Early this week we finally got round to visiting our neighbours two doors up the street, Lynne and Richard. They have a few acres of land, running down to the creek at the foot of the hill, and have dug in a dam to catch some of the runoff, have started to terrace the steepest part of their garden, and made real progress reverting to native plants and removing invasive alien plants and weeds - the pay-off was clear to see: A happy family of wallabies bouncing around their bottom paddock. Also, they've only been in Nimbin for about as long as we have. Richard's industry in the garden definitely gives me a complex, but the bright side is, he has a wealth of knowledge and is happy to give me cuttings!
We have also heard from the our ante-natal classmates Jonas and Tanya - they're doing fine (despite Dunoon -only a few kilometres away- suffering a mini tornado last week) But Tanya's baby is yet to arrive, though she's five weeks ahead of C. I'm dreading the imminent period of some 2 to 5 weeks when the baby might arrive, quite literally, at any minute.
After an almost unbearably sweltering week, the temperature dropped suddenly to the mid twenties and we had a week of intermittent but persistent rain. This has made for a really nice late Spring, with the Nimbin and Tweed valleys even greener than usual, and the blossom staying on the trees later than it did last year. It has also made us see reason however - given that C could go into labour as late as mid-December, we have decided to invest in a "backup plan" window-mounted air conditioning unit, just in case we are really unlucky with a heatwave.
The upside for me was that I had a reason to get some work done indoors, given the rain. I had completely run out of excuses and I had all the tools necessary to press on with the bathroom, so after prevaricating for another day and a half, I got in there with the dust mask, a belt sander and lots of attitude. The results so far have been better than expected - the floor is never going to come up beautifully flat and shiny, but the planks are a very rich red-brown colour, and in fairly good nick for an almost 20 year old tongue and groove floor, so I'm optimistic that the end result will be worth the effort.
We had a tough decision at the end of the week, as we'd planned to stay in Nimbin until Tuesday, but due to leaving it very late to book a Christmas party venue, my work in Brisbane ended up organising their Christmas do for Friday November ninth.
In the end, I decided to drive back up to Brisbane on the grounds that, working from home, if I don't go to some functions I'll never get to know the people I'm working with. the works do turned out to be a good laugh. It was at the Merthyr bowls club by the Brisbane River In New Farm - it was your basic Australian works do: Dress up as sheilas, then spend the afternoon doing something competitive under powerful antipodean sun, while consuming weak lager and competing to be last to the kharzi. All great fun if you keep a certain detachment! Once a state of sufficient dehydration was achieved, we retired to the boss's pad in West End, where it turned out he'd set up not only a DJ and cocktail bar, but a full-on play-money casino setup, complete with blackjack table, roulette and two croupiers. All great fun if you keep a certain detachment.
Somehow, our Brisbane house mates colluded to have an impromptu barbecue in the back garden on the Saturday, and that, along with our mad dog decision to walk all the way from west end to Paddington in the noonday sun, put paid to any lingering hangover, and should ease us into next week.