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Published: August 19th 2008
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Day 468 to 474 (07.07.08 - 13.07.08)
As usual we have closely followed the happenings at Wimbledon albeit with a little difficulty this since it was normally aired from about 10pm onwards - no good for people with responsible, important jobs like us! We couldn't stay up to watch the men's final so Sarah and Duan offered to download it from the net and host a Wimbledon night on Monday at their flat. We had to try hard not to listen to news all day so we didn't find out who won (although Mark did get a tip off!)
We took over some cucumber sandwiches, and some 'tennis ball' stuffed potatoes, and they provided Pimms and strawberries and cream (plus pletny more besides!) for a true English night. And so we settled in to watch the match which was an extremely exciting five setter finishing with a well deserved win for Nadal.
As a spur of the moment decision our friend Rob had decided that he fancied a spot of farm work and would be leaving the follwing Monday on an epic drive over to Perth and a couple of months saving money as a farmboy! So on
Thursday night after we'd been for a dentist visit we headed into town for Rob's leaving do to meet everyone for a game or two of tenpin bowling. We had great fun until it degenrated into some shotputting the balls down the alley and we decided to make a quick getaway whilst we could still get our shoes back!
It was another night of karaoke for us as we made our way down a dodgy looking alley to find Charltons Karaoke bar where we continued the night with some excellent performances by all (including Veng's sleeping upright trick)! A great send off for Rob, we will miss him hugely.
Friday was a quiet night as we made up for the lack of sleep the night before and preaperd oursleves for a funpacked saturday. We started the day over at Tiana and Ash's, where they treated us to an excellent English breakfast, before heading back home to get some jobs done and to cut Robs hair so he turned up looking respectable (hopefully!) to his new job.
To round off the day we;d been invited round to Veng's house in Springvale where he'd roped in his mum (quickly
christened by us as Mrs Veng) to prepare us a Chinese feast. The three of us caught the train down, Veng collected us from the station and we arrived at his house to an amazing array of food on the table - Mrs Veng had done us proud! We spent the evening feasting on hotpot with mountains of seafood, dumplings, meat and veg to cook in the broth. We couldn't thank Veng and his family enough for this incredible hospitiality. Delicious!
To round off Rob's leaving weekend we were headed off towards the Rutherglen region in North Victoria on a wine tour. Our friend Darky has a minibus and is in the process of organising tours to the wine region so we generously offered to be guinea pigs - how kind of us. By 9am we were on the road joined by Veng, Rob and Darky's girlfrined jeanette (and for a short while a couple of hitchers). Probably too early in the day to start drniking we hit the first winery, Plunkett Fowles. That didn;t put us off and we tucked into the wines on offer there and found some good ones.
Unsurprisingly we left with a bottle
or two and craked one open on the bus on the way to the next stop, the Sam Miranda winery. Some more great wines followed and this place had a great atmosphere with some live music and plenty of other people enjoying the wines.
It was soon time for a snackso we headed foirst to the Milawa bakery for a good pie and then tothe milawa Cheese and Chocalte factory for our fill of smaples and some great smellty cheeses.
One more wineryfinshed the day, Brown Brothers, and we passed the journey back to Melbourne playing stipod games to keep us all awake. A superb day with the only bad part being the goodbyes with Rob at the end of the day.
thurs - Dentist / Rob leaving doo
fri - Friday night at hom
sat - T+A for brunch, cut rob hair, vengs for dinner
sun - Wine tour
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