CFA Urban Senior Championships 2011 - Bendigo: 11-13 Mar

This year as usual, I worked at the Firefighter's Urban Senior Championships over the Labour Day long weekend. But luckily this year my manager relieved me from Sunday evening and so I didn't have to work the full weekend.

I got Darling to come along because I wasn't comfortable driving the 2 hours plus alone since my colleagues had already gone up earlier or were going up later the next day. He didn't have to pay for accommodation as we were all getting our own private rooms regardless. And thanks to weichao and daisy again for the last minute notification to take care of Jasper.

I didn't take much photos this time as compared to the last couple of years. Every year is pretty much the same anyway, only in different places and the set up of the display stands are slightly different.

The Online Services & CFA Connect display stand where I was based at.	This year they had more display stands like the Radio Allocation & Accessibility stands.
Great student volunteers who came along to help clean up and pick up rubbish.	The teacher of the students group who volunteered to come clean up & recycle.

Here are some of the sports called the Coupling and Ladder Eights and Section Hose, Hydrant and Pumper.Congratulations to the Maryvale fire brigade for winning the 2011 State Urban Championships.

I think the highlights for us staff working that weekend was certainly the dinner and viewing of the Torchlight Ceremony at the Shamrock Hotel on Saturday night.

30 odd CFA people at the 2 course dinner that night. We took up most of the balcony area.	The view of the the famous and beautiful Bendigo Town Hall and clock at night.
Entrance to the Shamrock hotel upper levels of the restaurant and hotel.	We stopped by Beechworth Bakery on the way back as a colleage wanted to buy stuff.

This year for the first time of the Torchlight Procession, they had these really old and vintage firefighting vehicles heading the procession at the start. It was really a good experience for darling. He was commenting on all the competitors, how they weren't marching properly, their shirt weren't tuck in etc. It was real funny!

We also met a new colleague of mine called Catherine who had just started work at Community Safety dept. She was just lovely and chatty, a nice person to hang out with. We drove back Sunday arvo around 4pm and boy did we finally sleep well again that night.

Bendigo Trip - 3 Mar to 5 Mar '07

Here goes, the photos from the Bendigo Trip:

We arrived at Bendigo on Sat 3 Mar around 12.45pm and headed to have some finger food and ice cream as it was a scotching hot day. Then we walked around the city centre, got to the visitor information centre to get more brochures, maps and to buy the Bendigo Visitor Pass. 2nd highlight of the day was the trip to Central Deborah Gold Mine. We opted for the 1hour, 60 metres down below tour instead of the 2hour, 82 metres one. It was still all good and pitch dark below ground level, near the earth's core. And no, if you happen to find any gold, it doesn't belong to you. :( The guide was a jovial funny old fellow who made the tour an interesting one.

Sunday's first highlight was the Sacred Heart Cathedral, we went there for morning mass at 8.30am. It was a lovely sculpted building completed in the 1970s. Then we had brekkie at beechworth bakery because Ying thought that it was related to beechworth honey, but it wasn't and the food though lovely on the outside, didn't taste as good on the inside. Next was the talking trams tour, tramways museum and the Golden Dragon Museum, built by one of the forefathers of the chinese who immigrated to Bendigo during the Gold Mining era.

We continued the trip next to Bendigo pottery where we learned and actually saw how pottery is made. Duhhh?! :P We wanted to had a go and try our hands at the wheel, but we figured it was gonna be a hassle to keep "the thing" we moulded, so we skipped it. Last stop for the day was Confectionary Capers, which was built by a single man using 37 years of hard work. It was a display of mechanical and language displays which makes you think outta the box for english words with its interactive press-button displays.

Last day of the trip was horse riding! Yippie! My 2nd time doing it and I'm loving it evermore. I wanted to have a faster gallop but as the others were newbies plus Ying and Dom had slow and sturbbon horses, we had to settled for a slow trotting trail ride. But it was all good and I managed to get dusty(horse's name) to gallop faster along some paths. Finally we left some time for abit of shopping and we just had to take a photo outside the first ever Myer store.

Well that's all for now, I reckon I should start a journal travel site for all my aussie trips! :)

My V-Day Pressie - Yoshi's Island DS and Planning to go Bendigo!

Currently playing Yoshi's Island DS . Twas the game darling got me for my V-day pressie. The funny part was that this is the first time we are actually spending V-day together in the same place, but we decided not to bother making it a big hoo-ha at all. Dinners were too expensive; They were a minimum cost of $90 bucks per person in posh restaurants here, plus mummy's around and we kinda have 2 new friends who've recently join our clique and have been hanging with us for most of the time as well. :)

Anyway, yessh I'm soooo FREE that I actually had time to go to the Yoshi's Island website for a look since I'm so hooked on the game and it is one of the highest rated games (9.2!) from GameSpot. It's one of the best adventure/platformers that I've ever played and the characters are super cute! Well, I had a hard time trying to find the wallpapers because you had to explore the whole site clicking on stuff before you can "find" 'em, so I thought I'd share with people here. Sorry though, I only downloaded the (1024 x 768 px) ones. Just click on 'em and they will open to full size.

Plus, I suddenly had a crazy idea on Monday to plan a trip for mummy before she goes back home. (Actually I myself wanted a holiday also!) Well, so I decided we should go to Bendigo! A short 3D2N trip since I can't afford to take too many days leave again. So accomodation is booked, car rental TBA by tubbs; Bendigo, here we come! And Nooooo, I haven't forgotten about the shopping I've done! The cropping and editing of the clothings and accessories is on its way! ;)