Mothers Day

Today I took the Blogger to our favourite Brisbane Swiss Restaurant "Des Alpes" at Mitchelton. It's also our 46th Wedding Anniversary so two birds etc etc.

The Des Alpes is expertly run by owners Nick and Monika Herbert. (Monika was born in Thun, my home town)

You can eat inside or al fresco

We love eating at the Des Alpes

Diane had Chicken Florentine with Nick's excellent Rösti

I had Atlantic Salmon with Nick's excellent Rösti

The Des Alpes is also famous for its Fondue

Lunch was followed by a lovely Tirami Su

The Des Alpes is the only place in Brisbane that serves
Feldschlösschen Beer.

No dinner for us tonight.

Las Balsas Equador - Australia

We've been in Balllina for a few days to meet up with friends from our New Guinea days. We try to meet up somewhere every year.

This morning we visited the Ballina Naval and Maritime Museum, the home of the famous 'Las Balsas' raft which sailed from South America to Australia across the Pacific Ocean in 1973. The expedition was led by Spaniard Vital Alsa.

On May 27, 1973, three balsa wood rafts were towed to the open sea off Guayaquil, Equadorand were set adrift. On board each raft were four men, their provisions and a small collection of monkeys, parrots and kittens. All were beginning a 8,600 mile voyage to the west across the total expanse of the Pacific to Australia.

On Wednesday, 21 November, 1974, the twelve man crew of the Las Balsas raft expedition landed in Ballina. Plans had been made for expedition to land at Mooloolaba in Queensland, strong southerly currents carried the raft into the Richmond River on the North Coast of New South Wales at Ballina.

The Navy landing craft HMAS "Labuan" followed the rafts south from Brisbane to the Port of Ballina, where two trawlers helped two rafts into the Richmond River.

One raft was considered too water logged to take the strain of being towed and was cut loose. This raft drifted to Newcastle, where it was towed into port and was ultimately destroyed by vandals who set fire to it. 

Three of the 'Las Balsas' crew now live in Australia.

Foul Weather in Sydney

My daughter Carol and son-in-law David live in Sydney. The last couple of days they had strange weather.

Carol sent me these pictures starting on Saturday when they went for a walk along the cliffs near their apartment.

She said, they went for a walk along the cliffs at Vaucluse to Watsons Bay on Sydney harbour.

The cliffs at Vaucluse

Watsons Bay on Sydney harbour

Shortly after they returned home, the sky started to go strange.

 It was getting darker and darker

The following shots are taken from Carol and David's balcony.

Then the heavens opened up

There was a severe hail storm hitting the city and it looked like a wintery scene somewhere in Europe

It must have been amazing looking over a wintery landscape in a city where snow never falls.

Open for Business

The office/classroom is ready for our first lot of students. The inside has been completed for a couple of weeks, We've been worried about the state of the aluminium sliding windows for a while. Some of the paint had flaked off over the years which had to be addressed.

The man came to fix new blinds

Paint is flaking off the aluminium frames

So the windows needed to be re-sprayed.

First I had to mask out the glass and the brick walls 

Then the spray can got some action

The newly painted windows

The front entrance to my new classroom

So yesterday we held our first class of this five week Movie making course for U3A. I only have eight people as the room is not very big.

The first of five lessons os the U3a Movie making class

Castle Thun

My talented daughter Carol in Sydney, Australia, has decided to paint the castle in my home town of Thun in Switzerland.

She is putting the final touches onto the canvass.

The castle is in the town of Thun, in the Swiss canton of Bern. It was built in the 12th century, today houses the Thun Castle museum and is a Swiss heritage site of national significance.

The castle was built between 1180 and 190 by the Duke Berthol V of Zähringen, who constructed the still preserved keep to the level of the Knights' Hall. In 1218 it was inherited by the House of Kyburg.

Tragedy struck in 1322 when Count Eberhard committed fratricide by killing his brother by pushing him out of one of the castle windows. He then had to ask for help of the town of Bern and the following year was forced to sell Thun and its castle to Bern.

In 2006, the castle was bought by the city of Thun from the canton of Bern. Until 2009 the Bernese Overland regional court was based in the castle.

Here is Carol's finished oil painting.

The final painting

A River Walk

The Blogger thought I needed a walk. So we jumped on a train at Kuraby to Roma Street. On the way, I discovered I left my SD card in my computer and didn't take a spare one with me, so our last talk at the camera club came in very handy. "Phone Photography." So all those shots were taken with my iPhone, except the bridge with the train was taken by the Blogger.

At Roma Street we changed from the Beenleigh Line to the Ipswich Line for one stop to Milton.

The station is in Park Road, a yuppy Restaurant and Cafe street. It was getting onto lunch, so we stepped in at the Coffee Club for lunch.

After lunch, we ambled down to the Brisbane River for our  walk back into the city, along the river bank.

Outside BWS Bottle Shop

Park Road Milton is wall to wall restaurants and Coffee shops.

Milton has a new ferry terminal 

View of Brisbane from Milton

Two city trains cross the Brisbane River

Officially the Kurilpa Foot Bridge, also known as the fiddlestick bridge

 There is a cycle way and footpath all the way from the city to Toowong (3.8km)

The cycleway and footpath along the river

The Gallery of Modern Art across the river at South Bank

At the Brisbane Plaza, every Wednesday the farmers market is on so we took the opportunity to buy some natural honey. 

Finally we walked over the Victoria Bridge to South Brisbane station where we took the train back to Kuraby.

We walked a few kilometres today. I know the Blogger is happy. Me? I'm happy when the Blogger is happy!

Cheers.

A New Office

We have decided to hold a U3A class here at our place as the library meeting room was not available at the time we want to hold the Movie Making Classes. So we had to renovate my office from where I ran my business for many years. It may not look it, but for us it was a major task.

You do accumulate a lot of junk over the years.

A very cluttered office - All had to go

First, I spent a lot of time shredding old business files, invoices and contracts and other sensitive documents.

Shredding old documents

We collected lots of boxes, to store stuff we were going to keep. Other boxes were filled with stuff to go to the dump. We have new neighbours in the street behind us, he runs a Handyman's outfit. He agreed to take everything to the local tip for us.

All the desks and drawers are going

Geoff, the neighbour came with his offsides to load up everything to go to the tip. He filled up his truck and trailer.

As it happened, our Interior Designer daughter Carol-Ann was up from Sydney, working in her Brisbane Office but was staying with us. She offered to design my new office in a way that it can be transferred into a classroom whenever I have students.

Carol-Ann designs my new Office/Classroom

The old carpet was worn out where my chair was at my desk, so it needed replacing. We got a carpet layer in to rip the old carpet out and replace it with new carpet tiles.

The carpet layer at work

We had asked the painter who painted our house last year to come and paint the new office. He came, gave us a price and we told him to go ahead. Then he told us he couldn't do it for at least three weeks. Well, that's no good as I start teaching classes in two weeks. Diane mentioned it to Carol in passing and to our surprise, Carol suggested she and David would come up from Sydney on the weekend and paint it for us. We gladly accepted their kind offer.

Of course you have to have some fun

Carol and David at work, painting the new office

 So, finally my new office/classroom is ready for work. Just need to hang some paintings.

Option A - My Office

 I only ever take 8 students for my 5-week U3A Movie Making Course

Option B - The Classroom

I'm set up

Today my brand new iMac is being delivered. I'm ready for my first students