Winter blue skies over the Miami Downtown skyline
Lunch at the Viceroy overlooking the Bay with my host Edmundo, and then a visit to the minimalist Four Seasons before dinner at Buena Vista Bistro in the Design District – not bad considering this is my first day, after travelling a day and a half to get here.
Michael enjoying lunch at Viceroy on Brickell in Downtown Miami
Dinner in the Miami Design District with Rai, and my host Edmundo
New fireworks patterns appear on the Sydney Harbour Bridge early on in the display.
Sydney’s legendary New Year’s Eve Fireworks this year more than lived up to the global reputation for a spectacular showing. Sydney was abuzz in party atmosphere all day with people out in the streets, at cafes, and taking their picnics to the vantage points in the parks bordering the harbour foreshores.
I went with friends for dinner before returning to friends’ apartment for dress circle views of the whole display. The photos give just a hint of the magnificent pyrotechnics lighting the whole harbour for nearly 30 minutes.
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Click here to see other photos of the spectacular New Year’s Eve Fireworks over Sydney Harbour.
At 21 months, the child has endless energy! Poor Bill and Mindy.
Bring Jude back to Uncle Michael’s apartment to visit when he can talk, and understand ‘No’. Or can simply be sat in front of a DVD, or quietly in a chair with a bowl of grapes in front of him.
It took only five minutes for Uncle Michael to suggest that we abandon plans for cold turkey and salad at home and head for the cafe in the park for Boxing Day lunch where Jude can run free on the grass.
Here are some of the photos.
What's left of the watercress - refreshing in COLD water!
Christmas morning – after standing for 15 back-breaking minutes to pick the tender shoots off the watercress and refresh in cold water, I put my hand into the sink only to find to my utter shock and horror that the water is HOT! I want to serve crisp, chilled watercress salad, not soup!
Now, I am so far behind in my preparation for Christmas Day lunch. I haven’t even started to set the table. I have been soaking the black currants in verjuice to make them plump, and will toast the pinenuts to coax the nutty flavour into the overall salada extravaganza – or what there is left of it.
I had the foresight to make the Avocado Soup yesterday and it is chilling in the refrigerator. I have not peeled the tiger prawns that will adorn the soup as yet as I wish to retain that delicious ‘saltiness from the sea’ taste that remains when a prawn comes straight from the shell.
I do hope the silver is polished and the little-used crystal gleaming!
PS: Just as we are about to sit down to eat, I’m asked why there are 7 places set for only 6 people. I’m not used to all this activity – obviously!
Avocado soup lost in all that once-a-year china and crystal. The hand washing-up is a killer!
Chookman, Michael, Pam and Ken, and Victor 'raising a glass' before the Christmas lunch
An 'Australian' Christmas - so many families had hydrangea growing in their gardens as we were growing up.
My good German friend, Gerhard is once again working wonders with the hydrangea from his own gardens in the Blue Mountains to decorate St Canice’s in Elizabeth Bay for Christmas. He’s had large Christmas trees soaking for weeks in his dam to keep them fresh and green, and will adorn them with lights to stand next to the altar at Midnight Mass.
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Click here to see other photos
The Turner family
Pam and Ken leaving St Mary's Waverley - 22nd December 1961
Pam and her bridesmaid Marsha with Michael
Alan, Juanita and Michael on their way to the Golden Jubilee Celebration
Click on the arrow at the bottom left to start the video. And then you can click on the icon at the bottom right to open into fullscreen.
Alan hosted family and close friends in a celebration for his 70th Birthday.
Earlier in the afternoon of the big day, storm clouds gathered; the sky grew grey and steely; thunder clapped and lightning struck; and rain bucketed down. Providentially, by late afternoon the skies cleared and the sea calmed in time for us to board the Macleay Cruiser at Double Bay for a sail on the beautiful Sydney Harbour, and a glass of Taittinger, on our way to a mystery designation for the Birthday Dinner.
Docking at the wharf at Balmoral Beach, on what had developed into a beautiful balmy evening, the group walked casually along the waterfront to the wonderful Bather’s Pavilion for an evening of good food, and great entertainment – by none other than the host himself!
“I love the video, but can’t you do something about the red face”, says Alan. “I wasn’t as red as that you know!”
Click on the arrow to start viewing photos from the Sydney Harbour Twilight Cruise and the Birthday Dinner. Double click and it will open into fullscreen where you can browse individual photos or view the album as a Slideshow.
Click on this link to read what Michael, an old friend of 44 years, shared with Alan and all the guests.
75 minutes from Sydney and I’m landing at Mudjimba Airport on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. I’ve never seen so many babies in all my life as were on the plane. It’s good to see young families being able to enjoy holidays at the beach I suppose.
My brother Mark and Jenny have a new house overlooking Sunshine Beach just south of Noosa – so near to nature looking out at the sea but maybe too close to nature in the early morning being awakened by the cawing of old black crows and the screeching of black cockatoos outside my window.
Clear, clean waters of Sunshine Beach
Michael and sister-in-law Jenny after on Sunrise Beach - at Sunset, after a long walk through the wash of the waves to the headland and back
Anne and Trev came up from the Gold Coast not knowing that I was the surprise guest. Seeing the prawns that Trev brought with him, that he had collected from the trawler man returning from a night at sea off the Gold Coast, was almost as exciting for me as Anne’s excitement and surprise at seeing me there.
You know how much I love my seafood (and my sister).
Fresh prawns for lunch on Mark and Jenny's terrace - with Anne and Trevor
Great Uncle Michael doesn’t quite understand what it’s like to be blessed with child.
Nephew Bill and grandnephew Jude in Rushcutter's Bay Park
But after this afternoon’s non-stop chasing of young Jude over the grass in Rushcutter’s Bay Park while my bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich and coffee got cold, perhaps I’m the one who got it right!
Great Uncle Michael declares that there's nothing cruel about putting an overly energetic child 'on a 'leash' after getting such bad indigestion running after Jude while trying to eat my sandwich
The fresh salmon sushi that I brought with me as a wee treat for Bill and Mindy had to be thrown away. Even after I ordered three meals and three coffees at the kiosk in the park for lunch, the dragon lady of an owner sent a girl to remind me that only food bought at the kiosk could be consumed at the tables. Her shortsightedness makes me vow never to return!
Beggaring belief, development has encroached right up to the edge of the great Pyramids of Giza
My only visit to Egypt was in 1990. It was primarily for business and my sightseeing was confined to a morning’s visit to see the Sphinx and the Pyramids just outside Cairo.
We did not cross miles of cinnamon-dusted desert on camels to reach the site. Instead, driving down the main street of Giza, the Pyramids suddenly appeared upfront like the Fairyland Castle at the end of Main Street in Disneyland!
I find it hard to fathom that a bustling built-up suburb with buildings, streetlights, cars and markets has been permitted to encroach on one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
Captain George waves from the bridge of the 'Macleay' at Greenwich Point in Sydney Harbour
A Devonshire Tea of freshly baked scones (whipped up in Captain George’s own kitchen) is the first surprise of our harbor cruise that takes us into the Lane Cove National Park and the upper reaches of the Lane Cove River. George was up early to do the baking before slipping the epaulettes on the shoulder flaps of his crisp white shirt to greet us at the gangplank of his tidy little boat at Greenwich wharf.
The Jacaranda Season in Sydney is in full swing with blotches of purple daubed across the landscape of harbourside homes and parks at this time of year. In spots I couldn’t see the jacaranda for the masts of all the sailing boats moored in the little bays.
But there is so much more of the inner harbor to take in with so many islands that once hummed with industrial activity and now standing pretty much bastions of a time past.
Once George explains this most interesting history of our once ‘working harbour’, we disappear from urban development into the silence through mangroves and along sandstone river banks in the upper reaches of the Lane Cove River. Can this be but a few kilometres of the centre of a bustling 21st century city?
Double click on the arrow to open the Picasa Photo Album and take a look at the photos to see what we experienced, and to read the captions that tell some of the story.
Sydney's iconic Opera House and Harbour Bridge from the Botanic Gardens atJacaranda time
Father Steve regaling Pam and Ken after the successful evening. (Or is it Pam doing the regaling?)
I had more than a passing interest in the success of the evening as I had visited the Mission in the mountains outside Dili in East Timor with Father Steve two years ago. This trip wasn’t exactly a baptism of fire, but it was definitely an immersion in an environment so different from anything I had ever experienced, and one that I totally enjoyed.
Whether it was having electricity for only a couple of hours each night; or splashing a pail of cold water (that had come by hose from a mountain spring) over my naked body each morning; I freely accepted it as what one does in primitive circumstances. I took all of it it in my stride. This immersion in activities so foreign, coupled with being treated like a welcome guest, has its own sense of luxury. Money can’t buy this! But money can provide these happy, undemanding East Timorese with a few of the basic necessities of life.
And so it was last night, that almost 200 people were similarly inspired to dig deep to help the efforts of the mission, and they hadn’t even been there. Much of this is the work of Steve Sinn who inspires benefactors, large and small with his passion
On reflection of my 2009 visit . . .
News of the death of Libyan dictator Gaddafi has stopped my morning. I visited Libya twice in the past four years and now look forward to returning again. Tragically, Jamal, the owner of the travel company, who personally drove me to Leptis Magna on my second visit, was killed by a stray bullet in Green Square in the opening days of the revolution.
A memory of my 2008 visit with Edmundo to the Roman ruins at Leptis Magna on the Mediterranean outside Tripoli
I visited the Hunza Valley “where mountains meet” in the Northern Areas of Pakistan when I was working in South Asia 1985. I’m giving very serious thought to a return visit in 2012, fanned on by similar desires of Ken Turner and Pam.
The thought is sufficient reason to dust off my story of past experiences of nearly 30 years ago in that wonderful country.
You simply won’t believe the day we had yesterday!
Jumping off the back of the dive-boat into the sea as 26 year-old Captain Matt backed up to get us as close as possible without the boat hitting the reef, I had visions of ending up ’20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”.
Only today do I learn on Google
“The title of the book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea refers to a journey around the world that was of a distance of 20,000 leagues, not a depth of 20,000 leagues. A nautical league is three nautical miles.”
More of this story to come.
Michael swimming with a school of Oriental Sweetlip at the Cod Hole on the outer wall of the Great Barrier Reef. Photo taken on my camera by Scotty the dive instructor
A hundred metres from my doorstep
I am on Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef with friends Juanita and Jan for five days of relaxation. It may be an easy 20 kilometres off the coast of Far North Queensland by Cessna, but flying low over the coral reefs in clear tropical waters before landing on the island’s airstrip, I’m overcome by a feeling of being 20 light-years away from reality.
I’m a castaway in a wilderness not only in the unspoiled landscape of melaleuca and she-oak casuarinas, but in a technological wilderness cut off from a world of television and mobile phones (and almost from Wi-Fi Internet access that I can access in a lounge area only).
Today, Lizard Island is a terrestrial and marine National Park under World Heritage protection, combining ‘natural beauty, uninterrupted, with fine dining and refined comforts for the discerning traveller’.
Jan, Michael and Juanita after flying from Cairns over the Great Barrier Reef to Lizard Island
Michael in Red Square, Moscow in 1990
Recently reading an article on ‘The Golden Ring’ of towns within driving distance of Moscow, and having a strong desire to go explore them, has prompted me to dig deep into my archives and find the story of my first trip there in 1990.
I hope you enjoy reading what I experienced there 21 years ago.
On the edge of historic change . . .
between reform and disintegration, perestroika and collapse . . .
Back on terra firm after an amazing experience aloft at 1,000 feet . . but like riding a motor bike when we swooped down like a bird and flew between the trees at just 50 ft!
Fields of bright yellow canola and green cereal crops, (planted these days in perfect lines by farmers using GPS tracking devices on their agricultural equipment), stretch for miles below us.
We fly low over sheep stations and typical Australian landscapes with eucalypts lining the now-running creeks and waterholes.
The only telescope in the world that tracked and recorded the complete first manned mission to land on the moon in 1969 is here below me outside Parkes, NSW!
A swing back over the town let’s me see the old railway station and wheat silos of my grandfather’s day from on high; and then out over the huge distribution complexes that one day will be expanded as a central hub for the whole Continent, (if our Federal Government can ever rise above short-term politics and finally address strategic infrastructure upgrades such as this).
Here I am aloft wedged in behind Peter under an 8-metre span of red and white wing at 300 feet, happily dipping and diving through the air as free as a bird. Exhilarating!
I fear for but a split-second when Peter’s whole body involuntarily jerks sideways. “Surely he’s not having a stroke? Where’s that switch that he told me about in the pre-flight safety briefing that fires a ballistic ‘chute to lower the whole micro-light (and me) gently back to earth?”
Unbelievably, a gossamer thread trailing from a catapulting spider has struck Peter across the face, and of course there is no drama for one as experienced as he. But can you imagine a spider swinging that high?
Safely back on terra firma after an hour in the sky, we drive by a country butcher for some thick bacon rashers and freshly laid, free-range eggs.
This intrepid aviator is hungry!
As free as a bird