Sydney - August 2026

 Nice rainbow!

One day I went for a drive to Buladelah, where we used to stop each year on our way to our family holiday in Forster. This bakery has been there since that time, some 45 years ago. I bought a sausage roll and a loaf of bread for old times' sake...

I then detoured to Tea Gardens where we used to have holidays with our kids and my parents. We used to stay here opposite the river, at The Boathouse Resort. Nice memories...

My Father taught Callum to fish here...

We would often go to the pub for dinner...

I continued home via Karuah, another stop with the family in the 70's...

One day I drove to Bronte to have lunch with an ex-colleague. Beautiful day...

One day while working at Umina, I went to the beach for a coffee. Still cold but sunny at least...

Nice moon again...

I'm cooking most nights at the moment. Cantonese style green beans...

Pad See Ew beef...

One day, I went to visit Alex at her work, TreeTops. I did the ziplines which was fun but climbing the ladders was less so :-)

Didn't love this bit either...

One day I went for a bush walk with Alex from Forresters Beach to Bateau Bay...

This guy was watching us...

Then we had a pie at the Forresters Beach bakery and this guy was watching us :-)

A rainbow this time looking the other way...

The weather has been cold but the days have generally been sunny. I went for a walk along the lake path one day...

My old mower needed a service so rather than spend the $200 for that, I bought an electric one...

Made sticky beef one night which was great...

And this fried rice was excellent...

Callum and Alex went skiing for a couple of days. I loaned Callum my favorite ski hat...

Having a coffee at the gym while waiting for my next class...

Umina Renovation - July 2026

After 20+ years of ownership, we decided to give our Umina Beach house a major renovation. 

I didn't take a before pic of the front but this is downloaded from Google. 

In fact it didn't look this good, because one tenant had put pebbles down over the grass and over time it had been let go so it looked pretty bad. This shows part of what it looked like...

The only thing we had done to the house was replacing the roof, which we did 20 years ago when we bought it...

We had the house 'wrapped' which gives it a much more modern look and should mean it will never have to be painted. I subsequently painted those poles and gutter, and cleaned up the garden...

We had a merbau deck built out the back which looks great...

There was an out of control Bird of Paradise at the front...

So we had it taken out...

I planted these down the side. I took them from my Pymble garden...

The back garden had really been let go...

We had it turfed and all the pebbles removed. It was a big job...

We had that tree removed, along with several others...

These are the remaining pebbles in this existing garden so not sure what we will do here...

Back garden looks great. Probably will add some plants over time...

The third bedroom...

Bathroom before. That window really dates the house...

And after. That window was surprisingly expensive but it allowed us to have a solid wall for the mirror...

Kitchen before...

And after...

That room at the right was a small 4th bedroom so we removed that wall you can see to create more living space...

We had the boards polished and new lights installed. You can see the wall has gone...

The second bedroom...

The front lounge room...

The concrete slab for off-street parking was the last thing to be done...

This is a better pic of the house after the slab is down and the garden has been tidied up...