I sent a quick email to the national Sunrise breakfast show this morning about something I saw them doing a live story on, and sure enough they brought it up on the next cross. They mentioned my name 3 times which is a nice little surprise in the morning over breakfast.

Even in the winter Sydney can still look beautiful

To be honest Sanna is doing 95% of all the wedding planning as I’ve had my plate 110% full with setting up and starting the new business off. The wedding planning is all going well though, about 6 months to go and it’s all about 75% planned I’d say.

Well me Sanna and my dad have finally launched our company it’s no longer a secret, Cousin Jacks Pasty Co. so named after the nickname given to the Cornish who emigrated 100’s years ago to live in Australia and bringing the recipes with them. Have a look at the website www.cousinjackspastyco.com and the Facebook page www.facebook.com/CousinJacksPastyCo

It’s taken us a year and a half to build the company from the initial idea 2 years ago. So much effort has been put in by so many people which is evident when you see the website and the photos of the actual store. Developing and testing all the recipes at home and then at the markets was just half of it, creating the whole brand and designing/building the store and getting good staff is a massive task. I’m currently working 60-70 hour weeks in the store so it’s hard work but, the initial reaction after 3 weeks has been overwhelmingly positive and we have  a solid local regular repeat customer base. We just hit a milestone of selling our 500^th pasty too!

We have so little social time available at the moment so it’s great to see our friends come to the store to say hello and of course try some of our pasties. Last night we went out to the cinema to watch the new film prometheus (I’d give it a 7.5 out of 10) it was the first thing outside of working at the store and sleeping for 3 weeks, was a great evening for a change. Not so many updates on my blog for a while as its been Cousin Jacks 110% so I apologise for that.

Ahhhhhhh karting with lightsabers, seems like so long ago now since we last did it back late last year, in a galaxy far far away…

At the Northern end of the Glow worm tunnel

This Sunday Damien, dad, Sanna and me went for a 2 hour drive from Sydney to the North West area of the Blue Mountains to visit the Glow worm tunnel I’ve always heard of. The final 30 km’s is on VERY rough unsealed road so I really don’t recommended taking a car you care about getting damaged possibly. From the car park at the end of the unsealed road it is only a very easy 1km walk to the tunnel. The tunnel used to be a old 400m long railway tunnel abandoned in the early 1900’s. Now glow worms have taken up residence.

At the entrance to the tunnel, it looks like Jurassic park

Due to incredibility wet month we’ve had, there was a lot of water in the tunnel. Remember to takes torches of course as its pitch black in the middle. When you do get the the middle, turn your touch off and look around and you will see the hundreds, possible thousands of glow worms all glowing a greeny bluey colour, they look like stars.

Its pitch black in the tunnel and the glow worms glow so faintly we couldn’t take any good photos of them.

Looking out to daylight after venturing through

Me and Damien walking to the tunnel

Naughty Terry eating scones on his diet

Hello all, this weekend me Sanna and my dad visited Cockatoo Island in the middle of Sydney harbour which was a old jail and large naval ship yard in world war 2. I found this happy diver

We went on an hour and a half guided tour of all the old ship building yard and buildings and bomb shelters and tunnels under the island, it was fascinating, would well recommend it.

An impressive selection of beer and wine bottle well done all

Thanks for all that came to the Mardi Gras party and parade this year. Here is the video of the parade from the party, it took 3 hours to put together and 3 days to upload to YouTube as we run out of internet quota from watching too many HD movies off the net nooooooooo.

Videos 14 minutes long. Last year’s video was even longer! It’s hard to get over 30 minutes of footage down to just over 10, whichever float you cut out, they send me YouTube comments or messages complaining I cut them out, it happened last year!

Hope to see you next year, get your names in on the guest list early to avoid disappointment.

> Watch in HD here <

Quick photo update, here’s a photo of Oskar, Damien and Troy on the balcony before the parade.

Sanna and I on Sunday hired 2 single sea kayaks each and paddled out to Shark Island in the middle of Sydney harbour from Rose Bay.

It took us 15 mins to paddle there. It was a bit choppy when some of the bigger boats and speed boats went past, you just have point into the bow wave and ride over them. I was more thinking of sharks and seeing the jellyfish in the water, Sanna called me a sissy.

On the island there is a small shelter with some tales in it, there is a public toilet and some small picnic tables scattered around that’s it. The view back to the city and the harbour was very nice.

The public toilet was opened sided and had arguably the world’s best most beautiful view from a public toilet, check it out:

Something for my overseas blog readers. Kanga barbie skewers, not something you’ll find in your typical supermarket meat section. These ones are Herb & Garlic road kill flavour, yum.