Oh, what a night!

Hello everyone, just wanted to share out night with you.

All was well, and nothing was stirring, not even a mouse. We were all fast asleep, dreaming our dreams, when all of a sudden, at 3.43am, I was rudely awoken by a lound wooshing noise. I grunted and rolled over.

Then it happened again, this time much louder. I leapt out of bed and looked outside and to my horror the service yard of the car dealership opposite us was ablaze! Every 10 seconds or so, there was a huge release of gas (no, not by me ;o)) which made the flames shoot some 30ft into the air. The though crossed my mind that this could get alot worse - there was undoubtedly gas cylinders with oxyacetylene for welding - it was after all a repair shop.

So with one swift move, I dialled 000 and calmly explained what was happening, while at the same time waking helen, telling her to get dressed, and move to the back of the house.

So, she promptly headed for the window for a rubber neck! I know, I'd do the same. Some 3 short minutes later, we heard the distant sirens of the fire engine.

The fire was out within 15 minutes, thanks to the 5 - yes 5 - fire engines that pulled up, plus 2 police cars, and multiple neighbours all intheir dressing gowns and slippers.

I took some movies that weren't too good so I wont bother with google video, but here is a pic...

Before we knew it the place was awash ankle deep in foam and the firemen has gained access to the yard with the help of a hefty angle grinder. the flames were out within 15 minutes, but there was still huge clouds of steam leaping into the air!

Soon there were police crawling over the scene, with temporary floodlights making it look like a move set.

All was quiet again by 5.30am, just as the dawn was breaking. Sleep beckoned, and when we arose at around 9.30, the place was abuzz with forensic teams, there was even a 'scene of crime' tape across the entrance to the yard.

I, being the nosey so and so that I am, headed out to get some much needed info, and was met by a member of CID who had a pile of questions for me. The funny thing was that I was standing there chatting away with one hand in my pocket - holding a box of matches! I was suddenly feeling scared! I had been out in the late evening prior to this for my usual friday night cigar, and left the matches in my pocket! How scared was I?

Anyhow, it seemed that they were investigating this as a case of arson, and will be making many enquiries in the coming days, so I may not have heard the end of this!

Whoever said that life in suburbia was dull???

OK, better go to bed now, we'll post more soon - we visited the Puffing Billy today and had fun, then watched Happy Feet in the open air cinema - what a cool film!

Catch ya soon

C

Parents Arrival

Christmas day was less than a week ago and yet it seems like forever ago! Christmas day itself was lovely- if not a little stange! For a start, it was practically a white christmas here in Melbourne and the coldest Christmas on record in the klast 50 years- bizarre. The hail fell so hard that it did just about look liel snow, (as Chris put it ' if you close one eye and squint abit!') Anyway, a our picnic was well and truely off, we trundled around to our friends, Anton and Karin's after the usual rounds of opening presnts, (Amongst other things- Chris got a IPod Shuffle, tool box, shirt, alarm clock and digi box and I got a cool watch, a Jamie Oliver cook book, Kylie perfume and a top).

We had a lovely day, with a very odd Christmas dinner. It was a combination of the picnin food and a roast chicken and potatoes- something to keep us warm. After dinner Chris took Anton out to play with Big Bertha and later our Karin's little boys persuaded us to watch Ice Age 2. When we got home, dead on 8 o clock, we started the msning, which is becoming a bit of tradition on Christmas evening. We watched as Jon, Chris' bro, opened his gifts. We chatted to ROsie and Terry and we took some small part in the utter bedlam going on at my parents home. IN one smallish room, gathered aruond the computer, there were 3 dogs, a grandma, an 18 month year old and 4 adults! It got worse when Ronnie, the baby, opened a gift, which was food, and started running round the house holding it saying 'mine mine mine' whilst the 3 dogs follwed behind him, trying desperately to make the food theirs! After all this excitement we fell in to bed. A lovely, if somewhat different, day!

And now, my Parents have arrived from England and we get to have 2 lovely weeks with them, including 4 days in the Northen Territory, Uluru and Alice Springs, and a night on the Great Ocean Road. THey are curently unpacking and trying to stay awake. THey say they are going to make the whole day without a nap- but its gone very quiet uop there- I reckon they're having a kip already! Better go check it out,
Love Helen***

Christmas Eve

Well Christmas is over- thankfully, my hoidays aren't. Mum and dad arrive in 2 days for nearly 3 weeks and we are going to Uluru with them and I am going overnight on the ocean road with them. Will be fun.

Christmas has been fun, (look at the photos on Flickr). ON Christmas Eve we attended the most watched TV show of the year- Carols by Candlelight. It is filmed at the Sidney Myer Music bowl here in Melbourne and 20, 000 ish people attend each year. We bought our tickets back in November but ubecause they were general admission we were warned by friends to arrive to que up at 2 in the afternoon at the latest to ensure a decent space on the lawn. Luckily the day was fine but not too hot so we qued quite hapily all afternoon.

when the gates opened there was a fast track que for those wirthout bags so Chris took all oyur stuff and I legged it in with only a blanket. It was such an adrenilin rush as everyone sprinted for a decent spot!I was quite please with where we got!

Unfortunately not long after we got in at 5 it started to rain and then it was showers on and off all evening. I was fine as I got in the sleeping bag which turned out to be water proof but poor Chris looked like a drown rat most of the evening!

The pre show entertainment started at 7. It wsn't bad- except for this ridiculous Mr Men and Little Miss sho that went on for hours! The main event started at 9. It was excellent! Started with Delta Goodrum and had lots of famous Aussies and even Brian McFadden from Westlife (he was spendinng Christmas with Delta- ahhh!) THe whole event was beautifully put together and despite the rain we had an amazing time. My favourite thing was looking bck at the sea of candles that swayed to the music! Fantastic!

On the way home as the clock showed midnight I leaned out the window and shouted Merry Christmas to everyone we passed. I had fun but I think the Melbonites thought I was a)mad or b) drunk! Of which i was neither!!

It was a long but great day! More about Christmas soon!

Christmas stuff

Although it is still 2 nights until Santa I am already in the festive mood this evening. I have spent the afternoon creating Christmas master pieces for our 'picnic' on Christmas day and we have also been to our Christmas concert at church and had a 'kind of' early Christmas dinner! (Since we are not having one Christmas day and are out all day tommorrow, we figured today would be a good day to do it!)

The Christmas carol concert was fantastic! They did it on a white Christmas theme and had cotton wool all over church as a kind of snow. The music was lots opf traditionakl carols spiced up and some more modern stuff too. There was a lovely Christmas feel to it and the true meaning of Christmas came over loud and clear too.

Jokes from our Christmas crackers (or bon bons as they are called here!):

WHy did the elf take his computer to the hospital? Because santa said it had a virus!
Which of Santas reindeer has bad manners? Rude-olph!

See- it doesn't matter what continent you are on- they don't get any better!

Have a look at Flicker if you want to see photos of our Christmas so far!

More about the weather!

Now it may be cold in ENgland, but at least you can count on it being cold. I mean no one in England is thinking 'oh tommorrow it might be 30 degrees'! No, you are all going about your business secure in the knoweldge that, whilst it may not snow for Christmas, it will at least be cold.

Not so for us Melbournites! We can no more rely on the weather than we can on Micheal Fish's weather forecasts! Earlier this week we had soaring temoperatures- 35 plus and the hottest night ever recorded in December in Melbourne. It didn't drop below 26 degrees all night. (And boy did we know about it- NEVER have a 2 storey house in a hot country- HOT AIR RISES!). So, looking forwards to a hot Christmas, we planned a picnic with friends on Christmas day. But then what should happen? The temperature drops and the forecast is for the coldest Christmas day in 50 years in Melbourne. It is looking likely to reach 13 or 14 degrees only! So my friend and I are busy rearranging our picnic to an indoor type thing and even doing some hot food!

Add to this the fact that our friend Karl, who is a weather forecaster, says that in Mount Baw Baw, only 3 hours away, there is actually going to be snow on Christmas day!! Chris and I debated cancelling our Chritsmas lunch and going to Baw BAw just to see this, but have decided against it! Most of all because, ridiculously, the bush fires are still burning in some of the countryside close to the mountains! If the snow manages not to evaporate in the heat of the fire then it will be an awesome sight- snow falling right next to bushfire- doubt thats been seen before. Karl said that if the locals are lucky they may even see the snow go through the 3 stages, snow to rain and rain evaporating to water vapour! How bizzarre!

WHo knows what New Years will be like- probably scorching again!

Christmas is coming....

Well that's it.
Christmas is finally upon us - I was presented with my Applied Biosystems festive Ham today. These aussies are an odd bunch, first they go and destroy us in the cricket (if I hear one more snide comment!) but on the other hand they have some very endearing christmas traditions - like the presenting of half a pig to employess for all their hard work and endeavors over the year.

So, having just spent nearly an hour trying to make space in my fridge for this monster cut, we now have the honourous task of trying to consume this between the two of us! I reckon I'll be eating ham sandwiches for a month.

And we had our 'secret Satan' er, I mean Santa, today. I had to buy a present for woman I have never spoken to. anyhow, I was presented with a very ornate looking chocolate fondue set. As if I need any other excuses to eat chocolate!

So that's all, except that my parcel arrived today from the US - new parts for Big Bertha! Hooray! I should have her up and running before christmas I hope... watch this space...

Ok, gotta go make dinner now... have fun

C

Christmas Exhaustion!

I am exhausted!! Chris isn't far off either.

Christmas seems to have hit with full force and for one reason or another we seem to be running around like headless chickens. I got to rest a bit today but this seems to have made me feel more tiered instead of less!

Our friends from England left a few weeks ago and since their departure we seem to have been out and about no end. Church parties, friends parties, work parties and a wedding far away up in the country- not to mention the Christmas shopping! This morning we had a lovely brunch at a friends house followed by both of us leading our 'sections' at church. We are both 'on' again tommorrow morning too. From my point of view it is my own fault really, as I write the schedule. However this weekend was the toddler Christmas party and I didn't want to burden anyone else with this task!

I spent the week shopping for Jesus' birthday party- driving Chris mad at the supermarket by asking whether he thought my choice of cake was right for Jesus and how many candles I should use. He suggested 2007 but I felt this may have been going a little far and opted for four! THe party went well'ish' this evening, although the kids did get a little boisterous and we nearly had tears over the winner of pass the parcel. We go through the whole thing again in the morning!

Good news for the week though- I have been appointed as a teacher at the local autistic school for the next 6 months. I will team teach six boys- 6 kids, 2 teachers, 1 assistant. THe other teacher is pretty expereinced and the assistant is lovely. The boys will be interesting but our room is near the time out room (practically a padded cell!) so that helps! All the boys can communicate verbally and a few of them even hjave converstaions, of a sort, which is pretty rare for this school! I start in January! HUrrah!

Well best go to bed to avoid further exhaustion tommorrow! Despite being busy we are well and actually quite enjoying The Season, although, of course, it is always hard to be away from family at this time of year.

Love Helen***

great minds...

well gosh, it seems we both decided to blog today!

Its like a number 9 bus....

c

Busy little bees

Hey everyone, sorry its been ages since we posted. Life is pretty manic for us both right now!

We'll do a proper update soon enough, but just wanted to shre what is the big story in melbourne right now - the bushfires.

Theya re claiming these fires to be the worst in memory, with unimaginably large blazes roaring across the countryside. It's thought that the front of the fire will reach 90km across today, and over 800,000hectares have been burned already.

Here's a pic from the NASA website of Victoria from space, taken just this morning. A picture says a thousand words.

We woke this morning with thick throats, feeling like we'd been hit with a ton of bricks, and looked out the window to a very surreal sight - yellow fog. The house stinks, and it is heading up to 38c today. Perfect weather for a christmas party methinks ;o)

truly scorchio!

C

Huge Bonfire

I was awoken this morning at 6.30 by a strange smell- in my semi-concious state I wrote it off as Chris' wind problems and went back to slepp. However, when we eventually rose from our slumber this morning we were amazed to look out the winow and see nothing but thick haze and the strong smell of smoke.

There are bushfires burning across the north-east of Victoria. The nearest one is at least a 3 hour drive frmo us and yet we are sufering the fall out and, if the wind changes, we may even get covered in soot. This weekend, if the predictions come true, the fires will join inot one mega fire, the biggest fiers EVER in Victoria. The front will be over 100 kilometers long.

Currently it is like living close to a bonfire. Everything smells of smoke and we all smell of smoke. No one really knows how long this fire will last- even extra firefighters from New Zealand are struggling to contain it.

It's going to be a long, hot and smelly summer!

Love Helen***