Happy New Year to all our blogging mates

G'day blogging buddies and happy new year to you all.

First of all let me say that we hope we never see a Funnel Web Spiders ever again. D is still having palpitations at the thought of it.

Even though the dreaded thing is typically Australian I want to show you something else that is very much Australian and a darn sight more pleasant. It is called a Wollemi Pine. B was recently given a plant from my Nonna, Auntie & Uncle when they came to stay with us. The thing about this particular Pine is its very very special and old.

Here is a photo of it along side of me. It is one of the world's oldest and rarest trees and belongs to the 200 million year old Araucariaceae family. It was discovered in 1994, 200km west of Sydney in a rainforest gorge within the 500,000 hectare Wollemi National Park in the Blue Mountains. Now we have our very own and B has planted it in our yard. In the wild there are less than 100 mature trees.

The exact location of the Pines is a closely kept secret because of the pristine and fragile nature of the wild habitat. Only select researchers are permitted to visit the area on rare occasions.

Onto the next part of our post and we'd like to thank our new pal Mason Dixie for this cool award.

We would like to pass this onto some of our blogging pals and even though we love all your blogs we can only pick 5 cause the rules say so:

1. Thor 2. Butchy & Snickers 3. Faya & Dyos 4. Maggie & Mitch 5. Moco

Oh I nearly forgot. I've had a top time chatting at the New Years Eve chat party. Thanks for organising it Bussie. I even got to bring the New Year in (for a second time) with a whole bunch of Huskies and other pals who live on the East Coast of America. That was so much fun.

Happy New Year maties

Noah x