View from my window

Every morning I open the curtains in our kitchen. It seems that the view that awaits is never the same twice. This is what I saw when I pulled the curtains back this morning.

The hunting shack at Hanleth

I've been part of a small group of pastors who regulalrly 'retreat' together for sharing and fellowship. It has been an amazing exoperience journeying with a group of guys. The relationships have deepened over a couple of years and our level of sharing gets deeper everytime we go away together. On Friday night we headed off to a large property in the Fingall Valley known as 'Hanleth' . We parked at the homestead and then changed over to four wheel drives and headed off up into the high country. The land was as dry and cracked as you could imagine. We wound our way up to an old hunting shack for the night. It's pretty primative, but the views are fantastic and the nearest neighbors are several k's away.

Here's a couple of shots inside our 'hut'. All the modern comforts of home. We even had battery powered lights. The TV didn't work, but it looked quite good!

Of course every 4 start accommodation unit must come with an amenities block and ours was no exception.

Once more I spent some time with a group of guys who I have learned to appreciate deeply. We will meet again in June for another overnighter and then our longer retreat in September - but that time we will be at Bruny!

Incidentally I'm off to Bruny this week on my own for some time out to pray and to plan and then next weekend the elders and ministry team of our church are off an yet another retreat. Must be the season.

My brother Simon had some great things to say recently about the value of rest on his page. Check it out here

Cape Hauy

Today was a public holiday in Hobart - Regatta Day. We decided to organise a church bush walk to Cape Hauy and got twenty three starters. We promoted it as an easy family walk of about four to five hours


The track got rather steep and became more of climb. Our rest stops became increasingly frequent - but eventually we saw a welcome sign



After a strenuous walk of almost three hours we arrived at Cape Hauy, looking none the worse for wear!!


We enjoyed a long lunch break sitting on a rocky platform. The seats were hard, but the view was amazing.



All that remained was the long walk home. By the time we got back we were all a little tired and sore, but enjoyed the experience all the same



There was a section in the middle of the walk that was quite flat - Oh that the whole track looked like this

Acknowledgement

I decided not to take my camera as it is a little bulky. Jo took her camera and took most the photos today. Well done Jo

Port Arthur Revisited

All four of our kids were off for a few days at the church youth camp and the diary for us was fairly uncluttered with the year still getting under way - so you put those things together and the opportunity to get a couple of nights away somewhere was too much to resist. Jo and set off last Thursday to Port Arthur and stayed at the Fox and Hounds Inn pictured below.

About 18 months ago we purchased a two year pass to Port Arthur which will expire about the middle of this year. We therefore decided to get some good mileage out of our ticket and spend a day at Port Arthur. We both took our cameras in for the day and decided to make it a photographic day. At the end of the day we returned to our room and loaded the photos onto the laptop and compared our shots.

The best thing about our room for the two nights away was the view we had outside of our window.

The after holidays look