French Connection

The closer we get to C's due date, the more things we remember we should already have done. In the main, it's knock on effects and tasks caused by other tasks that I've forgotten to account for. For example, I had allowed cupboard space for a load of baby gear, but I had not accounted for the time and effort required to rearrange and repack all of my stuff into what was left of the bedroom.
It's looking like Christmas week itself will be very busy, so I have broken with Stephens family tradition, and set the tree up in the lounge in the first week of December.
Rose has had an interesting first week in Nimbin - as we got home on Monday evening, there was a large lizard caught in the wire fence next to the carport, and I must have looked hilarious as I gingerly cut it free using wire cutters - they are only a foot long but those claws look vicious. Luckily, the poor thing was too terrified to do anything except freeze up, and it didn't even scamper away until I had cut its neck completely free of the fence. Later in the week at Nimbin pool, she got to observe at first hand how I react when bitten in the foot by a large Australian red ant, which is probably even funnier. I think.
At the end of the week, Tity finally turned up - he managed to make it all the way from Auckland to Nimbin this time, making up for our complete failure to hook up when he and Morganne were in Australia on holiday earlier in the year. He almost didn't make it again, as his alarm didn't go off, and he woke up after the Kyogle train was due to leave - luckily, the train was delayed by almost 2 hours!
Given how tired we are at the moment, it was lucky that Tity was up for an extremely chilled weekend. We pretty much reverted to type; showed Tity round the strange architecture of the village, made sure he got some good souvenirs from the candle factory, got coffees, got cold beers, and chilled out on the deck watching the sun go down. I am fairly certain that Tity will be our last pre-baby guest! It was fantastic to catch up with the old bugger, and he certainly seems to have enough plans to keep him busy for the next few years - and with a bit of luck we might even catch up with him in Montpellier sooner than he expects!
Talking of babies, Ian and Eri in Tokyo have just had their son, Louis. As Eri did not look as big as C, and her due date was a week after C's, it's quite a surprise that she got there first!
Though today has been a very full week, it will be a very short blog post as at least 90 per cent of my time has been taken up with mundane crap that is best forgotten.
Forgetting stuff - ahhh... something I do well.

No floor!

On Saturday, we were up and about quicker than we have been recently at the weekend, and managed to hit the road shortly after 9.00. It was a perfect spring day, and we had a really relaxing drive taking the Murwillumbah road.
During the week, Ellen had been in touch from Thailand of all places, because she was worried we might have suffered in the extreme hailstorms that Lismore experienced! Though we had rung Stefan and Iris, and they had reassured us that there had been little hail in Nimbin, we were still a bit worried about what we might find when we got home. In the event, there was no structural damage, and all the trees in our garden were still standing.
The electrical storms had knocked out our trip switches however. This entailed a couple of hours throwing away the food in our fridge and freezer, and scrubbing out the interior of both, and all the containers - but we got off lightly compared to the denizens of Lismore.
During the cleanup, we found an injured lizard hiding under the bean bags. I don't know enough about lizards to tell whether he's just happy in that space, or is unwell and has crawled there to die. He seems friendly, and definitely eats insects -if it's the former, then we seem to have adopted a new pet.
The building supplies place at Nimbin keeps quite strange hours -it's open Wednesday Saturday and Sunday, which was good news for us as Sunday was pencilled in as DIY day: We ripped out the rotten floorboards in the bathroom, and have now positioned the replacement boards over the gap - they'll need to stay there for a couple of weeks to get acclimatised, before they are fastened to the beams and battens. Despite the frustrations, one part of me is definitely enjoying the bathroom renovation project - it will be a good feeling to complete a project where absolutely every aspect of the visible room has had my hand in it.
We had a trial run putting our new tent up - it's relatively simple to put up, and even better, it has 1/2 assembled mode, in which it can be transported in the back of a car, and only requires the addition of one pole to become tent shaped.
We also made it to the Channon market for what must now be the fourth or fifth time. At the Monday evening ante-natal class, we discovered that Jonas and Tanya had also been at the market but we didn't see them there. Both in Brisbane's West End, and also in the Nimbin area, we have started to get to know a few people, but still not enough so that we routinely bump into them when we head out. This contrasts strongly with how quickly we settled in Auckland - by the time we had been living in Devonport for a year, we couldn't walk down the high street without seeing familiar faces, and stopping for a chat every couple of 100 yards. The alienating effect of working in two places and living in two places is stronger than I had surmised - and I begin to understand how it can be that dormitory towns become soulless even once there is as little as 30 per cent of the population commuting.
Instead of driving back to Brisbane late at night on the Monday, I took Tuesday off work and we made our way up the road leisurely on Tuesday afternoon. We took a random detour off the Murwillumbah road, and found a delightfully tranquil valley with a little stream running through it in which to have lunch - it was the perfect setting except for the insects.

Badger, badger, badger, badger......

The first week back after holiday should be easy in theory. In practice it can be a hard week to get through. Spring officially begins on September 1 in Australia, and I can see why - many of the trees are already in bloom, the lowest temperature at night has probably climbed by five or six degress in the last three weeks, and the midmorning sun is something to be afraid of once again. After the horror of 41° in the shade in Kyoto, the weather here seems pretty perfect however.
As we had to drive down to Nimbin on the Saturday, but were not in a hurry and didn't have too much to do, we decided to vary our usual route down the motorway, and instead swing inland at Nerang, and take the tourist road that cuts through in between Lamington national park and the coastal plain. As soon as you are out of Nerang, it's a really pretty drive, as the road climbs up almost to the level of the Lamington National Park plateau and then the view opens up across the Tweed Valley all the way to Byron Bay. It probably takes about an extra 40 minutes to get to Murwillumbah, but if you're not pressed for time it's definitely worth it. Oh yeah, and there's a cafe with home baked fudge cakes on the way.
We were looking forward to a reconfigured and functional bathroom at home, but it turns out that I hadn't quite asked the plumbers to do what I thought I had. I thought that I had asked for the shower and sink to be plumbed in, and that that would mean both would be assembled and connected to the water supply. Unfortunately, I wasn't specific enough in my email, and I now realise that the quote we received was to assemble and plumb in the shower, but only to run pipes to the sink, and not assemble it or plumb it in. Fortunately, the Ikea flat pack sink unit was quick and fairly intuitive to assemble, and by this morning, we had it set up and at least ready to plumb in to both the waste pipe and the water supply. We need to buy a couple of pipes and connectors, and we should be able to finish the job in a couple of hours.
Having been away in Japan, the house and garden and deck were all a bit of a mess, and there were off cuts, and pieces of fibroboard left by the workmen and the plumber which needed to be tidied away. This was sweaty work, which meant that we had to test whether the new shower was working properly. It's pretty powerful, and there's room for two.
In our absence, the local wildlife has taken up residence. As we arrived, we saw a large spiny lizard, sunning itself in the last rays of the sun, and several too-large-for-comfort spiders ran away as I loaded things into the basement. When we drove into the village to get bread, the joey that we saw two months ago with his mother was back, by itself this time. It has grown to almost 3 foot high, and developed a shiny silver pelt on the front. It's also more paranoid than before, pounding off into the bush as soon as it becomes aware that you're watching.
On Sunday morning, C went to clear some of the lantana away from the chicken coop. As she was working, she heard something rustling in the bush next to her - and when she looked, she saw a fair size snake moving through the grass towards her. Once she figured out it was no threat, she called me over with the camera. It seemed it was attracted by the scent of the chicken coop - which is quite incredible, given that it hasn't contained chickens for almost three and a half years! We watched it sniff its way along the ground, and then once in the centre of the cement chicken coop, begin to follow its nose up the wall, to exactly where the roosts were positioned. After a few moments, it figured out there was nothing to eat, turned around, and continued on its way into the neighbour's garden.
Disconsolately, we tidied, and packed, and drove off, back to Brisbane.
Our weekend however, was not entirely over. When we got two Sphinx rock, there was a local band playing of the cafe, and a fair crowd had gathered to watch them. They were called Channel Free; a funky five piece playing rootsy psy-dub, with an amped up didgeridoo, and a synthesiser doing interesting percussion effects. We sat in the late afternoon sun, on the grass by the creek - and didn't care that we'd get back to the city a bit late.