Tag: Australia

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 · 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!
Australia · old house · Tweed Valley

The Grounds around “Lisnagar”

Joanne4 Comments
Rous River

Today I will continue with part two of my “Lisnagar” story. If you missed part one, where I showed some photographs of the house itself, you can see it here.

The old homestead of “Lisnagar” is in the quiet country village of Kynnumboon, on the banks of the Rous River. The home itself appears upon entering to be “the house that time forgot” and the very same can be said for the surrounding grounds.

This wheel no longer turns

Various farming implements and carts once drawn into town by draught horses are dotted throughout the property, unused, weeds growing through any crevices where they can manage to find light.

An old Dray Cart

The old garden shed would have likely seen many days of hard toil, perhaps carried out by Edward Twohill himself, the Irish immigrant who built the homestead in the early years of last century, to house himself, his wife and their large family.

An old garden shed

The look and size of some of the trees within the grounds would suggest that they were already on the land when Edward chose the property for his future home. Perhaps Edward planted some of these large trees himself. Who knows?

An old farming implement

Nowadays, this tree provides shelter for farming equipment which has long since passed its used by date. I wonder whether the Twohill children and their friends once climbed this tree, back in the glory days of “Lisnagar”.

Unused tractor

Edward Twohill was one of the early settlers in the Tweed area. He is also the great-great grandfather of my children. I don’t think any of my children realise just how fortunate they all are, knowing that this property was built and owned by one of their ancestors, but one day they will, when they have children of their own to show the house to.

Here at “Lisnagar”, my children have the opportunity to not only know who their ancestors were, but to see how they lived, walk inside the rooms of the home they once called home and catch a glimpse of how their lives may have been.

I can imagine it must be quite some experience to know you are walking along the same roads, through the same grounds, that your own ancestors once walked upon!

Typically Country

I know there was one area of the grounds that both of my girls got a kick out of seeing and being in, but that story will have to wait until tomorrow. 🙂

 

Australia · old house · Tweed Valley

A Family Homestead ~ “Lisnagar”

Joanne80 Comments
" Lisnagar"

“Remember me in the family tree, my name, my days, my strife; then I’ll ride upon the wings of time And live an endless life.” ~ Linda Goetsch.

Continuing with my recent theme of visiting old houses that hold some significance to me, I felt compelled to include a historic family homestead, situated just outside of Murwillumbah on the far northern New South Wales coast. This home is named “Lisnagar”.

To this day I can still remember the first time I spotted “Lisnagar” whilst driving past the home in the back seat of my parent’s station wagon. We had only just moved to Murwillumbah, having relocated from the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. I was thirteen years old and this beautiful old home immediately conjured up images in my young, impressionable minds-eye of women wearing lovely long white dresses, and bonnets with big ribbon ties under their chins.

Hiding among the greenery

My interest with “Lisnagar” was resurrected at the age of nineteen, when I met the man who was to become my husband. This beautiful old home had been built by his great-grandfather, Edward Twohill.

“Lisnagar” was built in the early 1900’s by Edward and his wife Ellen and is presently owned by Terry Twohill, a grandson of Edward and Ellen’s.

Upstairs, downstairs

The home has remained in the Twohill family throughout all the years of its existence, with two of Ellen and Edwards unmarried children, Emma and Kevin, being the last two occupants.

Looking upstairs

The eldest child of Edward and Ellen was Esther, my husband’s grandmother. Esther lived to the ripe old age of ninety years. (Esther’s eldest son just celebrated his 99th birthday!) Esther passed away in 1983 and during the six years that I knew her, barely a weekend went by that we didn’t spend some time with Gran and her best friend, a tiny female chihuahua named “Kelly”.

The Twohill family are an eccentric clan, to say the least! Dear old Gran, bless her soul, was certainly not the stereotypical warm and fuzzy grandmother! She remained opinionated and fiery by nature, right through to the day she died.

“Lisnagar” is an extremely beautiful homestead, with wrought iron lace work adorning all the verandas, as was the style of architecture during the Victorian era. I had the opportunity of photographing the detailed lace work close up recently when visiting the home with my husband and daughters during a family reunion.

An abundance of lace work

When I decided to add my photos of “Lisnagar” here today, I searched Google to see if I could find any links to websites to share, only to find some rather wishy-washy links available. So what I will offer is my story, my photos and my memories of the fiery daughter of Edward and Ellen, whom I was fortunate enough to know.

Gran spoke very fondly of her old family home. She had married in 1912, the same year the Titanic sank, the reception of the wedding being held at “Lisnagar”.

Detailed sketch by Gran

Gran and her female siblings were very artistic, with the walls within “Lisnagar” holding a number of old drawings and paintings done by the girls. Gran had been a very talented artist in her younger day, although her artistic ambitions had ended with the birth of the first of her twelve children.

One of Gran's paintings

The grounds of “Lisnagar” are another story within themselves, which I will continue with tomorrow….

The downstairs veranda