A lovely week

Well I have just had a lovely week. I will shamelessly be plugging the place we stayed during our ski trip - Brumby's Run. It is currently being run by Coby and Barry, although may not necessarily continue to be so. It is about 40 minutes all together from the snow and it is a lovely B&B set on a rural property of something along the lines of 60 acres (I think). You drive down the drive way which is lined by trees and parrots (crimson rosellas, king parrots, swift parrots) scatter before you. These parrots continue to fly around the yard the whole time you are there. You are welcomed into a house at which one end is their private residence and the other end is a dining room, a lovely lounge area with a fire place that they keep going to just a perfect heat. There are four rooms available to stay in. The one we stayed in had a spa bath and it was lovely.

The best thing of all is Coby and Barry's cooking. We ate in almost every night except one. It was absolutely to die for. Freshly baked bread straight out of the oven with every dinner. Meals such as rack of lamb with homemade mint sauce, chicken in some kind of divine sauce, pork steaks with cranberry and apple, morrocan lamb, thai chicken pie. Each night these dishes would be accompanied by a different style of potato every night, and an array of fresh vegetables and salads. An example of a salad might be the salad that accompanied the chicken - lettuce, blue cheese, roast sweet potato, proscuitto, sundried tomatoes... Yumm. As for dessert (by which time you're fuller then you can imagine but lack the willpower to say no) - lemon meringue pudding, raspberry soufle, sticky ginger pudding, tiramisu. All this followed by complimentary tea, coffee or port. Each of these meals came out presented in a lovely professional manner (they used to own a cafe). Plus a lot of the time it was just me and Matt for dinner, so it was like your own private fancy delicious restaurant. A lot of the food was grown there on the farm. I won't even try to describe breakfast, it would all take too long

When Matt and I weren't skiing, we went for a few walks on the property where I saw an array of wildlife - big kangaroos, gang gang cockatoos, the afore mentioned parrots, satin bowerbirds (1 male and approx 3 females), fairy wrens. Plus of course the big bull and the cows. We also saw a lyrebird a few times when we were driving up to the snow.

After 5 days of skiing for some reason I said to Matthew perhaps on the Sunday that we weren't skiing, we'd like to go for a hike.... I don't know what possessed me. Once again the lovely folks at Brumby's Run helped us out by packing us a bit of a picnic set (we had some goats cheese from yarra valley, but they provided us bread, a thermos and the most delicious chocolate slice in the world). We did this little 6km return trek. Easy, I hear you say, I nearly died. I'm not the fittest person, I'll admit that. We got to the top of the first hill (just a straight up ungraded track beating through a bit of bush) and I was pretty knackered. I'd had to have a rest every so often during the walk up (just quick little stops to catch my breath). Anyway, we got to the top of this bit and I said to Matthew, well we're here, this is a nice grassy patch, what a great view, let's eat. Matthew gently tried to tell me that the track continued and he wasn't convinced we had done 3km. I was like, what do you mean that wasn't 3km (we'd probably been lucky to have done 1km but it really just went up and I was tired). Still after he read the description of the view (360 degree views etc) I had to concede we weren't at the top. So against my better judgement I continued. We walked along a mountain ridge that was up and down and occasionally a bit of effort but not too bad compared to the first part. What concerned me was what we seemed to be walking towards... from where I was it appeared to be a rockface that I was certain I didn't have the energy to get up. As we walked on and snow started to make some of the trail a little slipery, it became clear that we really were going to go up that rocky steep climb. And as I scrabbled up loose rocks, and then the last bit which was up a little rocky bit that required the help of my hands to get up, I cursed my pride that hadn't let me quit. Mostly because I couldn't imagine how on earth I was going to get back down. Still we got to the top and I did enjoy my lunch and the view of Mt Buller, The Bluff and other surrounding mountains. We could even keep our water cool in the tiny bits of snow that were left up there as we ate our goats cheese on bread. I think on the walk back Matthew got quite sick of me asking "why can't I see the car yet?" but importantly we did survive the climb down (although it was a little slow going). Needless to say I have blood blisters on the inside side of my feet (who knew my blue suede doc martens aren't the best hiking boots? They've always proven comfy before!) and every time I have to squat for any reason, I struggle to stand back up again.

In a few other amusing tales, I have been the subject of much mockery from Matthew. There was a small incident when I was driving and I said "There's a baby polar bear or something on the road in front of us..... Oh, it's a sheep". Now I'd like to point out that from a distance polar bears and sheep are both fluffy and white, and I did say a _baby_ polar bear. However these arguments had no effect on Matthew who thought that seeing as we were surrounded by cows and sheep on every side, that it made more sense for my first guess to have been a sheep, not a polar bear. My arguments that recently we had been skiing and surrounded by snow and that made me think of polar bears didn't actually seem to make an impact on him.

On the way home we stopped at a trout farm, just for a sticky beak. However after I had thrown a few pellets into the ponds and the trouts had come swirling to the surface in splashes of colour, I couldn't resist. I asked for a rod, and I had a go. However being unsure if I actually liked trout, I went for the salmon pond (a little more pricey - whatever you catch you buy by the kilo). And I caught a beautiful 1.9kg salmon. A bit of a silly thing to do when we're going away to brisbane. So we had fresh salmon in garlic and butter with lemon for dinner tonight, and we have frozen the rest for another time. The fresh water fish are a lot slimier then salt water fish, which makes them slightly less enjoyable to catch for me, but it was fun.

Anyway, I have to pack, I have an early flight to Brisbane tomorrow:) I may once again be absent from blogging for a bit, depending how busy I get in Brisbane.