Newcastle getaway

Newcastle And Bulahdelah

Visited Newcastle for the first time in the weekend and it was completely flooded.

The big ship was beached at one of the main beeches Noobys beach and it was threating to leak oil, luckily that didn't eventuate. There were heaps of people taking pictures and I was one of them.

Driving around was a little hazardous as cars were scattered all over the show and trees had fallen down everywhere. Tow truck drivers were moving cars off the road or onto the medium strip. Houses had water coming up through the carpet and 95000/50000 people were without power.

One young mother got her car stuck in the water while flooding and it carried her and her child down the river. Three young guys came to her rescue, one on a surfboard and two swimming. They managed to pull her and her baby out to safety.



What a shocker! Didn't do to much in the weekend but it sure was interesting seeing the effects of a flood. The power was off where I was staying and we just played cards and lit candles for the first night, until it came back on the next day. Then everything was back to normal.

Mind you it looks like Newcastle has alot of cleanup to do and have a new water feature. Stopped at Bulahdelah on the way back to Port Macquarie, it's a very small town with a lovely cafe Myallah.

Mums visit to Port Macquarie

Mums PMQ Trip

Mother came to Port Macquarie over Queens birthday weekend and what a weekend it was!

Allen and Mum arrived at my apartment in Port Macquarie, they had a wee bit of trouble getting here apparently. I received a text message from Mum advising that they were out the back. So out I went, they could have just pushed the buzzer but Mum told me NZ'ers didn't know about them... something I highly doubt. Anyway out I went to see them and low and behold they were nowhere to been seen, so I went out the front and I still couldn't see them. I figured they must have turned up at the wrong complex, so I texted back advising of the street address and building name. Mum replied with "we're at the front" I was a little distressed at this so out I popped, only to see Allen driving away in a rental car. I jumped up and down a little but to no avail they were happily driving away, eventually they turned up at the back of the apartment. All in all it was a little extra exercise for me and I'm sure you all know what was going on inside the car :)



They stayed for 3 days and I kinda moved to Mel's so they had the run of the house, double bed and all. I showed them the bats and boy ain't they cool, Mum got me a new zoom lens from Canon, so the bats look better in the photo's. Allen really loved the bats as well, however Mum made a mad dash through the bat zone. They piss and poo and smell a little bit as you walk through them, all good though. Fruit bats are rather interesting, they're referred to as flying foxes in Port Macquarie.



Later that day we went out for Lunch with Mel to the River Mart cafe, it was a great lunch and we followed it up with a cruise on the Port Venture. The Port Venture is always a great trip only 25 bucks each and you get to see Oyster farms and Dolphins and the local houses, I'm sure you've seen alot of my photo's up the river so I tried to keep it to a minimum.



That night Mel and Mum had a body shop party, it's something girls do at houses. I should have never left them alone! My mother told Mel she had to take two years off when she has babies amongst other things, I'm lucky the girl is still around, shocking :) I wonder how long I'm meant to take off? If I father a few babies.



So anyway it was a great success and we followed it up with the Pirates of the Caribbean: To Deaths End, that was really cool. The next day we went for a board walk around the rain forest, the guy taking the tour knew all about the rain forest and we learnt tons about rain forests which I've conveniently forgotten :) Also check out the bush Turkey those guys are crazy!



The following day we went to Laurieton, it was a great view from the top as it always is. We stopped off at lighthouse bay and checked out the Whales. At night we all went to the corner bar and had a fabulous dinner.

It was a huge weekend and eventually Mum and Allen drove back to Sydney and flew out to Auckland. Mum e-mailed me and said she was safe and sound, so she must be.

Love Jamie

Meeting the fockers and catching the flu

Well this past two weeks has been quite something. Melissa in her infinite wisdom, decided we should go to her hometown Tamworth! Ye hah, so off we went into Tammers, it's inland and is the sister city to good old Gore. Gore is where my father comes from so he's been telling me I'm getting back to my country roots....

Something like that I guess :) Well Melissa drove most of the way, because after all it is her car. It was a windy drive inland, it's the second time I've done it, it was only a few months back I did the Inverell trip.

After a four hour drive and a few stops we arrived at her parents house, the time was 9pm and they had severed up the great Aussie meal. For those of you that don't know what the great Aussie meal is let me enlighten you.....

Several weeks back I went to visit Mel's Grandparents, it was a real experience I can tell you and it was also Carmel's birthday (Mel's Mum) whom was also present. I was expecting a great roast or perhaps a BBQ... but no surprise, surprise the local Chinese store provides the great Aussie meal. It is Chinese.... and doesn't always agree with my stomach as I found out at the grandparents. The grandparents visit is a story in itself which I might tell you if you're mildly interested another time.

So I was at Mel's parents two weeks later at 9pm and they order delivery Chinese, I was a little shocked but more impressed with the home cooked meal the following night it was really tasty.

Well the parents visit was pretty cool and me and Mel got to stay in the same room even, so it wasn't all that bad :) We went to a local quilt show, which incidentially had titavating bra's (see my web album link) and other such fun. Then the local rugby union was on in the afternoon and in the wee early hours of the morning I was shipped off to the Impy(pub). After all that I was shattered.

The visit seemed to go without a hitch and the fockers wern't all that bad, Mel gets to meet my mother this weekend te he he, I've been winding her up about it for days now. Well the following Wednesday I went on a boat cruise with the crew from work, after the cruise we watched some rugby and had some fun. Unfortunately the following Friday I was sick and have been for the weekend.

And now half the team is sick and I'm finally getting over it... gee what a run I'm having. Mel has the flu now to, crazy stuff.

For those of you that don't know I'm off to London in July, Visa and all can't wait and am staying at Leon's sisters house until I find my feet. All good, more stories and laughs to come.

PMQWorkFDUSeaJunket

Tammworth Trip

Jamie and John Howard

Well today I had lunch with John Howard, it was a big lunch and we obviously had some very important issues to talk about. Overall he was impressed and glad that Kiwi's were working in Australia and why not, he gave me a handshake and offered a photo opportunity. Good on you Johnny you can come stop by Auckland any day.

p.s. have been way busy to post on my site lately though check out my zoo photo's and my work do one's in my web album.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jamie.nicholson

PMQ Australian PM John Howard

Tommies FDU End of Year Christmas Party

Work Christmas do, was very cool. It was a really really really yummy dinner and everyone had a good time. There was a show, some drag and dance at the end of the night. Very cool.

Short post.
Love Jamie

Tommies

Twisted Ankle

This weekend I decided to go car shopping and I was told by my boss that there would be plenty of 2nd hands on Ocean View Drive. Ocean View drive was about 5km's so I decided to run there. Next time I'll use one of those vouchers and hire a car :)

Checked google maps as to which route I should take, and set off @ 10am.
After successfully navigating through the back streets to Lake Rd there wasn't much distance to travel before my destination. Although as fate would have it, there were people working on the power lines and they were even throwing electrical wire down from the poles. This was a little disturbing and there were a number of workers so I veered away from the curb and straight into an invisible hole. These are holes that you cannot see in the grass, lurking to injure foolish runners.

And I was one of them, my right foot fell into the hole and found ground then I twisted the foot and heard a crack as something nasty happened in my foot. Probably a piece of ligament tearing. I doubled over and exlaimed "ouchie, owchie" whilst holding onto my foot, rocking in pain. An electricity worker came over and he saw it all happen and offered a lift home. So off I went, Lewis gave me a ride home and boy he just couldn't stop talking. I don't know how many times he said "it's good in port aye" but it just seemed like forever.

Eventually I hoped back into my apartment building up in the lift and crashed on my reclining sofa with a pack of pea's and stayed there for quite sometime. After sleeping on my ankle I can walk on it and the swelling ain't to bad but it is a little tender. My boss was really good about the whole thing and her hubby can run me down to the Dr's, but since I can walk on it I'll see how I go tomorrow.

I've read up on it on the net and found some very interesting stuff on rehabilitation, here's an extract.

It's extremely important not to limp when you walk and bear weight on an injured ankle, even if it is necessary to use crutches. If you walk with a limp, the position-sensing nerves in the foot quickly forget the correct way to walk and instead learn to limp. Subtle changes in this function can leave you with a chronically imbalanced ankle that is easily re injured.

So I'm at home with my foot elevated and toughing it out :)
Hope you are well and are doing stupid stuff as well.

Love Jamie

Green Inn Win!

What a night to remember! No pictures but boy what a story.

I signed up for poker and I was lucky 13th signing up. There turned out to be about 16 people for poker that night. At 10oclock I'd cleaned everyone out! I won $60 and the entry fee was free.... Aweeeeesum!

So after that I went to dodgy Downunder with Ken (workmate) to celebrate, we met up with another guy from work and talked for an hour or so. Then we hit the dance floor, and I did some big bad dancing, at one stage there was just four of us on the dance floor dancing to techno. Most locals don't go for techno, but I was ripping it up.

And then another song came and a sexy girl in the bar decided to close dance into me(this is a rare occurrence)! That was all good but what was funnier was when she caught her hair in my shirt button as she danced down my body. She got caught to such an extent my shirt was lifting off my body and another girl had to sort it out!

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo funny, she was embarrassed and took off, will have to catch up with her next week .

Winning poker is worth $60 but having a girl getting caught in you're shirt button on the dance floor is PRICELESS :)

Be sure to leave comments, and click on my other posts (Rachel's 21st @ Inverell). I've posted like 8 times in October, I'm abit of a blogger :)

Love Jamie

Rachaels 21st @ Inverell Australia

Yeah baby! Inverell :-)

Rachael's 21st was the best party out and it was my first road trip in Australia.
Although the weather was crap so I rarely ventured out of the car.

Rented the car from Avis, turns out they're the biggest rip off artist ever! I had two free days car hire compliments of my boss, but it still turned out to cost $150, all those hidden costs... Sigh, it was an experience I don't want to repeat and I'll be sending them an e-mail with my complaint. I'm guessing most rental car places always rip you off though.

Anyway my road trip was from Port Macquarie to Inverell, it was 350kms in total. With about 60km of windy roads, and about 70kms of roads at 110km speed limit (cool eh :) ). The Holden was a nice drive though at times it felt like a big concrete slab, I'm used to tiny Toyota's!

There was a lovely falls along the way Ashely falls, my pictures don't do it justice as the depth of them was massive. I'm going to plan some track walks for the boyz when they come over.

Bundarra 10kms from Inverell had a population of 400 people, I was abit worried thinking maybe Inverell had a similar population. Luckily they had a population of 11,000, Rachael's 21st was at the Australian Pub, though she told me it was on the main street, so after going to two other pubs I finally turned up at the Australian.

I arrived at the party @ 5pm and everyone was dressed fancy! My jeans weren't going to stack up, however I wasn't near home and that's all I had. Turned out, it was just the girls and a few guys that had dressed up which so I didn't stick out to much after all :)

The girls were really nice and the boyz were friendly to, I met this girl that was 19 and coded in php, c++ and was a qualified interior designer. She was a cutie and a fun dancer - she kept wanting to do drops and at one stage I swear she was 10cm from the ground, :p only in Inverell.

Anyway I met heaps of people that night and had heaps of fun, there was even a power outage, someone drove into a nearby pole which caused a power outage for about an hour. Rachael was abit distressed however, Luke the musician was still playing, it was to bad.

At the end of the night Emily bought me a drink after I insulted her about her activities with animals (she's a vet). So this just goes to show, girls will buy you drinks in Australia but only after you insult them :) Thanks NZ Anna T (she advised me on this before I left). Emily was like Rachael's best friend and single! But I didn't get a chance to woo her to much :p she just had so many boys to deal with.

The night ended at about 2am and I trotted up to my bed upstairs in the pub, it was only 25 bucks a night - four beds in my room with one double... very nice :)

So I'll be going back to Inverell on boxing day for abit of a laugh, apparently it's packed round that time. The next morning I had dinner with the ole folks Tony, Jude, Donna and Gregory.

The trip home was uneventful and I took a few photo's from the car, again it was wet. All and all it was a good weekend and alot of fun had.

Thanks to Rachael and Jason for being such great friends!


Click the picture to see all the pictures in my Picassa album.

Inverell Road Trip - Rach 21st

Heres a video with some dancing.