Spring

Officially, this is the third week of spring. To us poms, it already feels like the height of summer, and the wildlife of all descriptions is certainly stirring. On the drive back to Brisbane we spotted an echidna - we pulled over, and walked back to where we had seen it. It saw us coming, and curled up into a tight, quivering ball. They look bigger than hedgehogs, but I think that's just because the spikes are longer.

In Brisbane, just after we had turned out the light and were settling down to sleep, we saw the shadow of a possum projected on to the wall - he was feeding on the leaves and shoots of the trees just outside our window, and behind him on the pavement was a lamppost - so his shape was perfectly outlined on our wall as shadow theatre. We crept to the window, and looked out - possums are very common in Brisbane, and they are pretty much treated as pests. Nonetheless, I hadn't yet been close to one that was feeding as though unobserved, and it's fascinating to watch how close to the tips of tiny branches they can get in search of shoots and leaves to feed on - when they need to move from one branch to another, and the target branch is only just large enough to take their weight, They hang by their tail, and gradually transfer their weight to the fore legs, and then the hind legs as well before finally finally releasing their tail from the branch where they started.
We drove back down on Saturday morning, and, with the weather so much warmer, we stopped off at the Gold Coast's Bilinga beach, and had our first beach day of 2007 - though it seemed thousands of Brisbanites had the same idea, so we ended up picnicking on an unpatrolled beach to get some quiet, and just paddling and mucking around in the surf rather than going for a proper swim.
The bottle brush tree in our garden is now in full bloom, so we have the bright red blossoms up against the verandah when we have breakfast, and flocks of rainbow lorikeets swooping in to get the nectar. The final piece of wildlife this weekend is yet another enormous huntsman - we've got to the point where we just let them be if they're less than two inches across, but this one was more like three inches, and quite hungry looking, so we've popped him in a box and will drop him in a field tomorrow.
With only 2 days down in Nimbin, we've had an unambitious Sunday, wandering round Nimbin market (usually monthly on the second Sunday, but they do an extra one when there's a fifth Sunday in the month) and making plodding progress on the bathroom renovation front - basically, enjoying our last 10 weeks without baby!