Australian Weather

I'm supposed to talk about the weather so I'll begin by saying that - apparently - it's been the coldest summer since 1970 this year. Everyone is telling us how lucky we are that we've avoided a 40 degree heatwave but it's hard to feel lucky when you're waking up cold every morning. Is it too much to ask for a bit of sunshine? We've travelled half-way round the world to find that it's like being in England but without central heating. Still, it usually warms up a lot in the day and keep warm well into the evening.

Here's a photo of the mouse nest that we discovered under our sink. It's not a great photo, but I'm sure you can appreciate that our camera wasn't really designed for taking photos of vermin infestation while sticking your head under a sink. You can see some of the snail shells and a mouse skeleton in this photo if you know where to look.


I haven't updated this blog in a while, and I'm sorry for that. In fact this will probably be the customary short post. I'm really busy at the moment reeling off assignments like...something that gets reeled off quickly. Congratulations to Terry, anyway, who's just got his PhD. That means that he's officially a doctor, but not the useful sort.


Calvin's getting on well at school. He gets tired and I think he misses playing with Reid, but he's fine. He had his eyes tested a couple of days ago and despite Ruth and I being short-sighted he's actually slightly long-sighted. Apparently this is quite common in children. Or maybe it's just common in Australian children. Reid is doing well at preschool too. Even though he's still an angry loner, he is settling in really well and tells tales of all the things that he's doing with his 'new friends'. One of the things he's not doing, apparently, is asking their names. Still, one step at a time. Xanthe is still acting like she's the queen of Dubbo.


We've got a few guests coming soon. It's Staff Conference this week (look up the blog post from a year ago to get an idea of what that's about) and then we've got some of Ruth's family coming for a couple of days. In about six weeks my parents are coming to visit. We're looking forward to that.

Have a good week everyone. Hopefully I'll write again soon.

Happy Anniversary

Sorry for the long gap between posts but I've been pretty busy recently. I've been working hard at assignments as I'm trying to finish the third year course as soon as I can. Once I finish that then Ruth and I will be able to think about applying for a more permanent visa and see where God leads us over the next year or so.

It's Valentine's day here, but it's also the anniversary of our arrival in Sydney. We've been in Australia for a year. I can't really decide if it feels like a year or not. In one sense it doesn't, but when I think about all the things that have gone in in the past twelve months some of them seem like a lifetime ago.

It's amazing to think what God has done in the past year, and it's even more amazing to think that the adventure is still going on. It would be easy to, after the journey we've been on and sacrifices that have been made, think that we'd arrived; that we could just settle down and live our lives and assume that God isn't going to ask any more of us. But this is just one step in a lifetime's journey and it's exciting to think about what the future holds.

Speaking as someone who's taken a risk because they believed that God was leading them that way, I say to you 'do it'. It's not that it's been easy or always rewarding. Far from it. It's not that I expect everything to be rosy from this day forward. Again, far from it. It's just that I'm beginning to realise that settling for the mundane and not seeing every day as a potential adventure is not what God has called us to.

If you're deciding between settling down and pushing the boat out then I suggest that you push away. I can't say that you won't regret it, but I can tell you that you can't have an adventure with God without getting out of your depth at some point.

I hope that God has blessed each of you over the past year. May He continue to do so in the coming months.

Fearless Mouse Killers

Can you believe it? We've had storms pretty much every night for the the past few days. There's been plenty of rain - so much rain, in fact, that our garden is more like a bog than a garden at the moment. It's still summer and it's still really hot but it's also really wet. Dubbo usually 'enjoys' a dry heat, but it's been very humid this year. So I suppose we still haven't really experienced a true Dubbo summer.

Our new garden, water features aside, has some nice aspects to it. It's very big, which everyone in the family (except the designated lawn-mower pusher - i.e. me) loves. We are also growing grapes, lemons, limes, oranges and other edible vegetation. That's quite amazing. The grapes growing on our vine just outside the house are probably the tastiest grapes I've ever had. The only downside being that they are, of course, seeded grapes. Stupid non-genetically modified fruit.

Here's a few photos of our orchards. Admittedly, only the grapes look remotely edible at the moment but it's the thought that counts.






Calvin started school this week. Here he is in his school uniform, looking just a little bit like a tiny witch.


Still, I think that's better than this photo of Reid on the day that he started preschool (also this week). For some reason this photo reminds me of Jimmy Krankie.


They both got on very well with their new adventures. It's been quite a big week in that respect and it's made me feel a little tearful at some times. Mind you, that might have something to do with the mosquitoes that have been running rampant in the house.

Our mousetraps have been quite busy. Yesterday Ruth found a mouse that had gotten its rear end caught in the trap. It was still alive and struggling so Ruth grabbed it and tried to smack its head against the door frame. Unfortunately doing this meant that the mouse fell out of the trap and proceeded to escape, commando-crawl style, dragging its useless rear legs behind it. Ruth then smashed it to death with a newspaper. She's come a long way baby.

My Family and Other Animals

This is a little post about our animal adventures over the past couple of weeks.

As you know, we've just moved. Our new home is lovely in many ways, especially the new friends that we have made. As it's a bigger house there's plenty more places for spiders and other insects to hide. Ruth has been spraying and I've been swatting and we've all been eaten by mosquitoes. We've also caught two mice in the past week. Not 'caught two mice' as in "Look what I've found, let's keep it as a pet" but as in "What's that jerking shape protruding from the mousetrap?". Ruth and I are getting good at managing the vermin population. We're still newbies compared to some of the people here though. You're not a real mouse hunter until you've wrestled one hand
-to-hand, Mano-a-Mano, glaring into the whites of its eyes. One man and one mouse enters, one man or one mouse leaves. Tis a noble thing.

We did catch a baby lizard (as in "Look what I've found...") in a box. Calvin found it one day when he went outside. It must have climbed in there in the night and then couldn't get out. Calvin named it Lizzy (even though he insisted that it was a 'him') and sobbed his little heart out when we insisted that he had to let Lizzy go at the end of the day. He didn't bat an eyelid when his guinea pig died, but he really loved Lizzy - or so he told us. Well, as Sting once said, 'If you love someone set them free' so he let Lizzy go. It's hard work being a five year old.

It's Australia Day this weekend. It's a national holiday to celebrate being Australian. The advert on TV tells us that Australia Day is our chance to say thank you for "...beaches, lamington drives, Kylie and our democratic right to give dead arms". It's quite a funny advert. Actually there are a lot more 'public service' adverts on Australian TV informing us about everything from skin cancer to saving up for retirement. It might sound a bit 'Nanny State' but it doesn't come across as that. It's quite endearing in a way.

Calvin has decided to make a book. He has decided that he's going to take some photos, put them on the computer and get mummy and daddy to write the words. He's not mentioned it today though so I suspect that he's forgotten about it. Because it's unlikely to see the light of day I'm going to post some of the photos Calvin took for his book, which was to be entitled 'Calvin Shrinks'. Please feel free to make up your own words.









Freaky but with a certain flair of genius, I'm sure you agree.

Post-Birthday Message

So it was my birthday yesterday. I am now 31 years old. Exciting.

What did I get for my birthday? How about a new house.

We've moved to another house in the community, which is really nice. What wasn't so nice was that we had to move on my birthday. It wasn't too bad or anything but it still isn't what I would choose to do with my 'special day of much celebration'. But - on the plus side - I got a mammoth box of chocolate M&Ms from the boys so that made up for most of the disappointment.

The new academic year is about to start here. It's going to be pretty crazy for a few weeks, so this little blog is another tiny update to let you know that I'm still alive but might be a bit quiet for a while.

Enjoy the peace!

Happy New Year

Just a short update today. Most people are still away on holiday so there's not much going on yet. It's been a case of business as usual, though Ruth has done a few bits and pieces in preparation for our move. We're going to be moving to a different house in the community sometime in the next couple of weeks. The new term will be starting as well, so there will be plenty to do shortly.

I've read a bit more of Art Gish's book. Parts of it are not as compelling as the opening chapter that had me so enthralled and he's advocating an even more radical manifestation of community that Cornerstone currently practice, but it's still a great read. However, there might be some topics that he doesn't comment on which he probably should. For example, there is a chapter about 'The Discipling Community' which I thought would be worth a read, what with Cornerstone attempting to be just that. It turns out that they made a pretty big proof-reading error and the chapter in question should actually be called 'The Disciplining Community'. Maybe there will be something on discipling in a later chapter. There should be.

However, his comments on authority and communal decision-making are excellent and well worth reading if you're involved in a church that has congregational government. Of course, the chances of you getting a hold of this book are very slim anyway so maybe you should just smile and nod politely as I rant away.

So that'll do for today. Have a great week ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.

Here's SAAANNTTAAA!

We hope that you all had a great Christmas. We were in Sydney for the festive season. You may remember that we were in Sydney once before, staying with parents of one of the couples here at Cornerstone. Well, they invited us back for Christmas. Dave manages a Christian conference centre and it was empty in the build up to Christmas so they let us stay there. We had all the facilities to ourselves. It was like being in The Shining except with less snow and more Cornflakes.

Speaking of snow...the weather was incredible. As in 'unbelievable'. As in 'it
rained a lot'. We drove to Sydney and back to Dubbo in torrential rain. It was crazy. There were a couple of very nice days when we in Sydney but it wasn't as warm as we were expecting it to be. Christmas day was very grey, just like back home. The difference was that it was still warm enough to wear shorts - but I wore a long sleeved top for the first time since winter. Apart from that it was all very nice. We're thankful to Dave and Ros for their generosity, and we've been blessed by the generosity of people here in Oz.

We had a BBQ for Christmas lunch. Prawns were included in this event, so I guess we've now had the stereotypical Aussie Christmas lunch. Reid certainly enjoyed his 'frozen prawns' as he called them.


We did quite a few nice things while in Sydney too. We visited a couple of beaches. We didn't get to Bondi, but we did visit Manly beach - which was pretty stunning as you probably won't be able to tell from the photo below.


Reid managed to get totally soaked at Manly Beach - he seems to love splashing in the waves fully dressed. Ruth managed to knock up this little number out of Xanthe's kanga, so Reid wondered around Manly looking like a tiny little Hare Krishna. He enjoyed that too. Basically, every day is a celebration for little Reidy.


We also visited Palm Beach. Now why would we visit that beach, you may ask? What's so special about Palm Beach? Well, listen up. Palm Beach is where they shoot the beach scenes for Home and Away. That's right - we've been to the beach where Alf Stuart lives. If you look at the photo below you can see that piece of land sticking out into the sea. That's Stuart's Point. From Home and Away. Even having to get out of the water because someone spotted a shark couldn't dampen the magic of being at such a hallowed place. Tune in next week to see if I can crowbar another Alf Stuart reference into this blog.


We visited Taronga Zoo which was pretty good too. We had to, seeing as we include Ruth Webb : Zoo Visitor amongst our number. Here are some photos of our day out - including the rather nice view we had while eating our picnic lunch. Bonus points will be awarded for posting "That's a nice photo of you James - no wait, it's a gorilla" comments.






I've actually enjoyed receiving a few annual newsletters and e-mails from Pommie friends this year. I'm always very keen to find out what everyone is up to now that we've left the country. I expect the quality of life in general has gone down.

I'm reading a book called Living in Christian Community : A Personal Manifesto by a fellow called Art Gish. I wasn't really keen to read it at first because the author's photo on the back of the book looked like a medieval woodcutting of a leprechaun, but I'm glad that I did. It's got nothing do with Cornerstone, but it's probably the best effort I've come across of communicating exactly Cornerstone's vision for community. I've only just started it so it might go downhill rapidly but I don't expect it to. If you wonder what's at the heart of our decision to live communally then try and get your hands on this book. If you can get your hands on the author then even better. I think he'll be forced to give you a pot of gold if you do.

I'll finish with a photo of a St Andrew's Cross spider, so called because it's completed web usually has a clear 'X' structure in the middle of it. This web is not completed and the photo is a bit blurred but Ruth was quite proud of it (bless her) so I'm putting it up for everyone to see.