A Weekend in Newie

Pic of Newcastle looking from the north east
Just doing a spot of blogging during my lunchbreak on Monday. It's quite warm up here today...Fran Kelly on Radio National (who wakes Steve and I up and who travels down at least as far as the uni with us - never quite sure what happens once I'm out of the car) said that Brisbane would reach 33 today and I suspect we are around 30. Apparently the weekend was very similar. I say apparently because Steve, Glen and I jetstarred down to Newcastle on Friday afternoon for a weekend in the old country, staying with our friend Graham in Mayfield. Later in the evening we gathered a group of friends (Kerri, Geoff, Graham, Richard and Piglet) to gorge ourselves silly at one of our fave eateries, Le Dynasty, in Darby Street. Vietnamese is hard to come by in Lismore and even harder to come by in Larnook, so we gobbled down the salty squid and tom rim thit (braised pork and king prawns) like madmen. Possessed madmen in fact.
After a breakfast in Beaumont Street, Hamilton, on Saturday morning, we popped in to say hello to the kindly ladies in Pina's Deli in Lindsay Street before taking in a tour of some of the changes along the foreshore and up around where the Royal Newie Hospital once was. A spot of pre-lunch dessert was then taken with our friend Libby McD at 3 Beans cafe, again back in Beaumont Street, before hightailing it across the road to Richard's for lunch.
Then I had to haul Ike Gayland screaming and kicking out of his plastic bag and together with his idiosyncratic brother, Hal, spent an hour or so being photographed by the talented Lauren O'Brien for a forth-coming television series pilot. Shhhhh! Can't say any more than that at this stage.
Home then to start preps for the.....

which was an extraveganza in all ways. Congratulations to Lee and her team at Rainbow Visions for again putting on such a wonderful night. Delicious meal, great entertainment and fun dancing, catching up with friends. Steve and I hadn't had enough of the dancing so together with Glen I and Glen II we headed down to the Gateway Hotel, but only lasted an hour or so before we started to falter but luckily our friend Bubbles was able to give us a lift back to Graham's around 2ish I guess. Glen I and Glen II stayed on.

Sunday was spent visiting with my mum and dad, admiring my mum's outrageous magnolia tree and then lunching at Graham's before a quick en-route drop in to Geoff's fabulous salon de art deco further down Mayfield. Then onwards to Williamtown for a fly out at 2.30.

Flight out on time and I silently thought how good it was that both flights had kept to schedule. Alas, no sooner than the rather young-sounding first officer gleefully promised us they'd have us disembarking 10 minutes ahead of schedule that we then aborted not one but two landing approaches and were then told that because of smoke from adjacent fires we would be diverting to Brisbane. Bugger. When we landed the flight attendant, Kye, who was not someone unfamiliar to me, announced 'Welcome to Brisbane, ladies and gentlemen. You don't want to be here and neither do we...' I thought that was a nice touch. Anyway, Jetstar managed the whole thing pretty well. We were shuttled back to Coolangatta aiport at 5.30 (we had landed in Brisbane just before 4.00pm so that was a bit of a bugger) and got back there just after 7.00. Hopped into the suzuki and arrived at Maryville just before 8.30. So there you have it...And now I must get back to my marking.