Bellingen '06

Ju Ju on the verandah of the cabin where we stayed for the week. It was one of 2 cabins on a lovely 4 acre farmstead on the Bellinger River.

View from said cabin... how's the serenity??

This is Jack (as in Russell) who came as part of the cabin package much to our delight.
A most welcoming and adorable little mutt if ever there was one...

Not to mention affectionate and requiring many pats and cuddles thank you.

And Marilyn the pig, who's quite a porker and no doubt fearless and friendy as a direct result of knowing her owners are vegetarian. (She's also incredibly hairy!).

You wouldn't have a scrap or two on you by any chance??

Jessie getting acquainted with MandyMoo, (her and I felt an immediate bond), another fine specimen of the farm's friendly menagerie... there was also a guinea pig called Mary and two droopy-eared bunnies, originally called Cottontail and Nutmeg until it became apparent that Nutmeg was of the male variety and was thus appropriately renamed Elvis (probably referring to his rather impressive pelvis action). Cottontail and Elvis are the proud parents of 4 very small and incredibly cute baby bunnies.

Jessie with chewy by the paddock...

Jessie with chewy by the river...

Dax is a very happy and huggable wee chappy...
(ok, not so 'wee' but certainly huggable)... and happy.

Mum and I took Jessie up to Dorrigo for lunch at the Dorrigo pub and a poke around the town. The weather was very 'four-seasons-in-one-day', pouring with rain one minute, lovely and sunny the next. This was a brief non-rainy (if not quite sunny) moment when we found a lookout looking out over a spectacularly mountainous mountain range.

We met some friendly alpacas at the farm next door to ours and discovered them to be just like mini camels...

However this fella looked more related to our dearly departed Sadie than to a camel...

We stopped for a coffee at the Old Butter Factory in Bellingen.
After letting it all hang out for a while...

Dax then decided to go incognito...

This is at Tina's place in town. Dax loves the swing...

And he rather thought he'd love my camera too thanks...

Tina is fast becoming an orchid-growing officianardo... she has a wonderful greenhouse in the back-yard, housing neat rows of orchids in various stages of development, with tissue-culture-cultivation and cross-pollenisation and... and things like that(!!).

One night we had a girl's night in... photographic evidence care of the camera's self-timer. We got take-away Thai from Bellingen's sole Thai restaurant. The choice of meat was chicken or chicken, so we went for the chicken with cashews (all 3 of them) and the panang chicken which was the same as the chicken with cashews, only less cashews and a slightly creamier sauce.

Marilyn was rather partial to bread. Jessie was rather partial to breaking the bread into as small pieces as possible to ingeniously extend the joy of feeding her bread to the pig.