Last few days in Sydney with some old friends from Bar Contessa

With Con and Sarina, my bosses from Bar Contessa. Lovely to see you and look through the album at us girls as we were then! Thanks for being so generous to the kids. x

Renee, great to see you and meet your Richard, Brandon and Lilly. Thanks for an unforgetable roast - pork with all the trimmings and blissful gravy - and full on Sunday brunch. The world is waiting for "A Year without Beer" Richard. I'm expecting a few more highs and lows than "A Year in Provence" or "The Woman who went to bed for a Year" and have some bearing on why people live so long in "A Year in the Village of Eternity"! Look forward to seeing you in Devon soon-ish. x

Got all the kids up, the boys out of the top bunk and Magi out of her wombat hole, packed away the beds in the van for the last time and drove to the airport. Randy and Vicky flew in, having left their farm south of Adelaide early in the morning, to take our Bruce away. They paid us the balance on the van as a $5k wodge of notes and had a quick look around. They said that they rarely leave their rural area, so negotiating the roads out of Sydney was going to be Randy’s worst nightmare. 

We had a great flight from Sydney to Auck/Orc-land. Watched "Contagion" - probably not the most relaxing in-flight viewing and a couple of episodes of “Come fly with me”. Saw the one where Walliams and Lucas seize some drugs and proceed in their office to try them out, progressively getting more and more smashed.

Stunning views as you fly into Auckland – fields and undulating hills of middle earth and a glimpse of 90 mile beach. 

This is the first time we've been through biological customs, here they examined the soles of our shoes, like we were a family of shire horses – for any specs of dirt or clots of aussie soil.