Monday, February 14, 2011

Four . .there's a Roo on My Fairway

Apologies- lousy upload speed means Sunday's Sojourn is being posted late.

As you know, it's a year of weddings here at the homestead. My nephew is getting married on our property on the 4th of March and my brother who normally does very little around the house is in a frenzy of activity spreading bark, laying phase 3 power for the band and spruicing up every part of the garden except mine. It seems that as long as the view from the Marquee is fine, the rest can go to hell but hey, that's just him.


Meanwhile my own darling boy is getting married in July. Today the 'in laws' were taken for a tour of Riverside Oaks, a rather nice golf course and function venue near Windsor where I might add we've had many a delicious Mother's Day smorgasbord. We had the grand tour, a lovely lunch and the bonus of seeing kangaroos on the course. I know you probably think that they bound down Pitt Street in central Sydney on a regular basis and they're the next best thing to public transport, but actually seeing them in the wild is a bit of a trick. They're early risers and evening baskers and for an animal with such odd proportions, roos are amazingly invisible when they want to be. Anyway, it was a lovely day despite the overcast and muggy weather.


I'm very proud of these two. They're organising and paying for the whole shebang themselves. Why? Not sure. I guess they know I can't afford it, they're keen to tie the knot and also paying for it themselves gives them total control over everything. Thought you might like to share the venues just a few months before the big event.




View down the Hawesbury Valley from the Church

Where they're tying the knot



Hope it doesn't rain

Hawkesbury Flood plains

The chosen venue for the reception

The Lodge . $1500 for 30 peeps if we can get them to commit

Nobody walks on this course



Mother and daughter, this is where the Bridal Table will be


Lunch on the verandah

Can you see them?

Just off the 15th Green . , . they still give me a thrill


And on the driving range .  "Hey, this is a golf course, wankers!"
The beauty of this afternoon is that these guys are only 20minutes from a really built up area. Lovely to see them invading the golf course and all are totally wild, clearly couch tastes great. I never realised they'd be so close to home. Not one, not two but three or four mobs of Eastern Greys enjoying the labours of the greenkeepers.

24 comments:

  1. This brings back memories of happy days preparing for Elly's wedding. Enjoy the build up and have fun.

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  2. Nice! If it was a golf course around here, the kangaroos would be replaced by groups of Canadian Geese or deers (both a bit of a nuisance). Do kangaroos cause any type of problems?

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  3. wow. it really is a beautiful place...congrats all around...and cool roos!

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  4. Did the future in-laws appreciate the show they were getting?

    Back in Newport this time of year any large grassy area, large lawns and golf courses included, are covered by Canada Geese. People have taken to putting up cardboard cut-outs of Coyotes (and in one case actual 3-D lawn statuary in the form of Coyotes) in hopes of scaring off the geese. That might work on domestic geese, who have been bred into absolute stupidity, but geese in the wild are pretty intelligent birds, and it doesn't take them long to figure out that the potential predators are actually inanimate objects. Heh, heh! I have some great photo of geese feeding around some of these fake Coyotes.

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  5. Anonymous1:16 am

    Really nice Helen :)

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  6. I love seeing the roos! I also see 2 lovely weddings in your future. Very pretty sites for tying the knot.

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  7. Obviously having one of those golf-course business meetings, to decide long-term kangaroo strategy for the months ahead.

    Some pretty hot venues by the looks of it. Somebody's found the perfect settings for the big day.

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  8. Awesome to see the kangaroos! I had to squint on the first pic. I read your caption, "Can you see them?" and realized I'd missed something. So much for skimming.

    Looks like a lovely place for a wedding reception. I particularly like the plate glass window view of the course. It will be a ton of fun.

    I hope to hell my kids don't expect me to pay for a wedding. Thank God I had sons although I hear the groom's parents have some bills to foot. They'd better marry practical women.

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  9. great views, love the big tree. strangely, seeing a kangaroo does nothing for me...we've had either them or wallabies at our zoo forever and they pretty much look like ungainly big rabbits. Now to see them thumping along the fairway at a rapid pace might be something else...

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  10. I love weddings; such happy events. It looks like a beautiful spot for the reception. People go all out now and it can be very expensive. You are lucky that the kids are paying for their own.

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  11. Anonymous9:27 am

    Really enjoyed this post and pics Helen. Exciting times ahead!

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  12. It looks so beautiful.

    Your soon-to-be daughter-in-law clearly didn't get her height from her mother!

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  13. Will they move if you yell "Four"?

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  14. It's a beautiful venue Baino. The photos you post after the event are bound to be gorgeous.

    Just don't try feeding bread to the kangaroos. When the bread runs out but they still want more, they might smack you upside the head. My older son has a small scar just above one ear from just such an encounter.

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  15. looks super!

    what's 'roo taste like?

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  16. What a gorgeous place for a wedding. Exciting times.
    Kangaroos you say? Where? Can't see any kangaroo in those photos. Must be hiding behind a tree... (duh, but they have, as you say, odd proportions. They are clearly visibly though ;-))

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  17. Anonymous2:48 pm

    Do they get workers comp when struck by a ball?

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  18. Looks like a great place for a wedding. I remember when I was in Sydney (10 years ago now?) and I went to the zoo and we could walk through where the kanagroos were. It was so cool! Someday I'll be back.

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  19. I can see it roos and all. A lot of emotion for one block of time there lady

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  20. hi and thanks for your comment

    you seem to make the same assumption everybody else does: that what i talk about in a counselling type situation or in a blog post where i'm explaining my present to another person is what i think all the time. if i thought like that i'd actually be proper crazy

    what did you mean the psycho shit isn't real? of course it's not real to you how can it be?

    i'm only using doctorly language when i say "psychotic" that means hearing voices (among other things) but I can't decide whether or not to hear them they just come and they started 15 years ago it's only recently they've been as much fun as they are nowadays

    if you think i'm telling you i feel sick and ill you're misreading. i'm saying i feel really funky and DOCTORS think i'm ill. i certainly don't

    "antipsychotic" doesn't mean i'm psychotic it means i had symptoms of mania. it explained this in the risperidone leaflet. schizophrenia was bullshit; mania was a picture of me. i'm down now so that's no longer an issue. i never told any dr i thought x or y was the problem. they told me. i knew the symptoms of bipolar and thought i didn't have them, i thought i just had ups and downs like we all get. you can't tell you got manic until it goes so fast you cant think any more and feel Superior to all creation. anything more piss weak than that is just a good mood and what's ill about being happy?

    but i have to keep some handle on boring concencus reality if i didn't i'd have run to paris to have fun or would be living up a mountain as we speak. i don't need anything from anyone so that's what i intend to do. live naturally. loads of people do that in india, africa etc they call theselves shamans and that is what i am

    it's only medical bullshit that tells me i'm ill, i am not ill at all never was. i'm merely more in touch with reality than other people. and more in touch with mySELF

    i just get pissed off having to deal with the shit of this world we live in and i want off drugs as the longer i'm on methadone the longer the governent control me. it's no coincidence methadone is more addictive than heroin.

    i'm not in detox at all. i'm on a flat dose of methadone that holds me perfectly. it doesn't hold my mind, nothing does, not even heroin

    so i'm giving it all up

    if i can survive heroin survive the street i can survive nature. we have no poisonous spiders here so it's all cool

    you can reply in comments i cannot get my head round email at all it's so fucked up i just can't read anything the screen lets me read 2 lines at a time: what has gone wrong?

    if you want to know what i think i think this: but i don't think i think it too much. if i didn't think i'd be comatose or in retardation?... surely..??

    ok rsvp because i THOUGHT i knew what you meant but can't be 100% sure

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  21. ps i am sorry i cannot say more about what i actually think my family or the police or medical people will use it to try and track me down and/or fuck me up

    so do you understand why i act all grown up and put my experience in the context of psychiatry? it means i look all respectable and i look like i'm coping well

    if i say i'm going to x place then i disappear they will all come looking for me and i can't trust them can't trust anyone

    whatever i do i will end up fucked up, every move i make is pre-empted everything i do is watched and acted upon so i'm fucked

    i need to be on my own and outside london but i cannot say where or someone will fuck me up

    let's be realistic here there ain't nothing crazy about this, this is the reality

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  22. That bridal table picture view is beautiful.

    I really upset my freind Anna and I tried to apologize to you probably I made a pig's ear of it all. I feel so confused honestly I don't even know what to do except not do "that" I can't cope properly any more I see the dr. in a week.

    I'm sorry if I upset you I don't mean to upset anyone. I think I'm going to have to shut my big mouth from now on I seem to cause chaos everywhere I go.

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  23. Aren't they something? I guess your seeing the kangaroos is like our seeing deer here. Beautiful. We have a herd that call The Glen HOME. Are the Roo's bothersome? Here the deer are SO overpopulated that they ruin all sorts of plant life and 'cause MANY deaths and accidents when crossing the roadways.

    Wedding spot is perfect!

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  24. Lovely spot. And how cool that there are kangaroos!

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