GO GO GO!!!

The Ultimate F1 Car!!!
Wurtz out! (below)

Greetings all!

Hope you are all well.

Sadly not the interactive F1 post that I had hoped due to Library P.C. not allowing me to download my videos from my phoneL! Hey ho! But in a nutshell we had an awesome day. I, as you can imagine was in my element!! The Tractioan area we were in was wicked! Right on turns 3 and 4 (where Coulthard crashed into Wurtz!!!) as much food and drink as you could manage from 10am – 5.30pm (so we were a little worse for ware by the end of the dayJ) The atmosphere was awesome, F3 race, aussie V8 races, celebrity cup race and loads more, so full on petrol head entertainment all day, combined with dj’s, the Sneaky Sound System, and then a funk/dance group fronted by Mr Jigga to end the day… Great to experience a bit of the glamour of Formula 1!!!

After the GP we returned to Sheparton for more fruit picking, only to be rained, yes rained off! So back to Melb for a Victorian microbrewery beer festival in Fed square which was really cool! We tried a warm beer! Much to the amusement of many Oz blokes around us!

On Monday of this week we finally began -after nearly a month- fruit picking again, the mighty Granny Smith apples! Mmmm, to be completely honest the appeal of getting up a silly o’clock and spending hours filling monstrous bins of easily bruised fruit has begun to loose it’s appeal now! But only 4 more days left before we have enough petrol money for our round Oz trip! We are both itching to get on the road now as fruit picking has dragged on a bit longer than anticipated, but despite this we have had a great experience and made some good friends along the way.

Easter weekend looming and a bit of a Polish Jamboree planned with Nick and Tali in the Mighty Melb, and no doubt a few stubbies in celebration of the end of the Fruit Picking!!! Before we head off on the Great Ocean Road………. Post to follow.

So have a top easter all.

A few special birthday wishes!

Firstly to the Mighty Fin (My godson) Happy 2^nd birthday, miss ya dogs!! :0

And the Mighty Mummy G for the 18^th April, just in case we can’t post again before then.

Xxj&jxx

You Little Devils!

Tasmanian dawn!!.....
Wineglass Bay....
Weindorfs forest in the Crdle Mountain National park (How Lord of The Rings!!!)

Hello!

I hope everyone is doing well and all is ok.

Soooooooo, we finished picking pears on Wednesday 28^th Feb, a bit earlier than expected due to a poor crop caused by frost, wind and severe drought (our knowledge of pear farming is astounding now, but to stop people from logging off, I’ll save that info for another time!). Despite it being really hard work, very VERY hot at times (a temperature of 43C was recorded in the orchards on one day), and also not quite as lucrative as we thought (you have to pick A LOT of pears to fill one bin!), we thoroughly enjoyed it and met some great people. So much so in fact, that we are going back there to pick apples on the 20^th March for a couple of weeks (interesting apple facts to follow…….).

In-between picking different varieties of fruit we have been doing some more exploring and visiting…..

We popped off to Tasmania for a week on Thursday 1^st March on the overnight ferry, “The Spirit of Tasmania I”, leaving Melbourne at 8pm and arriving in Devonport in Tassie at 7am. It’s a massive P&O style ferry that takes 11 hours to sail about 350km across the Bass Straits, but its great fun. Once there we saw and did loads, and it’s an amazing and beautiful place, very alpine-like in places.

Starting off in Devonport we drove down the middle passing through Launceston (where they brew James Boag beer, don’t know if they get it in the U.K, if they do try it, it’s nice!). We spent Saturday in Hobart and experienced the Salamanca Market, supposedly the best market in Australia! It is quite awesome, with tons of stuff ranging from fruit and veg to Tasmanian soaps to Merino wool hats. But it was also reeeeeally busy. From there we headed east to Port Arthur (where they used to put all the prisoners!) with a stop over in the Tasman National Park. We camped at a place called Fortescue Bay, gorgeous, and the camp manager gave us a massive bit of yellow-fin tuna that he had caught and his wife cooked that day, yum!

From Port Arthur we drove to Coles Bay, and that was when we experienced our first proper rain for weeks!!!! We camped at a place called Friendly Beach, which wasn’t very friendly at all then! But the next day it was bright sunshine again and we walked over to Wineglass Bay, which is rated as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, and it didn’t disappoint, stunning beach, with white sand and rolling waves, and you can only get there via a steep rocky path, so it’s really quiet! And on that walk is when we saw our first live snakes (that weren’t in a zoo!). Two big black Tiger snakes, which are dangerously venomous……………………hmmmm, as you can imagine I wasn’t scared at all…..especially when James stood underneath one dangling from a tree and started to take pictures………..hopefully we won’t see anymore!

We then set of across the middle of Tasmania crossing the central plains, then up into the central plateau region, and into the Great Lakes. The variety of landscape we drove through in a relatively short space of time was incredible, green fields and lush forest, to dry, brown, flat fields, then hilly rocky land with loads of lakes and hydroelectric power stations. We camped by Lake Arthur, and it was FREEZING. When we woke up in the morning there was a thick layer of frost on the van, it was so cold, 1974 VW campervans definitely weren’t made for camping in cold weather!!!! Trying to warm-up we drove to Lake St Clair, and then carried onto to Queenstown and Strahan.

The journey from Lake St Clair to Strahan took us through some pretty amazing landscapes, the wilderness area to the baroness of the mining area around Queenstown. Films set on the moon have been filmed there, because there are just rocks left after years of over mining.

After camping by the sea in Strahan, at a place called “Hells gate” (where the convicts were sailed to Sarah island through), we went to Cradle Mountain, where apparently, on 7 out of every 10 days its raining, and on only 1 out of 10 days its sunny!!! We were lucky, it wasn’t sunny, but it wasn’t raining either! Fantastic Mountain though, check out the pics! After Cradle Mountain we stayed at a wicked campsite near a tiny (2 house) place called Moina. Again, rain, and the van sprung a little leak! 32 year old rubber seals find any more than a fine drizzle a little challenging!!

The next day we did a swift dash along the North West coast through Burnie, famed for its deep water port!! Penguin, famed for it’s….yes you guessed it Penguins! Who were absent on the day of our visit!! And then to Devonport, to buy James a shirt for Sophie and Richards Oz Wedding! ($7 Red Cross with sleeves too short! Apparently Oz blokes have shorter arms than Europeans ;) and then to catch the ferry…

Which bring us nicely to the end of this post…. Sophie and Richards Oz wedding! On Sunday the 11^th March. We drove up the now very familiar Hume highway on Friday, stopping over at our favourite rest stop in Jugiong, and arriving on Saturday afternoon, slightly later than planned due to Jimmy G knee problems (which are recovering nicely now). The venue was lovely, right on the sea, Sophie looked Stunning in her dress and all in all we had a top day, it was really nice to be a part of it after missing the U.K. one. Again as stated in our gorgeous card, we wish you lots of happiness, and thanks for the use of the shower! Should tide us over for another few weeks ;)

OK! Monster post over now! Off to the mighty Melb this aft to hook up with Tali, Nic, Rich and Jill for a few days before the Melb GP (GRAND PRIX!!!) on Sunday. As you can imagine James is just a little bit excited about this. There will be a full interactive blog post to follow with Videos and general highlights!!!.... After this frivolity, back to Shepparton to bag some Apples!! Wooo hoooo

Hope all are well.

Keep us posted on U.K shenanigans.

Love J&J