Weekend of gigs (and not mine...)

 
We went to see Glen Hansard this weekend at the Freo arts centre, fantastic gig, outdoor venue, perfect to kick back on the grass and enjoy a beer or two by sunset.
 
Here he is with the rest of his band playing up a storm!
 
Then the following night we went and saw our other favourite band the hip mo toast big band at the quarry. They played great and had some new really good arrangements of classic ozzie rock songs. Again another outdoor concert, beers, sunset, you know the deal.
 

There is an easier way.....

Hello blogfans, just got a tip off from Owen Kelly about a pretty good price for a flight to oz, checkit.

Outgoing :
Sat 11th, leaving Cork 07:15, arriving Sun 12th, 17:25 Perth
Aerlingus Cork 07:15 - Heathrow 08:45
Emirates Sat 14:00 Heathrow - Dubai - Perth Sun 17:25

Incoming :
Wednesday 15th, leaving Perth 06:00, arriving Wed 15th, 23:25 Cork
Emirates Wed 06:00 Perth - Dubai - Heathrow Wed 18:40
Aer Lingus Heathrow 22:15 - Cork 23:25

Total Costs :
Aerlingus Outgoing (€49.99) + Incoming (€29.99) = € 79.98
Emirates return journey (Sterling fluctuation) = € 687

Total price of return to Oz : € 767.

more of that flower thing

 
 
 
 

More from my amazing garden

 
Frangipani trees. Flowery trees of which we planted a bunch a few months ago, they have taken root and are growing at a pretty rapid rate, maybe a bit too fast..........
 
Here we see the petals in early development.
 
And here is what they normally look like.
 
But this one plant must have been in quite a rush because the petals grew right THROUGH its own leaf! This was yesterday, I'll take another picture in a few days and show you because I know that you are all budding gardeners at heart really.......

ARE WE THERE YET!

 
Another automotive adventure for the hounds

Random Snaps

 
I made two low-carb beers a while back and they went on tap last night. A sparkling ale and a wheat beer. They taste great and have zero carbs, and because its homebrew its got no opther chemicals either, its now a healthy, tasty, 4.1% DIET beer. Huzzazaaah! Fittness never tasted so good!
 
David Gray is still doing a mean trade in mainstream consumer products over here.
 
And check out this sunset from the other night, sunset here takes about 15 mins so you can see the all colours changing pretty fast (relatively speaking of course) as you sit out and enjoy a cool low-carb beeer
 
And check this out. We have a creeping plant (sounds spooky) which is growing around our gazeeeeebo out the back of the house. It has been doing really well lately and as these strands shoot out I hook them around a wire for support. This one did it by itself and check out the shape of it! Only in a musicians house.......

3 in a row

Three updates in one day, things are getting out of control.

This is where we are getting married in April its the WA rowing club, lovely venue right on the river overlooking south perth.
 
 
And here is the latest addition to Perths waterfront, its a big ferris wheel. Not as big as the london eye or anything like that but stll pretty good, the ride lasts about 12 minutes, 3 revolutions with great views. the day we went up there was a forrest fire in kingspark (where we are getting married) and we could see the emergency services helicopters scooping water from the river and dropping it all on the forrest, about 6 helicopters back to back on a constant rotation for hours to but out this fire.

More Aqua

What are the odds, 2 updates in the same day. Here are some more pictures from AQUA.
 
 
Aqua is great, they really go all out to make the exhibits as interesting as possible, which includes making the most boring fish in the sea, the jellyfish, into a really funky lava-lamp-esque light show.
 
Finn is talking almost all the time now but still has some words mixed up, he still calls fishies, shippies, so here we see a starship.
 
Check out this stingray, because of the concave glass everything appears 1/3 smaller, these guys are huge!

Happy New Year (again)

Hi Everyone, well, January can go down as the worst blogging month of all time, I am still on holidays so hardly spending any time at all on the ol PC, that'll change shortly when I go back to work in Feb, so apologies if I havent replied to any emails in a few weeks. Here are a few highlights of the last few weeks to keep you entertained till I get back to regular updates.
 
Played a wedding a few weeks ago and came across this double pedal steel guitar, twas the property of no other than Lucky Oceans, grammy award winning muso and resident of Perth.
 
Finally got to wall mounting my yard of ale, and believe it or not i still haven't drank it yet, that may all change on monday.......
 
We took Fin to the aquarium last week (aqua) and we had a great time, his favourite was the sharks, the stingray and when he got to touch a starfish.
 
And check this out, I had a break between students the other day so I got out both my instruments and had a viola'vs'violin play off, and i have to say the viola won in every category!

The Finn Man

 
We were doing a gig in a shopping centre over christmas, all carol singing (yes, singing) and Finn came along for a listen. Here he is outside the cinema checking out the dinosaurs
 
Then we went home and set up thomas-land with his brand new crane.
 
Here he is with another of his christmas presents, a helicopter
 
And here he is from a few days ago with his brand new haircut.

Birthday Beers

 
Twas my birthday the other day, we had a really small party as Jane was ill with a flu so twas just me and a few of the lads for a 'quiet' beer or two. I made these beers especially for the occasion. Both are pretty basic lagers (kinda like carlsberg) except for one ingredient (both ingredients do the same job in the fermentation process but one costs twice as much as the other, so i wanted to see if it made any difference), so it ws kinda like a pepsi challenge.
 
Here are the kegs fully loaded. Both beers were fine, but the general verdict was that the more expensive one was better (it was about $3 more for the fancy ingredient)
 
And just to give you an idea of the temperature over here at the moment, this was taken at about 5pm on my birthday. No wonder we were so thirsty.

Dogwatch

 
Here's Kirby the wonderdog having a bath for christmas day from Jeff, our dogwasher. I got talking to Jeff a few months ago about homebrew, showed him my settup etc. and he got right into it. He went straight to the brewshop that evening and bought about $500 bucks worth of distilling equipment and now he makes his own whisky.
 
Heres another of Kirby enjoying his christmas present
 
The dogs got me a present too for christmas
 
And last off, here is Kirby and Reilly filthy from a swim in the river at low tide and playing with a stick.