London - April 2009

It's been a lifelong ambition of Samantha's to become a true blue Little Aussie Battler! (well, who can blame her, she was born in England, so some of us have a heavy cross to bear!)

After some paperwork and to-ing and fro-ing between here and Australia's Passport Offices and then London's Australian High Commission, Samantha and I travelled down to London to participate in the ceremony to become and Australian citizen, and therefore, a Little Aussie Battler!

Australia House is pretty cool and was even the venue for one of the Harry Potter films...very grand indeed.

Here are the pics, with a couple from the Law area of London too.

Etretat & Honfleur - Normandie - France - April 2009

After we had visited Villers-Bretonneaux for Anzac Day, we drove down to the Normandie coast and stayed at a small town called Etretat.

Etretat is a nice town, most notable for cider (Normandie is famous for cider - loads of apples) and also an unusual rock formation on the coastline, resembling an elephant's trunk, dipping into the water.

We really enjoyed our short time in Etretat and just a short distance down the coast is a larger town called Honfleur.

Loads of tourists as it was a superb day, but not overly touristy and a really cool place to visit.

The harbour in Honfleur is very impressive, especially with the tall building overlooking the old harbour.

The Somme - France - April 2009 (Anzac Day)

As all (true) Australians know, Anzac Day means a lot to us.

Sure, it represents, to some, an Australian battle at Gallipoli where we lost hundreds of young men in the first world war but it has come to mean more than that - as it's about mateship, courage and determination in the face of adversity - all characteristics that mean everything to Australians and highlight our view on life.

However, whilst Gallipoli has received the major amount of publicity - probably due to this being one of the first major conflicts Australia has served in - there were actually more Australian men fighting in Northern France and Belgium at the Western Front.

Consequently, more Australian men died in World War I in these battles and many battles were far more important in terms of the outcome of the war than the battles at Gallopoli.

We did visit Gallipoli last year and this was a really momentous occasion as some of my Great Uncles fought there and one of my mothers uncles won the Military Medal for courage and service as a field ambulanceman in the Light Horse Regiment.

However, it was especially poignant for us to visit The Somme and the battlefields of Northern France as one of my Great Uncles fought and died in the Battle of Mont St Quentin in 1918. (Sadly, only a few short months shy of the war ending but that's the way it was for many other fine and brave men from both sides)

This visit coincided with Anzac Day and we wanted to attend the Anzac Day Dawn Service in France at Villers-Bretonneaux.

This was the second official service at Villers-Bretonneaux, with the 2008 service being the first.

Of course, we were surprised to learn, perhaps through our ignorance, that Villers-Bretonneaux itself has been conducting services for some time as recognition for Australian troops liberating their town in 1918.

In fact, they have a wonderful museum in their small town, at the local primary school no less, that celebrates the immense contribution that Australian servicemen made towards France, the allied forces and the towns and cities of the Western Front during World War I.

The museum was superb actually and was partly the result of a gift of aid from Victoria in the 1920's, after the war. It highlighted so many of the Australian servicemens stories and how they fought in the war.

We have visited France previously and Northern France was always described as rather industrial and therefore we were not overly bothered in the past but I can safely say that these descriptions are complete crap.

The area of The Somme (the beautiful river of the Picardie region) is wonderful and absolutely superb in terms of beauty and style and with so much history, it is definitely a part of the world we will revisit.

The day before the service we had driven to Amiens to base ourselves and following this, we visited many of the Australian memorials. Most are near small towns and yes, there are 91 years since the fighting ended there in World War I but there is no indication at all with the beauty of the area to indicate such conflict.

We visisted Villers-Bretonneaux - with the Australian War Memorial and the town, with the Franco-Australian museum - Le Hamel, where Australian troops were credited with shooting down the Red Baron. This memorial was in the middle of a crop field and still had trenches - but it was beautifully situated and so peaceful.

Following this, we searched and found my Great Uncle's grave at Hem-Monacu Farm Military Cemetery.

Francs Noble was a Lieutenant in the Australian Army 2nd Battalion and on the morning of 31 August 1918, he led a charge within the Battle of Mont St Quentin, near Peronne.

This battle has been described as one of the most important battles in World War I and despite the overwhelming number of German troops, the Australian troops fought and took the hill at Mont St Quentin.

Sadly, my Great Uncle died instantly - shot in the temple by a machine gun bullet.

However, he died a brave man. A man to make his family and his country very proud.

His gravestone had a very touching and special message -

A big Australian

A good son

A grand man

We will meet him later on.

I was unaware of these words, however, they were very touching and my father was very proud of these words when I told him on our return to Britain.

Following this, we visited the memorial dedicated to the brave men who fought at Mont St Quentin.

Apparently there was a more aggressive memorial depicting a soldier destroying a German eagle. However, in World War II, the Germans retook the area and destroyed this statue.

Fortunately, now, the memorial is a simple statue of a digger - far better and more representative of Australia than the previous statue.

The next day was Anzac Day and along with several thousand other Australians, Samantha and I attended the Dawn Service at Villers-Bretonneaux Australian War Memorial.

This was again, very poignant and we are proud to have visited the area, first and foremost, proud secondly that we participated in the 2nd Dawn Service in France on the Western Front and finally, proud to have visited the site of my Great Uncles grave and where he fell, serving his country and flegling nation.

London (Wembley - Luton v Scunthorpe) - April 2009

Luton Town have had a few poor years recently, mainly due to inscrupulous management of the football club and without going into the ins and outs of it all, we have been deducted a load of points that means that survival in the league is nigh on impossible.

However, there are several separate competitions in England, one of which is the football league trophy, or as it is known, the Johnstone's Paints Football League Trophy.

The points deductions and poor management of the club have all combined to really galvanise Luton supporters and the fact that we made the final at Wembley was a massive, massive achievement.

Sure, all the arrogant supporters who follow Manchester, Liverpool, Chelsea, yawn, Arsenal, ho hum, etc can disparage clubs like Luton and this trophy but what do they know about supporting a team when it is doing it tough? Nothing. And I am glad I am not a supporter of one of these teams.

Anyway, so it was that Samantha and I secured tickets and much to my surprise, Luton sold 40,000 tickets to the match - in the process setting a new record for the most amount of supporters at the New Wembley Stadium from the one club!

We drove down on the day of the match and Scunthorpe is basically on the way from our place in Durham. Consequently we saw loads and loads of their fans along the way, until we went through Luton and we were out in force.

Orange is the colour our supporters were asked to dress in and there was orange everywhere once we got to the stadium!

The famous Wembley Way was absolutely awash with orange and it was absolutely fantastic to see such support for my grand old club.

Scunthorpe are a very handy team and were in the division above us. In fact, just to make the final we had had to beat three teams in the league above us as well as the best team in our league, so it wasn't an easy run by any means.

So, to the game - after a very loud and well deserved booing to the person who presided over Luton's points deduction Scunny took an early lead which certainly quietened the Luton end. However, we equalised with a well taken goal from Chris Martin - 1 all at half time, cool.

Second half, Scunny had most of the ball but then we went up the other end and Tom Craddock controlled brilliantly and put one away, holy moly, 2-1 up and we went mental...!!!

Two minutes remaining, can we hang on?

No, was the short answer and of course not as Scunny scored a superb goal - fair play, what a great goal....but we are Luton and nothing is ever easy for us!

2 all at full time.

Extra time required.

Could we do it? We looked very tired...but no, out we came, looking good and five minutes into the first period of extra time and Claude Gnakpa, our substitute, latched onto a through ball, lofted the ball over the oncoming keeper and after what seemed an age, the ball bounced across the line and hit the net.

Incredible! 3-2 up....!!!

From there, we looked pretty solid and there was no real problem from Scunny and we ran out victors in an awesome match which saw my club triumph over adversity and claim the trophy!

What a brilliant day and certainly one of the best sporting matches I have ever been to!

Paris - March-April 2009

It's fair to say that we enjoy visiting Paris and we have done so at least once a year since 2005, our first visit to the beautiful city.

Samantha's mother, Jean, was visiting from Australia and we thought, well, she might enjoy Paris, let's book a trip over with our travel partner, EasyJet and off we went.

The weather was rainy of the first day and as we were staying near Canal St. Martin, in an apartment - sorta living like locals, maybe-ish, we just mosied around the area initially.

Canal St. Martin is quite a nice area so that was all good.

The next day, our first full day of this trip in Paris, and we had a good look around. Starting with a metro to Montmartre, or at least the station behind Sacre Couer, we then walked up the hill to the amazing Sacre Couer.

This is a fabulous church at one of, if not the highest spot in Paris. The views across Paris are amazing and even with the usual amount of Parisian smog, it's always a cool sight.

Following our time at Sacre Couer we had a decent wander around Montmartre, always a decent walk and then headed across town to the ever-beautiful Musee Rodin.

This is my favourite museum in Paris for three reasons - it's very stylish, with the chateau styled building that Auguste Rodin lived and worked, Rodin's sculptures are absolutely magnificent and finally, it's just a really relaxing place to have a look at great art and a sit down.

We then wandered over to Napoleon Bonaparte's tomb, which is housed in the Invalides - amazing that a small man has such a massive tomb, but there you go.

The Musee D'Orsay was the next museum to visit after walking down the grand Seine and this museum was formerly a railway station - and what a brilliant building - absolutely spectacular.

The art in this museum is also equally spectacular with works by Picasso, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Latrec, Monet - to name a few. It's a brilliant museum, no doubt.

I don't think we need to highlight every minute of every day, however, we visited loads of sights in Paris and we all had a great time.

Check the pics.