howie’s halfpipe

Today we began with a little trip to a beach just north of Aberdeen where my hippy parents used to frolic in the sand dunes before i was born.

Then we dropped mother off at the hotel and the 3 of us headed somewhere or other. We got some lunch and stopped at a little railway to pick up some railway merchandise. Then it was off to a castle in the mist. It was a pretty cool castle, it was on a cliff and only accessible by a windy steep path.

Beach

Captain Wife

Wife doing some interpretative dance on edge of the north sea

Castle

Castle in the mist (not it’s official name)

wife on a bridge

another amazing photo by Robert Howie

boys toilet at the castle

more castle.

Happy Mothers Day all of my mothers out there. known and unknown.

today we left Perth in a nice fog and headed towards Aberdeen, with a quick detour back to the hotel.

We stopped at Scone Palace, which was a pretty cool place. Old things arnt really my cup of tea. In my opinion once you have seen one antique table you have seen them all.

So i wasnt all that interested in the insides of the palace, but the outsides kept me entertained for quite a while, oh and the gift shop!

Scone Palace 

The Peacock that took the nappy san challenge.

The Palace and it’s guard.

you havent been to Scotland if you havent seen a highland cow, pronounced highland cooo.

Can you help wifie escape the maze?????

We have been without internet for 2 whole days now. In the last 2 days i have also felt quite nausious…..I have internet tonight and i feel fine.

We went to York and visited the NRM, for those of you who arent down with the NRM it’s the National Railway Museum.

I love trains.

NRM 

The NRM recentlly aquired the flying Scotsman, my favourite steam train in the whole world. Here it is below.

After York we headed to the lakes district to stay with some of my family. It was fun, my cousins sure do have a lot of energy, we played the worlds longest game of rounders in the back field and chatted away.

Today we went and had a look at some lakes.

Lakes

This afternoon we crossed the border and are staying in Perth.

Sign of the day (yesterday)

DLR

This morning wife and I made a dash across London to go on the DLR (Docklands Light Railway). It’s cool, super frequent trains to a range of places, and best of all the trains are fully automated. No driver!

Then it was back to the Hotel to meet the olds. We drove to Oxford where we spent some time sorting out hire cars, for some reason we ended up with 2 cars instead of one. But we are hopefuly changing back to just one in the next couple of days.

Here is the one that my parents got for me and jenny.

It has a sun roof, in case you thought we must have got out my pocket knife and made a hole in th roof for a good photo op.

Village

Now we are in some village, it’s small and english like. I had steak for dinner, cows taste different in England, must be the mad cow disease.

Signs of the day

Today wife and I caught about 5 thousand buses and 3,238 trains.

I can’t remember where we went exactly, just the main attractions.

I know thumbnails can be anoying but i figure you may not want to actually look at my photos so now you get a choice.

Big Ben

London Eye

I really enjoyed the eye, I’ve been looking forward to it for weeks.

Madam Tussauds

Madan Tussauds was no way near as good as i expected. It was packed full of rude french people whou would physically push you out of the way so they could push in or get in front for some reason. I was getting pushed around a lot and sometimes with a lot of force.

you may have noticed that Mr Speiilberg and myself don’t look very impressed, well i can tell you why. I just showed him an episode of ‘wisdom with tabitha’

London Bridge - complete with their ‘package deal’ photo opportunity.

We also went to St Pauls, and i drank a bottle of coke that was from Germany.

We went for a walk with my parentals into hyde park. we didnt get very far casue everyone was so exhausted.

Our hotel is just down the road from a big strip of cafes and food joints. A lovely part of town to have dinner. But why do that when you can have a real dinner.

I’m eating a frozen lasagne and drinking a bottle of coke. there was only 2 problems, the first being our micriwave doesnt work, the second there is no utensils.

being the handyman that i am i fixed both problems. I took my frozen lasagne into my parents room and used their microwave. The cooked plastic container was too hot to carry so i wrapped it in an old newspaper. Now i’m in our room eating lasagne with a tea spoon.

them my friends it is sleep time, i miss sleeping.

I am in London, Notting hill to be exact.

24 hours of sitting on a plane, 4 airports, 3 trains and now all i want to do is sleep but its only 3pm in the afternoon.

that is all.

Well what a long day it has been.

My 7am flight to melbourne didn’t leave until 7:30am and then due to crap weather we had to circle melbourne 3 or 4 times so it ended up being almost a 2 hour flight.

got to melb and met the other buddies then we got us a taxi out to the TEAR office. $76 cab fare.

then all of today was in a meeting, twas pretty good and good to meet other tear peoples. Tomorrow is another day of meetings.

Tonight David and I went to a pub in richmond for dinner. I had a tops chicken parma.  and when we got back to his sisters apartment I did the biggest poo i have ever done in my life…Melbourne’s pipes will be working that baby through for a while.

we are in Armidale, sitting in myparents house awaiting their arrival home from work.

I brought my airport express so was ableto plug it straight into their internet connection and now we have wireless. this town is starting to look more appealing

You can’t come to Central Australia and not take some photos.

here are the 2 photos I have taken.

the office

my desk

I think the desert is broken. I flew out here on wednesday morning and since I have been here it hanst gone over 25 degrees. Today its all kind of overcast and dull. whats going on!!!

I want just one scortcher, a nice 45 degree day, oh how i love the heat.

In other news I have some seriously chunky,red dusty snot.

The last few days out here in the red centre have been busy busy busy.

I’m the video / web / other stuff guy. And today i did the Mala walk 4 time (it’s part of the walk around the base of uluru.

pluse many other jobs.

sleepy isnt it.

tonight could be a late one too.

I’m here in Yulara, (the resort next to Uluru).

I realised in my carry on luggage i had a pocket knife and sydney airport security didnt notice.

i found it when i took my laptop out when i got here.

oops.

its not heaps hot here, about to go get me a coke and then head off to do some work.

This morning wife and I headed off to Glenreagh about 30 mins north west of coffs. They have a little steam train! And we all know how much I love steam trains. We found the plae, it was a litle shed in the middle of a muddy paddock. There where about 20 little old men and lades in bright orange vests scattered around the shed. They where all volunteers for this little train. We had to wait about 20mins for the train. It puffed on in and we got on and enjoyed the little 6km train ride.

then it was off to find some lunch. We first stopped at a little bakery that only seemed to sell burnt buns,cakes and bread. We bought a finger bun each, whilst driving away from the bakery jenny managed to drop half her bun under her car seat. The 10 second rule does not apply in our car!

we eventually made it to another place for lunch, I ordered a hamburger with no bettroot, I got given a hamburger with beetroot.

and that brings us up to date.

We awoke early to begin a day of coffs harbouring in the middle of ‘hurricane you-have-to-stay-inside-all-day-or-you-will-drown’

After spending some time playing with my electric train, which laying on the floor I noticed a poo like smell under my nose on the carpet. It was at this point i decided it was time to find a new recreation activity.

We headed to the big banana, You cant really say that the builder of the big banana is compensating for something. The keyrings in the gift shop are bigger than the ‘big banana’ itself. It was pissing down with rain and not a whole lot of shelter so we b-lined for a shopping centre.

I devoured 5 cinnamon donuts and we wandered around for a bit.

Boredom struck so we headed back to the apartment, then it was back into coffs to a restaurant for lunch. I ordered a chicken burger but without the bacon and sun dried tomato. I got a chicken burger with bacon and sun dried tomatos.

After lunch back to the apartment, a bit of sitting, a bit of walking in the rain, a bit of dvd watching a bit of dinner and a bit of board game fun with the old ones.

tomorrow is steam train day, I’m excited about that!

In other news we may need to go to bunnings tomorrow to start buying materials to convert our car into a ship, with a pool of course!

well th beaches are cold, its super windy and raining.

what a super beachside summer holiday

for some reason my shoes really smell at the end of each day up here, like really really smelly. I’ve never had smelly feet but it seems schoolies brings out the worst in people.

Jenny got bitten by some killer ants today.

Getting nice and pink up here on the gold coast.

I know I’ve already said it, but schoolies is crazy!!!!!

Today i got to see a lot of peoples bits and pieces, both girls and boys. Why oh why?

I’m soo tired!

I’m pretty much the best balloon sculpter ther is.

I made over 100 today!