Or Happy Chinese
New Year! It has been a great week with Cor’s
parents and Uncle Robert visiting for both Australia Day and Chinese New Year.
On Australia Day
we took them on a tour of the farm, and then headed to the Apple Shed to enjoy
some great pizza and cider. If you are
down this way, you simply must check it out.
The cider is great (if not the cloudy Somerset style I prefer), the food
is outstanding and their display of apple production history is also good. I would like a bit more on the history of
apples coming out of the Huon, but then you would expect that from a Geeveston
orchardist! Still, it is a gem of a
place and a wonderful addition to the district.
The Tahune
airwalk was also on the list of things to do, and lived up to its billing. Walking through the wet eucalypt forest,
checking out Huon pines and massive eucalyptus trees and then doing it again all
at the treetop level was just great. The
swinging bridges were also a fun walk, and it was all topped off by short walks
to the Waratah lookout and Arve River falls up the Hartz mountains, where we
saw trout! We learned a bit about our
newly adopted home of Geeveston at the Forestry centre, and are now armed with
facts sure to bore future visitors to tears.
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| The junction of the Picton and Huon Rivers |
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| Cor's Dad, Uncle Robert and her mum |
We gave them a
bit of a food tour, buying farmed salmon direct from the fish farm, in addition
to roadside cherries and other stone fruits, but this was just the entrée to
the main course… the food that was to come with the resumption of our annual
Chinese New Year barbecue.
Chinese New Year
was always a great event for us in London and a great reason to get our friends
together. We had missed it while we were
travelling and were determined to make up for it now that we had a house, not
to mention a new home. We couldn’t
invite everyone we wanted to, as our place is pretty small, but we did
OK. Matthew and Sadie brought Hedley, Ross
and Leanne brought Cooper, and James and Samara brought Will and Molly for a
bit of a barbecue and Chinese feast. We
had the New Year yeesang salad, chicken and pork buns, pork ribs, BBQ duck and
ox-tail stew, finished off with coconut jelly and fruit for dessert. It was a great feast everyone seemed to enjoy,
especially Cor’s parents who got to meet some of the people helping us to
settle into our new life in Tasmania.
Uncle Robert went
back to Sydney with some fertilised chicken eggs from one of our local chicken
gurus, and Cor’s parents have now flown to New Zealand to spend time with Casey
and the family over there. We are moving
on, with our first WWoOFers due to arrive today, and a new chapter beginning as
things really ramp up on the farm.
So we wish you a
wonderful Year of the Horse, and hope it is the year you make it a bit closer
to your own good life (even if that just entails paying us a visit)!
Some more photos of the week....
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| Princess sleeps through the preparations... |
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| Samara jokes about her chopsticks |
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| It has been hot enough for swimming.... |
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| ... and the pigs need cooling off too! |
