Our friend, Jason, from Sydney, arrived on Friday evening to spend the long weekend with us. The weather into the Gold Coast airport was sodden and there were some doubts about whether his flight would go ahead or if it did it might have to be diverted to Brisbane, but luck was on his side and his hire car pulled up outside our garage around 7.15. Lots of drinking of sparkling wine, dinner and spa time occurred shortly afterwards.
After our regular Kyogle Saturday morning, Jas did some work on a painting he has been working on for us for a while now, while I prepped for dinner. The weather had promised cool and wet on Friday night/ Saturday morning so I decided on a slow cooked pulled pork even though the day became progressively hotter and sunnier. Julia and Bluey came over together with a new friend, Blaine, from Kyogle. Blaine has taken over a cafe that we occasionally frequented so look out for some big things happening in Kyogle over the next month.
Anyway, it was a great night - lots of things to eat and drink and lots of chatter and laughter. The best kind of night. Then on Sunday Jas, Steve and I headed off to Bangalow market, as that was the only local market Jas hadn't experienced, but it was a very very hot day so we pulled stumps after a
couple of hours and headed north east to Brusnwick Heads. But, before we left Bangalow we had a browse in a book and art shop and I found this wonderful historical and picture book of the circus. It has a very interesting chapter on animals in the circus, and even more amazing illustrations so I need to make it my own.
The beach at Brunny Heads was spectacularly beautiful and we frolicked in the waves for an hour or so before hauling our bodies out to dry on the sand for a while. Gelato followed soon after and then we headed for Julia's place at Cawongla for afternoon drinks. Yes, we do lead a very civilised life up here in Larnook/Cawongla. Blaine came up for drinks as well and we all enjoyed Julia's tour of his amazing garden before settling down in his beer garden for some polite drinking. A huge storm had been brewing which broke without much warning so we all ran in underneath the shelter of the dairy bales. We really felt like we were part of the storm as the dairy bales is not the most stable or robust of structures. We received an enjoyable 34 mm of rain out of it.
And then today dawned sunny and warm so after an enjoyable breakfast of my corn fritters and bacon and mango chutney on the back verandah we drove up to Border Rangers. We stopped at the Blackbutt lookout and
marvelled at the wonderful view of the Tweed Vally and Wollumbin/Mt Warning before driving further along the road to The Pinnacle lookout which again gave superb views.
And then we drove clean across the national park to its western edge and went for a walk to Brush Box Falls where we could admire the water hurtling off the cliff face.
Isn't this the most wonderful ancient liana.
After lunching in Kyogle on pluto pups and scallops - what could be more Australian - we got back home around 3.00pm. Jas only had an hour before he needed to drive back up to the airport so he got stuck into planting the rainbow gum that he kindly bought for us at the Bangalow markets yesterday. This species, which doesn't grow naturally in Australia but does grow in PNG and the islands surrounding, is extraordinary. When mature its bark is coloured in the most beautiful patches of bright crayon colours. We had to plant it in the spot least likely to suffer from frost as it is a tropical species and so doesn't tolerate frost at all. Fingers crossed it will be OK. Oh we also made up a new saying based on the farmer's market in Kyogle. Lettuces come in two types - your more pedestrian iceberg lettuce and anything else is a fancy lettuce. So 'that's as fancy as a Kyogle lettuce' is now part of our Larnookian idiom.
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