Autumn Trip to Fiji
16 May 2019
Our trip to Sydney for Mardi Gras was short this year. My mother’s birthday fell on Sunday and we had planned a lunch for her birthday, so we didn’t arrive in Sydney until Sunday night, having watched the parade on the SBS livestream from home the previous night. We went to the Extra Dirty event with friends and took the opportunity to spend another couple of days in Sydney seeing the Art Gallery of NSW and some other sights as well as having a meal with Beau.
Back in Melbourne, we were at the gym for the lead-up to the Arnold Australia Expo, so the visiting US pro bodybuilders were training there. The lineup for the pro show was good this year. Jay and I went to the prejudging where we had good seats. Jay had to be at the airport before the evening show, so we didn’t see the presentation, but William Bonac was a pretty clear winner from what we saw.
Jay travelled to the Bay Area for the Game Developers Conference, taking the opportunity to visit friends and his sister’s family. It was only three months since we had last been there, but this year we both have work trips to the US. While he was away, I amused myself by finding my little donkey (steam) engine from when I was a child. With some machine oil for lubrication and methylated spirit for fuel it still ran well. I made it just like old times by giving myself a full-thickness burn on the finger with the spirit burner.
We went to a few shows in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and also the Melbourne Queer Film Festival before my birthday at the end of March. It was a low-key birthday for 49; we had dinner at Cutler & Co. For next year I’ll have to figure out some way to mark my 50th.
Over Easter we went to Fiji for a few days. We had wanted to go somewhere warm with a beach and neither of us had been there before. The weather was kind to us with only a little rain. We did a day trip to a coral atoll and also went zip-lining and abseiling. The trip was a little shorter than we had originally envisaged as we had to be back to use our tickets to see Tim Minchin on the Tuesday after Easter. Once again I was called to attend to a sick passenger on the flight back, this time a six-year-old with a UTI. I put some more photos online in an album.
Tim, Corrie and Tats invited us to come for a hike in Werribee Gorge on ANZAC Day. It made for an enjoyable day trip with a late lunch at a pub nearby. The second half of the hike was surprisingly challenging with the path along the river being very narrow in parts. Tats managed to negotiate the whole thing while filming with his phone.
Apart from turning 49, the other things which made me feel old recently were attending the welcome ceremony to the County Court for our friend Liz and also going to David’s fiftieth birthday party, when it seemed not that long ago that we were going to all our friends’ fortieth birthdays and not long before that their twenty-firsts.
The welcome to the court was quite a touching ceremony, with speeches describing aspects of Liz’s life and career. The morning tea afterwards was understandably very lawyer-heavy. David’s birthday was a fun opportunity to talk with people some of whom I hadn’t seen for many years.
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Back in Melbourne, we were at the gym for the lead-up to the Arnold Australia Expo, so the visiting US pro bodybuilders were training there. The lineup for the pro show was good this year. Jay and I went to the prejudging where we had good seats. Jay had to be at the airport before the evening show, so we didn’t see the presentation, but William Bonac was a pretty clear winner from what we saw.
Jay travelled to the Bay Area for the Game Developers Conference, taking the opportunity to visit friends and his sister’s family. It was only three months since we had last been there, but this year we both have work trips to the US. While he was away, I amused myself by finding my little donkey (steam) engine from when I was a child. With some machine oil for lubrication and methylated spirit for fuel it still ran well. I made it just like old times by giving myself a full-thickness burn on the finger with the spirit burner.
We went to a few shows in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and also the Melbourne Queer Film Festival before my birthday at the end of March. It was a low-key birthday for 49; we had dinner at Cutler & Co. For next year I’ll have to figure out some way to mark my 50th.
Over Easter we went to Fiji for a few days. We had wanted to go somewhere warm with a beach and neither of us had been there before. The weather was kind to us with only a little rain. We did a day trip to a coral atoll and also went zip-lining and abseiling. The trip was a little shorter than we had originally envisaged as we had to be back to use our tickets to see Tim Minchin on the Tuesday after Easter. Once again I was called to attend to a sick passenger on the flight back, this time a six-year-old with a UTI. I put some more photos online in an album.
Tim, Corrie and Tats invited us to come for a hike in Werribee Gorge on ANZAC Day. It made for an enjoyable day trip with a late lunch at a pub nearby. The second half of the hike was surprisingly challenging with the path along the river being very narrow in parts. Tats managed to negotiate the whole thing while filming with his phone.
Apart from turning 49, the other things which made me feel old recently were attending the welcome ceremony to the County Court for our friend Liz and also going to David’s fiftieth birthday party, when it seemed not that long ago that we were going to all our friends’ fortieth birthdays and not long before that their twenty-firsts.
The welcome to the court was quite a touching ceremony, with speeches describing aspects of Liz’s life and career. The morning tea afterwards was understandably very lawyer-heavy. David’s birthday was a fun opportunity to talk with people some of whom I hadn’t seen for many years.
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