Aunty Joel

I became an Uncle today!

Zac and Fraze (my middle brother (I'm the youngest and sim is the oldest) and Fraze his beautiful wife) proudly brought Eliza into the world! After an approximately 38 hour labour, she arrived into the world in Frankston hospital (already wearing moccasins and a flanny jumpsuit I presume - just kidding).

We got the phone call from Zac at about midnight our time on Friday night stating that labour pains had started. I was so excited to receive another call from Zac at 3:45am this morning that the birthing process was starting and from then on Em and I couldn't sleep from the excitement of it all. Then at approximately 8am Sunday morning our time Zac rang to tell me I am an Uncle. I was joking throughout the duration of the pregancy that if it is a girl I could be an Aunty instead!

Here is a pic of Zac and Fraze taken some time ago - but here it is for those who haven't met them.


We are both fantastically excited and can't wait to see and hold our little niece! We are sure she is just beautiful and can't wait to see some pics - if anyone can send some over by email it would be fantastic. It's time like these that the diameter of this planet really give you the irits! We are sending our love and wishes to Zac and Fraze as they both recover from this amazing experience.

Apart from Zacs phone call on Friday night, we also had ourselves a pretty surreal experience that night! Emma, Ryan and I went to see an Australian musician called Darren Hanlon play in Egersund at the Egersund Visefestival. It was about an hours drive away but was well worth it. For those of you who aren't familiar with his music here are a couple of youtube clips of some of his songs. Well worth a listen.


This one is of his latest single - Elbows. A true story about brushing elbows with a famous actress - he told us who it was about too! Currently getting a lot of airplay on triple J.


His more popular song from his recent album.


Probably his most famous song - Falling Aeroplanes.

Anyway we got chatting to Darren after the show and he was flying out from Stavanger at 6am and therefore had to get up before 4am to get there in time on the Saturday morning - so we offered him a lift and a place to stay. Not really expecting him to take us up on it, we went off to see another band after he played. Just as we were about to leave he grabbed us and said he would take us up on his offer! So we packed his gutar, banjko, ukelele and other odds and ends into our little Polo and made our way back to Stavanger.

He was a lovely bloke and we asked him to pose with a drink coaster Ryan and I got him to sign when we last saw him at the Royal Oak in Tassie. We just managed to finish the Tassie Trail cycling tour across Tassie in order to get back and see him and we got him to promise us (signed on the back of a drink coaster of course) that he would come and play in Stavanger this year and put us on the door list. Quite freaky and surreal experience actually. He was kind enough to ask me in the car on the way to the airport whether I had heard from Zac and Fraze yet about the baby. You never know - little Eliza may end up with a song written about her!


We have been a little slack lately with the blog but we do have some excuses! I have been quite busy in the last week as I was down in Langesund (a couple of hours south west of Oslo) for a few days last week when I had to organise the lifting and transport on a barge of the large Template (100 tonne extremely expensive lump of steel that sits 380 m below the sea and allows oil companies to get richer!) from Langesund to Stavanger. The project went extremely well and smooth with no hiccups at all. We finished it 2 days ahead of anticipated schedule which was an excellent result. Here are some pics of the operation.


Lifting it with a heavy lift vessel in Langesund.


Here she is sitting on the barge in Dusavik (Stavanger) after its 24 hour tug journey up the wild coast of Norway ready to be lifted off.


The big crane ramshorn block we used to lift her off with.


Here she is being lifted with the Conlift in Dusavik.


Me and Torbjørn ensuring the welders finish their job properly on the barge late at night after she has been landed on the quayside.


Also lots of people always ask how light it is at night during summer. Well this shot was NOT taken at quarter to 11 in the morning - it was quarter to 11 at night. It was from the other night about 2 weeks after the longest day of the year. As you can see it is still quite bright outside.