The Avalon Restaurant and Cocktail Bar at Katoomba is housed in the old Savoy Theatre (constructed 1936). The venue is full of vintage memorabilia. What a sense of fun there is here. It has a definite Alice-in-Wonderland quality. Upstairs is the dining room. For a sense of
Read more →I have been thinking about design lately, purely as a layperson you understand Let’s start with the good. How perfect is this little hotel shower cap? It so satisfyingly springs open? Who came up with the idea I wonder? It deserves a Nobel prize. But here alas
Read more →In this extraordinary year of 2020, our resident Wonga couple have been producing chicks throughout winter. Remember Peter Costello’s quote on offspring, ‘One for Mum, one for Dad and one for the country?‘ Well, they have truly taken this to heart. There have been two single ones,
Read more →I’m pretty sure these old tweed pants are the most ancient piece of clothing I own and still wear. I bought them at Bloomingdales on a visit to New York about twenty five years ago. I was delighted, because they were only size 4. Mind you, this
Read more →Isn’t this just the most wonderfully constructed bower? Good, thick walls and a perfectly shaped, oval ‘front door’. You might say Mr. S. has home construction pegged (sorry, I couldn’t resist). He is a builder extraordinaire and a credit to the community of Blackheath. JULY 21 —
Read more →Hello, Desmond Conolly here. I’m off to old Sydney town at last! Yay, lock-down has been such a challenge! Mind you, right from the start I knew the trip would be difficult for someone with an independent spirit comme moi. And wow, was I right! At Medlow
Read more →Well during this creepy Covid-19 crisis my guardian Pauline Conolly has been using a funny little dumpling recipe. She heard about it on ‘Aunty’ ABC radio. It’s just self-raising flour and soap, sorry soup (tee hee, my little joke)….yes, that’s it, very simple. I said even I
Read more →I am a latecomer to what has become known as iso-baking. However, I was listening to late night ABC radio recently when an elderly lady called in with an extraordinary recipe for pumpkin scones. ‘Just two ingredients‘. she said. Wow, it sounded so simple even I decided
Read more →Our resident Wongas here in the Blue Mountains are acting so bizarrely. These monogamous, Australian native birds usually nest in summer, from October until January. They have a clutch of two white eggs, in a rough, twig nest built high in a tree. However, this year they
Read more →So for the first time, our resident Wonga couple have left their chick June in a ground nursery and enjoyed a little outing together. They can’t stay away too long, because June needs regular feeds of ‘milk’. I was amused to see Mrs Wonga taking time out
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