Storm

We had an insane storm in Nimbin last week. There was a power cut, and when I went out with a torch, I saw an overhead electrical cable trailing across the road directly in front of our gate.
The rain stopped, and it turned into quite a social occasion, as people from up and down the street came out to survey the damage, we ended up taking turns to park a car with hazards flashing in front of the cable, and comparing the damage to our gardens, roofs and trees.
The following days saw much chainsawing and lugging of branches and broken stuff to get things back to shipshape. Luckily, the largest branch to hit our house (a 7 metre long chunk of Pollonia weighing in at about 50 kilos) struck the main keel of the roof first, and then just slid to the ground - no damage done.
We finally located the Hanging Rock swimming hole - it's as big as an Olympic size swimming pool, and has a 3 metre waterfall over vertical rocks. The depth of the main pool is effectively infinite, as it sits on an ancient volcanic vent - those with strong stomachs can climb up the side of the pool and rope-swing into the centre from 20 metres up. It's a cool, shady pot for those sticky summer days, and half of Nimbin gathers there on some afternoons. Best of all, the Wadeville store (ice cream, coffee, affogato) is less than 2km up the road.

We have received two bits of good news from the postman:
Our citizenship tests went OK, and we both passed despite a lamentable knowledge of historic cricket batting averages. This means we are now free to apply for passports with pictures of kangaroos on the front (and, somewhat offensively in my humble opinion, tiny little aboriginal flags embossed way down towards the bottom). It also means we are now very near the end of the treadmill of expenses and paperwork that began in London back in 2001.
The other bit of good news was the approval of our solar power rebate for panels on our roof. This means we can go ahead chopping down the offending palm trees, getting the insulation under the roofing sheets, and having the panels installed in time to catch the summer sun.
We have now experienced the weirdness that is the Nimbin fashion show - a bizarre and at times terrifying mix of the local-yokel, Sydney/Byron high-fashion, and latex fetish wear. It made me feel very proud to be a Nimbin local, especially as it became obvious some of the local designers were the most imaginative (and wearable) - I should no longer be surprised at the range and breadth of creative talent around this little town, but I still am.
This weekend we're heading to the beach at Ballina for a couple of days to get away from the Summer stickiness and get some swimming in before Christmas is upon us - it looks as though the new year is going to be busy with guests and family and more building work and overtime, so we're going to chill out while we still can.

Island Vibe

We trundled up the road to Brisbane once again, and caught up with Marina, Bruce and Naomi, and our ex-flatmates Oscar and Aida. K loved the big city this time around - she wanted to investigate everything she saw and heard. C took her around the Roma Street parklands, the central toy library, and the Queen Street malls, while I had a couple of days working from Gensolve's West End office.
That week over, we took the ferry to Stradbroke island, found our campsite, and got set up. All was well until 3 am, when a drunken Frenchman got into an argument about his girlfriend, and half the campsite joined in. The next morning, fortified by much caffeine, we headed to the Island Vibe festival site and registered as volunteers.
We got an excellent deal - free weekend tickets in exchange for three hours work per day, and best of all, the other volunteers in ticketing weren't even reggae fans, so no-one objected to us swapping our shifts around to catch the headline acts. Katchafire (naturally) rocked. Schoolfight were also rather toptastic. I can't even make up an adjective to describe Olmecha Supreme's efforts... Perhaps bizarrific comes close... I didn't even know you could overdrive an acoustic tin whistle. But you can.
We ate unhealthy, fatty foods. We lay on the beach and paddled in the warm ocean. We were desperately tired and wished the baby would sleep. Our own fault, I guess, for disturbing her routine.
Before heading home we put K in the backpack and did the hike to the blue lake. It's a beautiful spot - if it had been sunny I'd've swum for ages there, and even cloudy, it's peaceful and unique.
Back home in Nimbin we've now had two weeks of sunny weather, so the village pool has been much patronised, and the garden is slowly getting less cluttered as I work my way around it with the chainsaw, pruning shears, axe and machette. I need to call the man with the woodchipper before the pile of branches entirely obscures our view of the road and prevents us getting through the gate with the car.
This week we sat our aussie citizenship tests. I think we passed, but the staff couldn't operate their computers so they printed the tests out and will have to mail us the results in a couple of weeks' time - the usual chaos.
We're keeping busy over all - I'm now writing a series of articles on internet freedoms for the local paper in addition to compiling their crossword, C's list of local clients for her web-design services is ever growing, Gensolve want me to do more work than I already am, and there's plenty of paperwork left before we get our passports - the main things getting squeezed are sleep, and blogging time.





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Bookshop Crawl

Somehow this blog has drifted into a fortnightly update. I require less slackness. I'm even not working overtime now, so I've no excuse not to keep it up to date.
My priority for the springtime is R&R. I need to recharge my batteries, get outdoors a lot, and spend quality time with C and K rather than hunched over my keyboard tapping away like I am now.
Last weekend in Lismore turned into a bit of a bookshop crawl, and next time is likely to be even worse, as we discovered that the municipal library hands out an official Lismore bookshop-crawl pamphlet (which is a bit much really, in a town where you can count the independent bookshops on your fingers).
Nonetheless, There has been much contented reading (and re-reading) this past couple of weeks - some LeGuin and some Greg Egan has really cheered me up. I still need cheering up. It's now 12 weeks since I got the flu, and I'm still a bit under the weather. I keep dithering about starting exercise - I disastrously went running a couple of times after 6 weeks and made myself very sick indeed, so I'm now overcautious and nervous about resuming some exercise.
The man from the council came and examined our cement formwork and pronounced it acceptable, so we have booked the cement truck to do the big pour on Monday, assuming the weather holds - the only caveats were that we also have to find some way to raise the railing round our balcony by 6 centimetres as it's not quite legal height, and we need to install mains-powered smoke detectors both upstairs and downstairs.
Amidst the brilliant sunshine we had one and a half days of torrential rain, starting last Thursday - the creek burst its banks and we couldn't drive into Nimbin - I stood by my car on the near bank along with a crowd of neighbours and joined in the communal tut-tutting and shaking of heads before executing a very soggy three-point turn and heading home.
We have now been in Australia 24 months, so we rang up to book our citizenship test (yes, they really do ask you questions about Don Bradman). Just because he's probably the most outstanding player of a team sport in history, there's no need to rub it in.
The big task this coming weekend is to take a chainsaw to the row of big palm trees on the north side of the house that steal sunlight - much as we like them, they are incompatible with the planned solar panels on the roof, and a couple of them are starting to lean ominously over the deck as they grow too. If it gets any warmer, I'll also be packing the logs away and retiring the woodstove for the summer - and that's a very happy thought!
On a less happy note, I can't let the Sarah Palin thing go by. I am aghast. No, that's not strong enough. I'm dumbfounded that her selection as McCain's running mate has led to a poll bounce for the GOP. Frankly, much like the Italians with Fini and Berlusconi, if the good citizens of the USA vote for someone who had to apply for a passport when her job as governor took her abroad, then they deserve what they get and may Cthulu preserve the rest of us. Seriously, I don't usually blog into this territory, but it's gone too far.

• • Palin believes the world was created in 7 days by a sky pixie
• • She's convinced man made global warming is a hoax
  
• • She's convinced evolution is a mistaken theory and would like creationism taught in schools (She's backtracked, but check her quotes before she was on the ticket)
  
• • She's against abortion
  
• • she's against sex education in schools
• • When newly elected mayor, she approached the town librarian with a query about how to go about banning books
  
• • her position on healthcare: "...less regulation, more competition..."
  
• • She's as pro-guns as you'd expect from a moose huntin' lady
  
• • She openly campaigns to have the remaining wildlife sanctuaries in Alaska (and offshore) drilled for oil
• • She's sharing a ticket with a septuagenarian with a dicky ticker - if he pops his clogs, she's CiC and her finger is on the button of the world's second largest nuclear arsenal.
  

My fingers are crossed, but I've got a bad feeling about this one.