Mei Mei

Congratulations to Bin who has just become the youngest, hottest, smartest, most pleasant, generous surgeon in Australian history. A genius of shocking loveliness.

Sydney's pastry chefs

Having just come home from a whirlwind visit to Sydney which included a meal at Universal and Quay, I have been thinking about how exceptional the pastry chef's of Sydney are. Unsung heroes, the recent deserts I have eaten in Sydney deserve attention and along with Claude's, the "big" meals I have recently enjoyed have finished on massive, massive highs.

Throw in my Victoire's and Sydney is sweet.

A litttle German, a seagull riding a turtle and fishing in Darwin

I am no photoshop wizard, so it has taken me several days to turn the goldfish Lacy caught into the beast you see below. After the CGI effects, this Golden Snapper was the biggest fish caught on the charter and a mighty fish worthy of Lacy's mighty hangover the following day.

I was surprisingly impressed with Darwin. I am not sure what I was expecting - maybe a rough frontier town, however there was a really young, fun, outdoors feeling to Darwin and it is somewhere I would head back to in a flash. The city is clean, small and generally navigable on foot. There are lots of backpackers and tourists contributing to the party atmosphere and upon my arrival at the airport at 3:00am, the ZZ Top bearded taxi driver greeted me with a "Ow r ya Cobba?".

Does it get any better?

Out on the water we saw a number of sharks (including the one I caught - "we're going to need a bigger boat"), porpoises, sea snakes, squid and yes, a seagull standing on the back of a swimming turtle. It is an amazingly rich environment - a very uplifting place to be.

A cheeky pub crawl on Saturday night led us to meet a small German. If you recall Goldmember of Austin Powers fame then you have a good image of our friend. "I am little and German - isn't that vierd?"

Needless to say, we only had one drink at that pub.

Fishing with Nathan

Nathan and I used to fish Sydney harbour probably 2-4 times a week for many many years when we were kids. Fast forward 20 years and we found ourselves with the opportunity to head a few hours north to Rompin, Malaysia to try some proper fishing. Fishing for sailfish.


The first day was action packed with around 10 missed strikes, 3 fish that got away and 4 fish landed and safely released. This is by far the the biggest fish I have ever caught and the leaping and speed of the sailfish is incredible. They can reach over 100km/hr in speed and when hooked, leap spectacularly.

Day two was not so good. After our meal at a local restaurant, 6 out of 8 of the people involved with the two charter boats had severe food poisoning which required hospital treatment. Nathan and I escaped with a a nasty case of diarrhea and left everyone else behind as we set out for a second day fishing.

Despite the terrorist attack that took place in the bathroom throughout the night, I felt pretty good in the morning and was fit for fishing. However as the boat left the dock I deposited my breakfast over the side of the boat and spent the next 8 hours lying on my back moaning. I managed to get up for 10 minutes to land my second sailfish before collapsing again in exhaustion and pain.

Despite the great fishing, the trip really gave me the shits.

Makgadikgadi Pan - Camp Kalahari

This is out of sequence being our last stop on the trip, but though I would load it now anyway. This is me being viciously attacked. If the meerkats were bigger than a rat, this could have been serious.