What a weekend! Not only did Kazza turn a year older, but she got a massive rock on her finger too! Karen agreed to marry me! yay! So, lets recall the events since the last entry…
The short film festival in The Domain was excellent. It was the first glorious day for a while and we bascially sat in the park all afternoon with Ruth, the eski and a few beers and wound Bruce up (he was on a slow train from Newcastle to Sydney!). The film festival itself was interesting; some of the short films (i.e. less than 7 minutes) were very good, some were just strange.
There was also a festival of ships into Sydney – 7 of the worlds largest liners were all scheduled to dock in Sydney over a 10 day period, ships that included the Queen Victoria and Queen Mary 2. OMG – how big are these ships! Sorry, Cruise Liners. The Queen Victoria took her place in circular quay and looked beautiful. The Queen Mary 2 was TOO BIG for the quay and had to dock in the navy base, as Karen said – you would have been gutted not to cruise past the opera house and in towards the bridge!
All attention was then on Karen’s birthday. The plan was to meet up with everyone in Sydney for drinks on the Friday evening. Both Karen and myself had the Friday off so Karen knew I was planning activities for the day and a spot of lunch. I arranged to sail on the harbour, then have dinner at Uccello at the Ivy, followed by drinks at the Pool Club. Then the Saturday morning we were picking Bear & Emily up at Sydney airport at 9am to then head north for a weekend of camping (we had the Monday off too!).
What Karen didn’t know of was my recent frequent trips to Bill Hicks to arrange having an engagement ring made!!! Boys – this is a very stressful task, making decisions on diamonds (cut, clarity, caret and of course COST!) and a band to ‘set’ the stone on. Jesus was I nervous. Time was tight too, I picked up the ring (first time I had seen it other than the drawings we sketched) on the Thursday night. We were all set for the Friday.
We first had lunch at Room 9 (our favourite breakfast spot in the ‘hills’!) then headed to the quay. Sailing was unbelievable, we had a little wind for some time, then we took the sails down and cruised into Darling Harbour, etc to have a look’sy! All the time my stomach was tieing itself in knots – maybe it was Karen’s skippering! Once we had returned to land I decided the time was right. Overlooking the quay in blazing sunshire I popped the question, her response: “Are you joking?!” Great! But I am 100% sure there was a Yes in there somewhere!
So with us resembling two cheshire cats we taxi’d off to the Ivy, enroute calling the only family members awake – the Bayliss’s – they were to say the least, a little excited and Lily immediately wanting to know how many sleeps it was until she could be a princess! Lunch was amazing (bottle of bubbly and more wine!) and drinks (haviana’s & coke obviously!) by the pool were pretty spectacular! So come 4pm we were very merry – in more ways than one!
We then met all the guys in The Establishment and had a good few drinks there before going on until 1am in the morning. This fact is important, as….when I staggered to the rental company the morning after Karen was left dead in bed. Long story short – Karen was green and we were an hour late picking up Bear & Emily – but all that was forgotton once we showed them the ring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Camping was great fun, all four of us in out $75 Gumtree tent! On the second evening as were were BBQ’ing the clouds rolled in and we found out the tent wasn’t waterproof! Being only 90 minutes form Sydney we packed up and headed south for an indoor BBQ!
All in all, a faboulous and unforgettable weekend. Thanks to all that participated and to all those in foreign lands for the kind messages, and Andy: “No, no joint weddings. However, is their a charge to hire the page boy?!”.
