La plage - jour 2

Day 2 and an early, delicious breakfast, was followed by a scenic drive down to the Mornington Peninsula where we arrived at Sara's beach house at Mt Martha for a BEAUTIFUL DAY AT THE BEACH. Here are Francesca and Jason on the balcony at the beach house, with the bay behind, and juice in hand. Thanks to Sara for asking us to come down! Grace was also there, and a cousin of Sara's who was very lovely, but I don't know how to spell her name.

We had a leisurely lunch, lazed around the house a bit, and once the danger 11-3 high-sun time had passed, we headed down to the beach. The water was cool, the sand soft, you could go for ages out into the sea and it stayed calm and shallow. Jason kept saying the water was salty. I kept telling him is was the sea.

There's not much more to say about the beach. It was hot and sunny. The sky was blue. The water was lovely. We all got browner. We had a minor ice cream tragedy (the truck was there when we came out of the water, but it was gone by the time we walked over!)

Oh, Jason stole my sarong. Bastard.

We reluctantly left the beach for a nice drive home where Francesca went to sleep, then we took her out for dinner, wandering down past the MCG, through Birrarung Marr, by the river and to Fed Square for an al fresco donburi dinner at Chocolate Buddha. And followed it up with a nice coffee at Brunetti. Also al fresco - the night was fresh and cool (today was supposed to be 42 degrees, so we were enjoying it while it lasted, but it's turned out to only be 38)

Anyway, I should go now. NYE dinner guests tonight - the lovely bridesmaids (and Andy), and Jason is busy cooking while I am typing away here. I might have a shower, stir my ice cream (strawberry and balsamic vinegar, solidifying in the freezer as we speak), then go and watch as he fries the aubergine for the moulignana tonight! I attach a sneak peek to tempt you, and there will be NYE photos tomorrow...

Elle est arrivee!!

Thursday afternoon and Francesca is finally with us! As proof, here is a photo of her and Jason in my mother's house:

She is surprisingly awake and perky, and tomorrow we are going to the beach! Tonight, a little rest and some nice soup - il fait beau - 33 degres, et 37 demain!

An added bonus - here is a photo of the roast pork from Christmas dinner Sunday...

Frozen rain

A belated Merry Christmas to all!


We had a fabulous, overdone Christmas lunch on Sunday at my mother's place, complete with pig-quarter (roasted to perfection), many, many noodle salads, and possibly the best dumplings to grace the face of the earth. The pudding was forgotten until later in the evening during games of Pictionary and Jenga.

But we're off to the beach today and I am being hauled out the door - so all I'll say is this: Francesca has been delayed by the inevitable weather conditions of Montreal, and is only on her way to Chicago now, three and a half hours later than scheduled. She probably won't make tonight's SFO flight, so we will expect her for Thursday morning instead of Wednesday, alas. But on the bright side, more time to go and get the mattress pad for the sofa bed! No, that's not much of a bright side, is it. The beach beckons.

Je me souviens

Seriously, I'm trying to keep it going.

A string of emails and cards from Montreal bring us news of 41cm of snow, and I reminisce about slush and 'calcium' and falling on my arse on the ice and those monster big trucks that come along and clear it away. Then I go outside and bake a little in the heat and pull up my sleeves so my t-shirt tan doesn't get worse and fret about not wearing strong enough sunscreen.
But now Jason is listening to Marie-France Bazzo interview Andre Boisclair, the night air is cool after a change and some rain, and I could almost look out the window and see the snowflakes falling and suggest that we go to la patinoire ou la glissade, ou je voudrais faire un bonhomme de neige parce que je n'en ai bati que deux l'hiver dernier. Il n'y avais pas 41cm de neige le decembre dernier... nor this December, I guess :) Not for us, anyway!

In other news: la cousine de Jason, Claudia, a un nouveau chiot - ZORO...

And Francesca will be here in ONE WEEK!! We celebrated by eating kangaroo for the second time in a week at the Night Market at Queen Vic. With an emu sausage, which means we've now eaten the coat of arms. Jason is privileged - he never offered me patriotic Canadian symbols for supper while in Quebec.

Christmas approaches... Jason is working like a dog for the festival (www.slf.org.au/festival), I am working slightly less hard for BRIDGE (www.bridge-project.org), we have nearly finished Christmas shopping and wedding preparations continue apace. We're both tired and stressed, but a festive break beckons, there will be much roast pork and Jason Salad for Sunday lunch, and Francesca has just taken delivery of a batch of divine Chloe chocolates to transport across the Pacific and this time, not be furtively scoffed by my father's small dog, to then be thrown up on the carpet. And a merry Christmas to all of you as well.

Bonjour!

Un premier message...on verra si plusieurs autres suivront.

C'est fou!

Il y aura plus d'articles en francais bientot, je promets. Pour maintenant, un petit kangourou d'Australie...



This little kangaroo, as far as I know, wasn't in tonight's
kanguragu, but I'm sure he would have been pretty tasty if he was.




Apart from eating national symbols, we've been drinking a lot of coffee. Here is a picture of one. We were outside Brunetti on Swanston Street on a cold day in winter, about to go to the football where Jason was going to be baptised as a Hawthorn supporter. Hawthorn lost, but the coffee was good.

A first post and I don't know what I'm doing

Oof, finally, online. Who knows if this will work, but we'll see how it goes... this is kanguragu, named after the dinner we just ate. Perhaps if I'd created this yesterday it would have been called roast veg and haloumi, but such is life. Kanguragu it is.

This blog is a half-arsed attempt to provide the lovely Francesca with a simple way of keeping everyone in Montreal updated on her upcoming Australian holiday, and as a pleasant bonus, a good way for Jason and I to keep les montrealais et les montrealaises (et les lavallois et les lavalloises) updated on our big Australian adventure in general. So voila!

More to come, I suppose, but for the moment I'm just going to post this to see what happens!