Hello There

 Hi!!!!!!!!!!! My name is Eleanor. Yes the Eleanor. The one this whole blog was about. As you know there hasn't been any recent posts lately . So, My dad said I could right in it. so....... HELLO. 

The last time we left off was when Cal was born. Well now he is not a baby. He is 6. and I am not 3. I am 9.  Got it not a baby and defiantly not a toddler. Cal just started 1st grade and I just started 4th!!!! I like my teacher. She's really nice. Now if you are one of Sharim's friends and wondering where he is because you want to have a play date with him. You will have to get on a 12 hour fight to Seattle. Thats because we moved!! Yay nothing else really got you caught up on the 6 years you were away but I will put a picture of me and the Chua's (including me!!) at the bottom. Hahaha I said Bottom

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Callum John Huang Yu Chua

Once again it's taken me longer than I would have liked to write something about the birth of our children. After a much longer than expected labour (especially after our experience with Eleanor) we welcomed our son, Callum John Huang Yu Chua, into the world at 16:16 on Sunday the 16th of March 2014. Our boy bested his sister's initial measurements with a birth weight of 3.25KG, height of 51cm and head circumference of 35.5cm even though he had less time in the oven (born on his due date no less, I like punctuality!).

It was a comparatively relaxed birth this time as we even got a chance to have breakfast at home and say goodbye to my mum and Eleanor before driving into the Mater. Alison had her epidural and waters broken early on in the morning as we expected things to move a lot faster for a second baby. The next six hours of playing trivia games on the iPhone with our obstetrician gave us plenty of time to reset our expectations.

Of course once things started to move they did so quickly and in a handful of pushes we were able to meet our son. He announced his presence to the world with a quiet and considerate wail that we found to be rather adorable. Callum also emerged with some of the longest fingernails I've ever seen so I'm taking that as a sign that he will follow in his dad's footsteps to take up fingerstyle guitar when he grows up.

So onto the name. As with Eleanor we found it hard (even harder actually) to come up with an English boy's name that would be well suited with Chua. We had very few real options that both of us could agree on, and in truth we had "Callum" on the shortlist way before we knew Eleanor was a girl so it's been locked in for over three years now. The name is derived from Alison's Scottish side of the family with the most recent inspiration being Alison's mother, Sheena McCallum Snow. One doesn't have to look much further than Alison's dad to see where his other middle name comes from.

As with Nell, we entrusted the responsibility of coming up with a Chinese name to my mum once more. Again she has delivered with something that we feel summarises all that we hope for our little boy, Huang Yu (煌愉). Huang is directly translated as "bright" while Yu can be interpreted as "happy" or "pleasant". I think that's a reasonable goal to strive for in life.

Our stay in hospital wasn't as hectic this time around as we enforced a moderately strict "No Visitors" rule. The family and Eleanor were allowed to come and see us on the second day of course to meet the new guy, an event which Nelly was extremely excited about.

In fact I can't believe how well she's coping with the new addition to the family. It would be a turbulent and challenging time for anyone to adjust to and she's been an absolute darling over the last week with helping out around the house and looking after her little brother. Hard to believe that our ridiculous expectations of our three year old are actually being met if not exceeded. What a beautiful girl.

It wasn't long before we were packing up to head home with a new child. We used the same blanket that we had for Eleanor, which was actually made by my mum for me when I was a little baby. He was perfectly content in the car and continued to sleep for another two hours in his capsule when we got home.

The last week has been tiring though it feels different to what we went through with Nelly. Having mum here to help out with cooking and entertaining Eleanor has obviously played a role but I think the key difference is that we already went through the midnight debates and dilemmas last time around so it has largely been a matter of executing the parenting playbook we already have. Every kid is different and Callum seems to be a lot more laid back as well which has been fantastic for settling and feeding.

We're trying to enjoy the moment with this little guy and not get too excited about what he's going to be like as he grows up. If he's anything like his sister we're in for a real treat.

What's going on?

Wow, I've been pretty slack with keeping up to date with posts in the past but it's been almost five months since the last one which has to be a record for me. Sad thing is I've had more than enough material to write about in that time but haven't been able to get around to doing it. Given that we hope to welcome a new baby into the family in the following week I thought it would be best to briefly catalogue some of the recent big events before I hopefully descend into newborn minutia again.

A new car

Our civic has served us well for many years and we were sad to see it go. The upcoming influx of family members however demanded some adjustment to our transportation so we had to do something. Getting a second car was something we considered but we didn't like that idea due to the additional operational cost and the need to travel separately. In the end we got a pretty good deal on the run-out design of the Honda Odyssey - what some would argue is the ultimate Asian family car. We certainly don't feel out of place at Sunnybank and can now fit mum and dad along with the children when we need to.

Alison had an operation

Just in the lead up to mum coming out for Christmas we had a bit of a health scare with Alison and the baby. Alison took a trip to the GP which turned into an ambulance ride to the emergency department and ended with an emergency appendectomy.  Not the easiest 24 hours but the family and baby all came out of it unscathed thankfully.

Mum over for Christmas

So it was lovely to have mum out here to spend time with Nelly and the family. Had a lot of fun and ate heaps of good home cooked food, which was a relief for Alison who was still recovering from her operation.

The baby's heart is fine

During our morphology scan last year we were told that our baby boy had a small hole in his heart. It was nothing life threatening but still a small concern for us understandably. In January we had a follow up appointment and were told that they could not detect any abnormalities much to our relief. The doctors still can't be 100% certain that the hole isn't there anymore but it's certainly no longer something that will have an impact on his health.

Aussie Aussie Aussie

I suppose it was just a matter of time before I got my act together (or Alison would force me to get my act together), but I've finally applied and successfully completed my test for Australian citizenship. I did miss out on one answer on the exam but thankfully they have a pretty lenient passing grade. Unfortunately there's a bit of a back log so it's unlikely that I'll be able to attend my ceremony and officially become a citizen until September this year. Even so it didn't stop us from having a great Australian day out with friends.

Got a new job

The last year and a half of owning my own business with Chris have been really exciting. The reality of self employment and new ventures however mean that sometimes things don't turn out the way you expect them to. We are still keeping the business going but I've decided to focus on the product side (What Bin Day and Nose to Tail) in lieu of the service arm of the business. This comes with a new position as a developer at Wotif Group, a role that I've been enjoying quite a bit if only for the comparative simplicity. I never got around to that blog post about Socket Software so I won't make promises about discussing work in more detail, but who knows.

Imminent Baby

It's now day minus 6 till we are supposed to meet our boy, not that those estimates are anything to go by. We're enjoying the time we have left as a small family and can't wait to welcome the new bub home. Mum will be flying out on Wednesday to help us out and we're ready to have our lives changed all over again soon.

It's a Boy!

I'm sure Alison would disagree with me on this point, but having gone through the paces of pregnancy once it seems like this second one is just flying by. Of course I don't have discomfort and nausea to deal with so what would I know. Either way we had our 19 week morphology scan this morning and discovered that Eleanor is going to have a baby brother in March.

Measurements were actually quite similar to what we got for Eleanor at her scan, with the exception of leg length. While Nelly was in the 98% percentile for her femur, our new little boy is just a little below the average. Got to blame dad for inheriting stumpy asian legs I guess.

Biparietal Diameter	43.6 mm
Occipitofrontal Diamater	59.2 mm
Head Circumference	164.3 mm
Transcerebellar Diameter	19.6 mm
Abdominal Circumference	143.1 mm
Femur Length	29.8 mm

Not everything went smoothly for this scan however. The sonographer detected a small (2 mm) hole in the heart and classified it as a minor Ventricular Septal Defect. Apparently these things are pretty common and have a high likelihood of fixing themselves before term so there's nothing to worry about. Even so we've been called back in for an additional scan in January to make sure that everything is going alright.

Aside from that the baby seems to be developing perfectly fine. Just like his sister, he refused to perform and sit still for photos during the scan. None of the "4D" photos were decent on account of obstruction by two or more limbs with an umbilical cord in the way. Nothing new I guess, but if I can use Nelly as a guide I can now rest assured that it doesn't mean that this kid won't want to have his photo taken when he's out in the world.

So there you have it. Of course we would have been happy with a boy or a girl, but in some ways we're quite pleased that Nelly won't have to compete with another for the title of our favourite daughter. Now we just have to prepare ourselves for an entirely different nappy changing experience.

Waste in Melbourne, a New Nephew and Potties

Last week was super busy. Socket Software have been preparing for a big expo in Melbourne to present a new What Bin Day product for Australian councils. At the same time Alison and Nelly were spending the week up in Toowoomba with the rest of the family, including James, Dora, Thomas and new baby Andrew who had all just come in from Singapore to visit.

Chris and I were pretty excited to head out on our first interstate Socket Software trip. Packing everything we needed for the expo booth into one check in bag and carry on luggage was a challenge but we just about made it under the weight limit. Even so, it wasn't much fun carting the stuff around the airport and the streets of Melbourne until we could dump most of it at the exhibition centre.

We were glad to see our AV equipment and furniture had already been delivered and set up for us to use when we arrived at the expo hall. Finishing the rest of our prep would have taken less than an hour if we didn't have to contend with the dodgy power cable we were provided. In the end we didn't have many other technical hiccups so I guess we should be grateful, though I must confess that I won't be paying for overpriced and slow internet connections at these things in the future. Live and learn.

Standing on your feet and talking to people for over eight hours a day for two days straight is pretty tiring. There were about 1500 attendees registered for our expo and a lot more in the two affiliated expos next to us so we saw a fair bit of traffic. Things started off pretty slow but by the end of the two days we were happy with the number of councils that we got to meet and show our product. With some luck and perseverance we might even be able to get some decent conversions too so I'd rate the whole exercise as a success. In talking with the other exhibitors we discovered another conference for councils that takes place at Coffs Harbour in June so we'll probably try and attend that next year.

I drove up to Toowoomba the day after we flew back to Brisbane, eager to spend some time with the family. It was lovely to meet Andrew and hold him, a reminder of what we have to look forward to in our little family come March next year. He's very different from Thomas and we're very lucky to have two beautiful nephews. While Nelly seemed a little concerned about the attention we were giving the new baby, she soon warmed up to Andrew and was very loving and gentle as we hoped she would be.

Thomas and Nelly also had a chance to play a lot more than they have in the past. It's great to see them growing up and interacting with cuddles and toys. Sheena arranged for a quick visit to a nearby farm to see some animals which the kids loved as well judging by the shrieks I heard when they came home.

Dora was kind enough to let Nelly play on the piano which would be the first time our little girl has had a chance to use a full keyboard (I'm not considering the little toy pianos we've given her in the past). I was curious about how she would react to it and pleasantly surprised that she didn't just bang on the keys mindlessly. I'm probably biased but I'd say she was enjoying herself which only strengthens my resolve to get us a digital piano once we have the room for it at home. Of course Daddy wouldn't mind playing on it too.

We have been trying to encourage Eleanor to use the potty/toilet for the better part of 6 months now with not a lot of success. In hindsight we probably started trying a little too early which didn't combine well with our daughter's stubborn personality. Our reward system (a sticker and chocolate for a wee and two stickers and chocolates for a poo) started off well enough but lost steam pretty quickly. Playing her off friends at school that had been toilet trained wasn't getting us anywhere either.

Just a few days with Thomas however ignited the competitive spirit in Nelly as she saw us praising and clapping whenever Thomas went to the toilet. Before long she was trying to do the same in Toowoomba and since returning to Brisbane I'm pleased to say that not a day has gone by without something being deposited in our little potty. It might be too early to say that she's cracked it but I think if we keep up the momentum it shouldn't be long now.

This is a picture of her sticker chart. Most of those have only come in the last week and I think we might be running out of room. The other worrying development is the amount of chocolate she's now ingesting as a result of regular success. Small price to pay for progress I suppose. Here's hoping we'll be out of nappies in the next few weeks!

Another Bunny

I already gushed on about how Eleanor has changed my outlook on life previously. While I consider myself a fairly imaginative fellow I cannot begin to fathom how special we are going to feel with the addition of another baby to the household. Thankfully I'm not going to have to try, as Eleanor is going to have a sibling in March 2014.

We officially broke the big news to Nell when we came back from our 13 week ultrasound and she's been running around the house shouting "I'm a big sister" at the top of her lungs. It's gorgeous and we think she's going to be nurturing and caring as long as we avoid giving her blankets to put the baby to "sleep".

The scan was uneventful, which is exactly what you should hope for at this stage I suppose. I must have been confusing the 19 and 13 week scans that we saw with Eleanor as I expected to see a little more on the screen. Even so it was so rewarding to see the baby moving around and listening to a strong heartbeat. Seems like all the bits are there so I guess that's a good sign.

Once again this baby refused to perform for the 3D pictures. I guess we'll just have to wait a couple of months till the next scan for more happy snaps.

Current due date is the 16th of March so I guess we should be getting ready for a Pisces in the family. Still no new Taurus but I'll learn to live with that. Grand Parents are of course ecstatic and mum has already made plans to come out for the birth and stay on until Eleanor's birthday.

Sounds like we're going to be pretty busy next year.

Second Year of the Father

I've never really paid much attention to Father's Day before. It's not that big a deal in Malaysia as far as I knew and my family situation at the time didn't leave much cause for celebration. Of course as one would expect, Eleanor has changed my outlook on this point. Though I have only had the fortune to mark two such days in my short period as a parent, I've come to appreciate the opportunity for reflection and thanks to all the wonderful intangible gifts that children give you.

So to commemorate my second Father's Day, I thought I'd share some recent musings and observations of my daughter.

A Shared Love for Food

I can't imagine how any child in our family would grow up without an appreciation for food and dining. Even so I'm grateful that Eleanor has exhibited a healthy (matter of opinion) interest in different types of food and ingests most new dishes with gusto, albeit with minor protest initially at times. Sharing a favourite dish is especially rewarding whether it is a bowl of ramen (or noodles of any sort), pancakes with bacon or in this case; a mountain of shaved ice, sliced mango and ice-cream.

An Interest in Games

Eleanor's dexterity for using the iPad has come leaps and bounds in the last six months. I can play a half decent game of Fruit Ninja with her now and she has grown quite adept at finishing puzzle apps that I have downloaded. Introducing Nelly to board games was something that I've been looking forward to though I imagine that I'm going to have to be patient for a while longer. Initial tests with Snake and Ladders proved to be challenging but to my delight she seems to really like playing with my Go stones and board. She isn't learning any Joseki yet but she does enjoy building pictures with the black and white stones so I guess that's a start.

A Great Sense of Humour

It's a constant surprise to me to discover how witty my two year old is. She takes delight in making us laugh and exhibits what I think is a sophisticated sense of humour for her age. Eleanor always seems to find interesting ways to showcase her creativity, whether it's coming up with new lyrics for a song or twisting the rules of a game that we play. Something that we find rather amusing is her peculiar and somewhat morbid technique for putting her dolls to sleep under "blankets".

We had a really nice Father's Day weekend this year. It started off with a special dress up Friday at Day Care for the kids with Superheroes being the theme. I'd like to say that we put a lot of effort into Eleanor's costume but it ended up being a matching top and bottom with red underpants and a safety pinned tea towel. Budget and effort aside I think she pulled off the look with moderate success.

On Saturday we drove up to Toowoomba to spend the weekend with the Grandparents. I woke up on Sunday to receive a hand painted mug, new jammie pants and a trendy belt from my girls. Most of the morning was punctuated by shrieks of "Happy Father's Day Daddy!" from Eleanor which was just wonderful. I couldn't be luckier or happier.

Climbing into Bed

As mentioned in a previous post, graduating from her baby cot to a full grown single bed has in the planning for Eleanor for a while now. A few weekends of hunting through bed shops and we found something that will hopefully serve Nelly for many years to come. Being the practical sort we opted for a more conservative bed head and style over some of the sickeningly saccharine selections we were offered. Let's hope our little girl doesn't make us regret that decision by asking for a princess themed bed head for her fifth birthday.

Weeks of planning lull you into a false sense that you're prepared to see your little girl take another step to growing up. It was rather surreal experience to clear her bedroom of furniture and stand back while the delivery boys assembled her new bed in place. The emotional whiplash occurred when we finally made the put on the sheets and watched our baby girl lie in it for the first time, causing us to wonder if we made the right decision upon seeing her tiny frame swallowed by the expanse of duvet around her.

It quickly became obvious that while she could descend from the bed easily enough by sliding down, getting onto it was another matter entirely. Thankfully we had a spare step that we bought from Ikea lying around which has served comfortably as her "ladder" to climb in. While we were initially concerned about the amount of space we'd lose I think we managed to shift enough furniture around to settle at a comfortable if somewhat spartan arrangement for the bed room. At least it's reasonably child proof now compared to the cluttered mess we've ignored for the last two years.

The first night was trying as expected. To Nelly's credit she never once requested her dummies that she had just relinquished that afternoon. As a reward for donating her "dodos" to the possums, she woke up the next morning (after a respectable night of rest) to see a thank you present left by her furry friends. Fascinating that they knew Nelly is enamoured with Peppa Pig.

It's been a week now since the bed has been delivered and I cannot begin to describe how proud we are of how well Eleanor has made the transition. The week had not gone to plan either with Mummy spending the majority of it in hospital (everything is ok thankfully on that front) so our girl has put on a brave face in pretty adverse conditions. In a few short days we have progressed from distressing bed times to a pretty comfortable routine and I can only imagine that she will grow more comfortable with her new arrangement. Even more amazing is that she still hasn't asked for a dummy. Not once.

What a great daughter we have. She's growing up so quickly.

Poo Poo for You

We have been meaning to try toilet training Eleanor for a while now, but with family visiting and holidays planned we just haven't had an appropriately long uninterrupted stretch to try. With the birthday events complete and the house to ourselves again we pressed the advantage and encouraged Nelly to try her potty whenever possible.

Though we weren't particularly disciplined about enforcing potty use over the last month, we've certainly been talking to Eleanor as much as possible to get her used to the idea. A few of her friends at day care use the "koilet" so it's not a foreign concept to her. Even so we were taken by surprise when she proclaimed in the car last week that she'd like a big girl bed, and would do so when she learned to do a poo in the "koilet". 

As an aside she also decided that she'd voluntarily give up her "do dos" (pacifiers) that she uses to go to sleep once she has a big girl bed. We're optimistic but a little skeptical that she'll follow through as she currently requires three dummys and a coterie of trusted stuffed animals to complete her nightly ritual.

Anyway, back to the point of this entry. We had just returned home from lunch with Sheenie and Grand Dad when Eleanor decided that she needed to do a poo. Nothing too exciting as we'd had many false alarms before but we obliged and let her sit in the corridor opposite Daddy who also had business to attend to. Perhaps it was the joy of company or maybe she was just old enough and it was time, but she stayed still long enough to produce a magnificent turd in her white plastic receptacle. Whoops of elation all around and I think more than a little relief.

I'll spare everyone a photo of the actual deed, though rest assured that one was taken for posterity. We celebrated by changing Eleanor into some toddler training nappies and pants... which she promptly wet about half an hour later while watching TV on the carpet. I guess it's a start.

Now we have plans to go shopping for a bed to replace the cot in her room. I wonder if we can still put bars on them to prevent her from coming into our room to wake us up at five in the morning.

Nelly Turns Two

Holy crap where has the time gone. Our baby girl turned two years old this month which is just crazy when I think about it. Maybe if I posted on the blog more I wouldn't feel obligated to start each entry with a whinge about how time is flying by so quickly. Hrm...

Mum, Dad and Mak Long flew out on the Saturday before Nelly's birthday to spend the week with us. Most of the time we had together was spent talking about food, cooking food or eating food so it's no wonder that my pants are feeling a little tighter as a result. Our first task at hand was preparing for the little girl's first party on the 16th with all her friends (and accompanying mums).

We were quite pleased with the result of our cake last year so once again we selected a recipe to attempt from the Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake book (vintage edition mind you). Eleanor helped pick out what she wanted and only changed her mind three times before settling on a rather cute teddy bear cake that didn't look too difficult. The trickiest part was managing the different coloured icing for the mouth and tummy compared to the rest of the cake, which we achieved with the help of plastic cups.

The rest of the icing process was a delicate operation that raised tension between Mummy and Daddy in the kitchen but in the end we pulled together to produce a reasonable facsimile of the bear showcased in the book. Except ours is arguably superior for the use of pink icing and a children's vitamin C tablet sliced in half for a tongue.

The cake went down a treat with the kids though we were left with the better part of a head and shoulder at the end of the day. Normally I'd be happy to have something sweet to snack on in the fridge but with three women shopping for food every day for the week our ice box was packed to capacity.

Being the first to blow the candles out was more challenging than we expected for Eleanor as all her friends wanted to help out. John seemed quite keen to lend a hand as he had lots of practice at his own birthday a couple of weeks before hand. Relighting the candle a few times a allowed our girl a chance to do it herself with minimal assistance from Callista.

John and Sheena drove Mary down as well to see the birthday girl on the day so we took an opportunity to photograph the four generations of girls. Nelly as always was very happy to see her great grandmother though I unfortunately failed to take a single photo with everyone looking at the camera properly. Here's the best of an odd bunch.

Eleanor received a lot of very exciting presents for her birthday but I think one that I found quite special (especially since I helped to assemble it the night before) was her first bicycle, bought by her Ah Kong. I didn't think she'd be keen to wear the safety helmet but she's surprisingly accommodating. We all took great joy in pushing her around the house while she applied the brakes and rang the bell with glee.

The day after her birthday was reserved for a family trip out to Alma Park Zoo. We had been talking about the zoo for months before hand but wanted to save the experience to share with Mum, Dad and Mak Long when they were out. The zoo was pretty well looked after but we were assaulted by swarms of mosquitoes that must have just hatched after the downpour the night before. Nelly was quite severely attacked but that didn't seem to bother her that much and she liked looking at the animals.

The following day was actually Mak Long's birthday so we decided to hit the road again and head down to the Gold Coast for some fish and chips. The weather was absolutely brilliant and we had a really nice day driving up and down the coast with a few stops to walk on the sand and gobble down an ice-cream.

The last event we had planned was another party on Saturday to celebrate the two birthday girls for the week. In a rather self serving gesture I suggested to Mum and Mak Long that we cook up a Malaysian inspired feast for the family to share, which they generously agreed to do. Alison helped cook (and will hopefully continue to cook) a smorgasbord of malay dishes including; beef rendang, pulut kuning, nasi lemak and large helpings of sambal. Absolutely divine so we all indulged and left very little for left overs.

It was a really short trip for Eleanor to see her Nenek but I think she had a great time seeing everyone out here. I'd hope that we can try and make it back to Malaysia soon as I really have a hankering for some more nasi lemak now. I think Nelly would happily brave the flight over to get a chance to eat as well as she did that week again.

We have had to re-structure her toy area and buy a new box to cater for the influx of presents for Eleanor. Some would say she's starting to get a little spoilt. I'd say she's worth it.

On Our Own with Scallop Pies

I'm sure the three people that read this blog are a little weary of hearing me gush about Eleanor. How fortunate then that this post is about our trip to Tasmania, sans progeny courtesy of two very generous and loving grandparents. We have just spent a whole week away from our daughter and have had a great time exploring the southern region of the apple isle, sampling pretty much every gastronomic delight we came across.

We found a lovely self contained apartment on airbnb which just a walk away from Salamanca and Battery Point. The place was newly renovated, comfortably furnished and boasted a spectacular view of the water and their garden. Our hosts were great and helpfully pointed us in the direction of nearby spots of interest, particularly those of the culinary kind.

On our first day out with the car (which I thankfully didn't crash this trip) we drove down to Bruny Island to embark on a boat cruise south to see the magnificent rock formations and local wild life. Some of the sea caves that we saw on the tour were amazing though I think the trademark moment that the guides prepare for is a "thread the needle" manoeuvre between Monument Rock and the cliff side. Kinda impressive what you can do with four jet motors on a small boat.

Aside from interesting geology we were also treated to a close up view of a seal colony. The stench downwind was eye watering though we were told to consider ourselves fortunate that we weren't facing a group during mating season. Apparently that bouquet can be smelled for miles and miles, which is apparently also an attraction for sharks.

The other highlight of the tour was when the guides dropped a submarine mounted camera into the water to show us some of the fish under the boat. It was one of the calmest days of the year so the water was pristine and clear. We were expecting Tasmania to be fairly cold but the day we were on Bruny was actually the hottest of our stay at 30 degrees, so I think more than a few people were tempted to dive in and swim in the sea. 

Our second day of driving had us heading north towards the little town of Ross, which is just south of Launceston. It was a great road to drive on with large dry plains on either side, which was quite different landscape to what we saw on Bruny Island the previous day. On the way we stopped in at Oatlands and checked out the Callington Mill, which if I remember the brochure correctly is one of the oldest working stone mills in the southern hemisphere. Not being a baker myself I can't speak for the flour that is produced but the sourdough loaf we bought from the bakery next to it was certainly yummy.

I must confess that our drive up to Ross wasn't entirely for the scenery. I can't quite remember where I heard about it initially, but I've been fascinated by the Tasmanian scallop pie for many years. Assuming that my love for baked crust and mollusks would be an easy and delicious match, I was quite insistent that we find a specimen of this seafood pastry during our holiday. Ross just happened to be the home of the Tasmanian Scallop Pie Company, so we thought it would be a fairly safe place to find a decent representation of the dish.

In fact, through the course of one week I ended up eating no less than five scallop pies from various bakeries and restaurants. This included both curried as well as creamy varieties and while I enjoyed all of them, there was only one venue where I had to go back for seconds. Let's just say that the drive to Ross was worth it.

Which is great news, because ironically it's now that I'm back in Brisbane doing research for this blog post that I've discovered that the Tasmanian Scallop Pie Company has retail outlets across the country. In fact the city with the most retail outlets is... Brisbane. Go figure.

The other exciting discovery we made was buying two wheels from the Bruny Island Cheese Company. We ended up eating them both for dinner at the apartment one night, along with Tasmanian smoked salmon, salami, apples from a farm that we passed and that sourdough we bought at the bakery in Oatland. Both cheeses were fantastic washed rinds and I thought they were quite different from what we usually pick up at cheeseries. The vine leaf wrapped Oen on the right is quite popular and had a lot of flavour, while the smaller wheel on the left was a sheep and cow milk blend that had a slightly more subtle body to it. Absolutely delicious and horrendously smelly.

Third day on the road was a long and windy drive through the Huon valley, south west of Hobart. Didn't see as many interesting stops to eat at early in the morning but that was alright as we were rushing to get to the Tahune air walk. It would have been hard to come back from Tasmania without at least doing one hike through the wonderful nature trails on offer. This wasn't exactly a rugged trek by any means but we did have fun walking below and above the giant trees in the forest.

The drive and trek didn't actually take as long as we thought it would so we ended up exploring a little more of the Huon area by heading south to the charming town of Cygnet. Lots of art galleries but we were most impressed by the Red Velvet Lounge where we stopped for lunch. By far the best food we had seen that day and very friendly waiters.

After stuffing ourselves silly on the hand cut fries and ox tongue sandwiches we drove along the coast to Peppermint Bay, stopping to pick some wild blackberries from the side of the road. Seems like we came to Tasmania at the wrong season for fruit picking and all of the cherry farms were closed so it was nice to have a chance to experience a little foraging.

We couldn't dally long however as we were in a rush to get back to Hobart and try our luck on a Friday night at Garagistes, a small and popular restaurant that doesn't take bookings. Due to us arriving minutes after the doors were opened we managed to score a table and had a fantastic meal there. We knew that the food would be special and we both noted with approval that they had a collection of Nathan Myhrvold's Modernist Cuisine on their book shelf. The dishes certainly didn't disappoint.

In fact we had quite a few nice dinners out in Hobart, most of which were selected through Urbanspoon recommendations. The other standout that we would heartily recommend that people try is Ethos. Excellent food that has been sourced from local producers and cooked in a simple and honest manner. A great contrast to Garagistes with their more modernist slant.

The next day of driving involved heading east towards Port Arthur and the Tasman peninsula. On the way we dropped into Barilla Bay to get a platter of oysters. Sure do like seafood in Tasmania.

The drive down to Port Arthur was a little gloomier than the previous days on account of the rain. It was drizzling fairly heavily by the time we got to the Port Arthur entrance and it was a little later in the afternoon than we thought so we decided to forgo the convict trail for a few more stops along the coast line. Glad we did as there were some gorgeous rock formations that we could see from lookouts. This was the "Devil's Kithen", a large sea cave where the ceiling had collapsed to reveal an archway to the sea.

On our final day of driving we set out to the north west up the Derwent river to see how far we could get. Maybe it was just fatigue from driving or a lack of interesting things to see around that side but we stopped at the Salmon Ponds to have a quick look around before driving back towards the city.

We weren't sure if we would make it into MONA (the museum of old and new art) but since we didn't have much else on our itinerary for the afternoon we decided to pay the entrance fee and check it out. I wasn't sure what I'd think of the material given that some of the exhibits were quite alternative, though in the end I had a really good time. Shame that the layout of the building is deliberately disorienting which didn't sit well with Alison and the iPhone handouts they distributed didn't work half the time. I found quite a few of the collections to be very interesting if somewhat confrontational, though I must admit that the number of orifices was actually lower than what I expected.

After MONA we opted for one last driving adventure and took the rental car up to the lookout on Mount Wellington. Due to the cloud there wasn't a lot that we could see (understatement of the year) but at least we can say that we've been there.

So after all that we're back here in Brisbane again. Alison is up in Toowoomba tonight and will be bringing Eleanor home tomorrow so that I can be a Daddy again. It was nice to have a week as a couple but nothing quite beats having our little family back together.