Jason's birthday jaunt

It was Jason's fortieth birthday on Saturday. He booked a holiday house on Phillip Island and invited us all down there for the weekend. After much discussion, it was decided I'd leave Rosie, Fred and Tess to fend for themselves while I headed down there and got really drunk. With a heavy heart, I packed up and hit the road.

I arrived to a familiar scene, albeit in a setting that wasn't the Lord Newry or a skatepark.

I was very happy to find Jenny was in attendance. Predictably, we had a great laugh. We went to the beach but I didn't take this camera there, silly.I took 'real' photos so you'll have to wait for a while before you can bathe in their out-of-focus splendour.

Dion and Tree share a quiet moment over a few hats and glasses.

Phil, an old workmate of Jason's, is my Fuji friend on Flickr. Here he is taking a photo with his phone (!) up on the deck while the sun set. The forums will be alight with this controversy.

Ali, pictured here, drove us to the supermarket in Cowes, which turned out to be a hilarious trip. She loves Coles! Along with our planned purchases, we found all manner of funny things and had a great time driving to and fro. Sam saw a pelican at one point and exclaimed, "I just saw a pelican." as if it was a grim but exciting thing to witness. Jenny and I exploded in fits of laughter in the back like a couple of kids. Sam later explained he was excited because he had seen a clip of a pelican eating a pigeon. I knew the internet would have something to do with it.

The birthday boy. Such a lovely chap! That's Murray lurking in the background, and Lauren also.

The birthday boy consoles Dion. "Don't worry Dion, it will be your birthday soon!"

The birthday boy, Lauren and Kat. I think Jason is drinking a can of Canadian Club with dry ginger ale in this shot - just one of the hilarious gifts we picked up for him from the supermarket.

The sunset was quite incredible. There were weird lines running through it. It was crazy.

And it kept changing. That's the thing about sunsets isn't it.

It was a tough group to wrangle for a group portrait, especially with like four Canon 5ds in the mix. Phil took this for us.

The birthday boy again. He deserves lots of photos because he's the birthday boy!

Chris 'Patrick Bateman' Ackroyd

I told Sam not to use the pelican eating the pigeon story as a conversation starter, but did he listen?

Here he is a bit later having a kip on the roof. I took this just before sunrise when I was tramping around going to the toilet and stuff.

This is what the sunrise looked like. The sky changed colour really quickly. It was a more gentle version of the sunset really. I was hungover and confused.

Here's Sammy again.

And Lauren. They both said they woke up for sunrise too but I didn't see that happen to be honest. We packed up and hightailed it to a cafe for breakfast. Then some of us went to play mini golf, which was really funny, but again, I didn't take any photos with this camera. Then we went and had a skate at Cowes park, which was glorious. Then I drove home.