Waters.

Knocking up a feast whilst knocking back a cold one

As it is now a few weeks ago, trying to remember our exact route is difficult but Sandra, who claims that her dementia is less advanced than my own, confidently says we visited somewhere called Bundara before stopping at Tamworth for a couple of new tyres and of course to be photographed beside the giant golden guitar. Tamworth is famous for its country music festival, epitomised by the giant guitar symbolically sited equidistant between McDonalds and the Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet and a photocall at its base is a Tamworth Rite of Passage for all tourists.

The Tamworth Big Guitar - between Maccas and KFC

With only a few days before were due back in Sydney we were looking for a nice restful place to camp before hitting the big city – and so ended up in Nundle, where coincidentally there was a woollen mill which was on Sandra's to do list. Camping by a waterhole half way up a mountain and with plenty of birdlife in evidence it should have been an ideal place – it wasn't. At night-time the temperature dropped to not much above freezing and I refused to stay for another night. Packing up we decided to head for Dunns Swamp a popular camping place just a few hours from Sydney which we had been to years before.

The fact that it was popular - and it was the end of the school holidays - and it was a holiday long weekend should have alerted us to the problem of Dunns Swamp – it was packed out. With small boys tearing round on bikes being chased by small girls pushing dolls prams it was far too dangerous for the likes of us and, despite darkness falling, we headed for the small, quiet and attractive village of Rylestone where we squeezed into a corner of the local caravan park and had a surprisingly enjoyable couple of days.

We camped next to the second tee on the local golf course but were not disturbed by golfers as, in our two days in residence, not a golfer was to be seen, only a few dog walkers.

A green at Rylestone Golf Course

One interesting feature of the course was the greens were made of a gravelly sand and, instead of flags to mark the hole, fine toothed rakes were used with golfers expected to smooth out the putting surface after completing the hole. I'm not sure how they handled the bunkers!

Sandra disappearing into Fern Gully

An interesting outing to Fern Gully followed by a very acceptable meal in the local pub just about completed our stay in Rylestone and indeed our trip around Australia. Sydney was to be our next stop where we had a bit of house renovation lined up which will probably keep us occupied for a few weeks.

Steven our son bought a house in Marrickville one of the inner suburbs of Sydney. Being near to the city centre allows him an easy commute to and from work but the downside is, being so near the centre the property prices are sky high and you don't really get a lot for your money – the house needs a lot done to it. When we arrived in Australia, Sandra and I spent a week or two decorating a couple of bedrooms and offered to replace the kitchen when we got back from our trip. The last few weeks have been spent on this project – more of which anon.

Belly dancers, hammocks and hailstones as big as golf balls

Due to our poor map-reading and almost double circumnavigation of the Glass House Mountains we were late arriving at Willie and Helen's house in Ormiston on the outskirts of Brisbane. It was dark as we walked up to the front door and it was immediately obvious that something was amiss - a dog was barking in the house and they don't have a dog, at least they didn't when we were here four years ago. The door opened and Helen appeared holding the offending article – a small, fluffy creature that personified “cuteness”. This was Abby, the latest addition to the Tait family, and perhaps some attempt to fill up the house now that the two oldest Taits, Jenny and Cameron, have both left home to study in the USA. There then followed a pretty full on week.

Unfortunately our timing was not very good as Willie was very busy at work and burning the midnight oil at both ends! His company had a big military contract and a deadline was fast approaching requiring him to leave for work at 6am and not getting home until well into the evening – almost every day we were there, including weekends.

First up for us was the result of the Scottish Referendum on Independence. I'm sure if we had been back in Scotland we would have stayed awake throughout the night watching the results programme. However, with the time difference, it was much more civilised in Australia and, after a good nights sleep, we watched the results come in throughout the morning as the same BBC programme shown in Scotland was broadcast live here in Australia. As Sandra had threatened to emigrate if there was a Yes vote, I'm glad it was No – I'm sure emigration would have been too much of a hassle.

As luck would have it, it was the Brisbane Festival and the city was alive with performance arts – pretty much along the lines of the Edinburgh Festival. On Saturday afternoon we picked Willie up from work to go to a show then on for a meal. The show, called “Soap”, was a mixture of music, song, dance, acrobatics and humour delivered from a number of full sized baths on stage along with copious amounts of water – it paid not to be in the front seats!

On stage with "Soap" before we were told to stop taking photos

Then on to the restaurant along with two friends of the Taits.

Sandra and Willie in Turkish Restaurant

For some reason I had it in my head we were going Mexican so I was surprised when we arrived at a Turkish restaurant. There are two reasons to go to a Turkish restaurant – the first is obviously the food, the second – even more obviously, is the Belly Dancers. Neither disappointed.

Helen, me and Helen;s friend in Turkish Restaurant

 Just as we completed our meal there was a crash of music and Fatima (or one of her sisters) appeared wearing an appropriately revealing costume – at least, a substantial amount of sinuous belly was appropriately revealed. My previous experience of belly dancers has been a lot of veils concealing a lot of belly and often a face that has seen a bit of life on the wrong side of the tracks. Not so Fatima who, as can be seen from my photo, was quite nicely proportioned and who, for some reason seemed attracted to our table. She returned several times to allow us to study at close quarter the Art of the Belly Dancer – and then she swooped. Picking on Willie she stood him in the middle of the crowded restaurant for a sensuous one-to-one dance. Willie had no option but to respond as best he could – and to give him his due, he probably wiggled as well as any other man would do in similar circumstances. I have resisted to temptation to use the photo of him performing so as not to embarrass the poor boy.

Willie's dancing partner

Then a walk along the very attractive river bank in the centre of Brisbane before a trip to the top of a nearby mountain for a birds-eye view of the city at night – spectacular.

With Jenny and Cameron in the States studying only Kirsty is left at home but only for another day or so before she leaves for a couple of weeks on a school trip to Japan.

Kirsty and Abby

Then W & H won't know what's hit them – the empty nest syndrome. However, before she left for the Land of the Rising Sun, we managed an evening out where we all went to a seaside park and ate fish and chips. If the weather had been a bit warmer it would have been very pleasant, however with the chill factor demanding fleeces all round, we only had time for a brief photo call before retreating back to the house.

After Fish and Chips - blooming freezing!

With the house being a bit on the empty side, Helen had decided to re-decorate a bedroom for Jenny for when she returns next year. Sandra and I waded in and spent a few days scraping, filling, sanding, under-coating, re-under-coating, re-sanding, top-coating etc.

Painting walls - just like being at home!

 It was difficult for three people to work together in a relatively small space particularly when they include two forewomen and one labourer – the latter being the person who inevitably “did it wrong”. However, job well done, and the room was looking good before we left.

Our trip to Brisbane would not have been complete without visiting Paul and Pam who live just a few minutes away from W & H. Paul is my second, or perhaps even third, cousin and is notably for looking amazingly like my late father – the Douglas genes will out, warts and all!! It was really annoying to hear that his two daughters, Kate and Emily, were on a whistle-stop tour of what appears to be The World and had recently spent a few days in Edinburgh where of course we were unable to offer them a bed for the night.



Paul, me and David ; Pam and Sandra

 Their son David, a traditional Douglas name, has yet to make the trip and hopefully, if he does, he will pick a time when we are at home. Like nephew Calum he is a good rugby player, but touch rugby which is a much bigger sport in Australia than the UK, he has plays for Queensland and hopes to be in the Australian team playing New Zealand in the near future.

After a week Chez Tait it was time to be on our way again. I have just about given up trying to plan a route as inevitably we never get to where we planned. The general idea was to head west and do a big loop round before arriving in Sydney in about a weeks time. Setting off due south we passed through Beaudesert, then headed west through Boonah onto the Cunningham Highway and arrived in the substantial town (pop 12,500) of Warwick before looking for somewhere to spend the night. About 20k out of town is the Leslie Dam where we put up the tent at the Washpool campsite right on the shores of the lake and surrounded by the inevitable mob of kangaroos. With hammock slung up between a couple of trees it was too pleasant a spot to leave in a hurry so we spent another day there.

It's a hard life

On packing up the next day – disaster – we broke one of the angle joints on the tent. It was a surprise that they had lasted as well as they had, but annoying that they had broken only a week or so before the end of the trip – c'est la vie. For some reason we decided not to go west but to head back towards the coast – I have a suspicion that Sandra has identified a craft shop she wants to visit. We initially aimed for the small country town of Killarney where we noticed a signpost for a tourist drive to Queen Mary's Fall and we were off again into the unplanned.

Queen Mary's Falls

A very scenic drive took us past Daggs Falls and onto Queen Mary's Falls. The falls themselves were pretty spectacular but so was the wildlife – with our first sighting this trip of a Koala in the wild. But it was the birdlife which really excelled with Sandra heading off with her camera looking for fairy wrens whilst being surrounded by multi-coloured parrotty things one of which had the temerity to land on her head.

We were heading for Kyogle – but we never got there. Stopping for a picnic lunch at a fly speck on the map called Wiangaree we noticed a track going into the Border Ranges National Park and thus ended up at Lynch's Creek. This is the site of a school which closed down half a century ago. The school, which once had 40 pupils in a single classroom most of whom rode to school by horse, is still standing and it is possible to camp in the school grounds.

Lynch;s Creek School - where we camped

These are grassy, flat with plenty of shade and toilet facilities which I doubt have been upgraded since the school closed. Sandra has read somewhere about a particularly poisonous spider which, allegedly, lurks under the seat of these old-fashioned “thunder box” toilets - and can jump - so has declined to make use of them, disappearing into the woods when nature calls.

Spiders - what Spiders?

First up was a running repair on the broken tent – it's amazing what you can do with duct tape. We got the tent up just in time as the sky suddenly darkened, lightning flashed, thunder rolled and the heavens opened. Rain would have been bad enough but within seconds the ground was white as hailstones the size of marbles lashed down. Luckily for Sandra she was in the tent but, on a brief excursion to batten down the hatches, the top of my head took the brunt of hailstones bigger than golf balls – OK slight exaggeration, but look at the photo.

It's now the following morning, the storm is over, the sun is shining and we have decided to stay another day.

Canondale National Park, the Glass House Mountains, Brisbane and Referendum Result

Well it was a long time coming, over two years, and now it's over – the Referendum on Scottish Independence. As the date for voting approached the Yes campaign seemed to be gathering momentum and a vote to break away from the rest of the UK somehow seemed to be within the realms of possibility – this led to unexpected behaviour from Sandra. As we passed through each small country town in rural Australia she visited the local estate agents to look at the price of houses muttering threats of emigration should a Yes vote be declared and asking “Do you think Australia would have us”. Now, with common-sense winning the day by what was a pretty comfortable margin, Australia can breath easy – we will be returning home.

One advantage we had being in Australia was being able to watch live BBC coverage of the results coming in at a civilised time of day rather than having to stay up all night.

Before arriving to stay with Willie and Helen just outside Brisbane we spent a few days meandering south from our last campsite in Wongi National Park. Heading first to the coast we passed the military training area at the curiously named Tin Can Bay and ended up at glorious Rainbow Beach where my attention was split between watching hang gliders and suntanned girls in bikinis.

Sandra on Rainbow Beach

After a picnic lunch we drove on through Gympie and Kenilworth and eventually rolled into Conondale National Park where we set up camp on the banks of Booloumba Creek. As was so often the case we were not alone with maurauding Brush Turkeys, Goannas and predatory Kookaburras being much in evidence.



Campsite at Booloumba Creek

One of our camp neighbours

We walked to a waterhole which looked an attractive proposition for a quick skinny dip (we hadn't brought our costumes with us) However the sudden arrival of a big crocodile soon put paid to that idea. Some people would point out that this was not crocodile country and we must have been imagining things – however it was real and large.

Swimming hole - before crocodile appeared

Okay, it maybe wasn't a Saltwater Crocodile or even a Freshie – but when a long crocodile of kids, with a teacher at either end, troops over the horizon on a Duke of Edinburgh Award outing and makes straight for your waterhole for a swim – all thoughts of dipping, skinny or otherwise, go out of the window!

Back at camp Sandra was patiently waiting for birds to photograph when a Kookaburra swooped down, snatched up a lizard and perched on a nearby tree with the wriggling reptile in its beak.

Kookaburra with dinner in beak

A second Kookaburra then arrived spoiling for a fight, or at least a share of the still wriggling dinner. Whilst K1 hung on grimly, K2 grabbed the lizard by the head and let go of the branch with its feet and hung suspended - with K1 having to cope with the combined deadweight of both the lizard and K2 and all the time posing for a photograph.

 

Kookaburra 1 holding on as K2 grips lizard's head and hangs down

The David Attenburgh moments continued when we noticed a large tail sticking out of a termite mound at the top of a dead tree stump. It was a goanna going head first into the mound. We weren't sure if it was feasting on the inhabitants or was digging out a nest for its own use.

Eating termites or making a nest?

Anyway, enough of nature.

After three nights by the creek we packed up and made for Brisbane via the Glass House Mountains.

Glass House Mountains

A Glass House Mountain

These strange volcanic plugs emerge from flat coastal plains and were named by Captain Cook who thought they looked like the glass furnaces back in his native Yorkshire. We weren't in a particular hurry which was just as well as Sandra had a bit of an off day with her navigation. A 125k circumnavigation of the mountains was quite acceptable, however a second almost complete circumnavigation via Lakes Somerset and Wivenhoe, was probably unnecessary - the Satnav was switched back on but we didn’t arrive in Ormiston outside Brisbane until after dark

Lake Somerset - during second circumnavigation of the Glass House Mountains

.