Elizabeth Farm and Paramatta....

Today we decided to get out of the city and head west to the suburbs. The destination was Paramatta which is not much to write home about, not alot happening for a sunny Saturday it has to be said! But, some interesting things to see. Our first stop was Elizabeth farm. Little bit of history, it is the birthplace of the Australian wool industry, where the complex character John MacArthur imported and supplied Merino wool back to England. It was built in 1793 and believe it or not it is the oldest surviving European building in Australia! What we really liked about it was the lady who gave us our guided tour of the house. She was a John MacArthur fan and knew pretty much everything about the dynasty and the house so we were able to fire lots of questions at her and she seemed very excited that we were interested in what she had to say. Pretty much everything in the house was a replica which was a bit disappointing but she encouraged us to stay around after the tour and have fun and take lots of pictures..which of course we did. The first stop was the servants courtyard where Nigel challenged me to a game of hoopla!! On our first attempt I have to admit we were pretty rubbish....but... on the second go the score read Nigel 1 Gemma 2 Woohoo!! Winner! After this we had another look at the grounds which are set really close to Paramatta river, there were lots of big cacti which I really liked and lots of imported plants. On the veranda Nigel made himself comfy and read his paper while I had a little sleep on the chez long....well not actally, but we thought they would look good for the blog and the tour guide did tell us to make our selves at home.... Later Nigel even tested the comfort of John MacArthur's bed, he seemed to think it was good...it was a replica by the way otherwise we may have got kicked out! I have also put some pictures on of the artwork. An artist came to the house to give her interpretation of the MacArthur's who are very well known in Australia for their controversial past, MacArthur went insane. What is really impressive about her pictures is that she started by charcoaling the whole canvas and then used an eraser to create the images...they were incredible!

The woman who did our tour told us that the artist had bad mouthed John MacArthur in his bedroom suite when she visited and since then their electricals and projector that had a wall display have stopped working, I was about to offer Nigel's I.T expertise but I think she was enjoying the fact that it maybe the work of his spirit and I think it would have spoilt her fun if he had fixed it! Next, we headed to the kitchen quarters as you can see I cooked up a pie and made some tea! Despite our aprehension on arrival at how good it would be I have to say we were both pleasantly suprised at how much we enjoyed Eliazbeth farm, it was a real find! Well done to Mum and Dad for the Timeout book that you bought us for Sydney as thats where we heard about it!