Ross and No Pub 27-28 June 2026

For the first time in a long time went to Inglewood on Saturday morning - because we went out for dinner to celebrate Madeleine's birthday on Friday night - and then Ross (Rileigh's Dad) and I went with Mad and Hughie to the football to see GWS vs the Hawks (Hughie had a couple of spare tickets)

Coincidentally (or not, as they are mad Hawks fans) Chris and Jo were there also 

So, a very good night was had by all - and we arrived in Inglewood around 11.30am on Saturday

Was a lovely blue sky sunny day - bit chilly, but warm in the sun.

I set up a table outside for lunch

 And also did a quick tour of the garden 

The medlars are now overripe and oozed some liquid when I squeezed one  - you can see the liquid gathered in a drop poised to fall at the base of the fruit

The plants from George are also about to flower

The revived succulent is getting a flower - hoorah

And the daphnes and hellebores are also close to flowering - didn't take photos of these

Three of the tear drop beds have been cut too far back in my opinion - and the couch grass is all still there - so not that happy about that.  Not sure that some of the plants cut so far back will survive.  Will advise Shane not to cut back the last one (the daphne / hellebore /gardenia bed doesn't need cutting back) 

Hmm, its now a couple of weeks later - I've been slack again

Anyway, the others - Chris & Jo, and Fraser, Rileigh & Ross arrived for lunch.  In fact Jo brought the lunch - a delicious ploughmans lunch - cheeses, bread, pickles, charcuterie, dips etc - yum

And of course the guitars came out after the lunch was finished     

Once again, I didn't really feel like cooking dinner - thought we would just go to the pub - we had also wanted Ross to try a typical pub parma

Jo and I walked up to the pub to check that it was open/make a booking - as the metal gate had seemed closed when we drove into Inglewood this morning

And it was closed....

There was no sign, but it didn't look good

Dropped in on Steve and Denise on the way back, and they said it was closed....so no pub parma

So Plan B was to cook (didn't really want to get takeaway).  I had planned a simple roast - but ended up going overboard...

Given that we were now going to be home for dinner - I thought an open fire in the dining room would be nice.

Both Fraser and Ross split some wood for us

Some more guitar playing before dinner

And as to the food, Jo and I made 2 x pork loin roasts, a whole roast cauliflower, crunchy roast potatoes, roasted brussel sprouts with bacon, and roasted onions. A green salad on the side, and a pear crumble with icecream.

It was a feast - so much for not cooking

Didn't stay up too late

Agreed to a late breakfast - 9.30am 

But got up before hand to have a coffee, also saw that it was quite frosty - as per the roof of Justin's car

I made us bacon and eggs which we ate in the dining room

And then I bravely started on the dishes (actually a lot of dishes had already been done last night.  These were pans that were soaking and the breakfast dishes

We all did my circuit walk afterwards

Even though it was around 11am - we saw some large kangaroos bounding in front of us.  Chris was pretty impressed with how large they were (no photos)

Saw some largish ant/termite mounds

Fraser was King of the castle

Jo, Chris and Justin walking ahead

Fraser, Ross, and Rileigh bringing up the rear

And just Ross and Rileigh

Once again it was a beautiful blue sky day

Fraser and co  left after the walk

Justin took a stylish shot - cleverly highlighting the "fake" cobwebs

I went and picked more olives - this time for dry salting.  The last tree still had heaps of olives

Chris came outside and played guitar

And then Justin joined him

Jo did crocheted a blanket in the dining room 

And despite the bacon and egg breakfast - we had a late lunch - leftovers from yesterday's lunch and dinner really

I got a rather dusty bottle of wine from the cellar - which I washed

And we had a very pleasant lunch

Chris and Jo left after lunch and I did a little bit of weeding

Tried to get rid of this sour-sop at the front - forgot to take an after photo 

There are lots of these in the back garden beds - I now realise that they are from the Hoop Pine

 
 

Paranormal Investigators and lots of guests Fri 22 - Sun 24 May 2026

Well, I'm sort of up to date - at least this is the last entry I need to do until the next time we go to Inglewood

Way back in February I wrote that a car had pulled up out the front - and some people jumped out and started chatting with me.

Turned out they were paranormal investigators and had always wanted to have a look at our house

I think I surprised them by agreeing - and this is the weekend that we had finally organised 

Justin wasn't that interested to come, but everyone else was ....

Madeleine & Hughie, Fraser & Rileigh, Helen & Michaela, and Karen

Mad then asked if her friend Courtney could come, who brought her boyfriend Nick (son of Chris), and she also asked if her 2 friends Chloe and Tarsh could come too

As it was Helen and Tarsh didn't come - but everyone else did - making it 10 people all up

Justin lent me his car, and I was going to drive Mad, Hughie, & Michaela, but then M&H decided to come up with Chloe on Saturday (as did everyone else).

So I just drove Michaela on Friday night - had some dinner, and then watched an episode of Pokerface - as we had watched that last time at Easter    

Saturday, and a garden inspection - Shane had chopped back this garden bed quite a lot - but the stupid couch grass is in it still

Fraser and Rileigh arrived after 2 - and the made toasties in the Aga

Karen had a friendly bee in her hair  - crawled around quite a lot - but eventually flew away 

Some of us went for a walk later in the afternoon - me, Fraser, Rileigh, Michaela & Karen - saw some rabbits

Came back, and some of the others had arrived

We'd ordered pizzas for 6.45pm, and I suggested that everyone should have their beds organised before this 

Started on dips/chips/bubbles etc around 5pm in the dining room.  Had to extend the table and get some more chairs

Mad had brought her polaroid and we mucked around with some photos (once we got it going, as she had forgotten how to work it)

The paranormal people came around 5.30pm.  There were quite a few of them - most from Bendigo, some from Dunolly etc

I gave them and Chloe a quick tour of the house, and then they started setting up their gear in the dining room - and they wanted the lights off - so we just had the battery candles and those little battery orbs that Carolyn had told me about. Below looks like some sort of transmitter/walky talky

And then they put these lights and the thing on the tripod on the mantelshelf

There were also cat toy balls scattered around the room - they were supposed to light up if there were any vibrations

And on the table they had what looked a bit like a rectangular torch - if the end turned blue - it meant that a spirit was around.  we could then ask yes/no questions - and it would respond with green if the answer was yes, and with red if the answer was no

Bear (the lead Paranormal guy) asked if they liked the new owners (me and Justin) - it flashed red - hmm - they didn't like us

He then asked if they liked what we had done with the house and garden and it flashed green - so that was something

There were a lot of pauses and waiting for answers, and a lot of seemingly random words which were generated from a laptop?  They didn't have oiuja boards

At one point - the name Linda was said - and Karen asked it yes no questions - as she had had a friend called Linda who had died - but the answers didn't really go anywhere 

Below is Madeleine and Fraser - still during dinner - as Mad has some pizza in her hand    

After an hour or more they decided to go up to the Music room - as some of them had felt something up there

For whatever reason Chloe decided to sit under that little table

At times the lights were off completely

At other times we had a little light.  You can see in the below photo that the end of the torch thing is green - so it had just said yes

Bear also set up the "spirit talker" which looked like a normal music speaker but of course lit up.  It apparently had something like 5000 words programmed into it - and it would just scan through the frequencies? and various words would come out - and then be shown on the spirit ipad thingy.  Words like Samuel, Opehelia, Tree, Cancer, Bear etc 

Some of us then split off into the green room downstairs because of the mirrors - not sure what happened down there ( I stayed in the Music room)

Then back down to the dining room - where the video camera was set up and we could watch what was happening on the laptop screen

Orbs were moving across the screen which  we couldn't see in real life.  we were told that these were not dust - but spirits, and that they had never seen so many - like a spirit super highway 

So, to wrap up - it just seemed like a lot of random words that were generated  - no deep dark secrets were revealed, not did anything mysteriously move or fly into the air

The Bear Paranormal people were very happy, and said it was great - but we needed some further convincing

That said, we had fun, and were glad that we did it 

Below is Fraser towards the end of the night

  

And another later evening shot

Here is their equipment - before they left

We stayed up a bit longer after they left, and rehashed what had happened.  No one had been scared

Sunday, and a late start - Karen had to go back early

The dormitory in the bee room was packed up

I did a little bit in the garden

Pruned that iceberg rose that I had put in as a cutting years ago - and had become a quasi standard rose 

 Admired the jonquils

And was going to plant the 4 x plants that I'd bought at Rippon Lea, but then didn't just left them in situ in the garden bed - given that my right little finger was still in a splint - digging holes was a bit tricky

The others left just before 3pm

And Michaela and I left soon after - and went to Macca's to pick up the olive oil.  As I said in the last post - less than a big square plastic container full - very disappointing - given that we had picked just over 200kg