The Chambers

What we get up to….

Photo taken while staying at the wonderful Sausage Tree Camp, Zambia. Here we are fishing on the banks of the Zambezi, one eye on the River on the lookout for Alligators, another on the lookout for Hippos, another on the lookout for Lions, another on the lookout for Elephants :)

Foo Fighters – Gold Coast – Metricon Stadium – 2011

Last night Kylie and I headed to the Gold Coast for the Foo Fighters concert. The concert was at Metricon Stadium and it was a cracker. The concert really was outstanding, with a good variety of the Foo Fighters new music and some of the older stuff I was really looking forward too. You’d have to be very hard to satisfy if you didn’t like what was played last night.

Dave Grohl was quite the entertainer, full of energy and engaged with the audience throughout the show. Grohl told a story about being arrested for drunk driving on a scooter after a “Big Day Out” concert years ago. I also loved the way he and Taylor Hawkins mucked around and teased the crowd about the number of songs which they would play during the encore.

This video is from the concert, not shot by me, but is of one of the better songs from the concert. Generator.

The setlist for the Foo Fighters Gold COast 2011 show can be found – http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/foo-fighters/2011/metricon-stadium-gold-coast-australia-4bd1230a.html

I found a couple of articles reviewing the concert:

The review on the Gold Coast Bulletin. Another review can be found on the triple m website

When the Foo Fighters next come back, I’ll be sure to get tickets again.

Round review: Hamilton Island Golf Club

I recently wrote up a review of a round of golf I played on the Hamilton Island GOlf Club and posted it to tripadvisor and also iseekgolf. This is that review:

I played this course in August 2011. Surely it must be one of the world’s most spectacular golf courses. You access the course by a 10 minute ferry ride from Hamilton Island and the club house sits atop a hill which gives great views out over the Whitsunday Passage.

There are some tricky holes made even tougher by a stiff breeze which waits to push your ball off the fairway and into the coarse rough just off the fairway. I paid several penalties for lost balls, when tee shots hit the fairway and then rolled off the fairway into the rough.

The most memorable holes are definitely on the back nine. The par 3 14th, with fierce winds and a long carry over native bushland is as tricky an iron shot as you’ll find. The 15th is a great par four which runs downhill & into a stiff breeze, you’ll be best hitting something which keeps low here. Another distraction, when I played this hole, was the pod of humpback whales passing through the passage. The par 4 18th, hitting down the hill & with views forever is a great closing hole.

I thoroughly enjoyed the course, though it was one of the more challenging I have played.

To see my scorecard for the round: http://golfshot.com/Rounds/Detail/218-6406508-6406739

Round review; Pine Rivers 10th June 2011

Date played 10th June 2011
Course played Pine Rivers
Score 43 Stableford points, with 93 off the stick
High light The 1st hole
Low light The 11th hole

This round review is a couple of weeks late in being posted. This was a mixed round, with five pars and a birdie being the good side of the round, the dark side of the round being the four bogeys and the eight double (or worse) bogeys. That’s a 56% rating on bogey’s or lower.

The main culprit of the dark side of the round being the four – FOUR – penalties in the round. Three of the four fell on the one hole, with three out of bounders off the tee on the 11th.

I was pretty happy with how I hit the new driver, with a driving accuracy of 42.9% on the day. This result is by far my best result off the tee with the new club.

Highlight hole is pretty easy to see on the card. The first hole. I smashed the driver off the tee, nearly through the fairway, which left me with a reasonably short chip (around 60 or 70 metres) onto the green. The chip ended up around four metres to the right of the pin and the putt went into the back of the hole! That’s how you play the first at Pine Rivers.

Lowlight hole is also pretty easy to see on the card. I still feel sick thinking about the play off the tee…. Driver, right and out of bounds… Tee it back up again. Driver, right and out of bounds. Switch to the hybrid, but same result, right and out of bounds. U G L Y.

Forthy-three stableford points, with three washes. I ended up getting a mention in the run down. All in all though, the result could have been a lot better though.

Round review; Pine Rivers 20th May 2011

Howdy, welcome to round review number one.

Date played May 20, 2011
Course played Pine Rivers Golf Club
Score 99 off the stick
High light A tremendous par on the 13th hole.
Low light A shocking 8 on the par four 4th hole

This was round number one with the new Ping i15 Driver. I was not terribly accurate with it, hitting 3 of 10 fairways from the tee. However, it was a shot with this club that provided the highlight of the day.

Highlight of the day: A par 4 on the 13th hole. This hole regularly kicks my ass, I do not play it well. There’s a lengthy water carry and historically I play the hole by hitting hybrid, then a 9 iron on hopefully, but normally I miss the green and then have a chip on to a multi-tier green which is tricky to two putt. In other words, if I play it very well, I normally end up with a five, but chuck in a wayward chip / tee into the water and I reckon I would average around a 7 on the hole.

In this round though….. I hit driver from the tee to green side! This was a massive shot and one of the best I’ve ever played. The hole measures 308 metres, I’m not sure where the tee box was on the day, though I am sure it was forward. My shot ended up around 20 metres short of the green – hurray! After that tee shot, I was able to chip up nicely and just run the first putt past the right hand edge and sink the second putt for the par.

Low light of the round? Definitely the “Road Hole”, which is Pine Rivers fourth hole. I put my tee shot out of bounds and then ran my second tee shot into a difficult spot behind some trees, which I had to chip out of and from there it was an ugly road to an eight.

The round broke 100, with 99 shots. I had 3 penalties, had 32 putts (this is ok) & only had two pars…. hardly a great round.

golfing update

Just wow! Through a contact on twitter, Mike Hauser (who works at Tourism Victoria): @doogsta I was put onto an application for the iPhone called Golfshot Golf GPS. I’ll write a separate little review on it, because it has quickly become one of my favorite thing about the iPhone.

Anyways…. In a nutshell, this application lets you track the scoring of your golf round and comes up with some handy stats and information at the end of the round too. I started using it for a round in January, but it wasn’t until the last couple of rounds I’ve come to understand how useful this app can be.

I’ve decided another of my regular posts here will be using the results of the Golfshot app for each round I play. I’ll mess around with the format a bit until I get it just like I want. I’ll post the first “Round Review” soon.

As an update on the new Ping i15 which I recently bought, I am loving it! My next “Highlight hole” post will feature the i15 & I’m getting warmed up to it now.

Ping I15 in the bag

Huzzah… After a loooong time in between drinks, I now have a driver back in my golf bag. After the round at Cab del Sol where I smashed three wood – three wood brilliantly (highlight hole post to come), I decided I could manage to re-learn how to hit the driver and get a bit more distance off the tee.

At Cabo del Sol I hit the Taylor Made woods well and was going to get myself the new R11. Those things look amazing cool and the trickery in being able to adjust the club is phenomenal. I have the R9 Taylor Made three wood and I’ve managed to hit it fairly well, so thought I’d get the Taylor Made R11 to go with it. I had some Golf World vouchers so went to Golf World at Newmarket. The dude who helped me out was great, I’ll get his name and update the post later on.

Unfortunately the R11 is not in stock yet through most Golf World stores, but I wanted to get a driver whilst motivated, so decided to try out a couple of clubs in the net & on their “hawk eye” system which helps determine what shaft strength / style club you need and determine club suitability. I liked the looks of the Ping and also Adams drivers, so tried them both out.

Both clubs held a similar visual appeal for me, in that they didn’t look like massive bulbous distractions. The clubs both also felt good to hit shots with and produced similar results, but I ended up going with the Ping.

The “hawk eye” swing & shot tracking system was great as it effectively measured the trajectory, path and distance of the shot. I have been hitting shots with a high trajectory and this means they effectively stop where they bounce, with no run-on. So, even though I hit my irons well and a fair distance, they dont run on and I get robbed of distance. There was no evidence of this in the “hawk eye” tracking, with the shot trajectory being good, the shots straight (just a minor adjustment in stance required) and the ball carrying just under 200 yards (approximately 180 metres) on the fly. Once on the course and with some more practice I should be able to work that out a bit further.

Thanks very much to the guys at Golf World Newmarket, I appreciate your help!

Looking forward to next weekend’s round at Pine Rivers Golf Club and testing out my new Ping I15.

A review on the Ping I15 Driver can be found http://www.golf.com/golf/equipment/article/0,28136,1941092,00.html

Here’s the commercial for the I15 which has Bubba Watson in it.

highlight hole – 30th April 2011

Regularly blogging is tough…. I guess it’s about expectations and knowing you are not going to be able to post every day, or week, and accepting that & writing when you can.

So…. I got to thinking about another reason to get me posting regularly to this here little blog.

How’s about a “Highlight hole” post for when I play a golf hole particularly well. It might be one a round for the good courses I play and once in a while for Pine Rivers Golf Course (http://www.pineriversgolfclub.com.au)

It just so happens that I do indeed have a highlight hole from this weekend’s round at Pine Rivers. The competition this weekend was single stableford (my favourite) and Coxy had changed to play in the afternoon and John and Dean had both called in a no-show Saturday morning (lazy, hungover bums), so I was hitting the round with Ollie.

The highlight hole for this post is from a round played on Saturday the 30th of April at Pine Rivers Golf Club. The hole is the 162 metre long par 3 8th hole. This hole plays around 180 metres up the hill and there was quite a wind blowing left to right across the hole. The description from the club website reads:

More to this than meets the eye. Hole plays longer as the green sits on top of a crest. Due to its length and a small bunker which guards the front right part of the green, this hole can be very intimidating.

The hole is indexed so that I get two shots on this hole and I played it well on Saturday (obviously, or it wouldn’t be the highlight hole!).

I played a 4 iron and smashed my tee shot basically pin high and only just off the green. Very close to the green, but just off… maybe 10 cm’s off the green, so I was definitely going to putt. The putt though was tricky, as the green slopes towards the front of the green pretty sharply and I was going to have to put the putt high of the hole and if I ran it past too far, the ball would end up running right down to the front of the green basically. The putt would have been between four and five metres long. I had decided I was putting for a two putt par result as I was, to that point of the round scoring two points every hole and didn’t want to eff up the round. The putt though was a beauty and went straight in the back of the cup. That putt was my best of the day and other than that one putt, the putting over this round was VERY forgettable.

The result of that wonderful 4 iron and a 4 – 5 metre long putt was a birdie on a pretty tricky hole. The stableford score for the hole was a 2 for 5 points :) .

The 9th hole was the last of the round (we tee’d off on the 10th) and I hit a 5 and 2 to score 40 points on the round. A pretty good result, which saw my handicap drop 0.5 points and down to 27.3. My goal is to get that handicap down to 18 eventually and by the end of the year I want it down to 23.

Highlight hole for this week: 8th at Pine Rivers Golf Club. Birdied for 2 shots and five points.

#project365 – Jan 11 – rugby league 3

This is the first of my #project365 photos with me in it! :)

This photo was taken on the 11th of January, I have just been a little bust and pre-occupied over the past couple of days with the current flooding here in Brisbane, as well as Central Queensland and through Queensland’s Outback.

So, this photo is Jackson and I playing the wii. The game is Rugby League 3 and Jackson LOVES it… He’s getting better at the game too but he HATES being beaten… and i REFUSE to let the Raiders get beaten, so games where I’m the Raiders are very difficult balancing game between me not wanting the Raiders to lose and Jackson’s frustration.

The game was Jackson and Kylie’s present to me for Christmas… It’s a great Christmas presie!