Garden wedding

Our friends Garry and Kate tied the knot just before Christmas, in an intimate ceremony in the Treasury Gardens, East Melbourne. It was a beautiful sunshiney day. The actual site of the ceremony was the John F Kennedy memorial in the Gardens, which was erected after JFK's assassination. Today it's a peaceful area, surrounded by lush greenery, pretty ponds (with a fierce duck that attacked me for walking too close to its ducklings) and a lovely waterfall. The sound of falling water was a serene background to the ceremony -- we think it should be the new wedding standard!

We toasted their vows with champagne cocktails at the Sofitel and then lunch at Mo Vida. Say no more. (Okay, for non-Melburnians, I will. Mo Vida is probably Melbourne's most splendid Spanish restaurant. It has redefined anchovies: one of its signature dishes is white anchovy with smoked tomato sorbet. Ooooh.)

  

Mo Vida is in Hosier Lane, one of Melbourne's famous little laneways in the CBD. Hosier Lane is renowned for its ... um ... street art. There was another bride (in white) being photographed in Hosier Lane at the same time, but we think Kate knocked the socks off her.

Garden from scratch

This is our new garden which took about 3 weeks to complete. Most of the plants were extracted from the old garden, including many of the large trees which we are holding thumbs survive over the next few months.

During the building of our house, all the existing trees bar one sadly had to be removed. We noticed many of the birds also vanished with the trees. One of our main aims is to re-attract the wonderful Johannesburg garden birds.

Royal Mail Hotel

The Royal Mail Hotel is a three-hat restaurant which has taken Victoria by storm. It's booked out for months ahead. As it's 300 km from Melbourne, one has to be fairly committed to eat there. But it's gorgeous.

Here is the menu for the night we were there (Saturday 15 December). It's a nine-course degustation (plus little bits and pieces) so you have whatever the chef decides is on the menu.

I didn't take photos of everything but here are some of the dishes. This was the most delicious Jerusalem artichoke that we'd ever eaten.

Egg yolk, teeny tiny baby potatoes, salt fish and fish crackling. Looks like a piece of modern art!

I loved this next dish. Little pieces of flathead nestled under an edible leaf, with crispy quinoa and edible flowers. We had a long discussion about how we would replicate the crispy quinoa at home.

Another piece of modern art. Look at these beautiful little lightly pickled vegetables -- the yellow and pink heirloom beetroot, the radishes. The eel is at the base of the dish and the meaty blob on the bottom right is lightly cooked bone marrow.

Salt grass lamb, broad bean puree, spinach leaves (three) and sorrel seeds. The salt grass lamb reminded us (the older Justuses) of Karoo lamb, which gets its flavour from the arid bushes of the Karoo. This lamb comes from one little island off the coast of Victoria, where the lambs graze on salt bush ... and then we eat them.

Now we move on to the sweeter stuff. This is a parsnip shell. Isn't it beautiful? Those are blueberries on a honey glaze, nestling inside the parsnip shell like blue peas in a pod. The apple is that little splodge to the left.

I failed to take photos of the quandong dessert (quandongs are a native plum) but this is the carrot, coffee and cardamom dish. We're glazing over (like the carrots: ho ho) at this point.

And an extra, not listed on the menu: fresh fruit. Sour plums and the first of the season's boysenberries.

Here we are, at midnight, absolutely full of delicious food and wine. Another culinary adventure under our belt (literally).

Dunkeld

Dunkeld is a small town about 300 km west of Melbourne. Dunkeld has become famous because it has an outstanding three-hat restaurant.

We set off on Saturday morning for the weekend in Dunkeld. (Table booked about six months ago. More on the dinner itself in my next post.) The drive takes about three hours.

We stayed at some cottages that are associated with the hotel, on Mount Sturgeon Homestead. That's Mount Sturgeon itself in the background.

In the afternoon, before dinner, Smuts and I had a two-hour walk along the river. In the photo below, you can see the cottages at the top of the hill. We saw hundreds of sheep (those grey blobs in the second photo, which we thought looked like blobs in an impressionist painting), four kangaroos a-hopping, three million flies, two parrots in a pear tree, and a wallaby.

Birthday Marcel

Today is the first 10 December that we'll be celebrating Dad in his absence. He was born in 1924, so today would have been his 88th birthday.

The first photo was taken around 1942, seventy years ago. The young Marcel was about eighteen years old. Are there hints of Braydon and Dustin in this photo? I took the second photo in early March this year.

We're thinking of Dad today.

Diabetic in Dubai

Dubai's amazing architecture never fails to impress me. Look at how these buildings twist and reach high into the sky.



Dusty's first few days out of hospital were challenging...as a newly diagnosed diabetic what should he eat and how much? 

Oats porridge was a new breakfast choice. Hhhmmm not so bad!

Note the bag. It's Dustin's diabetic bag which contains all his goodies. From a man who never used a bag, it's now going to be Dusty's newest and best accessory.

Boats, boats and more boats parked in the Dubai Marina. Who owns all these boats and when are they used?

Coral Coast, Fiji

Our last stop in Fiji was in the south, on the Coral Coast. This is a lovely beach-strewn coast bordered by coral reefs. It's also very windy.

Like everywhere we went, sunsets were beautiful. And also like everywhere we went, there were brides. And photographers.

Here are some grilled bugs. I thought they were a little overcooked and we do better ourselves on the barbecue at home. But tasty, very tasty at the end of a sunny beachy day ...

And finally, we went one day to the nearest town, called Sigatoka. We thought the bridge was interesting and we LOVED the ball-shaped rubbish bins in rugby-mad Fiji. Bula!