A Rude Awakening

One of the things you have to put up with, living in Queensland or the sub-tropics, you share your house with geckos. Mostly they live outside and come out at night onto windows, fly screens and doors for their nightly feed. Sometimes, one or two of them find their way into the house. They are harmless and frightened little creatures and usually keep out of the way.

Since we have a monitored alarm system, we usually set the alarm at night to cover the garage and my office downstairs. (My cave, the Blogger calls it). Since I've retired and no longer run a business down there, there really is no need for it to be alarmed. But we've got it for when we go away, so we may as well use it.

Well imagine this scene a couple of night ago: It was 2 c'clock in the morning, we were both fast asleep when we awoke to this blaring racket right outside our bedroom wall. That's where the siren is located. 'The alarm went off,' I muttered. Next to me, the Blogger said, 'What alarm?' while she is madly scrambling for her iPhone. 'Our alarm,' I shouted over the racket. She just looked at me, puzzled. I pointed to the alarm panel on the bedroom wall, 'that alarm.' She finally got the message and clambered out of bed to the panel. There she looked at me, still puzzled. Both of our poor old hearts by now are racing ten to the dozen.  We both have a seperate code to use the alarm, so I gave her my code and told her to press it to stop the damn thing. That confused the poor girl totally. 'That's not right,' she said all the while punching in keys, obviously wrong ones.

Ok, I thought it's time for me to get out of bed. I jumped out of bed and raced over to the panel trying to enter the correct code. 

I looked and looked but I couldn't see a thing. Two reasons for that. Well three actually. It was 2 o'clock in the morning and the lights were out and I wasn't wearing glasses. The third reason, I have to have the cataract in my left eye operated on in February, which didn't help at that point. I clambered back over the bed to my bedside table feeling for my specs while the Blogger is still madly punching numbers at the panel. I'm thinking, the neighbours must be cheesed off with us. By now it feels this damn siren has been going off for hours, but then I remembered most of our neighbours were away, except one lot across the street who have a screeching bird in a cage in the back yard, that goes off any time of the day. So they don't count.

Bespectacled I eventually got back to the panel and after a few goes, entered the right number. Phew, the noise stopped, but now the phone went.  It was the alarm monitoring people. 'Is everything alright?' she asks. I explained what happened to her, saying I thought it might have been a gecko walking over one of the sensors downstairs. 'Better check, to make sure,' she said and 'good luck trying to go back to sleep.' I gingerly crept down the stairs and into the garage. No one there, then I crept into my office, turned on the lights, no one there. Longingly looked at my computers, all still there.

Heart still racing ten to the dozen, I locked up again downstairs and we climbed back into bed. The lady at the monitoring office was right though, it took us forever to get back to sleep.

I am presently spraying around the sensors to stop our little house mates getting near the sensors.

Traditional Christmas Mince Pies

Over Christmas, the topic of mince pies came up. it turns out that in the Curry clan, none of the men like them. Reason enough to go and buy some.

I got son-in-law Bernard and his brother Stephen to sample one.

Back To Front

I know, I know, I should have done this post before yesterday's, but somehow Christmas seemed more important. Anyway… on Christmas-eve we went exploring Arthurs Seat at Red Hill. We entered "Arthurs Seat" into the GPS and set off from our B&B. It took us into a cul-de-sac somewhere in a residential area and announced: 'You have reached your destination.' Like heck! We'd been to Arthurs Seat before on one of our wine trips many years ago and this was not the spot. As it happened, a lady was driving out of her driveway right there, stopped and quizzically looked at us. I said to her, 'we're looking for Arthurs Seat,' She said, 'your GPS took you here, right?' It obviously happens a lot. We did eventually got there.

Arthurs Seat was named by Acting Lieutenant John Murray when he entered Port Phillip Bay in the 'Lady Nelson' in February 1802, as it reminded him of the hill of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. So Arthur never actually made it to this seat, (whoever Arthur was).

There is lots of information about local flora and fauna

The Blogger sits in Arthurs seat, Arthur didn't mind.

There is a fantastic view over Port Phillip Bay from up there.

View from Arthurs Seat

For Ann's information, it was morning tea time, so we had tea and coffee at the caff there.

Then we headed for the coast again and stopped at Rosebud for lunch. The blogger had a chat with Bob The Builder in the street. They have these strange statues of street art in Rosebud.

When we got to Curry's, the cousins posed for a picture, after some persuading.

(from left to right) Banjo, Jimmy, Freddy, Lachlan, Ella, Fox and Georgia Arlo was asleep 

A very Merry Aussie Christmas

We were told that we would have to be at the Curry household at 7 AM this morning. A bit hard as our B&B doesn't serve breakfast until 8.30 AM.Oh well, we skipped brekkie and were there just on 7.00, the children were awake but the parents were not. However when they heard the car, there was movement. Immediately the children wanted to open Santa's presents but they were told, not until 7 o'clock.

Then it was on:

The children lined up behind the barricade youngest ones first

Santa brought Fox another box of cars, what else.

He was proudly showing off his new collection

Banjo digs deep into Santa's bag for his share

He sure does.

Banjo plays with his new train set Santa brought him

Meanwhile in the garage, Santa had set up a drum kit, a present for James (12), but Fox got into the action as well and I was very impressed, he sounded very good for aged 3 and the first time on a drum set. perhaps a future Mick Fleetwood in the making. We offered Sonya and Bernie we'd buy him a set for next Christmas, but that was answered with glassy stares. Well, maybe not.

Fox on drums with James looking on worried

Then around mid-afternoon the back garden was prepared for Christmas dinner which consisted of 13 adults and 8 children. Sullivan Stapleton, another Hollywood actor joined us. We had traditional Aussie Christmas food, prawns, turkey and pork,  potato bake, potato salad, peach salad, pumpkin pie and for dessert, plum pudding, custard, ice cream, pavlova and rocky road. No dinner for me tonight.

The weather was very kind to us, perfect sky, perfect temperature.

Backyard setting for a perfect day

The blogger enjoyed a couple of glasses of French Rose

The ladies had argued whether French Champagne was better or worse than Australian bubbly, so it was decided to have a blind tasting amongst them. Jason poured five glasses of bubbly, 3 French and two Aussies and let them taste it. Sonya and Kate correctly identified the wines and it was decided that the French champagnes won by a very small margin.

Sonys samples the bubbly and picked them correctly

After dinner, we had a Kris Kringle session with Grandpa Neville acting as Santa.

Santa Neville handing out the presents

Banjo scored a set of Maraccas

As did Fox

Tomorrow Boxing Day, Carol and David arrive from Sydney (via Brisbane) to join us for a couple of days. More after….

More of Rye

We're still on the peninsula. Christmas-eve tonight but we're celebrating tomorrow with a very large crowd I am told.

A couple of shots from the last few days.

On Sunday night, as we were leaving the family for our B&B, we saw the most amazing sunset. Luckily I had my camera and shot this out of the car window. The blogger was driving.

Out of the car window at Warratha Street, Rye

Yesterday we drove down to Mt Martha to have lunch with friends. He took us down to the local beach where I finally saw those colourful beach huts up close.

I wonder what he was thinking about?

Then we drove back on the coast road to Rye, where the kids were getting ready for a game of cricket outside in the street.

A future opener for Australia at Lords.

Again, merry wotsit to everyone.

Dinner with the Stars

Yesterday,  while spending time with the family, they had a couple of visitors for dinner. Bernie cooked a delicious BBQ and Diane and Sonya prepared a nice salad. My contribution: salad dressing.

Dinner with the Actors (Photo, Sonya Curry)

From left to right:  Son-in-law Bernard Curry (Hit The Floor,  VH1, USA), Stephen Curry (The Time of Our Lives,  ABC-TV, AUS), me and the blogger, Brett Tucker (Spartacus: War of the Damned, Starz, USA)

Photo Funia

The things you do on holidays. I've been playing with the boys and when they're asleep with a website called 'Photo Funia', where you can do amazing things with your photos.