Over the weekend, 10 of us piled into 3 cars and drove the 3 1/2 hours to Stanthorpe, a quiet country town, located in the Granite Belt, in which I'm convinced the entire economy revolves around vinyards and wineries. We had a relatively quiet games night on Friday, saving up for the big tour on Saturday. We were picked up at 9:30, while still eating our breakfast, forget morning coffee, there was wine to be drank! We loaded up the van and I think instantly intimidated the other 2 couples, probably hoping for a nice romantic weekend, with our our loud, [View Full Entry]

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What better way to celebrate Aline's 29th birthday and bid farewell to Gary on his long journey home to Ireland than a Brazillian BBQ pool party. The first round of cocktails started just after 1pm while Aline and Lachy were busy in the kitchen preparing the chicken hearts and slabs of beef to be slow cooked over the coal bbq, Brazillian style of course (aka with LOTS of salt), while the rest of the men of the house sipped drinks poolside as the other guests slowly poured in. The Brazillian and Irish contingent definitely dominated the gathering which made for some [View Full Entry]

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A gift from home. Yay my first visitor, well in Australia that is. Erin stopped in for a 2 1/2 week holiday on her way to explore NZ. She arrived and I drove her straight to a BBQ, bombarded her with some new faces and then took her out to a live comedy show, that was full of local Australian humour that left us both kind of staring blankly at eachother. Without giving her time to be jet-legged, the next day we drove to Lamington National Park to complete a 16.5km hike, followed by beach bumming it at Surfers Paradise the [View Full Entry]

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Well, it all started just over a week ago with Aline's idea (Tuesday) to head to Alice Springs on Thursday. As I was between jobs and wanting to go there anyway, I thought why not. We did our research and went to book, only to find that our plans weren't going to work out. So Andrea suggested Fiji, and seeing as it was cheaper to fly to Fiji than to Alice Springs, the desicion was made and Friday we were off to the sand and sun. We were greeted with uckelaylees, guitars, and big Fijian men in skirts and flowered shirts, [View Full Entry]

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Who knows what round we're up to know in the international cook-off, but this was by far the most heated contest to date. Mexico (Fernanda and Esteban) and India (Divya) did not disappoint. I can't remember the names of the dishes, but do remember the burn on the tongue, (and the burn in the throat from the Mezcal). The night started pretty quiet, but after a few rounds of liquid fire, everyone was doing the Mexican hat dance! [View Full Entry]

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I haven't updated you in a while, as my adventures are more local, and were getting as exciting as going out for dinner on my birthday (which actually did turn out to be quite memorable, as the waitress served us someone elses home-made birthday cake, that we ate without asking any questions, birthday candles, singing and all). More recently however, I went out to Lady Elliot Island, which is at the Southern-most tip of the Great Barrier reef, 80km East of Bundaberg for all of those familiar with your Australian Geography. My boss flew our staff out to the Island for [View Full Entry]

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The people at work can't believe how busy I am, doing something every weekend, but I told them, its like I'm living in dog years, and am starting to feel that my days here are numbered with only 2 months to go :( A few weeks ago I finished the Queensland half marathon in just under 1:55:00, which beats my previous time by almost 2 minutes. May not seem like a lot, but I was pleased. Its an accomplishment just to not have fallen asleep on the run it was such a boring route. Also, trying to find a spot [View Full Entry]

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I'm a bad blogger! How long has it been since an update, too long - mind you, at this point, I've probably lost most of your interest, as staying put for a while can get kind of stagnant. I, however, am enjoying it here soooo much! So as of late, what have I learned and experienced... Living with babies that you don't know sucks! My quiet, nice house mate James has moved out and has been replaced with one of my other house mates friends that has a 16 month old screamer! I saw the biggest spider in existence, with [View Full Entry]

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Well the highlights of the last couple of weeks would definitely be my climb up Mt Beerwah on ANZAC Day, participating in a "Save the Children" fundraiser adventure race, and my trip to Byron Bay this last weekend. I got up at the ripe old time of 3:30 on ANZAC day (Australia New Zealand Army Corps) to attend the 4:28 memorial service to commemmorate the soldiers who were killed in Gillipolie, Turkey in the first world war. It was very strong coffee, followed by a short nap. After my snooze, Jenny picked me up to go to her Dad's house [View Full Entry]

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I knew it was going to be a good weekend when from the other car, on the drive to Crows Nest National Park, Katherine (a friend from work), took many an opportunity to dangle the Aussie flag, a hatchet and toy guns out the window, while sporting a corked aussie hat, or white hard had with the Aussie flag taped to it. They gave me a bit of a hard time for asking why I hadn't seen a kangaroo, koala, crocodile or dingo within 5 minutes of arriving at the site, but they did find my a sloughy Billabong to [View Full Entry]

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