Garden update

My vege patch has gone crazy, or at least parts of it. Apparently the turnips and the brussel sprouts don't grow very well in this hot climate but the baby corn, squash, silver beet and rocket has gone mad! To think this is just 6 weeks since I posted the pre-plant picture.

My scare crow is looking worse for wear but is still hanging in there.

The other day I was invited by Jacqueline and her brother Daniel to lunch at their cubby house and even the "hairy" chook made an appearance.

I just had to put in this picture, it's so good!

New Years Eve 2009

John and I actually felt like adults on New Year's Eve when we attended a party at Lake Macquarie where everyone but us had kids! Welcome to the 30s and 40s. There were kids running around with glow sticks, toys all over the place and baby monitors galore.

The house was just beautifully located overlooking the lake. Unfortunately all the fire works were held just behind the hills you can see in the distance so when the kids lined up for the 9 pm fire works all they saw was a faint glow of colour on the night sky, just above that hill..

The glow stick bracelets, necklaces and star wars wands made up for the lack of pyrotechnics though.

The theme was black and silver for adults and this was my get-up (yee-hah!). For silver I had tinsel in my hair.

and Johnbob..

HAPPY NEW YEAR Y'ALL!

Part two of our Kanangra adventure

That afternoon we got a wild thunderstorm and rain so it was really nice to have a bonfire to chill out around. I slept in a bivy and it wasn't actually too bad getting in and out of it in the rain and I didn't get wet at all! Haha, didn't really have faith until I tried it out.

On the third day we got up really early (6 am) as it turned into another beautiful day and we wanted to get our 800 metre ascent over and done with before it got too hot out. First we had to cross the river again and then we set off on a vague trail up the ridge of the mountain side.

This is the incredible view we got half-way to the top. Below is the Kowmung river we crossed so many times.

And this is us having a sweaty rest not long after.

Here's another incredible view from the top;

When we finally reached the top and the car park again we decided to throw our bags and go to a waterfall that we had seen across the valley. The water was absolutely beautiful and here we are in the refreshingly cold water.

On our way back up from the waterfalls we are met by a couple that ask if we are the owners of a silver Hyundai.. "the police is looking for the owners of that car" they told us pointing to the helicopters that flew overhead.

"No, we have a blue car" I replied. Turned out that we did have a silver car (that goes to show how much I pay attention) and the police was in fact looking for "us". Or at least for the two girls that I travelled with. The choppers however were not for them, it was just the National Parks one, doing it's rounds or whatever it is they do.

What had happened was a man had found the car unlocked with the windows down (the seats were wet as it had rained the night before) with all our valuables inside and thought that someone must have gone for a day hike and not made it back. Thus he called the police who had gone through our phones and called the boyfriend of one of the girls. The police was told by the boyfriend that we were used to hiking and not expected back until 'today' anyway so maybe the search party should be held off for a while. The police had told him that a lot of things could happen to trekkers including flash floods due to storms like the one we had the night before among other things. Not surprisingly he was most anxious to hear from Gen as soon as we got back. What an adventure!

Kanangra-Boyd Natinal Park three day navigational trek

It took us about three and a half hours to get to Kanangra walls from Sydney. Almost hit what I think was a common barn owl on the way over. He was just sitting in the middle of the road, didn't even move as we swirved around him.

There were 8 of us going on the trek. Five of us experienced and 3 not so used to hiking.

We meant to set off early in the morning on Boxing day but of course got delayed and started the trail around 11 am when the sun was high and it was starting to get pretty hot.

This is Kanangra walls overlooking Kanangra creek.

On the first day we managed to get lost three times and the trek that was supposed to take 4-5 hours took 8! We had a GPS with us that the owner was reluctant to turn on, the maps were to be kept inside the packs and only the photocopied ones were to be used even thought they had sections missing that we could only see on the original ones and we were told navigation is not about knowing where you are "it's about knowing in which general direction you are going". Haha, it was funny in a frustrating way. The books we were using were probably 2-3 years old and the trail that we had planned to take was no longer in use. The trail was blocked off by branches and sticks and it was probably obvious to many but not so to us. I mentioned that I thought the trail might be closed but since we weren't sure we tried it anyway... only to lose our way and being forced to turn back.

We tried another trail and walked north for an hour before stopping to argue about the way again as we were supposed to have walked that last hour in an Easterly direction. As it turned out, we had missed second top, our turn-off point and made it all the way to third top, way off our maps. After much discussion we finally turned back and eventually seemed to be on the right track. Here the descent to the river was approximately 800 metres in elevation and along very steep, slippery sections.

Having run out of water and with very sore feet we were extremely happy to reach the Kowmung river. Here's Genvieve and Annie as they are crossing the river to get to the camp.

It was absolutely beautiful in the water. As soon as we had crossed I was in, having a well-earnt and much needed "wash".

The bonfire that night was very nice for chilling out around.

The next day we had to trek 3 kilometres along the river to get to our next camp. That hike took us about 3 hours. We had to cross the river many times along the way when the vegetation became unpenetrable. The trick was finding a place suitable for a crossing as many places were too deep or the current too strong.

On the path we saw a redbellied black snake,

and a beautiful goanna. We also saw wallabies and water dragons and river trout.

Gingerbread houses in the making

I didn't have much to contribute when it came to Christmas dinner so I thought I'd make a couple of gingerbread houses.

I gave one to Dorothy and Ivan and kept the one with the most MnM's for John's nephews.

Unfortunately the climate here doesn't treat pepparkakshus well. The icing got mixed with the sugar (used for glueing the sides together) and made it brown in colour. Kind of like dirty snow..

After dinner I hopped on the train to Sydney as I was meeting Annie and her friend at Central station and then driving to Kanangra walls to go hiking in the Blue Mounatins for three days.

Melbourne

Khay and I left Sydney and drove via the Hume highway to Yackandandah where I stayed at a friend's house. Here Khay and I are in Gunning...

This is Cath in Yack and her dog Chants (I think that's the name of the dog..)

Stayed with Mel and Dan in Preston for a few days and went for a party in Ballarat one night. Don't have any photos from Melbie at all.

It was great to see my friends again, even caught up with Linda over coffee on Glenferrie. How I miss living in Hawthy!

Peace in the Park

On Saturday we are going to Homebake in Sydney, a one day festival with 37 bands (I think?) playing on four stages. Khay, Annie, John and I are going. The crowd this time is over 18!! yay! Should be really good.

And on Sunday I am going to car pool with Khay to Melbourne where I'll be visiting friends for a few days. Love Melbourne and am looking forward to it so much. Will show lots of pictures hopefully when I get back again.

Here in Australia Venus, Jupiter and the moon aligned on the evening of the 1 December forming a smiling face in the sky. My photo is a bit crap as I don't have a tripod or a good knowledge of how to take excellent night photos but it's still neat to see.

Now, my lovely ma wanted to see what I've been up to in the garden so I have taken a few pics.

This is going to be my vege patch. We went to the beach the other day and picked sea weed which I have dispearsed as fertilizer.

The soil is beautiful and worms are plentiful but so are the Indian Minors (birds) so I decided to make a scarecrow..

You take one juice bottle, one Living End t-shirt, a couple of black tighties, a tennis ball and a couple of sticks, garbage bag and voila'; you have a dodgy scare crow.

The thing though is Indian Minors or Mynors are pretty smart and not easy to get rid of, they are in fact a bit of a pest in Australia so we thought that the only thing this ugly bird would scare off were our pigeon love birds. They coo and dance and prance and make sweet, sweet love in the garden all day and has been for the past 6 weeks! As it turned out though, I haven't seen any Indian minors since the scare crow and the pigeon lovers didn't even notice it's presence. They only have eyes for each other, were cooing as usual this morning, doing their little dance in the garden.

I love the little cicada shells you can find around the place. This one didn't quite make it out of his old shell before he died, still looks pretty though.

My tomatoes and herbs are not doing so well it seems. The tomatoes were under attack by some nasty green tomato hornworms that almost de-leafed the entire plants and the dill suffered due to being too dry when we were in Tasmania.

This is my favourite part of the house even if the herbs don't favour it.