Gordon's Big Deck!

Karen finally won, so I decided to build my own deck over the top of the grass I laid less than a year ago!

Site Preparation: Luckily Ja and Cass were down visiting a couple of weeks ago, and with Ja's expert advice in hand the designs for "Gordon's Big Deck" (said in a Kiwi accent) were drawn up.

Last weekend I prepared the site for the deck.

I managed to save one of the small trees and relocate him to the front of the house.

During this site prep weekend I bought most of the materials I needed and ordered the wood. K and I had a fun trip from bunnings with 27 4.8m long pieces of decking pine bouncing around on the back of bunnings borrowed trailer. Luckily we are only 2 minutes down the road and Paramatta road is normal at 30km an hour ;)

Build Weekend: Day 1

With a slight hiccup of the main structural timber order falling through on Thursday arvo we thought it was going to be off for this weekend. A few quotes later and albeit $100's more the lads from Bankstown Timber were dropping the 190x45mm H3 treated pine at 10am sat. The main frame of the deck was going to be tricky, getting that bad boy level was what it was all about, so I enlisted the help of an 'old' deck hand, Andrew for Day 1 of the build.

The other great thing was that Andrew is a tool junky! and by that I don't mean he hangs about Darlinghurst on a Saturday night.... well he does sometimes ;). He has the drop saw, the jigsaw and the industrial looking hammer drill. So we were set.

After impressing on Andrew the importance of time management, we swiftly got the two 'pole faces' level and anchored to either side with the use of 22 M12 Dyna bolts (gal).. don't ask?!

After lunch the work flew, we even had K in measuring up timber ready for the chop and the frame took shape.





The end of Day 1 and the frame was up and solid as we could make it.

DAY 2: Decking and Lights

Karen was my deck hand on day 2 and once we started, we flew:



The deck lights are LED and only require 0.8w to run each one so I allowed for 6 around the deck and cabled up underneath before we began laying the deck planks, I think I'll get an electrician in to wire the transformer to the house though.

The end of Day 2 and we had an, almost, completed deck. Just the front edge, square on the side and oiling to go!

Sydney Morning Herald Half Marathon

Sunday 18th May 2008 - 07:30am Start - 21.1km - Taking in some of Sydney's best views.
I completed it in 1hour 50mins, which I was pretty pleased with seeing as 15km had been my longest run to date.

Cardboard Tube Fighting League

K and I saw this advertised in the local paper. The guys from Seattle who set up a Cardboard Tube Fighting League were going to be over in Sydney for the first ever Australian Tube Duel battle and it was free for everyone...... of course we thought that would be a laugh to go along to and so did a couple of our friends.

Now when you're sitting down the local on a Friday night thinking "what am I going to make my cardboard armor out of" like you do, Andrew suggested the beer mats we were using as a chest plate. Great idea and the basis for my costume. So on Saturday morning with a can of spray paint a few boxes, some beer coasters, an egg box and the "Coaster Crusader" was born.



After a couple of swift ones down the Court House pub in NewTown we headed to the memorial park to let battle commence. We walked around the corner and took one look at Sam and pissed ourselves laughing. To put this in perspective, my beer mat chest plate took about an hour to put together with the other bits taking a few minutes cutting and spraying. Sam's outfit was made in about the same time and put together on site:
























I only fought with one tube by the way.

After the organisers had handed out the Tubes and explained the rules - Tube hits only and break your opponents tube to progress to the next round. It was on.....
Round 1 Roboman Vs Coaster Crusader (first video created by Scottie - The Smiling Assassin)

First Round



Round 2 we went as a team two against two.

Second Round


Final Round - All against all, there can be only one!


Well it kept us out the pub for a few hours anyway :) More in see below, should have Sydney on there soon.

Cardboard Tube Fighting League Link

Christmas 2007 in Five Dock

Our first Christmas in Five Dock and K and I were hosting Christmas Dinner for Matt and Tash and Dan, the orphans Christmas Dinner due to K's parent's going to Tas to spend it with Rach and the kids.

After a long drinking sesh on the last day of work with Matt and Tash at MPB (Martin Place Bar) we were going to be off for 10 days and intended on having some fun!


Paddo Bowls and beer.


View from Bar 360 looking down on Hyde Park, Centerpoint, as you can see from the shadow.


Champagne Breaky 11 Oasis Gardens style!


Gordon's first Christmas Turkey


Sit down and eat your food, Matt's been on the beer and wine all morning ;)


The Girls (and G) on Boxing Day down in Shellharbour - Aaron's parents house.


And the boys.


Happy New Year. 2008 started down the park in Five Dock - we could see the Sydney Fireworks from here and still managed to walk with the Esky home.

Now it's back to work and Bon voyage to Matt and Tash as they head to the final leg of their trip, onto Thailand!

Mr and Mrs G. Mowbray

Or as Don correctly pointed out, due to my massive title land in Scotland (all one square foot of it!)

Laird and Lady G. Mowbray



All of us on the beach at Malolo Island


Arrivals Terminal - Malolo Island


We had the best time, thanks to everyone who made it over and making it such a fantastic couple of weeks for us both! - most people just get to say 'Day'!
Quite a party.

Click on the picture below to see the whole album

K and G Wedding - Bula Bula!

Beer Fairy's and Steve and Sarah's Wedding

Don and Gog getting amongst it in the old London Lunchtime haunts.

It's been a busy couple of days back in the UK. Beers out in London and Steve and Sarah's wedding have made the days all mould into one, but it's been fun!



Just one beer before the Fairy suit came out!



Nice G-string!
Steve and Sarah's wedding over in Braintree three days later.

The cake figures were a perfect match

The happy couple just after the ceremony. What an excellent day and evening Thanks Steve and Sarah.

G and K (well K couldn't make it over but this would have been the one with both of us ;)


G abusing the bridesmaids good nature.

Manly Pipe Band - Scottish Ball

The boys in their kilts. Gordon and Fraser both wearing their new ones. From left to right:
Sam is wearing Fraser Tartan (his Gran's family - Kiwi)
Fraser is wearing Lindsay (his surname and clan! Frase went to Watford Boys with me lives here now too)
Andrew is wearing Mclaren (a relatives family name - Andrew is a friend from work in Sydney)
Gordon is wearing MacKenzie (our family's connection to a clan).

The Manly Pipe bands annual ball was a chance to don the kilt and dust off the brogues for a bit of a dancing! Great fun and getting the ferry in Sydney in a kilt raises a few eye brows and had tourists taking pictures of Sam and I? Very Aussie for them.. not.

Live Earth - 07.07.07

Doing our bit to save the planet. Live Earth Sydney - Sneaky Sound System, Ghostwriters, Paul Kelly, Missy Higgins, John Butler Trio, Wolfmother, Jack Johnson and Crowded House. A good day out and for a good cause, the planet.

Where have you been?

Well K and I have bought a new house in Five Dock and have been busy sorting that out. It's great to have our own place again, we're loving it. I've also been neglecting the blog as my new found friend Facebook has been taking up so much of my spare PC time.... sorry blogger!

Kangaroo Valley Easter Camp

We (K, G, Andrew, Chrissy, Dan and Caroline) popped down to Kangaroo Valley for an Easter camping trip, and true to form, for NSW's Easter breaks, it pissed with rain on an off for the whole 3 days! Great fun though. Check out the video link on youtube below, funny ending made us laugh and laugh.... there's not much to do but drink on the campsite at night you know.

Link to YouTube video Kangaroo Valley Biking: Click here

Sydney Bridge 75th Birthday

Sydney Harbour Bridge was 75 years old te day after paddies day. So we braved the hangovers after a night on the 'black stuff' and headed to the bridge walk, they closed it for the day and we, along with a couple of million other yellow hat cladded people walked over from North to South. Later there was a light show... oooohhhh here is a pic one of the guys from work took.

SuperBikes '07 Phillip Island

We headed down again for the third year in a row, I've got to get a bike!

Uk Christmas Trip 2006

Pictures speak a thousand words and that.....so here's a couple of thousand!

Nearly the end of another year.... I thought it was time for the GoggyBlog to have a new look...

Don is spreading the word......Parakey

I got a message from my bro Don to check out the mowblog he'd just updated.... he'd not been updating it for a while but there has been a flurry of postings over the last few weeks... winter must have arrived finally in the UK? We'll find out in just over a week when we're back for Christmas.
Here's an interesting article I got from Don - it's a bit of reading if you click on the article but sounds cool, watch out for PARAKEY in the new year! Next he'll be setting up Oracle meetings in SecondLife?? maybe we can talk about that over Christmas....

"The guy who co-invented the Firefox web browser, Blake Ross, is about to unveil a radical new way of managing all your content, wherever it might reside. The project is called Parakey. Essentially, it will overlay your existing OS and allow you to manage your photos, files, web pages by creating a kind of local server on your machine. You can then decide whom you want to give access by allocating different keys for friends, family, public access etc. You can sign up to get information on the project at www.parakey.com and read about it in this article on IEEE Spectrum." - Mowblog8th Dec 2006

Tweed Heads / Coolangatta weekend

We popped up to the Gold Coast for a weekend to visit Ja and Cass and check out their new house in South Tweed. It's a gorgeous place they've bought with get views of the Tweed river.

Tweed Heads is right on the NSW boarder with Queensland.
They showed us around and it's a lovely area, Cheers Ja and Cass!

















Beers down at Coolangatta RSL in the evening....
This is the longest surf break in Australia.

A week in New Zealand's South Island

We travelled around the South Island for a week. The first weekend was spent in Christchurch with some friends who we met playing touch rugby in London (Rick and Sue), they showed us around and took us to a rugby game Canterbury vs. Counties in Christchurch's international stadium. Then on Monday morning (with a car lent from the Harlow family) we headed down through the middle of the south Island to Lake Tekapo (take-a-poo hehehe) for a hike up a hill with great views of the lake and mountains.

Lake Tekapo - from ground and up hill

We continued down for my birthday night in Wanaka (nice small Ski town though low season this time of year).

Queenstown lake view
Tuesday and an hour drive over the Crown ranges to Queenstown (great picturesque town on the lake!) for two nights and a bit of Jet boating, Quad biking and a few beers or 5! avoided the bungy jumps though. Next it was back up the west coast to Fox Glacier where we booked in on the afternoon Heli Hike on the glacier. This was definitely the highlight of our week very impressive and even educational, brought back geography lesson memories from Watford Boys, I’m sure I did a project on glaciers at some point!


View up Fox Glacier from the middle


View down Fox Glacier.