Home is where the heart is

For those who do not know we have been living in Sydney for the past 18 months for work, and last June moved back to the Southern Highlands and are currently living in Bowral in a townhouse. Don't worry, the Goddess abode is still there waiting for us we are just taking some time to do some renovations to an investment I bought a few years ago.

It's a lovely location, we're located onto a reserve called the Cherry Tree Walk

You can get a bit of the vibe of the area from the video, we really enjoy walking the puppies there each day and its only a 5 minute walk from the centre of town so we are really enjoying the Bowral "inner city lifestyle"!

It's a 3 storey townhouse with the garage on the bottom, the living rooms and kitchen on the middle floor and the 3 bedrooms upstairs, so all we see from all the windows is the top of trees and we are constantly serenaded by the birds.

I'm so excited to be back blogging now that I have more time again and I look forward to sharing my thoughts and adventures with you again.

ciao

Opportunity Knocks... vintage shopping

One of my not so secret pleasures is to wander around op and second hand stores for bargains. We are blessed here in the Southern Highlands, in that we have a plethora of these around the area.   A couple of Sundays ago we went into Bowral for afternoon tea and decided to wander around Dirty Jane's Emporium and then take tea in the quaint tea house on site.

Think of your grandmother's best china,  all delicate and dainty and old fashioned silver tea services, and you'll get the picture.  Our chai tea was one of the best I have had in a long time.  And then......

with the tea pot our tea was served in!

so much so that I asked if I could buy that very pot!  Sadly it was not to be had, but then I became obsessed with getting a teapot just like it, I can be like that some times!

I became addicted to getting my ideal teapot!

Not quite the teapot I was looking for

 So I trawled Dirty Jane's after our tea and found this one with a matching sugar bowl as well.

But still my obsession was not satisfied, soon I  was like a drug addict, I couldn't get enough of tea pots!  I found myself hanging out on e-bay and ruby lane looking  to score more tea pots.....

and then I found these two beauties, one came from New Zealand and one is from the United Kingdom.

So now my teapot obsession is satisfied

 I have 3 beautiful pots that I use everyday.

Here are some other little gems I have picked up recently: 

a pair of candlesticks

 and this weekend bounty from our local tip recycling shop a genuine 1970's crock pot, check out that funky font on the dial!

The Doyenne of Australian cooking, Margaret Fultan's autobiography

a 1970's guide to landscaping, perfect for our 1970's courtyard makeover!

and some more info on being organic farmers

I could go on and on on some of the other great second hand shops, but I might leave that for another post. So if you are planing a trip to the Southern Highlands make sure you make some time for some opportunity shopping, as we know Opportunity comes once in a lifetime!

playing in my own backyard... part 2

 Sunday was another beautiful sunny day here so we decided to go for a drive.  Do you remember Sunday drives as a kid?  Remember when there was nothing open on Sundays and so Mum and Dad would load the kids in the car, pack a picnic and the thermos and go for a "drive"?  Well apart from the fact that now we can get coffee almost anywhere and don't need the thermos, we went for an old fashioned Sunday drive.

It was actually on the same way I went the day before to the truffle farm, but it was eons since we had gone down that way, so to me it was a no brainer to go and investigate what had changed over the years.

We drove through Kangaloon into Robertson and stopped at a local cafe for coffee. Last time I was at this cafe it was quite different to how it is now.

It has had a change of owner and now is Rockabellas roadside diner. It was a lovely warm haven on a Sunday morning with the slow combustion fire going and good coffee to be had.

It is decorated in a kind of funky retro decor and they also have vintage wares for sale, that is so up my alley! I just love this antique bar, it came from a flat in London, and it looks even better in the flesh!

vintage kitchen wares for sale

I can recommend the coffee

More funky retro decor

Then we went driving to an  area called Belmore Falls, it is part of Morton National Park.  When I lived here as a teenager it was the obligitory place we took visitors to show them the sights.  And of course in the arrogance of youth I didn't see what the fuss was all about. BUT now with more mature eyes I can see how spectacular and wonderful the countryside and scenery is. Please have a wander in my backyard.....

View from Hindmarsh's Lookout

looking down from Hindmarsh's Lookout into Kangaroo Valley

View of Upper Kangaroo Valley with cows

Kangaroo Valley

That's Kangaroo Valley township in the distance

Belmore Falls 

looking across the valley to Wildes Meadow, that place has a view to die for!

I love the sandstone escarpment

I didn't expect to see much water going over the falls as we have had no rain here for months, but there was still a waterfall.

One thing that was really noticeable to me  was that when I lived here as a teenager all the farms were working potato farms with very modest homes. My,  how times have changed! Not a modest farm house or potato farm to be seen.

All fancy-ancy designer "properties" and mostly cattle and horses, and most I suspect are weekenders for the well heeled. We locals joke that Bowral is the southernmost eastern suburb of Sydney. You can get the Eastern Suburbs Wentworth Courier newspaper at our local newsagents and another giveaway  called Latte Life which is also from the Eastern Suburbs.

I guess you can take some people out of the Eastern Suburbs but you can't take the Eastern Suburbs out of the people!

For my overseas readers, here is a quick geography lesson about Sydney.....

Playing in your own backyard...

I had a great weekend, how about you?

I spent the weekend with 2 of my lovely daughters playing in my backyard that is the NSW Southern Highlands.

Let me explain.....

When we moved here we joined the local slow food group in an effort to meet like minded people and enjoy good food and conversation. Unfortunately our local group disbanded due to no-one wanting to take over the running of the group ( I expect people are too busy or too scared!)  but the couple who were the leading lights went on to start their own business...

food path, so this weekend we spent Saturday taking on 2 of their tours.

The first one was at a local truffle farm that now has the honour of growing the largest truffle ever found in Australia  Yelverton Truffles. Which is just down the road from Glenquarry Goddess.  And I might just put it down here , that a trufferie is on the cards here to!  You just might have to wait a few year for us to be productive.

Favorite youngest  daughter  with "Jet" the wonder dog

here we are a the entrance to the Trufferie 

A side note here, my husband's Irish Ancestors family pile is called Yelverton, so isn't that a bit of serendipity?

Then we went on to Bousaada winery vineyard and mead makers, check out the beautiful building, designed for sustainability and the climate, I can highly recommend Alistair and Michele,  the hosts for a very welcoming, relaxing and informative experience.

Bousaada Winery front entrance

Our final stop was at Eling Forest winery and cafe I can recommend the winery tour and our guide was Mark,one of  4 full time wine makers they have here. It is a great tour with lots of tastings, if you get my drift.... :-)

and tomorrow I'll let you know what we did today!

so come back to play in my backyard tomorrow,,,,,,, please???

Spending time, losing time.

It's a sunny, but cold and windy day here at GG central. I am sitting here in the lounge room next to the fire, doing what I do best.....wasting time on the internet.

It all started today when the Significant Other went to a community meeting about our local hall. In many country towns around Australia there are school of Arts, or community halls that are falling into rack and ruin because of lack of funding to keep them going, ours is one of them.  So it looks like the local council will take over the responsibility for the on-going maintenance and insurance  of the hall and the local community will continue to fund raise to provide better facilities for us all.

Anyway, I got to thinking about how we could do some fundraising and then had the scathingly brilliant idea of having a 1920's/Great Gatsby ball next April. As our hall is officially known as the "Glenquarry Peace Memorial Hall" and was opened on April 29 1920 I think this theme would be entirely appropriate.

So I began searching on the internet for any references to our hall and then somehow I got onto this amazing site which is a treasure trove of all types of stuff, go on check it out.!

And so I found out a lot more about our hall, and the fun and merriment that used to go on there during the 1920's. Also a piece of trivia for you, our hall has a link to Don Bradman, can you guess how? (answer at the end of the post)


So now I find myself looking through back issues of the Women's Weekly 1966 editions (don't ask how I got there) but I found  this beauty  and remember when my friends and I would strike poses like this when pretending to be models!  What is it about the leg thrusting????  And of course  you should always wear a rain hat when wearing your swim suit (!)

Do you find yourself losing great chunks of your life while on the internet?

* Jessie Menzies family donated the piece of land upon which our Glenquarry Hall was built.!

It's not raining men..... yet!

Since moving back to the country I have been obsessed with the weather, particularly rainfall. It may have something to do with the fact that we are on tank water and if we are not careful and we have a long dry spell between rain storms we can find ourselves in the position of having to pay to have water trucked in and put into our tanks.

As we all know we have been inundated with rain this spring/summer and our rain gauge has been over 100mm at least 3 times since Christmas, that is a lot of  H2O!

Today Sydney city basically shut down due to torrential rain, I was in the city last night for the French film festival (more on that on another post) and had an appointment this morning in town at a hospital for work. I managed to get out of the city and home in one piece but  it was when I got home that I had the best fun. We went flood chasing!

Like those crazy people who chase tornado's etc I love a good flood ( as long as no property or people are in danger that is)  during my way home I went to the weir and checked it out, it was flooded!  here is a pic of it, this is a part of the Wingecaribee river which is normally about 10 metres wide and runs alongside a bike/walking track, it is completely submerged and the river is about 500 metres wide in sections.

I drove home eagerly to get my significant other and go out to local spots and check out the flooding, it was awesome ( and you know how I hate to overuse that word, but it was!) so here are some pics.

FYI our own property is safe as we are very high and on a slope but we have a mini waterfall in our back paddock and if we stand outside we can hear the stream across the road which usually only has the sounds of the frogs, now sounding like a rushing river.

But as we all know courtesy of Tony Rabbit ( abbott) climate change is crap!

really??????