Month: February 2013

All manner of birdlife visit our home garden but never have we seen a kookaburra, which Wednesday began by eyeing off the bedding begonias for any sign of creepy crawlies for half an hour and then tried a fitting in the bird bath.
It’s surveilleance point was the Tipuana tree, which is 18 years old and during summer gives shade to the entire back garden.
Constant feathered friends we usually see are honey eaters and we can have up to 20 or 30 darting in and out of the tree branches in what appears to be a game of tag and chasey. It is amazing to watch them, for they never ever collide either with each other or the branches.
Mr Willy Wagtail is a constant visitor, especially while I am weeding the garden beds and he picks over the newly tilled earth for a bit of tucker. There is also a rather cocky mudlark, noisey as ever, standing up to any potential threat to its livelihood, be it a dog, cat or 100kg monster gardener.
Wattle birds too enjoy darting in and around the trees and shrubbery, the red bearded male along with its plain-jane female version.
Crows are one of the unwanted visitors, for apart from their sickening car-car-car! sound, they love to drop purple poops all over the bird bath and environs. A beautiful overweight palamino homing pigeon is another unwanted variety because it has chosen our place to ‘home’ and always attempts to put sizeable deposits on our outdoor furniture setting. But the squeak associated with the sliding door opening alerts them that the landlord is on the war-path again and they are terrified. At least until my back is turned or while we are away on holidays when they get free reign to move right back in.

Late last year we found ourselves alone at Christmas; the entire clutch of family members had flown the coop, obviously a pay-back for us spending over 4 or 5 months during the year either overseas or over east.
The McInnes’ and Stewarts took their respective caravans to Esperance, for Dave and Erin, like Stu and Jas visiting from Melbourne for the festive season, the call of Jas’ and Erin’s individual maternal nests took presendence on Xmas day.
Undaunted, Isabel and I were cock-a-doodle-do over a pork loin roast with all the trimmings and not a kid or grandkid in sight to fight over the exquisitely crunchy crackling.
By Boxing Day all had been forgiven as half the family members flocked to the Dunsborough holiday home. And how perfect with Sophie and Frankie (and Sascha the dog!) getting to spend quality time with Grandma and Grandpa.
While I am more of a gourmand, Stuart is a well defined gourmet and following roast duck cooked and served for his in-laws Xmas dinner, Stu reserved the epicurean delights of roast goose for us over New Year.
If you cast your mind back to the recent festive season the days were energy zappingly hot and the normally temperate Dunsborough decided to join in with a series of daily 38c
So our quality time was lengthened somewhat, sitting around the air-conditioned lounge room instead of the usual family luncheon setting at the Bootleg Brewery complete with rock bands.
But we did get to marvel at 6 month old Frankie’s mobility skills, Sophie’s articulate communication and door opening skills letting in the heat and allowing Sascha’s preferred option of barking at the neighbours wandering by.
New Year’s Eve arrived and time to turn our attention to matters of a poultry nature as the grand goose had been in the frig thawing for 48 hours and time for it to salute the recently cleaned and especially prepared oven.
At 5.30 pm the kitchen lighting took a serious dim view while the oven was taking an age to heat up. We had struck a ‘brown out’ which is apparently less severe than a ‘black out’, but none-the-less harmful to a ready prepared goose.
I rang Western Power who advised there were no outages for the south west and had I checked if the problem also existed with any of the neighbours. A quick check with Jenny in 13 found her half sized fluorescent circle globe in the kitchen flickering like they usually do. “Just use my oven if your like” she generously proffered, “I am going out, but you are welcome to use it”
After calling a couple of local electricians, who politely laughed at me calling on new year’s eve, one told me it was back to Western Power for me.
Calling the power generating giant, this time I was advised that they had received 780 complaints and that the matter would be rectified by 8.30pm that night.
What a good thing Isabel had a stockpile of yummy left-overs in the little frig to enable us to celebrate the arrival of yet another year.
The following day–still a rather auspicious day– the goose finally joined in the celebrations giving the many unitiated diners the taste of a bird usually the favoured domain of European royalty.

The Perth branch of the family presently numbers 14 with Erin and Dave adding yet another birth’day later this month. Early February each year sees Sophie celebrate the 1st, David observing the 3rd and young Ryan eagerly rejoicing on the 5th.

With so many celebrants to kick up collective heels, a  family knees-up on Saturday February 2nd memorialised the multiple occasions with a fashionable meal of sliders. Whoppers are so yesteryear! Out-dated, two handed and passe when compared to the cutting edge sliders; a chance even to hold these mini burgers with 2 fingers and practically stuff the lot whole into your gob.

Researching all the bakeries of Australia revealed that the genuine slider buns are only made for retail fast food outlets. The ‘family’ slider show must make do with soft round rolls recomended by the bird at the Booragoon Coles store. (ordered 2 days in advance)

It was the usual suspects of Ally, Bec, Erin and Isabel who formed the catering corp for the event with an assortment of lamb, beef,  vegetarian and chicken burger patties. Not even Maccas, KFC or Sizzler can match such an outstanding range of distinctively delish dainties deserving of a dynasty.

The Stewart’s poolside was the popular mid-afternoon venue and several hours in the pool always sets up the appetite for burgers, salad and birthday cake in the form of multiple cupcakes as opposed to those NHMRC incorrect communal cakes that spread the nasties.

There are other months of the year when birthdays tend to collide but July has been chosen for a fully-blown family get together in Broadbeach on the Gold Coast, when the Melbourne branch of three will swell the dynasty ranks to 17. There could even be sliders on the menu!

 

Welcome to the first of our new blog, an occassional posting of family events and grey nomad travel adventures.
Recently the Perth Wildcats celebrated its 30th Anniversary to which Dave got top tickets courtesy of his Meerkats boss Gavin.
A prestige celebratory event at which we rubbed shoulders with past owner Bob Williams and his sons Richard and Chris (the passage of time is a curious matter, for young Chris was in those days employed as a floor wiper and about 9 years of age about the start of the new millenium).
Other shoulder to shoulder greetings involved James Crawford, flown in for the event from his now home in Alabama, Cal Bruton, Eric Watterson, Ned Coten, Trevor Torrence and being actually seated next to the guest of honor for the day, John Worsfold
David was stoked getting to update his 20 y.o. pictures with JC, who not even remembered the event but remarked that Brian’s home cooking on that night included salmon; and an ever obliging top bloke Woosha happy to smile for the IPhone.
The Wildcats Legends team defeated the Pioneer Westate Wildcats and the current Wildcats champions beat the Adelaide 36ers
All that was Sunday February 3rd and the celebrating continued the following morning at a breakfast for 500 at the Perth Exhibition Centre as moi sat next to the former owner and enjoyed the banter and breaking bread.
As one who has only ever won a bride doll in a raffle imagine my joy when David rang again to announce he had fallen heir to more box seats at the following Friday night game. Retirement does have its drawbacks. One never gets a day off in retirement.