Walk to Christo-Rei: the hard way

Walked to Christo-Rei the hard way - up heartbreak hill to the third checkpoint, then hard left up the ridge. Follow the ridge as best you can.

Warning: These snaps are all out of order.

Close to my objective. Christo-Rei in the background.

Looking down on the Christo-Rei carpark.

A bit further from my objective. Due to a cliff, I was unable to follow the ridgeline at this point, and had to track around the side. Seriously steep.

Looking East. Yes, that is all coral shelf. The cloud covered peak is the one above Bob's rock, about 3000 ft ASL.

Looking West towards Dili.

Swans on Sunday

A netball Saturday, fortunately not playing in the fog. The Shooting Stars did well and the Thunderbolts only lost by two.

We also saw Pat Longworth, her daughter Stephanie, husband Phil and children Zoe and Sally. It was great to see them and the girls all had a rampage together.

Grandpa is here to help out for few days in the school holidays, so we had the now traditional yum cha at the Hellenic Club today.

We took advantage of the beautiful afternoon and had a run around at Black Mountain Peninsular.

There was tree climbing, swan feeding, sketching, playing on the playground.

Steph practiced her writing and drew a picture of me with the caption 'Mum doing a funny face'.

All in all, a lovely afternoon.

Look who's growing up.

Check out the plaits!

The kindergarten classes ran assembly on Thursday. They had to dress up as toys. Steph was a very sophisticated ballerina doll in pink and black.

Taken from up the back of the hall, it is hard to see her, but she could see me! She waved and waved when she caught sight of me.

They sang some songs and were incredibly cute!

Canberra in winter

We've had frost every morning...

Lots of cockies hanging around (filled the bird feeder today)

And a foggy Saturday morning. Fortunately this cleared before we hit the netball courts.

The winter sunshine shows up the dirty windows, so I put the children to work.

Now the winter sunshine shows up the smeary windows!

For those of you who weren't there...

The best of Bali in photos

Incredibly lush gardens at the hotel - beautiful ponds, trees, flowers, little bridges, statues. Just gorgeous.

Children imitating the angry gods.

A textiles factory - beautiful weaving. And great photos taken by Edward.

Rice paddies up in the mountains. Lots of ducks, presumably to eat the snails.

Lake Kintamani and the volcano, which erupted in 1974 (ish...)

With our tour guide Karles.

Even the statues wear flowers.

In the monkey forest....

...there were three wise monkeys

plus one extra.

We saw elephants up close, and had an elephant ride (at which point the batteries in the camera went flat). It is amazing being so close to an elephant.

The fisherman out the front of our hotel - this is about 7.30 in the morning. Apparently they can spend up to three hours standing chest deep in water fishing.

We had a great time in Bali - the heat and humidity a huge contrast to Canberra. The girls had a great time swimming, exploring and eating at the breakfast buffet. But we all agreed that the best thing about Bali was seeing Edward.

Dive Club

I went to a Dive Club meeting tonight. The topic was "equipment maintenance". I should have been home doing my assignment. Anyway...

Farewell

The malae population in Dili is extremely fluid. So, last night was another farewell dinner. This one was at Little Pataya Thai and Lebanese near Cristo Rae. Wasn't really hungry so I just had the soup.

For a while, the conversation was centred around "should Timorese Police beat people up"?

The Yeas said it was OK because that was what the people expected and respected, and that the Timorese society (including the Police) had to evolve out of it in their own time. The Yeas happily referred to South Australia, a place where the police - including some present - had moved beyond "flogging" (their term) suspects only in the last decade or two.

The Noes were incredulous that this could be a topic of serious conversation.

Myself and "GT".

Guess what is on tonight?