Housewarming at Winterburn

Winterburn is the name of Ross's new house in Fortitude Valley. Pat helped Ross move in to Winterburn a few weeks ago and the first thing that moved in was Ross's fantastic paintings. It was now time for a Housewarming party.
There where a lot of friends at the party. Here's Pat with Rod and Nicki.

Luke and Nicki brought their 14 days old Mika to the house warming.
Mika of course stole much of the attention.

Swedish Chamber of Commerce in Brisbane

The Swedish Chamber of Commerce, Swedish Trade Council and a few from the Ambassador crew visited the Volvo Truck Facoryy in Brisbane during the Thursday.
In the evening we enjoyed a dinner at the St Lucia Golfclub, where Pat and Kristin usually play golf. The Golf restaurant is run by two Swedes who set up this place in the late 70`s.

At the dinner Kristin met Christine Gall who is a friend of a friend (Otto) from Gothenburg. Of course we gave him a call. We then took a photo of us with the Swedish Ambassador, who also invited us to Canberra, where she is located.Ambassadör Karin Ehnbom-Palmquist, Kristin & Christine Gall på St Lucia.

Cairns

Cairns is the backpacking capital city of Australia and so we chose to stay at Gilligans, a backpacking hotel designed by Patriks architect firm. The city is not that large, but it offers hughe amount of activities such as bungy jumping, scuba diving, parashuting....

As a start we chose to go on a horse backriding adventure with Blazing Saddles in the topical rainforest.

Patrik on Clayton, Kristin on Bob Tail. Clayton and Bob Tail both behaved during the tour which we very much appreciated!

Bob Tail looking his best!

On Saturday afternoon we went for River rafting with Raging Thunder on the Barron River. With an outfit of helmets, lifevests, joggers and some swimwear we went down the fall for 1,5 hour experiencing the beautiful nature and an exciting journey.


The best part was when we in a more quiet part of the river could jump off the boat and body surf down the river!
Bums up!!! Very important as it will otherwise be very sore the day after. Floating along the river in our lifevests was quite possibly the best thing we've tried so far in Australia.

We saved the Crock visit for Sunday morning. Our tour began in Cairns harbour. The harbour hosts military boats as well as very extraordinary yachts.

An Australian military ship. Check out the helicopter deck on the yacht behind the military ship.

Our boat headed up the water system to get a view of the wild crocks and then a visit to the crock farm.

Here is a Crock relaxing in the sun amongst the Mangroves.

At the farm we saw a lot of crocks. They had 17.ooo of them. They raise them mainly for the skin which are used for handbags and shoes. One single crock skin can be worth 3600 aud!
They also sell the meat wich mostly goes to restaurant's. It's similar to chicken.
Feel free to read more about the Crock's here.

Crikey! That's alot of Crocks!

A big one! First he lies calmly on the beach. But when he see us he sudenly decide to take a swim instead.

Luckely for us he's behind the fence.

Movie - Departed

Yesterday we went to see the movie Departed together with Anders. Slightly over the top when it comes to violence, but certainly one of the best movies we have seen in a long long time. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson acting was truly world class. Clearly a movie worth watching!

Departed is a remake movie, based on a Hong Kong movie (big hit in Asia).
Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston bought the rights of the movie along with it's following episodes. We are really looking forward to the next movie!

Read about the original - www.imdb.com/title/tt0338564/
or the remake www.imdb.com/title/tt0407887/

Byron Bay Weekend

Friday the 13th of October, we drove down to Byron Bay (1 hour south of Surfers Paradise) to enjoy a weekend with friends. We where 8 people renting two appartments and on arrival our friends had already set up the BBQ with gorgeous meat and veggies.

Here's our two appartments. Nathan's looking out over the pool area.

Anna, Anders, Patrik and Kristin had breakfast at "the Balcony" in the city. Soo good we had to go back on the Sunday morning. Here's there famous stack of vanilla pancakes with syrup, banana, cream & bacon. Believe it or not but it was a big hit with all of us!

Very healthy brekkie?!

Anders and Patrik focus was to get as much surfing out of the weekend as possible, while most of us girls wanted to relax on the beach sunbathing with spf 30, of course.

Here's Anders & Patrik at Tallow Beach next to Byron Bay Lighthouse.

The Byron Bay lighthouse is Australias most easterly point, and therefore the first place to sight the sun raise in Australia.

Here's Anders, Anna and Kristin enjoying the view.

Kent and Christina

Last week we got a visitit from a couple of friends from Sweden who have come here to Australia for 6month. They are of for a trip round the country. After starting of here in Brisbane they are now travelling up the coast to Cairns, and then over to the west coast to celebrate Christmas in Perth.
The will be back here in Brisbane to return their campervan in Mars, and we are looking forward to here the stories and the tall tales from their trip.

Please follow their adventures on
kust-till-kust

BBQ with Ann Helene & Vinnie

On Saturday Ann Helene and Vinnie had invited us for a BBQ at their place, north of Brisbane. We all took part in a quizz of 10 musical questions and Elsa won the fantastic prize of 12 eggs laid by their own chickens!

Jaana was born in April and she really got in to the watermelon dessert. Jonas (Jaanas older brother) instead showed off his cool four wheel drive in their backyard.

Australia vs Paraguay

Australia played against Paraguay at Suncorp Stadium with 47,000 watching the socceroos started out pretty good1-0. Until one of their players happened to score a goal in their own goal. The resutl of the game was 1-1, but the party at Caxton Street was on top.

We finished the night at Normanby Hotel with Rob who's birthday we celebrated.