Mega Blog Wednesday

By The Chronicles of Williams -
Getting behind on the blogs.... they're having a traffic jam in my head so today might be Mega Blog Wednesday before it's all over:)


Exploring David's campus at University of Western Sydney and Richmond


Last Friday I decided to visit David at work, take him to lunch and see Richmond for the first time.  Getting to Richmond from Springwood was a nice 20 minute drive.  We live on the mountain but in 20 minutes I drove down a steep windy road (with hairpin curves) and ended up on some beautiful farmland crossing a few rivers and seeing 7km of "watch for kangaroo" signs.  The university was on the edge of town and when I pulled onto campus I could see the trees and flowers blooming in white, pinks and these cool purple bunches of color hanging in the trees!  What a beautiful campus!
Can you see the purple blooms?

The road to David's office

We found downtown Richmond and it was so cute! Lots of shops and old houses with Victorian architecture, a big park with an old cricket field in the middle and all kinds of little restaurants. 

One of the many cafes


David thinking about shopping... or not
 
After walking the downtown area, we found a little deli off the main street and saw the most amazing gourmet meat pies and such a great price.  Since eating out is expensive here, we don't really eat out much, but have learned that lunch and some real searching it is possible to find a treat now and then.  We enjoyed chicken and leek gourmet pie and roasted veggie fritatta (like a thick quiche).  Fantastic!  And the side salad made with Australian's version of raisin and some peanuts with balsamic/olive oil and some cheese was awesome.  This is our new favorite homemade salad.   Tomorrow night I'm making my first gourmet meat pie!  I love learning about new foods:)


 



I'm going to learn how to do that!
After lunch we drove back to David's office through a new entrance and stumbled on a Koala Food Plantation where they grow food for the Taronga Zoo/Koala bears.  Just at the end of the road was a little sign "Secret Garden open today".  We found a secret and since our goal is growing herbs and cooking with herbs, this was a fantastic find!  We bought tomato plants, lavender, oregano, thyme, and more herbs from all over.  I tried to get pictures of all of the birds we saw, but they're too quick.  Blue, green, red, white, turquoise birds of all sizes and sounds. 



Before leaving campus, David wanted to show me the orange grove.  We picked a box of oranges in 5 minutes and ate some along the way.  yum yum!!!  Later, David made the best fresh squeezed OJ from our new fancy garage sale squeezer.




After crawling back up the mountainside, we stopped at an overlook.  We were back in the bush but looked down on where we just were in Richmond.  Very beautiful farmlands and rivers just 20 min away from our mountain top.  The flowers blooming and the temperature change reminded us a little of the difference in Laramie and Ft. Collins.  Will be interesting to see how our summers compare.


The view


Picnic table art




David has a good time riding to work with new friends.  Many people work in Richmond but live in Springwood so he enjoys hitching rides with different people.  Some days I like to pick him up early so he gets home in time to cook on the grill or go play some tennis with me:)

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