We saw the Vincent Tree

I don't know if anyone out there has ever fallen into a coincidence so strange and earth-shattered that it has redefined their very outlook of the universe down to the deepest heart of their visceral awareness etc etc. Me neither, but this comes pretty close.

A couple of months back we were staying with Jude's sister Lara in Coffs Harbour, a coastal town four hundred miles north of Sydney. Lara and her husband Nick and their three boys currently live just outside the town, back in the hills among the banana plantations.

One day, Lara and I and Zac and his cousins Jake and Darwin took a drive up the windy road behind their place and then on into the rainforest, which is under a conservation order and so has been spared the logger's blade.

After driving for half a mile along the narrow road, surrounded by the deep green of the forest, we stopped at a huge tree which was growing in a half-clearing. We got out. There was a plaque on the tree. It said, The Vincent Tree.

My mother's maiden name was Vincent. Her dad was Roy S. Vincent. He was Minister For Forests in the NSW parliament from 1932-41. This was his tree, named for him after he'd brought in the rainforest's preservation order.

I'd never seen it before, and Lara, though she had know it was here, had no idea of the connection between the tree and me.

Spooky, huh?

Ant.

We went to Ironfest

At the end of the Easter Holidays, a few days before the kids started school, we went to Ironfest with our friends Danielle and Joe and their 12-year old son Damien. Ian and Kate and their kids Bella, Ingrid and Davey were there too.

Ironfest is an annual festival in Lithgow, an old mining town not far west of the mountains. The festival is an odd mix of jousting, metal sculpture, smithying demonstrations and overpriced fast food, as well as folk music, mock hangings and reenactments of Napoleonic battles.


It was a great day out apart from the icy wind, which was just about as cold as anything that we ever felt in Ye Olde Country of Ye Drizzle and Ye Gloom.

Highlight for Zac was seeing The Spooky Men's Chorale, playing with singer-songwriter Fred Smith. We'd never heard of The Spooky Men's Chorale, but it turned out they were a local Lawson ensemble, and only a week or two into school, Zac had made friends with Hamish, whose father Dave is an actual Spooky Man. The Spooky Men will be touring England in the summer of 2009. All three hundred of them.

Joe took some great photos of Ironfest.

Ant & Zac.

We saw some toadstools

Zac and Tash and I saw these toadstools walking to school, not far from the library.

(How do toadstools walk to school, do you ask? It's a fair question, and one that deserves an answer.)

They look pretty amazing, but as it happens they're a very common species called Amanita muscaria or fly agaric, poisonous for sure, but not usually deadly.

They last only a couple of days then turn brown and wither away into sludge.

A few days after Zac took this photo, we went for a walk in Hazelbrook down the back of our friends Ian and Kate's house - they have five acres of bush - and Kate showed us a huge field of these little beauties.

Ant.

Well hello there

Welcome to ournewdaze, which is basically cobbled-together bits and bobs about what we're up to now that we've moved from Oxford, UK to the Blue Mountains just west of Sydney, Orstralia.

This is our second shot at a family blog - the first began as a travel diary, but never got off the ground. And as we're not exactly traveling, but simply living in a different place and not going anywhere much at all, it seems appropriate to kick that old neglected fragment of the internet into the void and start over.

We'll try to keep it all up to date with news and post interesting photos of what's been happening, as well as encouraging Zac and Tash to make some contributions so friends back in Blighty can see what they've been up to as well.

All the best,

Ant & Jude.