Our bags are packed and we’re all ready to leave.  Just got one final shower to have and the children need to go to bed (yes Jonathon I do mean you so stop reading over my shoulder and GO TO BED!!!).

We had a few mini crises today over the cases but we’re confident all will be fine.

Will update with the rest of the photos once we’re back and on broadband but until then we hope you’ve enjoyed reading about our holiday as much as we’ve enjoyed being on holiday.

Fiona, Hope, Jonathon, Eloise and Isabelle

xxxxx

Well, our trip is coming to an end but we’ve still got some more things planned. Tomorrow Ellie, Hope and myself are going on a Dolphin Watch Cruise in Nelson Bay for a couple of hours. We’re all really looking forward to it as there is a pod of about 80 dolphins in the bay so we should see a fair few.

It’s another hot one today, 29C in the shaded lounge, haven’t been out the back yet so not sure what the actual outside temp is but it’ll be in the high 30’s / low 40’s. Anyway, it’s breakfast time now so I’ll say good bye for now. Will post photos tomorrow when we’re back from our cruise.

48C today and the girls have been in the paddling pool since lunchtime. Hope and I finally made the gingerbread sleigh that we forgot to do before Christmas and J managed to get bitten on the foot by a green ant. Nothing serious but it does sting (although if you ask J he’ll tell you that it burns like an acid burn and is the worst pain ever).

These are a couple of the photos from yesterday at the beach.

We had so much fun, we all went in Peter’s 4WD and spent some time driving over the sand dunes - I’ve never heard Isabelle scream quite so loudly as she did when we drove what looked to be off the edge of the world! The sand dropped out from under us and Isabelle screamed and screamed and screamed!!

After we’d been deafened by Isabelle we spent some time playing in the sand and building sand castles - the kids loved it, especially when Jenny and I got soaked by a wave and ended up sodden from the knees down (today should have been shorts rather than cropped jeans!).

Pizza for dinner and an early night

On Sunday we took J to visit Maitland Gaol for part of his Christmas present. The gaol was a fully operational prison up until the January 30th 1998 and at it’s busiest hosted in excessive of 600 prisoners.

Our guide for the day was an ex prisoner from the prison who was incarcerated there from 1976-1979. We saw all of the prison from the cell blocks to the kitchens and also the secure wing where prisoners such as Ivan Milat were held.

We all really enjoyed our tour and we hope you enjoy some of the photos we took that day.

We’ve had a fantastic time so far today - the children got up about 7am and we sent the girls in to wake Adam up (he’s camping in the garden in a tent huge enough for a family of 20) and then we set about opening the presents under the tree. The children were all very, very lucky with their presents and will be struggling to get them all in their cases to come home again!

The adults all did very well, Santa was kind to us all, and we’re now waiting for the pork joint to finish cooking so we can sit down to lunch. Breakfast was scotch pancakes (with whipped cream and bananas for me) and a huge mug of tea. Lunch will be various meats and a salad and then the grog log (gollywog shapped chocolate biscuits - think a cross between rich tea texture and ginger snaps texture - briefly soaked in sherry and layed up with whipped cream then coated in grated chocolate) will be served.

It’s a bit damp here today and the temp in the lounge is 23.5C (with the air con on) and outside is about 29/30C.

Hope you all have a wonderful day and the Santa is as kind to you as he was to us.

Fiona, Hope, Jonathon, Eloise and Isabelle
xxxxx

It’s about 5.30pm and we’re pretty much ready for Christmas. WE’ve got all the food we could possibly need, J is fishing again with Peter and the girls are working on their scrapbooks with Jenny. Hope has finished making the ‘grog log’ and I’ve been working on my Uni stuff.

We’ve had some pretty impressive storm clouds lately but luckily the end of the Hunter River in Hinton hasn’t flooded so we’ve been saved some of the problems that other areas of NSW have had.

The gingerbread sleigh kit still needs to be done, will be doing that this evening and then we need to get the meat out of the freezer and we’re all set for tomorrow.

There was a party at the pub on Saturday night with live bands and we could hear them perfectly from the house, meant that we didn’t have to pay the inflated pub prices for coke and could just stay at home and drink our own!

We’re thinking about going to the beach on Boxing Day but it all depends on whether the shark has gone or not (!) not entirely sure we’re covered for Shark bite injuries and we’d never get the kids back in the water if they spot a shark!!

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, we’ll be thinking of you all in the freezing cold while we’re sunning ourselves in the low 30’s!!

Happy Christmas everyone

This morning we braved the Thursday morning crush at the supermarket to stock up on necessary items (very odd to be walking round a supermarket looking at salad and BBQ meats while listening to the PA system play Winter Wonderland!!) and took some photos of the local area on the way back. We braved temps of approx 35C to take this photos (aircon in cars is a wonderful invention) so please enjoy them.

Tonight we’re going to a friends house for dinner and will hopefully be taking some photos of the wildlife that she gets in her back yard - Kangaroos and Echidnas as expected with possibly some snakes and spiders as well. We’ve been lucky so far and haven’t seen any of the less attractive Australian wildlife - you’d have heard the girls all the way back in England if they’d come across a Huntsman spider or a King Brown snake. Mel lives in the village that we keep visiting in an effort to get some photos of the Christmas lights, one house in particular is beautiful but so far all our photos look like Vegas all sped up!! If it was just the lights we wouldn’t have a problem but they keep twinkling and its not easy to photograph the chaser lights or the moving reindeer made of chaser lights. We will keep trying though.

We all got up very early yesterday (left the house at about 6.45am) and drove down to Sydney (we’re about 120 miles north of Sydney) so we could go to Taronga Zoo - this trip was Isabelle’s main Christmas present so we wanted to make a full day of it.  We got there about 9.30 and it was just before 5pm that we left so it really was a full day - if you ever go to Taronga Zoo you have to be there for 9am when it opens or you’ll be pushed for time to see it all, especially if you want to do any of the animal encounters or listen to any of the talks about the different animals.

We started off in ‘Wild Australia’ and ended up in ‘Africa’ having spent a couple of hours in ‘Wild Asia’.  We saw eveything from Kangaroos (oddly enough) to Elephants and even saw a Northern Quoll (which is a very rare Australia animal).  The kids all had a fantastic time, it was about 29C and we had a beautiful clear view across the harbour to the Opera House and the harbour bridge.

It was gone 9pm when we eventually got back as we hit traffic on the highway but we all had a fantastic time.  Very tired today but it was all worth it.

I’ve attached some photos (I hope) and will post some of the local area once I take them!

We’ve not been doing an awful lot, some pottering around the local area and also a few bits of everyday general shopping.  We’re now totally ready for that event on December 25th and have enough food to feed a small army (although we’ll also have to shop again tomorrow!!)  Hope’s brother eats loads, as most young men his age do - especially the sporty ones and the children are eating more than the rest of us combined!!

The local area is very pretty, we’re in the Hunter Valley area in NSW and on Wednesday we went to the beach where the Pasha Bulka beached (Nobby’s beach) in the floods back in June.  We got some photos of J on the quayside with a large tanker in the background that was only about a fifth of the size of the Pasha.  Will post some photos later today when I work out where Jenny has them stored on the computer!!

The weather is about 27/28C most of the time, really very nice compared to what we left back home and very welcome.  It’s been a long year and the chance for some sun and heat is very much needed.  The children have been in and out of the paddling pool in the back garden and having great fun - today I think we may be going to get the water pistols out and stalk them around the garden then take every opportunity to soak them!!

Today my foot really hurts and is starting to bruise up, I slipped in baggage reclaim in Sydney airport when we arrived and ended up sat on the floor with myleg bent right underneath me.  The good thing is that my knee can now bend all the way without hurting, the bad news is my foot really hurts and now all the swelling has gone down you can see the pretty bruises.

We’ve been going to a lot of raffles lately, the Christmas meat over here seems to be hams and they’re being offered as raffle prizes.  The one Jenny got on Wednesday weighed in at almost 8kgs and that was fairly small.

I think that’s it for now - hope you’re all well and looking forward to Christmas.  I promise to add some photos later today and we’re going to be taking some photos of Hinton (the village we’re staying in) so you can all see the local area and how the Australian countryside compares to the English.