In many ways, it’s a great relief that the barbecue, or any kind of gathering in a friends back garden, has replaced going to the pub as the standard form of entertainment here in Australia. Because when you go round a friend’s house, you take a couple of bottles of wine, which will cost anything [...]
January 2012

G’day! This is the 563rd post on this blog, and so far I’ve never started any of them with G’day. But today I speak to you for the first time as an Australian, so I just had to do it, didn’t I? The day started early, we had to be at the Brisbane Convention and [...]

Tomorrow is Australia Day. I won’t explain what that is, I’ll assume you’ve read my post about Australia Day from three years ago. Or perhaps you’ve read about the Australia Day party I went to a couple of years back. Last year, almost all Australia Day parties became charity events, raising money for those affected [...]

Every weekend for the people living in Australia the routine is almost always the same. We arise to be greeted by a rapidly heating golden sun nesting in a clear blue sky. We gleefully pack picnics, Esky’s full of cold beers and bottles of wine, camping chairs, sunglasses and hats. We bundle our children into [...]
I think it’s an absolute miracle that I’ve lived here over four years and I still haven’t done a post on the TV program “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!” hosted by Ant and Dec. Today, I’m going to change that. What spurred me into this action now? Well, two performances that are [...]

On Monday I wrote about Things To Do During the Long Summer Holidays. That article was about a long weekend away, but what do Australians do when they want the biggie, the two week (or more) summer holiday. Well, I’ve written about those sort of Australian holidays before as well, but this is the article [...]

As you know, it’s summer here in Australia and we are still in the school summer holiday period. And during these times, we try to do the best we can to keep our children amused. With Christmas and New Year’s Eve slap bang in the middle of our summer holidays, that’s a couple of weeks [...]
This week, on various different days, communities in and around Brisbane have been marking the anniversary of last year’s floods. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cop2si0Dd-A As the reporter in the video says, the weather around Brisbane this week has been absolutely glorious. He’s right, it has been truly scorchio. Temperatures have been reaching between 32° and 37°C. So it [...]