Category: Australia

Australia · gratitude · music · nostalgia · old house · son · spiritual

Capturing the Moment

JoanneLeave a comment
Home for this eight legged fellow.

“Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no delay, no procrastination; never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.”~Lord Chesterfield.

The above quote sums up an important lesson I have learned during 2011.

Web of diamonds and pearls.

With my camera at the ready, as I see a magical moment unfolding, I photograph it. It’s no use in thinking we can go back to the moment later. If we fail to seize the moment, it will be lost to us, forever.

During the year I have captured many moments in time with my camera. We are fortunate enough to live in a generation when we can click away to our hearts content, transfer the photos to our computer and edit later. No more messy and expensive film processing for us!

Most of my captured moments didn’t make it to my blog page, for no other reason than there were so many of them! What better time to share some of my year as it draws to a close.

Memories of my childhood home.

 

During my visit to the Blue Mountains in April this year with my youngest son, I captured days which will live in my heart forever. There are those who say you can’t return to your past. Well, I didn’t do that; I re-discovered my past surroundings, through the eyes of an adult. The home where I grew up is obviously loved by its present owner, with both the building and garden being well maintained.

A Generation Later

Watching my son ride his skate-board along the same street where I had played as a child was one of those special moments, in need of capturing in the instant of the time.

School Days

My old school, the one where I began kindergarten at the age of four, seemed to me to be captured in a time-warp. A well maintained time-warp I might add!

Echo Point, Katoomba.

The award for the most surreal moment of the year, when time literally stood still for me, happened when my boy and I visited the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains. As we headed towards the lookout, the sounds of a didgeridoo echoed throughout the expanse of the valley. If you are not familiar with the sound, I have found a sample on You Tube, which you can listen to here…

The man responsible for the Magical Sounds kindly allowed me to photograph him, then complimented my son on his choice of cap he was wearing, a glossy, purple, checkered number he had found a few days earlier!

Making memories with loved ones is really something special; seizing the moment and recognising it for what it is embeds the moment in your heart.

Treasuring the moment, and moving right along in the direction of the next memory is absolutely priceless.

Australia · desserts · recipe · summer · traditions

Time to Repost ~ Ice-Cream Christmas Pudding

Joanne7 Comments
Christmas is coming...

Christmas is only just over one week away (really?…what happened to 2011 !!) and with that in mind, I will be making my family favourite Ice Cream Christmas Pudding this week.

I first posted this recipe here way back in December, 2009, when my blog was a brand new baby, just starting out in the Big Wide World of the Web. In fact, it was the sixth post ever added!

Over the last two to three weeks, this post has been up there at the top of the list of most viewed posts. Time for a repost….

“Living in a warm climate at Christmas time can have some definite disadvantages, the most obvious for me being that I have never experienced a white Christmas!

However, on the bonus side, how many people  in the northern hemisphere would have ever have had the inclination to experience the pure joy of finishing off their Christmas dinner with a sumptuously divine Ice-Cream Christmas Pudding? This is but one of advantages of life in Australia!

It was only about ten years ago that I first made this summer Christmas pudding. It has become such a tradition since then that Christmas just wouldn’t be the same without it. (Mind you, I also make a traditional pudding, which can be eaten with hot custard).”

Ice-Cream Christmas Pudding

Ice Cream Christmas Pudding

1/2 cup chopped raisins

1/2 cup sultanas

1/2 cup currants

1/4 cup glacé cherries, chopped or whole

1/4 cup mixed peel

1/4 cup chopped dried apricots

1/4 cup brandy, rum or fruit juice

1 litre softened chocolate ice-cream

1/2 cup blanched almonds, toasted & chopped

1/2 cup cream

Thickened cream to serve

Combine all the dried fruits in a bowl, add the brandy, rum or fruit juice. Stir the liquid through the fruit & leave to stand, covered, over night. (Don’t be tempted to add extra alcohol as the pudding will not freeze successfully with any addition to the specified amount!)

The next day, mix together the soaked fruit, softened ice-cream, almonds & cream. Stir well to combine, and pour into a 5 litre pudding bowl. Cover & freeze overnight, or until required.

To remove the pudding from the bowl, immerse the bowl for a few seconds in some hot water. Turn the bowl over onto a serving plate. Serve with thickened cream or cold custard.

Australia · summer · Tweed Valley

Summer…Wherefore Art Thou…?

Joanne4 Comments
Rain on the windows.

Indeed, summer, wherefore art thou?

This is the question I have asked, since the official first day of summer here in Australia, and the first day of December, when the summer season took on a very realistic impersonation of winter!

As odd as it sounds to me, with the summer months actually being my least favoured time of the year, I have to admit to a feeling of being conned.

I’ve literally spent hours, yes, hours, preparing myself for the heat. Light, cottony clothing hangs centre front in my wardrobe, jumpers and jeans now taking their rightful place in the less convenient and harder to reach areas. Quilts are neatly folded and packed away, along with heavier blankets, in the linen cupboard. Ceiling fans have been installed. The pool is clean and all ship-shape for the hottest of hot days.

Whilst I can readily admit to not feeling as poetic as Shakespeare, when asking summer as to its whereabouts, surely there must be some people who feel downright cheated out of their “fun in the sun”?

The patter of rain...

Here I live, right on the doorstep of the fabulously sunny and world-famous Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia, playground of the rich and famous. Even the not so rich and famous have been known to choose the Gold Coast as their preferred holiday destination at this time of the year.

And where, pray tell, is the warm weather? I’m sure the knowledgeable folk at the Bureau of Meteorology have all the answers. Being not so scientifically minded myself, I haven’t bothered to check. Please check out the website, if you feel so inclined yourself.

Pressure systems come and go; we can’t control them. Looking out of the window each morning is my preferred predictor of the upcoming weather.

And look out the window I have been. The above photos show what-I-have-been-seeing.

Even our usually shiny and dry, black and white magpie friends have had a problem with the cold and rain. I found three rather bedraggled magpies, wet feathers fluffed up, sitting on our back veranda.

A family of wet magpies.

And no, our veranda isn’t usually as messy as the photo shows, with paint cans, buckets, electric saws and pieces of wood everywhere. We have been renovating a room in the house, the veranda being our work area. The magpies are forgiven for thinking this area a free-for-all!

This summer I have plans. I intend teaching myself how to cope with the heat. Summer is to become my friend!

And when summer finally arrives in this part of the world, I’ll let you know how I’m doing! 🙂

Australia · Changes · gardening · spring · Tweed Valley

Spring

Joanne8 Comments
Spring has sprung

“Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments, not the composer.” ~ Geoffrey B. Charlesworth

In just a few days time we will be heading yet again into the summer months, my least favourite months of the year weather wise, due to the suffocating humidity we usually experience here in the sub-tropics of Australia.

Purple and blue

Yes, the truth of the matter is, I strongly dislike the heat, and that will be the end of my whinging, I promise. I mean, surely there has to be a positive aspect, or even two, to the summer months?

This summer I will be making an extra effort to look for the more favourable aspects of the hot weather. During spring I have already begun to do so, by looking at my garden through wide open eyes, taking photos of the beautiful new growth that has popped up out of seemingly nowhere, overnight at times, to produce the most beautiful colours imaginable!

Shades of purple

Over the past two months I have constantly carted my camera around the garden with me to capture the beauty, before the heat sizzles the pretty colours away.

Today’s photos show just a smattering of the colour show in my garden.

To enhance my photos I have (finally) found a program on my computer which improves the colour and also resizes the photos, reducing the pixels, therefore speeding up the loading process of the photos onto the computer page.

Okay, okay, I know; everyone knows how to do this already. I can hear the groans from here. What can I say? I’m a slow learner, although a rather chuffed blogger, having learned something new today!

Australia · daughter · old house · Tweed Valley

“Lisnagar’s” Famous Bamboo

Joanne16 Comments
Leafy Bamboo

Continuing today with the third part of my “Lisnagar” story. Part one included close-up photos in and around the old homestead. Part two showed various old tractors and farming implements lying unused around the grounds of “Lisnagar”.

As you drive through the double gateway out the front of “Lisnagar”, if you look to the right you will see a massive wall of bamboo plants growing. You can’t miss it…it’s huge!

Apparently the bamboo is one hundred and fifty years old and has been a major topic of conversation between family and friends throughout the years. Legend has it that a giant snake resides in the vicinity of the bamboo. Whether he is there or not I really don’t know. I didn’t see him the day I took my photos, nor did I expect to bump into him!

Bamboo Passage

In the midst of the bamboo wall is an entry into a large bamboo cavern. Although the day I spent at “Lisnagar” was not a particularly hot day, you could feel a substantial drop in the temperature within the bamboo “room”. Apparently it is a cool area all year ‘round. I thought it would be an ideal place to set up a dining table at Christmastime, out of the sun and in an area so refreshing and cool!

Looking outside from the bamboo cavern

When my husband’s grandmother Esther (the eldest child of Edward and Ellen Twohill who built “Lisnagar”) was alive, someone had told her that the bamboo had been removed. Gran lived in Sydney at the time and was most distraught at the idea that the bamboo had gone. On our next visit north, we checked the bamboo situation out for her. It was still there.

Gran had married her husband Percival in 1912 at the Catholic Church in Murwillumbah. After the ceremony the wedding party had returned to “Lisnagar” where photos were taken in front of the bamboo.

The Wedding, 1912

This photo shows the young newly married couple on their big day in January of 1912, with Gran posing beautifully as the typical blushing bride in her gorgeous wedding dress. The distinguished grey hair gentleman standing behind the newly weds is Edward Twohill.

Not surprisingly, the bamboo cavern was the highlight of the day for my two modern daughters. They are far more interested in the here-and-now than concerning themselves about what-has-been!

For me, the whole package of the “Lisnagar” experience is a highlight in itself. The history of the home, the antique furniture, the architecture, the artwork, the grounds, the bamboo, but mostly the people, the ancestors of my husband and children, without whom I would not have the people I love the most today. 🙂

This quote, for me, pretty much sums up how I feel about the place I call home and I can well imaging it to be true for a number of people, even back in the days when Edward and Ellen shared their beautiful home with their children. These words fit perfectly….

“Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other.  It is the place of confidence.  It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defence, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts.  It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule”. ~ Frederick W. Robertson

This photo gives an idea of the height of the bamboo next to the parked cars!