Australianisms

"Bluey" - pretty much anything with the word blue in it :) Bluebottle jellyfish? Bluey. Blue Bonds vest? Bluey (no self-respected brickie, plumber, builder, sparkie or just anyone driving a ute would wear anything else). Australian Cattle Dog (also known as a Blue Heeler)? Bluey. And a bloke with ginger hair? Bluey :)

"Fairy bread" - came across this one at a recent 1st birthday party, seems that all Aussies have fond memories of being at kiddy birthday parties and eating fairy bread. It's sliced white bread, spread with butter, then covered in crunchy hundreds and thousands. Everyone I spoke to at the party was amazed that everyone else in the world didn't have fairy bread at their kiddy parties :) In the same true traveller spirit that saw me eating snake in Cambodia and ant's egg soup in Laos, I ate fairy bread in suburban Brisbane last weekend - and although I smiled while eating it, I thought it was a bit yucky. The kids at the party seemed to enjoy it though :)

Bitter sweet

Sweet - on friday night bought a brand new longboard, 9'0 x 3' x 23', deep concave under the nose, psychedelic graphics, super duper 10mm Creatures slimfit boardbag (Nat's very jealous) and a couple of blocks of sexwax. By 7am on saturday morning, I was in the water at Currumbin with Nat, the new board paddles so much better than the old thing, and I was catching waves. Two dolphins even surfaced right next to us - and I mean right next to us. Stunning. We took my new GoPro Hero waterproof camera (a snip from eBay at $45) and took a whole roll of shots, almost all of which turned out really well. We even managed a couple of classy action shots, and I took one of Nat while we were both riding the same wave. All good.

Bitter - after the lengthy surf session, I was knackered. So knackered, in fact, that carrying the board across the carpark I dropped it. On the bitumen. It bounced on it's rail, then on it's deck. I had such a sick feeling in my stomach - horrible. I've caused a shatter in the fibreglass at the nose, and another at the tail, and scratches along the rail. Nothing horrific, but the board was only 12 hours old! On the way back to Brissy we stopped into Noosa Longboards to get them to look at patching it up. Keith, the same guy I had bought the board from, was working - so after telling him that the board was great, I told him what had happened afterwards. I didn't know the other guy in the shop, but we all had a bit of a chuckle about me being an idiot - only then did I find out that the other guy was Josh Constable, the bloody world longboarding champion.... Oh - and there were loads of blue jellyfish in the water while we surfed. Nothing worse than a stinging nettle kind of sting, but made me feel pretty uneasy and squeamish.

So my brand new board's at the shaper's being fixed to the tune of $90 (ouch) and Skye's making jokes about me having used up my birthday presents for the next 10 years - I don't think I'll ever drop another board! :)

Couple of other bits of news - the birthday balloon ride over Brisbane planned for for Skye and Lyn was cancelled the night before due to bad weather. That's a real shame, but the weather's so poor at the moment that it's almost better that we'll have to reschedule and have a chance of a clear day. We did go and see Mojo Webb last night, though, and he was fantastic. He's got a weekly solo gig at Satchmo's on a sunday - I can see us taking visiting Poms along there too :)

Last but not least, Nat and Al have a new puppy :) Luca is a Kelpie cross, very cute, evidently very intelligent and it's easy to see that he's going to grow up to be a great dog.

Photos from the weekend

Had a great day on saturday - friends over for a barbie, then Riverfire fireworks, then Gomez live at the Tivoli. Rather a lot of photos from Skye's birthday are here. Great to have people over to our place, put our deck to good use and have some reason to tidy up the house :) Going to the fireworks was a spur of the moment thing, but fantastic. The riverbank was thronged with families picnicking and grilling, and when the F-111 flew low over the river with afterburners blazing at the start and then again at the end, it was absolutely awesome. Gomez were good too, even the newer poppier stuff they played was bearable, but the top moments for me were all when they played songs from their first album. They're such a talented group of musicians, the performance was damn good.

Back at work after a big weekend is never great, but there was shocking news this afternoon that Steve Irwin died today. I think a lot people assume that he was just a joker, but after we went to his zoo a few years ago and saw him doing the crocodile feeding routine, I had a flick through his biography in a book shop and found that he was a committed conservationist and a serious naturalist.