Sunday.  10th.  Chicken sausages and a bunch of roast veggies for dinner.

Watched the Lighthouses 2.3. Then I watched part 1 of a documentary on Hurricane Katrina.

Monday.  Awake around midnight for a while, then a somewhat delirious sleep stressing over the proxies. Day of trying to get things done, waiting for people etc. Leftovers for dinner, Lighthouses 3.1 on Beachy Head, photo stuff, then watched the next two episodes of the Hurricane Katrina documentary.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep and felt like I was awake half the night. On and off day.. filling in time for part of it, crazy busy for other parts. Stu cooked up a very nice Asian-style dinner with some leftover pork and veggies, and we watched the Lighthouses 3.2 on Muckle Flugga.  Did some photo stuff, and watched more of the Hurricane Katrina documentary.

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep and somewhat restless night. Busy day of trying to deal with stoopid proxy problems. Our old one could deal with Mutual TLS, why can't the new one?? Lame. Leftovers of last night's dinner for dinner, then the last episode (3.3) of The Secret Life of Lighthouses, on the Boston Lighthouse.  Did some photo stuff and finished the National Geographic doco on Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time. What an utter debacle. It's so sad looking at Google Earth/Street View and all the vacant blocks because so many people didn't have the resources to rebuild.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep and somewhat restless night. Yeah after like four nights in a row of crap sleep I was a zombie today. Sure made it hard to concentrate on various proxy problems. Good drinks, a few other tables. Mills and Grills again for dinner. Death in Paradise 15.8 (end of season 15).

Friday.  Went to bed early and went to sleep early, but woke up around like 3 for a couple of hours. Tried to turn the heater on. It didn't even seem to want to turn on. Went back later with a light and was seeing "Busy 10 hi" and "Busy 46 hi" errors. Sigh. They errored out all day and we never did manage to get it going. Organised with Voltair for them to come and quote on installing a split system. Not quite as busy a day at work. Called it at 16:00. Kievs for dinner then we watched Rental Family which was.. touching. We both enjoyed it.

Saturday.  Took ages to get to sleep and awake a bit early but slept mostly ok in the middle. Turned the heater on and today it worked first go. Go figure. Definitely going to try and get it serviced/fixed soon though. We've lost one of Chrissie's clown loaches. It had been looking unwell for a couple of weeks with two large welts on either side of it. Now I need to decide what to do with the other one. I also need to decide what to do with the AR-620T. Both its lights have gone and they're getting hard to replace. Gem Aquatics still sell them but only the white ones, not the pink ones. Tony refitted his with a compact fluorescent fitting but I'm wondering if I should bother or just downsize our fish tanks. Climbed Mt Rogers, then went out birdwatching with the sweetie out the back of Weetangera.

Mt Rogers Trig Station

Airbus A380 VH-OQG flying over Canberra (QF93 MEL to LAX)

We may have stopped at The Scottish Restaurant for lunch.  They've got creme brulee pies at the moment (deep fried!) which are quite nice.

Finished the leftover pork for dinner then watched Catch Me if You Can, which I hadn't seen since 2003 (we tried to watch it a few years back but had to stop after like fifteen minutes and neither of us could remember why).

Sunday.  Actually slept relatively well for a change! The heater worked first go, but then died after its first break.  Reset it and gave it a rest and tried again later and it ran for a while before the house warmed up enough it didn't need to run again.  Quiet day of photo and house stuff. Even made a cake! 

Sunday.  26th.  Lit our anniversary candle and we had Chong Co delivered.

Had a couple of snackages from them as well (not pictured)

This cracked me up - the neighbours had setup a fire pit and they'd taken a tv out side to watch tv by the fire..

Then we watched Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching. Uh oh, a two hour documentary on birdwatching? Well it was actually really good, and very funny. Very well done. I reckon even better than the Hollywood Big Year movie.  Worth the time!

Monday.  Slept ok until 4:30 then awake.

Quiet day of house stuff and photo stuff and dotz. Stu fried up more leftover sausages from the Christmas party and we had them with some leftover veggies. Death in Paradise 15.2.

Tuesday.  Slept okish but awake from 5:30. 30 years since the Port Arthur massacre, and 30 years since Como Presbyterian Church reopened after the 1994 bushfires. Crap day achieving pretty much nothing.

We had a mini team lunch at Bombay Duck.  I had butter chicken which was very nice.

Leftover Chong Co for dinner, Death in Paradise 15.3 (yeah maybe, like, test everyone for GSR), then going into battle with eBay again. Tonight they'd changed all of their postage options from last week. Utterly ridiculous. This time "letter" was an option though. Just not a small package. The smallest package option was "up to 3kg". Anything in between you have to use "satchel", but what the hell does that mean? The smallest is 40x20x15cm .. can I still use a box for that?? WTF?? Also last week's set didn't sell. But disturbingly at one point during the week there were two views on it. By the end of the week there were none. Are they like deliberately hiding the listing unless you choose to pay extra to "promote your listing"?? I wouldn't put it past them. ebay is evil. One of the worst companies in the world. Got Tony to search for it. It came up ok so there's that.

Wednesday.  Super restless sleep.

Chaotic day. I have a task I really want to get done but I can't because I keep having to go to BS meetings or people keep asking me questions. It's getting crunch time and I'm getting more and more stressed about it. Just fricken leave me alone to do my work!!! Leftovers for dinner then Death in Paradise 15.4.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep and awake early. Another crazy busy day. Fairly quiet drinks. Pizzas and garlic bread for dinner.

Death in Paradise 15.5. Like, no physical evidence at all, just conjecture.  How would that even get to trial?

Friday.  Mayday! Not great sleep. Spent most of the day working through all the scenarios of the proxies with AWS. I have like ten or fifteen use cases to figure out. We also had the tree dudes out to chop back the ivy, photinia and pittosporum.

Carnage!  I really liked having the ivy on this wall as it offered some sun protection, but I couldn't manage it because it just got too high and we don't have a ladder long enough.

Kievs for dinner then Death in Paradise 15.6. Then watched Matilda which I haven't seen in probably 20 years (and last read the book in 2009).

Saturday.  Slept okish. But cranky with the world all day. Headed out to the club via Queanbeyan.

Stu went into Coles to shop for the bbq, and I went to return the frames I got from Homebase the other week.  Turns out Homebase Queanbeyan is dodgy as hell.  The frames I got the other week were meant to be 40cm x 50cm.  Except they weren't.  They were 38cm x 48cm - way too small for what I needed them for.  You'd think it would be a simple matter to return them, since were literally not what was on the label.  But noooo Homebase Queanbeyan tried to pull some BS "store policy" crap even though the product was clearly not what was on the label.  They said it was "more than seven days" so they have a no returns policy.  Well, I pretty much had to go full-on Karen on them and they begrudgingly gave me a store credit valid for three months.  Not really what I wanted, as I really never want to set foot in that store ever again.  DO NOT SHOP AT HOMEBASE QUEANBEYAN - they will try to rip you off!!  I told Stu about it after, and he agreed that Australian consumer laws override store policy in the case of products not matching descriptions.  

Made it out to the club and Stu cooked up sausages for lunch while Dominic and I raked and carted leaves off the tennis court. 

After lunch a half dozen or so of us raked and carted leaves off a big chunk of land below the toilets.  Pretty impressive effort actually.  Was aching by the end of it - sore back and ankles in so much pain I could hardly walk.

Got home and had a shower and washed my hair (again) and the sweetie got Crust pizzas for dinner.  I may have almost had a meltdown when I was too weak to open a bottle of Henkell...  It really was that kind of day..

Crust truffle beef rossini pizza

Peking Duck pizza.  This was great until I hit a landmine of really hot chilli chunks

Watched Okja which has been on my Netflix to watch list for years.  It was.. interesting.. 

Sunday.  Slept like crap - took ages to get to sleep (upset and stressed) and woke up at like 4:20 for ages. Quiet day of photo stuff.

Apparently this is a plume moth.. who knew?  Found it on one of the walls this afternoon

Sunday.  12th.   Leftovers for dinner then Professor T 3.4.

Monday.  Slept okish I think. Felt all day that work was completely pointless. I keep getting called into meetings for one project that people have to do every couple of years, but instead of reusing previous years' work, they insist on redoing everything from scratch, which feels like the most massivest waste of time and money ever. Then I was waiting for other to people to help me with some stuff. Still waiting. Stu cooked up some goats cheese and caramelised onion ravioli with a creamy mushroom sauce which was very nice. Professor T 3.5.

Tuesday.  Slept okish I think. More pointlessness and waiting for people at work.

Went into town after work for the first Shine Dome talk of the year in the Bright Minds, Bold Voices series.  This time they had Professor Stephen Simpson from the Charles Perkins Centre and Vanessa Hudson the CEO of Qantas to talk about "Reimagining how we fly".  The format was a little different from previous years (although I missed most of last year's due to reasons so not sure what they did then) in that they just had the guest speakers sitting out the front and chatting about stuff rather than having formal talks.  They were talking about the collaboration they're doing between science and Qantas to optimise the long haul experience by the choices of lighting and food service to try and reduce the worst of jetlag.  This was going to be especially relevant for Qantas' Project Sunrise A350 flights which are aiming for 22 hour non-stop flights from east coast Australia to the UK.  Which is great and all, but I was still hung up on how little *space* you get in cattle class. Vanessa addressed this right at the very end with a quick comment about how economy will get 34 inches between seats instead of the usual 31-32.  pfffffft.  Sorry but I need more horizontal space as well so I don't feel like I'm pinned in (which leads to epic restless legs).

Professor Stephen Simpson, Vanessa Hudson, Lish Fejer

We saw this very purple mustang in the car park..

Then Tony and I went for a light dinner at Badger & Co (we split this on account of pigging out at the Shine Dome)

Wednesday.  Slept okish I think. I don't think I achieved anything useful today. I did get a ride to and from work with Chrissie though in her Tesla. OMFG there are so many DUMB things. Like the door handles for a start (to get in you have to press them in then you can pull them out, and to get out you can either find an awkward little handle in the arm rest area, or push a button). You have to change gears using a touchscreen WTF?? (Ray pointed out that how often do you *really* need to change gears in an automatic electric car?).  Yeah so if the touchscreen dies you can't drive your car. Hurray.  And blinkers are a button on the steering wheel. The torque on it is pretty impressive though. Like a rollercoaster.  Stu cooked up a fake satay chicken using some almond paste we wanted to get rid of out of the fridge, with some red curry paste, coconut cream, fish sauce, chilli powder, sugar and some veggies that needed using up out of the freezer. It was very yummy and tasted like satay.  Professor T 3.6 (end of season 3).

There's actually a bunch of rice under this!

Thursday.  Took forever to get to sleep - super restless. Then another day of not achieving much. Chrissie came to drinks which was kinda fun. Although I think Mike hates me. hrmm. Got Dominos again, but only because they sent us a $23 voucher for a free pizza during the week (something about the delivery taking longer than 24 minutes last time). These pizzas actually went back to almost being full sized. Almost. Yeah, still only 9.5 inches.  The thin and crispy pepperoni we got was just over 10 inches. Still pretty hopeless. Professor T 4.1.

Friday.  Broken sleep from 2am. At work mostly just fixing up logging on the new proxies. Kievs for dinner. Professor T 4.2.

Saturday.  Somewhat restless sleep. Got annoyed (listening to the news in the morning) that I was going to miss the airport open day. I knew it was coming up but they hadn't put tickets online yet before I went away for our holiday, then I forgot to keep an eye on it while we were away. Annoying too because they were going to have an A220 which I haven't seen before. #grunt. Went for a walk again in the morning.

Got back then went out birdwatching with the sweetie. Suddenly the day is half over. Whoops.

.

Quiet afternoon.  I may have done a jigsaw.

Fire out at Googong (hazard reduction)

The sweetie cooked up a heap of veggies for dinner (including a very nice cabbage (cauliflower I think) bake using a pack of goats cheese I got from Chris's that was already past its use-by date when I bought it before we went on holidays... she'll be right!)

Then watched Netflix's 2023 "Civil War" which was a bit.. bleak..

Sunday.  Slept mostly okish I think. Quiet morning, then in the afternoon went with Jo and Mel to see The Sound of Music at the NSFA .. singalong!!!!! OMFG it was so much fun. The sweetie just barely tolerates me singing along in movies, so this was a great opportunity to really have some fun. It was awesome! Thanks Jo for the invite!

Friday - 6.9.24

Out the door at 9am, but had to get some extra things for Jeff's "hamper". Then we needed to get breakfast. So it was after 10 by the time we got away from Canberra.

Lake George shining

Stu put on an audio book - The Easy Life in Kamusari.

At the Nattai River hill we were passed by a hoon. I was disappointed there wasn't police on the other side of the hill (there often is). When we got to the M7 turnoff in Sydney there was a bit of a traffic jam and we were in the wrong lane to turn onto it, so that was a bit stressful. We were finally able to merge in and when we got to the pyramid there were police cars and the same hoon pulled over and under arrest (literally saw him in handcuffs on the ground haha).

Stopped at Ourimbah for petrol and lunch.

New freeway and overpasses at Hexham

I'll miss the old bridge at Hexham

Then just drove on. Mostly finished the book.

Arrived in Port Macqaurie just before 6. Dumped our stuff then headed out again.

Went out to Potty's for drinks and pizzas. Most of the family was there so that was nice. The kids were very loud heh.

Saturday - 7.9.24

Didn't sleep very well - the pillow was too thick and the bed too soft. I did go and get my own pillow which helped, but kept getting a sore spine from the soft bed.

Got ready then went out for a good long walk around the beaches which was pretty nice.

Folly, on Windmill Hill

Butcherbird

Nobby Head

Oxley Beach

Flagstaff Lookout

Town Beach

Oxley Beach

Waves crashing off Oxley Beach

Town Beach

There was a small formation of vintage aircraft flying around

Port Macquarie Observatory

Gak gak birds!!

Then I tried to find coffee and breakfast. I'd already passed one busy cafe at Town Beach but wasn't ready to get stuff yet. I found one other cafe but they didn't have any nice pastries just a couple of cakes/banana bread type stuff. Looked for a few other cafes but they didn't look the sort to do takeaway coffee. So #fail. In the end got some snackages and coffee in a can from the Foodary.

Annie stopped by to drop off a dress (I don't own dresses lolz). It was a bit big but looked marginally ok. Stu thought I should wear it.

Then we headed up to SWR, and finished the book on the way. It was kinda funny. Nice story.

Kempsey Northern Gateway Sculpture

At Jeff and Ruth's we arrived in time for morning tea (everyone was already there, so that was a bit stressful), and they put on a slide show which was pretty cool.

Jeff about to go through the slide show

Then we headed off to lunch - The Old Bank in Gladstone. They'd setup a table outside under a big tree overlooking the river - absolutely lovely setting. Had a pretty awesome lunch there. And there were lots of speeches hehe. And there were two snakes. Or the same snake doing the rounds. I thought it was Sally's leash that was moving, and things weren't computing, and everyone thought I was having a seizure or something. But I hope I didn't step on it (I don't think I did). Left after 3.

Family photo

Ruth and Jeff

Arancini balls

Chicken sausage rolls

Prawn platter

Green tree snake (take 2 - the other one that I nearly trod on got away before I could get a photo)

Beef tenderloin I had for lunch

Annie reading her poem

Jeff's birthday cake

Happy birthday!!

The plan was to go back to Jeff and Ruth's to get changed to go for a swim. But then it was decided to drive around the beaches to see which one would be the best. But then it was decided which beach they were going to go to, but noone told us, and most of them didn't come back to Jeff's. This made it Too Hard, so I just stayed with the Stu's.

Then back to Port for dinner of snackages (still full from lunch). Watched some Big Bang Theory then to bed.

Sunday - 8.9.24

Still too soft a bed to sleep very well. Woke up at 5.

Got ready then headed out to Potty's for coffee. We were first there which was nice.

Had breakfast at The Scottish Restaurant then tried to get petrol. But if you're coming from the restaurant side it's incredibly confusing and we drove around a couple of times and in the end came in through the back cause they made it too damned hard.

Put on the next Kamusari book which we got most of the way through (Kamusari Tales Told at Night).

Hexham Bridge

Had lunch in Ourimbah, and got petrol in Marulan.

At Lake George (which is still very full) a wallaby on the side of the road started moving onto the road. Stu slowed down, gently, then rapidly, then to a hard stop. We were lucky we didn't hit the thing. The dude on the right didn't slow down at all and zoomed past us while we were stopped. If the wallaby had kept crossing the road it would have been hit. In the end it went back off to the left. So that was a bit rattling.

Home a bit before 6.

This view coming into Canberra never gets old!

15.5.24

4:51 wakeup.  5:30 departure.  Stopped in Sutton Forest Maccas for breakfast and wondered if we'd missed the apocalypse - the car park only had a few cars, and the restaurant itself was completely empty.  Bizzarest thing ever!

This blew my mind because this place is *always* busy.  The staff were quite old too, guess all the kids are in school.

After Maccas the car lost connection to the ipad.  I finally started having a play with it around Pheasants Nest.  Of course I happened to be looking down as the Picton Road turnoff came up and we missed it (I looked up just as we were passing the air field).  Sigh.  So had to deal with M5 traffic all the way to Heathcote Road.  But haven't been down there in like thirty years though so that was nice.

Got to Mum's right on 9.  Dumped my crap then train to Sydenham.  Had a very slow walk to Westconnex (it takes ages when you stop every two seconds to take photos of stuff).

Talk/tour was quite interesting.

Then walked back to St Peters.

Took a train to Museum (via Circular Quay and was super super excited to see the old Freshwater class Manly ferries running again!).  Got to the museum a bit after 14:00, checked in bags, then saw the Ramses exhibition.

Afterwards did a bit of a wander of the museum.

My favourite thing in the museum - the Bone Ranger!

Gymea lily in bloom

Needed a drink after all that, so walked down to Hotel Sweeney for a couple of beers and dinner.

Then train back to Mum's and collapsed.

16.5.24

Slept fairly well.  Woke up at 5 for a bit then til 6:30.  Had a look at all Mum's Japan photos which was pretty cool.

Then went and played tourist for the day.

Train back to Mum's.  Had a shower then Luc and Cynthia came over (I was gonna go meet them at theirs but they very nicely came over to Mum's).  We went to Moim Japanese Kitchen for dinner which was very nice.

We also went and got some ice cream for dessert.  A lovely meal and catchup.

17.5.24

Early start.  Took the train to go inspect my flat.  The tenant talked for an hour about her baby coming soon and their life there.  The real estate agent didn't seem to mind, I guess it saved him from doing other work heh.

Took another train to Martin Place and walked down to the Mint.  I think I went there when I was in school but haven't been in at least thirty years so went there.  There's not a huge amount to see there so were done by lunch time.

I thought I'd look to see if there was a Tim Ho Wan in Sydney and got very excited when it showed one in Westfield.  But when we got there we couldn't find it.  Had another look and on closer inspection it was "Permanently Closed".  Yeah thanks Apple Maps.  Oh well, had Din Tai Fung instead.  

And Krispy Kreme from the station ;)

Back at Mum's I had a look at her backups.  Syncback doesn't seem to have been working since her computer was rebuilt last year.  When I loaded Syncback it complained about not having any profiles.  So I made two that matched the arguments in the windoze scheduled tasks.  I set them up to "backup" rather than "sync" - which is a better option for retrieving accidentally deleted files, not so good for a disaster recovery scenario.  Dunno what had been used previously.  I also tried to backup more of her recent photos to my disk, but ran out of time.  

Then took two trains All The Way to the other side of the world (Brooklyn).  Took like two hours.  But nicely I could change trains at Town Hall so didn't have to cart my bag all the way up to the other platforms at Central.

At Brooklyn I walked up and checked into the motel.  Ok room, but a little dated.  And no soundproofing so I could cearly hear the pub across the road.

Went across to aforementioned Angler's Rest for a couple of beers and some salt and pepper squid.  It said it came with salad, so that was a lot more meat and a lot less salad than I was expecting!

Trent Crawford was there doing live music, old pub rock, so that was pretty cool.  

Then I went back to the motel and had some wine and did my nails while listening to Trent Crawford and waiting for the sweetie.

18.5.24

Slept fairly well.  Had a leisurely start.  Picked up some pastries at the cafe for breakfast.

Then suddenly it was 9:30 and we still weren't ready so it was a bit of a rush to get out by 10:00.  Just made it though. 

Drove down to the marina to see how close you can get to the bridges.  Turns out not anywhere near them at all.  Sigh.

Then up to Rachel and Hayden's wedding.

Didn't escape til like 16:30.

Got home a bit before 20:00.  Had wine and chippies and ice cream for dinner then collapsed.

6.4.24

Tickets for the 2024 Canberra Airport Open Day came up while I was in Tasmania.

Noone told me about it.

By the time I found out after I got home, tickets were "sold out".  So I put myself on a waiting list.

A couple of days later I got an invite to claim a ticket.  So I grabbed one.

Then messaged David and he was able to get some too.

So off we went.

In the pouring rain.

They didn't even scan our bar codes, we just waved them.

I wanted to go on the A220 which they promised would be there.  But same as last time, advertised stuff didn't bother to show up.

So we waited in the pouring rain and deep puddles to go on the Hercules.  Our shoes may have been drenched by the time we got on.

Kellie had gone back to the car at this point, so David and I did a quick walk around.

In the rain.

Which made for pretty reflections.

There was so much water on the runways this thing would have been right at home..

Neither of us had gotten our big cameras out at this point (David had actually left his gear in the car).  The weather was all too depressing and David was hangry and needing to go to the toilet so we left to go find brunch.

After having brunch it was decided we'd meet their friends at the Burns Club.  Yeah I shouldn't have had that burger.  Whoops.

After lunch we decided to go back to the open day.  Once again they didn't scan our tickets, we just waved them.  We could have waved literally any QR code and they would have let us in.

The afternoon turned out to be a whole lot better and the sun even came out so that was pretty cool.

Hey! I was just there!

Closest I got to seeing an A220

The Roulettes flew in the afternoon

The last couple of open days have been a bit disappointing in that promised planes just haven't been there.  It's still cool to go.. just hasn't been as good lately...

2.9.23

I've been wanting to go see the War Memorial's annexes for ages and finally got a chance to go.  I've had some of the "highlights" (photos from my phone) saved for ages and was going to get around to getting other ones off the Canon.. but I haven't cause I'm a slacker.  So this is just a few of the photos.

In the next room is all the moisture-sensitive equipment.  So the room in nicely air conditioned to help slow down the deterioration of all the old gear.

This plane has a cool story - it flew from Britain to Australia in 1919.

Sunday.  23rd.  Backdating cause I'm a big fat slacker.  Roast chicken for dinner.  

Monday.  Super busy day.  Finished or at least documented another sneaky birthday present I got.  Crumbed salmon and leftover veggies for dinner.  Geotagged days 9 and 10.

How cute is the little x-wing!?

Tuesday.  Had a fit of rage at all the email I get that I never read.  So unsubscribed from everything that's sent me mail in the past few weeks.  Built a new trial proxy with Connor which was a bit of fun.

Wednesday.  Woke up at 2am and never got back to sleep :(  Cooked up a batch of mince and picked up the sweetie.

Thursday.  Broke the prod proxies while trying to setup the new trial ones.  Sigh.  But did learn some stuff about our implementation of kerberos so that was handy.  Two episodes of Andor in the evening.

Friday.  Spent all morning writing up the incident report from yesterday as well as updating the doco so we don't make the same mistake again next time.  Herbert's with the Chrises and Tony at lunch.  Leftover chicken for dinner and more Andor in the evening.

Zucchini fritters and halloumi fries

Saturday.  We were meant to go out to the club but Stu wasn't feeling it (having been in Melbourne half the week) and I was stressed about the loss of weekend as well so we didn't end up going.  I spent all day doing All The Things.  Leftover beef stew and a bit of Andor in the evening.

Sunday.  Some geotagging in the morning.  Went out for brunch (I had the same potato fritters I had last time I was at Market St Eats and they were just as awesome!) and then did food shopping and a Bunnings run.  Then spent the entire rest of the day photographing, packing and weighing Lego and then listing it all on ebay.  Ten Harry Potter sets from 2004-2006 that I've been saving MISB.  I was about to relax for the evening when six of them sold to one person.  But they put through five together in one transaction and one in another and paid for it all and *then* wanted to combine postage.  *sigh*.  eBay sure don't make that scenario easy to deal with.  No time for music.  Stuffed capsicums and roast kale for dinner.

A few weeks ago DannyG put me onto the RAAF 100th Anniversary celebrations.

Of course I had to go.  

The day before, I messaged the brother.  I thought he'd be working, but sent him a message anyway.

Of course he had to go.

Turns out he actually had the day off (at the last minute), so he came up Tuesday night and stayed the night.

We did our own thing on the Wednesday though.  He had the good lenses so decided to go up Mount Ainslie.  I wanted to be closer to everything with my piddly 135mm (200 equiv) lens, so I went in with the sweetie and walked to the lake from there.  OMFG traffic was horrendous.  So bad. 

So I actually saw the beginnings of things from Kings Avenue Bridge as I made my way over.

I set myself up at the end of Anzac Parade, a little west of the ceremonial area (the main ceremony was at Yarralumla, but it was being broadcast so I could hear it all from the setup they had).

From 10:30 they had the ceremonial flypasts, which went up the lake then up Anzac Parade.

C-27J Spartans

F-35A Lightning II

F/A-18F Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers (can you tell the difference?)

The bats sure were unhappy about being woken up by such noisy jets!

Then a bit of a wait for the C-130J Hercules

There were a bunch of people on top of the library

Then the Black Hawk helicopters (from the army - I call shenanigans!)

David got some awesome shots of these heading straight for him up Mount Ainslie!

Then from about 11:20 was the main flypast.  

First some old planes - Hudson, Boomerang, Harvard, Wirraway

Mustang, Spitfire, P-40 Kittyhawk

Catalina and Iroquois (Huey) and Dakota

Catalina

Iroquois (Huey) (Navy? what? I call shenanigans ;) )

Dakota

AP-C3 Orion

Caribou

Neptune

F-35A Lightning II

F/A-18F Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers (can you tell the difference?)

F/A-18A Hornets - these guys are being retired

PC-21

B300 King Air 350

C-27J Spartan

C-130J Hercules

P-8A Poseidon and AP-3C Orion

P-8A Poseidon

AP-3C Orion

E-7A Wedgetail

C-17A Globemaster III

KC-30A MRTT and F/A-18F Super Hornets

KC-30A MRTT

KC-30A MRTT and F/A-18F Super Hornets

And finally the Roulettes

RAAF Roulettes (with Virgin 737-800 VH-VUK in the background)

So yeah, pretty fun morning, although a fair bit of sitting around doing nothing for the first half of it.  I took over seven hundred photos.  David took over five thousand.

:)

I was labelling UK photos tonight (literally one more night of work to go!!) and was doing some taken at Frankfurt Airport on our way home.  Frankfurt Airport is one of the busiest airports in the world and I was wondering how they manage to deal with so many planes all at once.  And then I was looking the pictures and realised there were *no* planes.  Well ok, a couple.  Holy crap this pandemic has been hard on the airline industry.

I watched a documentary the other night on Covid and the death of the Jumbo Jet.  I don't have any particular sentimental attachment to A380s, but even so, those things are only a max 13 years old so it's still sad to see them being abandonded.  But seeing so many 747s being put out to pasture just made me cry.