Bahá'í Temple

I took the chance to visit the Bahá'í House of Worship near Sydney, one of seven in the world. I admire the Bahá'í architecture ever since I first visited one of their temples, the famous Lotus Temple in Delhi which is undoubtedly one of the most magnificent buildings in the world.

"Bahá" in Arabian language means the number 9, and a common symbol of the religion is a nine-pointed star. It is also reflected in the fact that Bahá'í temples generally have nine sides/corners.

The temple is open and free to be visited by anyone. The interior is white and flooded with light from all sides. The mood is friendly, solemn and calm.

I found it interesting that all the chairs are two-seaters. Partner seats, so to speak. By the way, there is also a Bahá'í House of Worship in Europe: in Frankfurt, Germany.

There are about 11,000 Bahá'ís in Australia and 5,000 in Germany. Their largest population is in India: 2.2 million, followed by 750,000 in the U.S.A.

Sold my car

I have successfully sold my car today!

The new owner, an Australian with a Dutch name, has paid in cash and from this minute I am again on foot and public transport...

But I am happy, the deal went very smooth and I have one less thing to worry about.

Palm Beach

Today I went for a day trip to Palm Beach, which is about an hour's drive north of Sydney and very famous among the high society who lives or has a weekend house there, I was told.

Palm Beach itself is a nice beach but not much different from the other beaches, except it's maybe less commercial. The ocean surf makes swimming impossible (only body surfing, between the flags), so there are mainly surfers on surfboards there.

The much nicer beach, I found, is the lesser known Station Beach which is on the inland side of the Palm Beach peninsula, called Pittswater, which you see in this picture. It is quiet there, not a sound, and very peaceful. All of a sudden I felt like on Fiji, a few months ago. However as far as swimming is concerned, Station Beach is not suitable for it either, because of sharks and jellyfish.

From Station Beach you can walk up to the lighthouse on Barrenjoey Headland. There are two walking tracks up to the lighthouse which have an interesting history: the steep and narrow track was built by two convicts in 18-something. A second way, which is wider and paved with massive stone blocks, was built for King George VI of the UK, who had planned to come to Australia in the 1950s and visit this place. But then the king's visit was cancelled for health reasons and the "King's Highway" was left in a half finished state.

From the lighthouse, which was built in 1881, you get a magnificent view of the area. This last photo is looking South (towards Sydney), with Palm Beach on the left, facing the Pacific (you see the surf) and Station Beach on the right (with the calm water).

I was told this spot was great for whale-watching, and this was currently the right season, so I looked out for whales but didn't see any.

Anton and Fabian

I finally got to meet Fabian, who is from my home town and is currently studying business in Sydney for one semester. We knew each other remotely as children but have not seen another for 20 years (and he is 24 now). His eldest sister and my younger sister are friends, and his parents and mine are closely befriended too.

His sister was here in September, but left just before I came back and so we had not met. This week Fabian's father Anton is visiting, and so I managed to see him too. We met in the city for a beer. Today Anton flies back to Germany, and in a few weeks Fabian will go on a holiday trip to New Zealand.

I just noted...

...that I've used the word 'beautiful' in 4 of my last 5 postings. I guess it shows I'm in good mood, and maybe also a bit romantic about Australia. I will miss this country a lot. And I will miss all the good friends I have made here.

Now that the spring has come here and everything is fresh and green -- to think that in 3 weeks I'll be sitting in an airplane back home, into cold and grey November Germany. But of course I'm also very much looking forward to reuniting with my family and to seeing my German friends again.

I have said goodbye to Evelyn, Richard, Magdalena, Wilhelm, Mathias and Katja, who were my "Schonegg family" in Murrumbateman. I visited Peter once more, the musician, and we had a wonderful BBQ dinner at his house, with his wife Ange and their daughter, and played some more music with guitar, sitar and banjo. He also gave me a lot of great music on CDs and a very special CD, a recording of our own music session.

Now I'm back in Sydney, staying in Michael's house as before. My car has not sold yet, so I reduced the price some more.

Sulky riding

We met some people in Murrumbateman who had a horse and a sulky, a lightweight two-wheel cart.

They showed us how the horse is harnessed onto the sulky, and then they invited all three of us to go on a ride!

The sulky was a beautiful old one from 1905. The horse was very pretty too, a special breed from England.

Creative Carcassonne

One of the most popular games I play with Mathias and Katja is Carcassonne.

After playing for a while we started making our own extensions. Very creative. In this game we used the "Yummy extension" (played with m&m's which are placed on the fruit cards) and the "Law and order extension" (with police posts on the roads and gallows in the cities).

Our other extensions include the "Canberra extension" (with shopping centres), the "Castle wall extension", the "Australia extension", etc... The white paper cards are just first prototypes -- Mathias will make beautiful laminated cards with green background later on.

Pink Pastry

Katja made this nice two-colored bisquits:

Lemon Spiral Bisquits
(makes 40 bisquits)

• 75 g icing sugar (Puderzucker)
• 150 g butter, softened
• 1 lemon
• 200 g plain flour (Mehl)
• 2 tablespoons milk
• pink food dye (rosa Speisefarbe)

Here is the recipe

They look yummy, don't they?

100 years Burrinjuck Dam

Yesterday we had two catering functions for the celebration of the 100-year anniversary of Burrinjuck Dam (ein Stausee) in the Yass District.

As you can see from the water level, Lake Burrinjuck is not too full at the moment, despite all the rain we had. But it is still a pretty lake. It serves as a water reservoir for the Yass region and for generating electricity.

The lake is located a one-hour drive from Schonegg. Evelyn and I served 'morning tea' at the dam (which means coffee, tea, soft drinks and bisquits). There were speeches and some high society was there, as well as the press and a local TV team.

The second photo shows the spectacular view in the opposite direction, from the dam wall downstream.

In the evening the event continued at a different location, at the beautiful gardens of the Glass Artist Peter Crisp, with drinks and canapés. I had the honour of the job of the barman. :)

It was a magnificent location for such a function, with flowering lavender, sculptures, a lake with a waterfall, etc. Only the flies were a bit of a plague.

There was also a harpist, a young lady from Canberra playing her beautiful instrument.

Magdalena's Gugelhupf

Yesterday night the whole Everson family and I had been invited over to Magdalena's (Omi's) house for dinner. She had put all her love into this event, planning it for days, cooking for hours, and she had even baked her special famous cake, a Kaisergugelhupf with cinamon and 4 kinds of fruit in it.

The cake is also known here now as the "German Language Radio Cake" because Magdalena bakes it traditionally every year for the annual meeting of the people who are active in the Canberra German Radio programme (FM 91.1). We were also given a premiere preview of the poem that she will recite on the radio, together with Mathias and Katja, on 14th November.

Now that the weather has become nice, I could take some more photos of the beautiful scenery here. This is a hill in the distance we can see from the Schonegg terrace, in the nice evening light.

Now I'm off to do some more mowing. The grass on our property has grown so enormously from all the rain that the mower hardly gets through!

Murrumbateman Field Days

This weekend (17th/18th October) Murrumbateman holds its biggest event of the year, the Murrumbateman Field Days. This is a huge open-air event, a combination of agricultural trade show (landwirtschaftliche Gewerbeschau), handicraft/machinery demonstrations, market and funfair (Volksfest). It was really very different and interesting to see.

They have lots of machinery, but also lots of farm animals -- various breed of cattle, sheep, alpacas, goats, chickens and the list goes on.

This thing here was an old steam engine vehicle, blowing steam and whistling.

We had great luck with the weather: after weeks of rain the sky finally brightened up and it became the first nice spring weekend of the year. Visitors come amass from Canberra and surroundings. The whole event took place, as the name suggests, on a field, and vistor parking was on the grass too -- but well organized and no mud thanks to the good weather.

The Eversons had a stand on the festival as well, in a tent, with brochures of Schonegg for advertisement and selling homemade gourmet jams. And our freebie were samples of a yummy apple slice (Apfelstreuselkuchen), with a copy of the recipe by Katja.

Maybe some of you in Germany would like to bake it too? The recipe is above.

Here are some cute sheep and lambs.








And these funny-looking fellows are freshly shorn alpacas. They have very soft, high quality wool -- and they can be eaten as well and taste like lamb, I have been told. They have interesting long necks and attracive faces with beautiful eyes.

Campervan for sale

My campervan is now advertised on the Internet, and the first people have contacted me to see it. If you're interested, here is one of my ads.

Prawn dumplings

Today I had the pleasure of making prawn dumplings (Garnelen-Teigtaschen).

Richard had prepared the filling and I did the dumpling-making. The dumplings were then simmered in hot water for 7 minutes and finally placed in cold water to cool off. (Later they will be reheated when needed.)

Donkeys

Last Saturday I visited a friend who lives on a farm 20 minutes out of Canberra.

She has several donkeys and two horses, and I could take some photos because it had stopped raining for half a day.

Sitar

It is still cold and rainy -- the coldest October they had here for a long time. I have left Sydney and come again to Murrumbateman near Canberra. It felt really good to get out here where there is space and air. The picture was taken on the way through my windshield during rain, I'm sharing it just to convey the feeling of the weather.

On the way I followed an invitation from Pete, the musician, and visited him and his wife Ange at their house. Pete has an excellent collection of string instruments -- guitars, banjos, a mandola, and the beautiful sitar you see in this picture.

Pete showed me the basics of how to play it and after a bit of trying I really got some encouraging sounds out of the Indian instrument. It was fun to play! All those sympathetic strings that reverb and chorus in the background, and the special frets that allow bending the string really far make for that typical sitary sound. Playing a sitar was a dream that I've had for a long time (more than 10 years) finally come true. I bet my Indian friends will be impressed by this picture! :)

I also had another invitation from people in Canberra for a BBQ party, so I went there as well. As you can see, I try to socialize and network as much as I can. The weather here inland at 2000 feet (600 m) altitude is even colder (2-14 degrees), but slightly less rain and every now and then we get at least a bit of sunshine. And the days are now noticeably longer again, which is good.

A great gig

What's the best way to spend a rainy long weekend?

On Friday I met with Xiabing for a Chinese dinner. She had invited me to return the movie invitation from half a year ago. On Saturday I went to a dinner party to socialize and meet old and new friends. On Sunday I drove up the coast to Rosco Club near Newcastle. A friend of mine who lives there, Peter, had invited me to come to play some music.

Peter's friend Pete who is a fantastic musician (in the middle of the picture) was also there on this weekend, and so we had a really good gig, entertaining our very appreciative audience of about 10-15 people with our songs for over 4 hours! It was amazing how Pete could join in and round my songs off with virtuosic improvised solos.

Australia has switched to summer time, so we now have 9 hours time difference to Germany.

Art and big eggs

Here is an example of what the Museum of Contemporary Art had on exhibit.

It's made of coloured glass in a Murano technique like they use in Venice.




The other picture shows ostrich and emu eggs (Strausseneier und Emu-Eier). The dark ones are emu. I thought perhaps you'll find it interesting to see the comparison in size.

The emu is native to Australia and is (unofficially) considered the national bird of the country. In the coat of arms (Staatswappen) of Australia, there is a kangaroo on one side of the shield and an emu on the other side.

I liked this funny variant, the logo of an Australian manufacturer of hand dryers!

I'm not showing any outdoor pictures because this weekend is cold and grey and rainy. Nothing much to do. :(