A bit of catchup and a meet and greet with the PM!

Tree Planting at Westminster House
Originally uploaded by JohnConn.

It's been a while since we last posted anything here so there is a little catch up to do. Not that a huge amount has happened in the last few weeks but some catchup needed nonetheless...

On the Canberra Day weekend MJ and I got up early on the Saturday to go see the Balloons that are a traditional part of the Canberra Festival celebrations. We got to Old Parliament House by about 6.50am to catch the last of the balloons taking off. We had a cooked breakfast while listening to the brass bands playing in the background. ACTEWAGL had also hired a circus which we watche for a few hours off and on and MJ had a good time. That afternoon we met up with some of the Birks clan for a BBQ/Picnic at Black Mtn peninsula which was quite enjoyable too.

MJ seems to have become quite interested in Telstra Tower so we headed up there after the BBQ for him to see ot at night. On Canberra Day itself, we decided to actually go up the tower with Jenna and Jay, Bob and Kim. Afterwards a few of us hiked down the back of Black Mountain and met up with Kim and Krys who had driven a couple of the cars. Next we headed off to the shores of Lake Burley Griffin for another picnic where we spent much of the afternoon. Another good day.

We have started to try and get something sorted with the backyard and have had some more soil delivered and a bobcat guy back in to clear the block some more and distribute the dirt. He's coming back this weekend to lay some edging pavers to start defining garden beds, paths and parking spots etc...

Work has been hectic over the last few weeks and months with the Commonwealth Games and preparations for PM Tony Blair's flying visit. He arrived on Saturday on a record breaking non-stop longest passenger flight (chartered British Airways 777) from Brussels to Melbourne and spent a couple of days in Melbourne to attend the Commonwealth games and flew to Canberra on Monday morning for an address to a rare joint sitting of parliament, to open the Australia-UK Leadership Forum 2006, a visit to the War Memorial and many other official engagements. Today, to wrap up the PM's whirlwind trip to Oz, the PM planted a Wollemi Pine at Westminster House (our High Commissioner's official residence in Canberra). The event was organised for staff only, was very laid back and casual and while everyone was a little tense at first people soon relaxed and started enjoying what ended up being a really great morning. I had been nominated as one of the photographers and took more than 150 photos of the PM and Mrs Blair during their hour long stay at WH. At the end a couple of us scored a good photo opportunity - see the flickr pics for some once in a lifetime shots (for me).

I've uploaded a bunch of photos to flickr and they are all out of order so make sure you scroll through to see all of the most recent ones...