The running festivals....

We are also trying to emabrace the fit and active lifestyle out here and have taken part in two of Sydney's major running festivals. The first was the City2Surf. The was a 14km run from the centre of Sydney to Bondi Beach. Thousands take part and it was an amazing day. Me, Nigel and Chris entered and managed the run the whole thing! I was only about 12 minutes behind Nigel and it took me an hour and a half. It was such a lovely day and the sun was shining so bright. Lots of people came out to support. Next we took pert in the Bridge run which was shorter at 9km but they closed off the Sydney Harbour bridge for the event. It was great to be able to run across the bridge and it has become part of my running route, altough I now use the footpath at the side.

Watching the Central Coast Mariners....

We have still been spending plenty of time on the Central Coast with our friends Kath and Chris. They have even taken us to a couple of football matches for their local team the Central Coast Mariners. We have had a couple of exciting games and it has inspired Nigel to play out here too. He has been playing for the local team, North Sydney FC and is now part of the best team in NSW. They recently won the league and even a tournament called the Champions of Champions which they won in the final last weekend. (I spectated in the pouring rain...it doesn't rain often here so it was very unfortunate that when it did it was the day I had to spend the whole afternoon outside!) Anayway here are a couple of pictures from the stadium, not being a great fan of the game at least there is a pretty special view to get distracted with. The stadium is located right on the edge of the water.

Our Sydney home...

Hi everyone, its been quite a while since our last blog and this is mainly due to the fact that we have been working hard to settle into Sydney life. I just thought I would put a short post up showing you where we are living. We have an apartment quite close to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Its about 10 minutes walk down to the water and we get a beautiful view of the harbour and the Opera house. Its pretty special and we both feel very fortunate to have found this place.

A morning in Japan...well okay a walk around a Japanese garden in Cowra!

Last weekend we headed to the only other town in driving distance, Cowra. The main and only highlight of this tiny town is that it is home to one of the best Japanese gardens in Australia. The garden was built to honour the Japanese prisoner's of war during WWII. Escaped convicts were shot about 12km from the site of the garden and the purpose was to build a stronger relationship between Cowra and Japan. If you are interested there is a website http://www.cowraregion.com.au/japanesegarden/?id=3168 It was a really nice morning and this idyllic place was a fantastic place to be to relax and enjoy the beautiful plants, lake and many waterfalls. We even stayed for lunch. There are lots of pictures because I couldn't pick which ones I like the best, they are all nice!

Our outback adventure....

Since we left Sydney and last updated you on our travels we have arrived in the outback in NSW. We are staying on a cattle ranch in order to gain approval for our visa extension. This has meant learning to live in a fairly remote regional area of NSW. If we need groceries it takes us 45 minutes drive to get into the nearest small town. For those wanting to track where we are the nearest town is called Forbes. We are living in a small sheep shearers cottage and our driveway is 4.5km long! We drive to work each day in a yute and are having many experiences that you can only have in the bush! We are working for a couple who have three small boys and are all madly into the sport polocross. We went off to our first competetion last weekend and I can only describe it as fast, furious and you have to be a little bit crazy to be involved! Its basically a racket sport on horseback. We were also treated to a delicious dinner cooked outback aussie style, one pot, a fire and some ash, a couple of hours and a lovely meat casserole dish...yum! Beer in hand and plenty of laughs. You can see me here with Murray and Emma's youngest child Aidee who has just turned one. I have been looking after the horses and learnng to ride in a stock saddle just like a cowgirl. No more do I ride simply one horse alone, these days I tend to take out three at a time...which has taken quite a bit of skill. The horses are all pretty good and this seems to be the norm so I haven't encountered any serious problems yet!



Nigel has been enjoying farm life and when he isn't up a tree he is chopping wood for our fire which keeps us warm on cold autumn nights. He has also been set loose on the farm quad bike which he regularly uses toi muster sheep, cattle and yesterday he even rescued a little lamb that had fallen down a well...lets just say it is going to take quite a few days for it to dry out!

The highlight of our trip has definately been the last week. We have been involved in mustering sheep and baby lambs, I have held a lamb that has just been born and we have helped out with the process of lamb marking (hard work if not quite mean!) We had about 1,150 lambs to catch, vacinate, ear tag and mark, and putting bands on their tails and boys bits to make them fall off...apparently they aren't needed and the tails just fall victim to infection from an infestation of flies so they are better without. The first day I was a mere bystander, a bit horrified by the whole process but from then decided to get involved and had a lot of fun trying to catch and pick up the lambs....I even got a few cuddles along the way and also a few kicks! Our legs and arms are now covered in bruises and scratches. As you can see from the pictures, Nigel was responsible for the more, shall we say cuddly of the lambs or just downright fat! I opted for the younger and cuter little ones!!



You can even see little Colly getting involved....it was his fifth birthday and he thought the whole thing was great....his dad even showed him his own unique way of keeping hold of the lambs!!! The rather large alpaca however did not get picked....he is very evil and hisses and spits at me every time I try to muster the sheep. It can be quite scary riding at him to get it moving I can tell you! The other great thing we did this week was to herd about 250 Angus cows across the most beautiful scenery at about 7.30am in the morning....it was incredible. They were mostly well behaved and went in the direction that me and my horse Joe told them to. When they stopped I just told them to MOOOve it along !! Okay so it sounded funnier at the time! Nigel then had the complicated job of drafting them into three groups ready for sale. A really tiring and physically demanding week and next week we are set to be helping the team of sheep shearers who are coming to shear 1,200 sheep!