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.

Wildlife, Good and Bad

This was my first week commuting from Nimbin to Brisbane and back. The commute itself is remarkably painless - the train is pleasant and fast, and has iced water dispensers between the carriages (are you listening, Connex SouthCentral...?)
As I was setting my laptop up on the train, I saw my first wild kangaroo - more than twice the size of the wallabies we get in our garden. It watched the train for a few seconds, and then thumped ponderously away across the fields - they really are big things - they somehow look smaller on-screen.
C met me at Kyogle station and we drove back to Nimbin. As we got to the corner of our street, there were 4 parrots perched in a row on the telephone wire across the road. It could take me quite a while to get blasé about the sheer abundance and variety of wildlife in this region. Talking of abundance, Fred, the spider we've adopted near the front balcony, has gone from merely obese to truly, startlingly overweight - I suspect it's the steady diet of unwary mosquitoes her/his web catches as they home in on our tasty flesh.

We were determined to get more done this weekend than last - and the garden is the priority now, as we're getting into the last few weeks of the year when many of the annuals can realistically be sown. Susie, the previous owner of the house, and her tiny daughter Delphi, are renting the downstairs flat from us for the next few weeks. Susie is moving her stuff out one car load at a time, and she hasn't got as far as the gardening implements yet, so we cheekily grabbed her spades and forks and trowels, and set about clearing the fallen leaves, and digging over the raised beds (it looks like they haven't been dug for 3 or 4 years). As I was returning from dragging a large log out of the way I spotted something moving oddly on my shoe - it was small and quick, and I couldn't quite see what it was. No sooner had I spotted it than it made a bee-line for the lacing-hole of my trainer, and slid itself through. I immediately stomped on the heel of the trainer and pulled my foot free - and sure enough, there was an inquisitive, worm-like head waving around on the inside of the shoe, looking a bit disappointed. A closer look soon confirmed this was my first encounter with an Australian land-leech. Now an ex-leech. It's only a matter of time before his cousins even the score though.

There were just enough hours left in the day to sand and oil some of the spare timber under the house to rig up as a crude temporary bookshelf, and get rid of the book-drift that's been cluttering the lounge since we moved in.

I feel thoroughly domesticated after this 48 hours - I've done some gardening, a spot of DIY, some shopping, some cleaning, and I even baked a large portion of chocolate-chip cookies. It beats spending the weekend glued to a monitor. On the way back from a particularly domestic trip to hang the washing on the line, I stumbled across what I at first thought was a flower, but on closer inspection turned out to be one of the strangest mushrooms I have ever seen - it is about two inches across, and seems to be mimicking a flower in bloom, with six curly, bright red imitation "petals" arranged around a moist black central "head". If any readers know what this is (or indeed, can point me to an online tool for finding out) please leave a comment or drop me a line!