Continuing to have a good time in Forster

Friends from Canberra, David and Lorraine Bird came to visit us and we invited Jill and John Davies for whom we house sat in this area two years ago.  David brought his guitar and Jill contributed her lovely voice.  It was a lovely afternoon enjoyed by all.

Here they are doing a duet.

As relaxation after the singing, Jill was making friends with the Conure parrots Sammi and Laurie.

Jill is communciating with the parrots. 

They are very cute when they are not pecking. 

House sitting at Forster, NSW again in 2012

We arrived at the Barton's at Panorama Crescent in Forster just after Easter 2012. 



A view of the back of the property where the two miniature horses graze.  The gazebo is in the front paddock.

 

There are two small horses, Kiss and Tula.  This one is Kiss - she has all black feet whereas Tula, the dominant more greedy one has a mixture of white and brown.



Andrew with Kiss.

Andrew doing Tula's hooves.  This is a task that needs to be done every second day or so to get all the mud and debris out with a sharp special instrument.  The horses are very good about lifting their feet for him.

 

Another one of our charges, Bruiser the Maltese/Poodle cross.  He is a lovely little fellow.



And last but not least are the two small parrots Sammi and Laurie.  Laurie is more clearly in view.  They are sweet but they do peck us, especially Sammi.  Their wings are clipped but they can do a small amount of flying.  We let them out of their cage each evening when we watch TV and they explore and often land on the floor but can't get up again.  That is when they peck - when we put them back up to their cage.

We are here for two months and we will continue putting photos up covering our activities.  Including shovelling horse poo - another task that needs to be done every second day or so.  These small horses are eating and pooing machines. 

Travelling to the United States

We are off to the USA from 11 August to 2 October 2011.   We have created a new blog titled Andrew and Nikki in USA 2011.  The blog address is andrewnikkiusa.blogspot.com for those who want to follow our trip.

Sydney the magnificent

The view of the city from the incoming Manly ferry.

Our wonderful Sydney Opera House.

The Opera House close up from the ferry.

The Opera House being lit up as part of the Vivid Sydney celebrations.

Another colour.

and yet another.

Paella at the Rocks markets on Friday night.

another colour for the Opera House for the Vivid Sydney extravaganza

and the city view lit up below.

Wingham Brush and the bats

Wingham Brush near Taree, NSW is an amazing place where bat colonies live.  The trees above one are thick with bats.

The bats closer up.

Andrew walking among the trees.

and look at those roots.

Could not resist another shot of branches full of bats.

You too can have a blook

What is a blook you ask?  A blook, according to Wikipedia is a book of a blog.  The book shown above is our treasured book of our year of travel around Australia.

The book is completely computer produced from our blog, with contents page and the photos we took and the text we wrote.

We treasure it and we plan to order one shortly of our current trip which will be titled Andrew and Nikki go inland.

And for your overseas travel here is another wonderful photo album you can make.  This method allows you a little more artistic freedom than the blog.

The photos are all your own and you use the software provided by one of the suppliers.  We use albumworks but there is also Blurb and Harvey Norman also does them.  The self created photo albums are also wonderful momentoes of travel.  Just do a Google search on albumworks, blurb, harveynorman.

Our inland trip

We have now reached the coast and are resting at Coffs Harbour.  We consider our inland trip completed except for the Birdsville Innamincka leg of the journey not realised.  We will make up for that sometime soon.

Here is a rough outline of where we have been on this trip.

Our around OZ trip on the outside of Australia was completed in 2011.