A short trip

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Hi friends and family, Rodger and I went bush this week for a few days with my cousin Marise, hubby John and Sam the dog (John UK – Marise is one of the twins). I just want to try out our travel blog and see if it still works. Sunday 30th was my mum’s 87th birthday and our planned outdoor event had to be cancelled due to rain. Tuesday 1st November is our Melbourne Cup – which is a BIG horse racing day in OZ. I held my usual Cup party, but I have given up on the big garden parties now and have a few selected friends invited for a ‘High English Tea’ event (No alcohol....would you believe?) This year I served for hot/cold savoury food – Crumbled chicken slices on a bed of herbed rice with chilli mango sauce. Next Crispy Arancini Balls, followed with lavish wraps of Smoked Salmon and salad. The sweet tower consisted of Brandy-snap baskets with strawberries and mascarpone. Next was Lemon and Lime Tart served with vanilla ice-cream and the final tier was chocolate dipped fresh strawberries. SO we headed bush into the wilderness of OZ. I will try to include a coordinate for you to link to via Google maps. Click on the ‘satellite’ option and you will be able to zoom in to see where we camped. Just look for where the 3 streams meet, that is where we camped. Flo we have these places in OZ too, not just Canada. Just go to this place in Google maps. Type in – ‘Bretti Nature Reserve, Baxters Ridge, New South Wales.’ And you will see where we were. It was way too short, only 4 nights, but just wonderful. So peaceful and quiet and the weather was perfect. Time was spent lazing in the streams, me knitting for the baby girls, Marise and Rodger reading books, trying to catch fish – no success, but Rodger did get 5 mussels (Maybe flo needs to pop down under and give Rodg some lessons). John and I had a ‘bake off’ competition over 2 days. We had to cook our comp entries in a camp oven on the open camp fire. John cooked sweet sultana scones and served them with butter and strawberry jam. They were delicious and perfectly cooked. I was panicking I can tell you. Next day I made my cheesy bread bun. I served it warm with butter. It also was delicious and perfectly cooked. So we declared it a draw. As usual, we ate too much and enjoyed a glass or two of vino by the camp fire each evening. Shame we had to come back to civilisation. DON’T forget to scroll down under the ads for more pics. Until next time, luv to all. Di and Rodg. PS. Having a few problems uploading more pics. Will try again later.

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Photos

Our nomad camp
Messy but homely, just the way we like it.

Rodger and John
Camp fire is built and firing away

John' scones cooking
We dare not have a peek

John's scones
Proof is in the eating - they were delicious

Diane's bake off on coals
Cheesy Bread

Di's result
Looks great, tasted yummy served warm with lashings of buter

Rodger and Diane
Nothing beats sitting
beside an open fire
after a busy day of
doing nothing.