All tne news that's fit to print, and of course a golf report

December 29 - All the news that’s fit to print

The morning newspaper in Sydney is not so different from the US. Their politicians are behaving badly, cars are wrecked, spouses are battered, and rains have flooded parts of the country while other parts are too dry. However cricket news is generally ignored in the Fort Worth Star Telegram.

Here the Australia vs. England cricket match is a front page story, plus a special section. Australia is in mourning because the Brits have kicked their asses for the first time on their home court in 34 years and did it in convincing fashion. The Aussies lost by 159 runs, but it could have been worse. They were behind 444 to 5 after the first inning. It took three more days until they officially lost. I guess cricket does have the 10 run rule. Heck, they must not even have a 100 run rule.  It seems cruel if a team is behind by almost 400 runs after the first inning that they should have to finish the match. Just go to the pub and get over your licking.

Another story in today’s Sydney paper was about a female minister in who was arrested as she was climbing out a broken window of her neighbor’s home in the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff (Mike’s birthplace), while carrying two fur coats. A lap top computer and several purses where found in the minster’s car that was parked in the driveway. Her explanation was, “I used poor judgment.” What are the odds a story about a petty crime in Oak Cliff would run on the day I am reading the paper in Sydney? Pretty sure it was a first time mention for Oak Cliff in the Sydney Morning Herald.

New South Wales Golf Club was founded in 1928. It is listed in the top 10 courses worldwide. We played it today in brilliant sunshine. The course is a combination of St. Andrews in Scotland and Pebble Beach in California. It has links style fairways bordered by heather and deep pot bunkers in the fairways and surrounding the greens like Scotland. Its layout along steep rock cliffs that fall straight down into the Pacific makes you think of Northern California. .


No pars on this hole

Our playing partner was a NSWGC member who is a retired partner with PWC, who went back to law school and is now also a barrister. Good thing he was with us because about half the holes are not open shots. You absolutely need course knowledge on this golf course. If you hit into the brush, your ball is history. Put a ball in a bunker and the only way out is backwards. We saw one woman take six shots to get out of a greenside trap. Wonderful golf course. On a windy day it would eat you up.



Back to town after golf and took a stroll through the business district down to Chinatown. Great Chinese food at Marigolds.

I have an idea for new business to share with each of you. Since it is already tomorrow in Australia, I am officially a time traveler. Here’s the business plan.  Each of you sends me $1,000 and I’ll buy lottery tickets for today. Since the drawing has already happened, we can’t lose. This plan is foolproof.  What could possible go wrong with this plan? Trust me.

Tomorrow we play Australia Club! Cheers.

Kangaroos, Koalas and The Blue Mountains

December 29 Blue Mountains and strange animals

Another early morning pick up by Suanne Adelman, our favorite tour guide, for this day’s trip out to the country side. This time she brings Lawrence, her husband along for the ride. He and Mike settle into the back seats while the girls drive and navigate. The trip west takes us past the Olympic Stadium and other parts of the grounds left over from the 2000 Olympic Games.

As the highway climbs up from sea level in Sydney to the Blue Mountain ridges at about 3,000 feet, the land becomes more lush and green. The Blue Mountains get their name from the bluish hue in the air that is caused by a vapor that rises off the eucalyptus trees that cover the rocky hills.

Suanne’s plan today is to get out ahead of the hoards of Indian (dot not feather) and Japanese tourists who jammed up her tour the day before. The plan works. She drops us at the gondola for the visitor’s center and we go aboard with no wait time at all.  

The glass bottomed gondola travels on a cable out over a 300 feet deep canyon with a waterfall that drops down the rocky face of the sheer cliff. At the far side, we board another gondola that drops straight down to the floor of the canyon. A short walk takes us to an old coal mine that was the reason for a tunnel in the cliff that opens up a narrow gap from the canyon floor to the top of the ridge. We board a tram that is hoisted by cable almost vertically up the canyon through the gap cut for the original coal cars.  The view has been spectacular from the transverse over the canyon, then down into the valley and then back up through the gap.

At the visitors center we visit the statues that depict the aboriginal legend of the three sisters. The legend is that the sisters were turned into stone and their father spent eternity trying to get them back to life. Three stone pillars along the canyon wall are supposed to be the personification of the sisters.     

After the visit to the well organized visitor center, Suanne took us to us to a spot she learned about from other tour guides. It was a terrific view of the mountain ridges and valleys with no guard rails and no gift shop. Just a slab of flat sandstone overlooking a wild rain forest was our perch. It was amazing.

Australia has animals like no other place on earth. Featherstone is a place that showcases many of them for visitors like us. We see birds, lizards and mammals that only exist in Australia. This small, privately owned operation has a large collection of well cared for animals that are out in the open, where possible, so visitors can interact with them. Susan has been looking forward to this all week. She gets to touch and feed Kangaroos and Koalas. She has accomplished her mission in Australia.



Happy Anniversary - Sydney Style

December 28- Our 15^th Anniversary Day

We wake up early and find the typical morning clouds have completely cleared out. A perfect day for links golf, alfresco dining and a walk to the Opera House is in store. We are finally at the day that is the reason we planned this trip to begin with, our 15^th anniversary celebration.

A 30 minute cab ride takes us to St. Michaels Golf Club for our first round of golf in the southern hemisphere. We check in quickly and they let us go off early as a twosome. St. Michaels is an old style ocean links course. It has nine holes that head out towards the ocean and return to the clubhouse, then a second nine that follows the same pattern. We enjoy the perfect day, the classic golf course and manage to play some respectable golf with rental clubs on an unfamiliar track.


Mike's a Saint, and he's got his own golf course



Susan par's her first hole in Australia

 After the round we grab some lunch in the clubhouse and discover that a cheeseburger has meat, cheese, tomato, lettuce and a slice of pickled beet. The pickled beet was not bad, just unexpected.  It also adds an odd purple stain to the inside of the burger. Maybe Dutch’s should add beets to its burgers so they will bleed purple for TCU?

After relaxing back at the Westin for a few hours, we get dressed for our date night in Sydney. We walk down to the harbor and locate Café Sydney on the top floor of the Old Customs Building. This is the hippest, trendiest restaurant in Sydney. The wait staff is dressed in black and all wear headsets and boom mikes. We score the best table in the place. Our two-top table is at the edge of the roof and overlooks the harbor.  While we have our drinks and negotiate the dinner order with our Jude Law look- a-like waiter, we see the ferry boats come and go from the wharf below.

Dinner is exquisite. Susan tries a lobster-like crustacean that is only found the waters off Sydney called a “Mudbug”. Mike has baby lamb chops that are the best he has ever eaten. Great view, wonderful food, excellent service, and then they kick us out because we have used up our allotted table time. I told you it was hip and trendy.

We leave in good humor because we are running late for the concert at the Sydney Opera House. We reach our third row center seats after the overture and are entertained for the next two hours by the Australian Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney Chorale, jazz trumpeter James Morrison and three operatic soloists. The concert hall is completely full and the audience is enthusiastic about the performance. The ensemble does everything from classics, to jazz, to show tunes, to a fantastic Russian marimba player. At the end everyone in the hall, including the musicians throw colored paper streamers about the place and celebrate the New Year three days ahead of time.

We begin the uphill hike back to the Westin, but give up when we spot a handy taxicab. Soon we are home at our Westin hideaway after a long day. Susan has been planning this for months and everything worked perfectly.

What a great anniversary!

Wine and Whine, and thank goodness for new and old friends

December 27, 2010

Hunter Valley—the wine country

I am awful at small talk. We go to a party and I am in the corner watching everyone or standing at the side of a conversation circle listening. Never have been able to do it. Never will. Today I met Richard, the world champion of small talk. I know he can go 10 hours straight because I witnessed it, unfortunately Susan did too.

Richard picked us up at the hotel at 7:45 for the two hour drive down to the Hunter Valley where the vineyards and tasting rooms are located.  Susan picked him because he was the only wine country tour guide who was a degreed Oenologist. He has been in the wine business over 25 years and is very knowledgeable about the agriculture, production, distribution, marketing and the business side of the industry. He attempted to tell us everything he has learned in the past 25 years in one session. Wore us out!

Our idea was drive through some pretty country, drink wine, eat some cheese and crackers and come back to Sydney. What we got was a ten hour course in almost everything. To be clear, when I say everything, I do not mean just about wine… I mean everything.  And the highlight for Susan, she saw her first Kangaroos up close and personal.

A partial listing of subjects covered: liquid propane gas automobiles, the natural gas industry in Australia, comparative tax policy of the US and Australia, types of turbochargers on Volkswagens, drivers education in Australia, investment banking in Thailand, solid waste disposal and using it to generate energy, green water devices for residential usage, cattle ranching in the outback, ranch management using helicopters and satellites, bottle manufacturers in Italy, using native foliage as traffic barriers on divided highways, public university admissions policy, General Motors malfeasance and weather pattern in the Pacific.
We did do the wine too. It was a highly structured class on wine appreciation and wine drinking best practices. Richard had a lesson plan and he delivered it…all… in sequence… unvaried… by rote.

Susan slept in the back seat for the two hour ride home while Richard held forth with me in the passenger seat. She owes me big time. When we arrived at the hotel, I leapt out of the car and hugged Richard like a brother I would never see again and darted into the lobby without looking back.

Soon we were in the Concierge Club having drinks with our new friends Patrick and Phil from LA and Lindsay Susan's childhood friend and recounting our day. Our new best friend at the Westin, Fiona the Conceirge asked if I wanted a glass of wine. I ordered two vodkas on the rocks.

I am still considering if I want to give up drinking wine completely.          

Sydney Sailing - Boxing Day

December 26^th-

Boxing Day in Sydney

The stores in Sydney are open at 5 a.m. this morning and the customers are lined up around the block to take advantage of huge savings on after Christmas Day sales. Boxing Day is the biggest retail sales day in Australia.

I have asked several people, “What is the derivation of ‘Boxing Day’. They all give me a blank look and stammer about a bit. They are polite, but their demeanor says, “What is wrong with you? We just call it ‘Boxing Day’. We don’t care why. We just know it is a holiday that gives us another day off the day after Christmas. Why can’t you just accept that and let it go.”

I guess it is just like when someone in the U.S. asks, “What does ‘La Quinta’ mean in English” and we can’t translate it, but we all know it means that hotel next door to Denny’s.

Susan can’t pass up a chance for a retail opportunity, so she elbows into the mob and does a little light shopping just to keep her skill level up.

Under overcast skies, we grab a cab down to Rose Bay wharf to catch our ride on the good ship Sydney Sundowner for a harbor cruise to watch the start of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race. This is an annual event on Boxing Day where sailboats depart Sydney Harbor and race across the open seas to Hobart, Tasmania. It takes from 2 to 5 days, depending on wind and weather.

We arrive on the dock a few minutes early and mingle with others who are there to board their boats to see the race. A light rain is falling, but we paid our money, so we are going to take our ride.

While we chat with our dock mates, I notice a familiar face. It is an attractive woman carrying a small child across the parking lot. I smile at her, she smiles back. You all know how bad I am with names, so to avoid being embarrassed when she gets up to us, I ask Susan to look at her and tell me who it is. She punches my arm and excitedly says, “That’s Naomi Watts. I’m going to say hello.” She leaves me standing there.

After several boats come and go the Sydney Sundancer, a 56 foot sailboat, cruises up to the dock and our cluster of about 20 couples steps on board. Captain John Boyce and his wife Lynne welcome us and we head out into the mob of sail and power boats in the harbor.

We cross the choppy waters and Captain John maneuvers us right up to the starting line and edges out other boats that are trying for the primo position to see the start of the race.  At 1 p.m. sharp, a cannon fires and the 86 sailboats in the race come sprinting across the starting line. First come the mega boats with professional crews. Then come the smaller boats until the last racer has crossed the starting line. Captain John chases them down the harbor until they make the turn out past North Head (the mouth of the harbor) and into the Pacific headed for Tasmania.

We turn about and cruise back to a protected cove and drop anchor. We quickly discover that Susan and I are the only two non-“Sydney-Siders” on the boat. Some couples have been on this same cruise on Boxing Day for over 20 years. They quickly welcome us as long lost friends and make us feel right at home. Soon we are trading stories and family histories.

Lynne lays out a gourmet lunch and a singer/guitar player starts a serenade performing everything from Roy Orbison to Jimmy Buffet. The clouds part and the sun pops out to make the day even more enjoyable. After lunch several of us decide to go for a swim in the clear water. Yes it is clear, but wow is it cold! After the initial shock we paddle around and find it is nice to be cooled off from the hot Sydney sun.

We spend the afternoon getting better acquainted with our new found friends. We find Australians are a lot like Texans. They are welcoming, outgoing, funny and unpretentious. We find we have a lot in common. Soon we have golf game set up for later in the week with one couple at their club. Another woman is going to meet us in Santa Fe next August. Yet others pledge to stay with us in Ft. Worth next time they are in the states.

When we get back to the dock, Jennifer insists everyone must come up to her house overlooking Double Bay for a drink. We make that trek up a steep hill and enjoy the spectacular view from the roof of her penthouse apartment.

We never did learn the significance of Boxing Day. But like our new Aussie friends, we don’t know and we don’t care. We had the day off, we ate, we drank and we had a good time.

Christmas Day - Sydney Style

Remember that harbor bridge I mentioned from yesterday? Well this morning having nothing better to do on Christmas, we decided to climb up to the top of it and overlook Sydney Harbor. Susan arranged the session several weeks before we arrived in Sydney. I guess I knew she had set it up, but I really did not focus on the particulars.  She assures me it will be a highlight.

After a fifteen minute walk from the hotel, we stand at the base of this historic bridge that was the longest span built in its day (opened in 1932). The base is built of hand carved granite stones and the superstructure is made from steel produced in the 1920’s. This iconic bridge passed its engineered useful life several years ago, but is still the main artery from the north side of Sydney harbor for cars and train traffic.

We check in at the ticket counter and are assigned to our tour coordinator. We sign a standard release form that gives the bridge climb operator permission to burn our houses and kidnap our children without any penalty in the event of their negligence.  After giving everyone in our group a breathalyzer test she takes us into a locker room and we are told to take off our clothing, watches, jewelry and all other personal possessions and leave everything behind in a locker. No worries yet, huh?

We are issued blue ball caps and grey and blue polyester jump suits that covered us from wrist to ankle. It occurs to me the term “jump suit” takes on added connotation when a person is wearing one while scaling a structure that is 134 meters above the water. This functional garment has numerous D rings sewed into the collar. Our coordinator connects sturdy nylon straps to the rings and then attaches the other ends to our caps and sunglasses.

She observed “It will be quite windy and the straps will keep your stuff from going over the side.” Someone asks “How windy?”  She assures us they have a strict policy of stopping the climb when winds reach 90 kilometers per hour. Then she sends each of us through a metal detector to make sure we have left all our valuables in a locker.  

Next we get a webbed harness to strap around our waists and cinch up it as tight as we can stand it. This harness has a nylon tether strap sewed into it that has a plastic device hooked to the end. The harness does take some of the extra bulk out of the waist of my jumpsuit.  Then we are issued walkie-talkies and headsets so we will be able to hear our climb master, Ross. He “test, test, tests” to make sure we can hear him. Then he shows us how to hook up our harness’s tether strap with the plastic device to a stainless steel cable that runs alongside the narrow and steep stairs. The plastic piece slides along the cable from the bottom rung to the top of the bridge.

And we are off, up the steel ladders and stairs inside the superstructure of the bridge. The steel is rusted and corroded. “Not to worry”, says Ross. They are constantly cleaning and repainting the steel. It was reassuring to learn that the deteriorating steel was getting a fresh coat of paint.

After climbing inside the labyrinth for an hour and a half we are at the top. The wind is howling. The straps on our caps do, in fact, keep them from blowing to Tasmania. We can see 50 miles in every direction. Our guide informs is that if we fell off the bridge at this point, it would take 5.3 seconds to hit the water. A group picture is snapped and we head back down the other side of the bridge.

Later they will send up a crew to scour my fingerprints out of the steel handrail.

Susan’s cousin, Tammy and her husband Rod pick us up at the bridge base and take us on a picnic in a nearby harbor park and a driving tour of the north shore. We end up at their comfortable home for dinner with their son and daughter Andrew and Kylie. Tammy is a jewelry designer and maker. Susan purchases last minute Christmas gifts when she chooses a necklace for her and cuff links for Mike.

When they drop us back at the hotel, we are pooped.

Merry Christmas everyone.        
     

Sydney by Seaplane

December 24^th Christmas eve

The downtown streets of Sydney are packed with Christmas shoppers and partiers. Many are wearing red and white Santa hats along with their shorts and flip flops.

We take a quick taxi out to the seaplane wharf at Rose Harbor. There we board a 1965 Beaver on floats (same type plane Harrison Ford flew in ‘Six Days, Seven Nights’). Our pilot claims to have over 18,000 hours in the Beaver. He lets Mike sit in the right seat and fires up the P&W radial and maneuvers around the yachts tied up on buoys in the harbor.

We make a takeoff run that finally unstuck the floats after what seemed like a mile and roll over on the left wing to fly up the harbor. 

 A short 15 minute flight and we drop down into a narrow fjord and land. The Beaver water taxies up to the restaurant’s dock and we alight at the Cottage Point Inn.

College Point Inn, a small but elegant restaurant with a varied menu and a good wine selection that make the afternoon pass by quickly. Lunch takes three hours, but it is very relaxed.  

We chat with our neighbors and find out that we will be having dinner at the same restaurant in Sydney on Dec 28^th as a couple from Sydney who share our anniversary date. The young couple, who shared the floatplane with us, is also from Sydney and engaged to be married next year.

Soon our airplane drops over the ridge and taxies up to the dock.  We climb aboard and he takes us on an aerial tour of the harbor and downtown Sydney. Then, we drop back into the yacht basin in Rose Harbor and our pilot makes another smooth water landing.

Before returning to the Westin, we walk through China Town and the Hay Market (named because they used to sell hay there in the old days). Both are packed with Christmas shoppers, tourists and Asians buying the produce in the grocery stalls of the market. We walk a few blocks back to the hotel and crash.

No dinner tonight after that lunch. So we read and catch up on our blog posts.

To bed so Santa can come tonight! 
 

Exploring with Suanne

December 23

Up at 5 am due to the time change, we explore our accommodations at the Westin, our base for the next ten days. Susan has scored a suite on the 28^th floor with a spacious living room and bedroom that have floor to ceiling glass walls overlooking the city and giving us peeks of the harbor between the skyscrapers. We are in the heart of the Sydney central business district. The concierge lounge has a full breakfast buffet in the morning and a cocktail hour with snacks in the afternoon.

Suanne Adelman meets us in the lobby to take us on a tour of the eastern shore of Sydney harbor and along the coastline. Susan quickly interrogates her and finds out that she is Jewish. Her parents were holocaust survivors who came to Australia after the war. Both were in Dachau and Auschwitz as teenagers and luckily survived. She runs a tour guide service and specializes in Sydney and the surrounding area. Her husband is President of their synagogue. 

With the two MOTs (Members of the Tribe) in the car, it was a day of mostly listening for Mike.

She showed us all the hidden byways along the harbor until we reached the entrance to Sydney harbor. We drove through many very upscale neighborhoods that shared spectacular views of the water. As the views improved, the real estate values increased. Not uncommon for $20 to $30 million prices along the shoreline.  Some have their yachts just off their back yard ready to cruise.  Many neighborhoods have their own private beaches accessible only if you know the “secret” narrow lanes to them. A little off-putting is the prominent installation known as a shark fence. Suanne assures us almost no one is eaten by sharks. Still at some point the neighborhood found the need for a fence. She confides she only swims where there is a fence.

At the end of the neighborhood tour, we reached the “Gap”, the cliffs that line the entry to the harbor. These shear rocks drop straight down onto raging surf and ragged boulders. The view is awesome, but signs line the walkway urging anyone thinking of leaping off the Gap to call the suicide prevention hotline.  Evidently this occurs enough to make this necessary.

Then on to Dover Heights, where we stop in a park to see a different view of downtown Sydney. We come up a young woman throwing balls with two dogs that look familiar. Suanne introduces us to Lisa Chimes, who is the co-host of a TV show named Bondi Vets. She is a veterinarian and lives in the neighborhood. The dogs we think are golden doodles, like our Cessna, are Cavadoodles. They are poodle/king cavalier spaniel crosses. She tells us in Australia, golden doodles are called “groodles”.  Later Susan looks up the website for Bondi Vets and we see this woman who we surprised with no makeup and in her dog training clothes is in fact a knockout and her co-host is an Adonis, also a local vet. Don’t have any idea what the show is about, but the hosts are worth a look.

Next stop is Bondi Beach, the most famous beach in Sydney. The day is slightly overcast so only a few hundred people are on the water, surfing, swimming and sunbathing. Suanne takes us to Icebreakers’ Swimming Club, where an Olympic oversized pool is built along the shore line so some of the ocean waves break over the sides of the deck and into the pool.

On the home stretch back to the Westin, we circle the main park in Sydney to see the best view of the Opera House and the bridge.

 Remember this bridge because it will be mentioned in Christmas Day’s note. Sue Ann shows us Russell Crowe’s penthouse on the wharf. Susan zoomed the camera to its maximum to get this shot of Russell’s house. She could not tell if he was home, but she tried. Can you see him waving from the window?

Next we sat in Mrs. Macquarie’s stone chair. A sandstone carving that was cut into the rock by convicts so the Governor’s wife (Mrs. Macquarie) could sit on the point and watch the ships go by.

Finally, Mike had enough and needed his medicine because he had become grumpy. Lord Nelson’s Pub, the oldest in Australia, healed him for the moment.

The place was full of office workers who had taken early departure from work and cricket fans from England and Australia. A pint of homemade pale ale took the edge off a hard day of exploration.

Suanne dropped us off in time for a little rest at the Westin. Revived, we had a light dinner and walked around the corner to see “Jersey Boys”. Susan third time to see it and Mike’s first. Back home at 11:30.

This vacationing is hard work.

December 20-21-22 (Actually not certain about 21st… see below)

Halfway around the world is a long, long time to sit on an airplane. Monday night we made our way from DFW to LAX for 3.5 hours, then boarded a Qantas 747 for the 13.5 hour overnight flight from LA to Sydney. I do not know how this happened, but we lost Tuesday. It’s just gone. We can’t find it. We left LA on Monday night and we landed in Sydney on Wednesday morning. Tuesday just evaporated. We will search for Tuesday on the way back.

First time on Qantas. The cabin crew was friendly as cocker spaniels and waited on us with good grace, anticipating our every need. When is the last time you could say that about a US domestic cabin crew? Evidently the QA cabin crew has never associated with US domestic crews. Since we departed LAX at bedtime, we were issued pajamas and slippers. Guess you could say we had a “Pajama Day”. (The Gaston girls in Virginia know what that means.) We arrived in Sydney about 10 am, so we just missed seeing Oprah. I am heartsick.

Susan’s girlhood friend, Lindsay Parsons (Lunt) picked us up at the airport and gave us the city tour and we had lunch at the Balmoral Beach Bather’s Pavilion Restaurant. She is an ex-pat from Kansas City and has lived in Australia for 20 years.  Despite her mid-western roots, she has an Australian accent and has become irrevocably imbedded in the Aussie lifestyle. It obviously suits her well.

We forced ourselves to stay up all day. After an excellent gourmet Chinese dinner at Spice Temple, we checked into our Sydney home for the next 10 days at the Westin and fell into a real bed for the first time since Sunday night in Ft. Worth.

First day in Sydney a success.

Why New Zealand?

December 18^th

Several have asked why we were married in New Zealand since we had never been there before, nor did we have any family connections there. Actually, it was our second choice. We talked about getting married in Fiji on the way to New Zealand, but found it was not allowed. Evidently Fiji is plagued with a lot of spontaneous marriages, so the Fijian authorities instituted a two week waiting period after arriving on the island to be qualified to apply for a marriage license. So we pre-applied at the NZ consulate in Los Angeles and were officially sanctioned for civil matrimony upon arrival and went straight to Russell, NZ for the ceremony.

We had a week to ourselves prior to our friends arriving for the NZ hiking trip we had planned. Diane, Kevin and Pam showed up with bright red tee shirts for us and the 14 other hikers to wear. The legend printed on their shirts said “I slept with Susan and Mike on their honeymoon”. On our shirts it said “I slept with 14 strangers on my honeymoon”.

Everyone accepted the shirts with good humor until one night we decided to wear them as a group on a dinner cruise. In the dining room, we got looks of amazement, offense and disgust from the other dinners. One mother with two pre teen boys is quietly explaining what the wording on the shirts mean. I think this is a conversation she would have chosen to avoid for few years.

Why New Zealand? We think the people who were offended by the tee shirts will have forgotten us after 15 years.

Wedding Day Photo

Russell, Bay of Islands, New Zealand

Gaston - Jacobson

There once was a couple from the States

Who went to New Zealand to escape

They decided to marry without being harried

And December 28th is the date

New Zealand Herald December 28, 1995