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Panorama photo: "Shouldn't we have gone paddling instead?"

Easter Escape with the push bike. When we moved to Sydney years ago, our push bikes were in our removed goods. We had expected to use the bikes — just as we did in Germany — as a mode of transport for the commute to work, and for the week-ends. We couldn't have been more wrong. Even though the Australians will not accept this: Riding the bike in Sydney is everything but fun. At least not is you are pampered with separate bike tracks and long-distance tracks across the country as in Germany, Only seldomly you see someone using his bike to go to work, no armies of push bikes are parked at the train stations. Narrowing the focus down to a sports toy, the bike gets only ever used in cross country mountain biking, or on the highways. Yes, highways, your eyes didn't deceive you ...

Occasionally however, they do exist, the "good" bike tracks. You only have to know about them. Kevin and Sue come up with the idea to take the bikes out for a trip along the Myall Lakes at Easter. Of course we join in. The trip starts out with a ferry ride across Port Stephens (which we know from so many kayak trips) and eventually takes us north between the lakes and the ocean, 35km in an almost straight line. We interrupt our ride with hops to the left into the palm jungles, and to the right onto the dunes (see photo). We find accommodation for the night on exactly the same camp ground where we did our very first camping trip in Australia. (see Monthly Report January 2003). The only difference is that this time, in order to make up for a day on the small saddle, we pamper ourselves with a cabin instead of a tent ...

(Make-believe) Innocence: Laughing Hans No. 1 in our tree

Hans(es). If the question for the most typical Australian bird is raised, the kookaburra is a very likely candidate. After all, he is the subject of many fridge magnets and stuffed toys, and he was one of the mascots of the 2000 Olympics. Plus he is (one of the many) birds that regularly wake us up in the early morning with their characteristic sounds. How these sound? Well, even though the kookaburra is endemic to Australia, he has a German name as well: "Lachender Hans", meaning Laughing Hans. That tells you everything ...

In spite of the omnipresent laughing around our house it took us several months to actually see a kookaburra. Why? We don't know. Certainly not because these birds are shy. But in mid-April suddenly we have got three of these large kingfishers sitting in the angophora tree in our drive way. Claudia quickly gets some salami slices out of the fridge and starts feeding the kookaburras. Kookaburras love all kinds of meat. Claudia had experienced this once before, when a kookaburra stole a steak out of her hands whilst she was talking to friends, not paying attention to the wildlife. These large kingfishers (20-30cm) are sly old dogs. Even if they look sooooooo cute ...

On our way from the 1970s to 2006...

...almost there.

Lighting the fire. This episode is a continuation of the eBay story in the last report. Do you remember? "[...] We use timber to build a frame; this gets encased with plasterboard; the gaps are filled with plaster, which needs to be sanded back several times causing a huge dusty mess in the whole house; and eventually everything gets painted. [...]" What we didn't mention then are the works on the roof. We installed the flue of our new fireplace through the ceiling and the roof, sealed it with a flashing, screwed and glued the flashing onto the roof, sealed the edges with silicone. Whether it really seals well? It hasn't rained since!

In any case, we don't want to hide the result from you. The blinds and some internal lamps are still missing — but doesn't it look stunning? The fireplace has a timer and a thermostat, so that our dining room is nicely heated by the time be crawl out of bed in the mornings. If the old timber log fireplace would have had this feature of being programmable?

Once the old thick curtains had been taken down — and sure enough were sold on eBay — the room reverberation of the dining room was so bad that every single word caused an echo. A first quick fix: Peter gets an early birthday present, two paintings on canvas. He used this as an opportunity to install the fourth and last halogen down light in the ceiling, centred to the sailing canvas, see photo. Since we hung our canvasses, not only the eye is pleased, but the ear as well: The echo has certainly gone.