Milton Park

At work we decided to have a team building exercise and we were bussed off to the Southern Highlands to Milton Park in Bowral. We left Tuesday morning and returned Wednesday evening. Milton Park is an amazing place, with a miriad of gardens, paths, additional buildings (such as the conference centre and spa).

spa entrance

side of conference centre

The house is built at the time of federation, and is beautiful with high ceilings and lots of space.
entrance to the Hotel from the garden
I had a room on the ground floor that opened up to the courtyard. I have never had so many pillows on my bed as I did on Tuesday night.

The food was spectactular, for instance the evening meal for me was venison followed by milk fed lamb from WA, a chocolate mud desert finished the meal.

The gardens are extensive, lots of paths winding around. Of course it is spring in the highlands and lots of the flowers and trees are bursting with new life.

Fairy walk

Helicopter pad

Lily pads

Another walk through the gardens

Beautiful bulbs down a meadow - very English

At the end of Tuesday we had some free time. Three of us went to an art gallery in Bowral, we also visited a cheese shop and a dress shop and Bed and Bath. Nothing like retail therapy, JR will be happy to know that the only thing I bought was coffee - although I was sorely tempted by lots of things.

When you really want to celebrate something special, a trip to Milton Park could be the place to go.

Mondo

Siparia, Trinidad and Tobago

I have now walked to Siparia. Also called the Sand City. This is location 16 in my walk across the world.

Siparia is best known for its annual Easter Sunday pilgimage when hundreds of Hindus, Muslims, Roman Catholics, and other Christian groups gather at the Siparia La Divina Pastora Church to pay homage to Siparee Mai Ke Mala, the statue of La Divina Pastora. The statue, known as Siparee Mai by the Hindus, is believed to be a manifestation of Mother Kali the Hindu Goddess of destruction. Hindus believe that long ago Siparee Mai appeared at the La Divina Church, as a baby, to grant the wishes of East Indian forefathers who were subdued by the colonial regime. Believers say the baby, who appeared close to the altar, aged as the hours of the day trickled by. By evening, she turned into an old woman and disappeared as the sun went down. It is believed the statue bestows fertility to barren women, marital success to couples, healing to the sick, proper husbands for young girls, and blessings to the poor and needy. Children who are unable to walk or speak could be healed if offerings are made to the Goddess.

Population is 49,394
Official language is English, also speak Caribbean Hindi, French, Spanish and Chinese

The local dish is Buljol: Salted codfish shredded and seasoned with peppers, onions, tomatoes, and olive oil, often served in a coconut bake. Not sure I am going to try this dish, depends how much salt is in it.

Bridgetown Conference Update

My life is full of updates at the moment: In late March I travelled to Bridgetown in Western Australia to attend the WA Natural Resource Management Conference.

The report from the conference in Bridgetown has two pictures of me! Just a hint they are on pages 3 and 4.

That is my 15 minutes of fame dealt with.

A photographer in Paris

Hi there,

Having just read Smells like? I thought I should add a Photographer in Paris (if you click on the title you will be linked to her site), however the best part of her site is A photographer in Paris blog. She is a talented photographer who spends her time wandering the streets of Paris taking beautiful photographs of my favourite city. Looking at this is the next best thing to being in Paris.

Here are some of my favourite photo's from Paris 2006

Arriving in Paris June 2006

The courtyard from our apartment in Paris

In the lounge room of our apartment

From the Louvre our first day in Paris

Here is the Monoprix (Woolworths or Tesco of Paris) above and the local street market below,where we bought fresh pasta and sauces, cheese, bread and cherries. At one point I asked the non French speaking indian student in the fruit shop for 300g of cherries in my best school girl french and came home with 1kg! The best thing about it was eating cherries in July as I associate cherries with Christmas in Australia. We had no trouble eating all of them. Note that we went to Paris twice, in early June as part of the bus tour and then again in early July under our own steam.

Melbourne National NRM Conference

Last week I was off again to the wilds of NRM, this time in Melbourne. The conference was hard work and was very successful from our point of view. The best thing about it for me was the fact that it was held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), and even though I am no sport fan, I did feel in awe of the place. If I get a chance to visist the MCG and do a tour I will.

Here is the view leaning from my fly screenless hotel window (yes a hotel window that opens, what luxury), straight to the MCG.

The hallowed grounds (note that they steam clean the seats)

In memory of the first football game played on this ground in August 1858.


There was a lot of memorabilia from the 1956 Olympics.

Shirley Strickland and Betty Cuthbert from the 1956 Olympics

One of JSR's hero's - Dennis Lillee

Walking back and forth from the hotel to the MCG, we saw lots of offices connected to cricket in the back streets. At the MCG there were tours for the public every day. We had the conference dinner at the MCG dining room, which was a great venue. The after dinner speaker Sir Murray Rivers (aka Brian Dawe), was very entertaining and not at all recognizable to me.

Bridgetown, WA (not Barbados!)

At the end of March I travelled to Bridgetown, Western Australia. A small town in the south west corner of WA, nestled on the banks of the Blackwood River, to attend the WA Natural Resource Management Conference. Bridgetown is about 3 hours south of Perth, 100k inland from Bunbury. Unfortunately it was raining cats and dogs for the whole day that we drove to Bridgetown. We hired a Toyota Prius, which was fine except for the visibility out of the back window. We stopped briefly in Bunbury at a service station, to get some lunch, however as it was 1.20pm they had turned most things off (cappuccino machine, grill, etc). It was good to get back on the road again. About 420 delegates attended the conference in a town of around 3,000 people. Here is the conference brochure. The conference was held in the recreation hall which coped with the numbers well. There were approximately 20 vendors in the hall. Food was fabulous, sourced from many cafes in town and the surrounding towns.

Bridgetown is a beautiful little town and reminds me of the southern highlands and some of the south coast towns. It has three wineries, 2 art galleries and a cidery. The country around Bridgetown grows apples and plums, as well as wine and potato's. The soil is very rich. The rainfall averages 1100 mm per year - which seems heavenly to me.

We stayed at Nelson's at Bridgetown, with a spa in each room.

The rooms were fine, the food for breakfast was ordinary, so on the last morning we went to the Barking Cat Cafe and I had the best cappuccino I have had in a long time.

I went on a field trip to Manjimup, to a chip factory and the Diamond Fire Tree. I thought that the chip factory would be handing out packets of chips, but no it was a fried chip factory.

Here is the delightful head wear we had to have for the chip factory tour

Having completed a tour of the chip factory we moved to the the land where the potatoes are planted and watched a line being put across the land to prevent the rain from washing all the goodness down the hill, then we looked at potatoes in their furrows the ground.

This is the potato man talking to one of the field trip participants. He never stopped talking about the potatoes and the issues with marketing, growing, staffing the factory - potatoes are his life.

On to the diamond fire tree.
The tree is in the Kari forest near Manjimup and is a very steep climb.

No I did not climb

On our last evening at the conference, we were bussed to Boyup Brook, 30k's down the road. Here we visited Harvey Dickson's Country Music Centre, just out of town. He hosts tours 7 days a week. Each year he hosts a rodeo and the "Road to Tamworth" a three day country music show, which then sends the winner to Tamworth. On our arrival we were given a tour in the dark.

Outside there were three 10 foot tall figures in a row, playing guitars

this is where we ate and danced to the country music crooners. The roof was littered with hanging memorabilia - vacuum cleaners, disco balls, golf clubs in a golf caddy, toy horse, plus the usual farm implements. Harvey has built this with his friends over the past 20 years.

rodeo

name of the bar

There were shrines to Elvis, Slim, John Wayne, Johnny Cash and more all around the outside of the main hall

On our last afternoon we visited Ford House, which is a B&B in Bridgetown, and has an amazing breakfast room.

Melanie and I "drinking tea" in the breakfast room, a slab hut lined with preserves.

After Ford House, we ended up at the visitors centre at a local food and wine promotion, tasted local cheese, local reds and cider and bought some plum and port jam - finally found a way to incorporate alcohol into breakfast.

After dropping a colleague off in Bunbury, we returned to Perth for the evening. On Friday we checked out Miss Maud's the Sweedish pastry cook and hotelier. We also walked down London Court: Set amongst modern sky scrapers in the heart of Perth City is Perth's London Court. Built in 1937, this small pedestrian "street" is located between the Hay Street Mall and St Georges Terrace. There are two clocks at London Court, one at each end of the lane. If you pay close attention you will notice the clock at the Hay Street entrance has four knights above it, which circle around when the clocks strikes every 15 minutes. At the St Georges Terrace end you will find St George battling a dragon above the clock, and both clocks are replicas of France's Great Clock of Rouen.

Northern Lights

Each building had five different pictures projected on them, which meant that it was interesting to walk up and down the strip to catch each variation. For better photo's of the Northern Lights that were held in Adelaide on North Terrace in late March you can click here. The Northern Lights was part of the fringe festival. I was lucky enough to go twice. The first time I went was the last day of 15 days of weather over 35 degrees each day. At 10pm it was still hot and sweaty. There were many people about, even toddlers and children, due to the heat, no one wanted to sleep. About 10 days later I went to see it again on the second last day of the showing. There were still a lot of people there, and weather was much cooler.