Nostalgia and South

We took a trip to Byron Bay beach on Saturday, as Ben, a good friend from my London coding/IT-slave days last century, is doing a stint in Sydney, and had taken a weekend in Byron to try out the surf. We met up at the Beach Hotel, and caught up the intervening years over a couple of cold ones, while his mates kept right on surfing.
I had already promised Fran a trip South, so so the following Friday morning we bundled into the car at 6am, and hit the road. We decided to head to Iluka via Casino and the Summerland highway, as we hadn't driven that route before. The forest and landscape going that way are quite a bit drier than around Nimbin, and a good introduction to the more normal East Coast hinterland habitat. We came off the Summerland at Pringles Way, which led us past some amazing wetlands filled with cattle and flocks of white cockatoos, and then took the car ferry over the Clarence river to Maclean.
Fran liked Maclean as much as I did when I first saw the place, so we spent some time wandering along the riverfront, and drove up to the top of the hill to the lookout that allows you to gaze out over the widening Clarence, the whole coastal plain to Iluka and Yamba, and the Pacific ocean. After lunch we got on the M1 and doubled back North over the Clarence to check out Iluka. We stopped briefly at Shark Bay so Fran could get some photos and appreciate the scale of the national park where it runs North up the coast towards Evans Head. The beach had an amazingly strong onshore wind, but the ocean was gloriously warm and perfect for paddling (and for K, chasing seagulls).
The following day I sprang a Valentines' day eve surprise on C. Without telling her where exactly we were headed, I handed K over to Fran, and drove back with C once again to the beach at Byron, this time to a double room near the beach, and twenty-four hours of pretending to be carefree DINKYs. We did nothing special - grabbed a drink, grabbed a pizza, strolled through an art gallery at a snail's pace, wandered around the Byron Bay night market until it started closing up, and then got another drink. It's amazing how special time for yourself is once you only get a few hours now and again.
Having spent more than enough time driving across the range to the coast and back, the whole followng week was spent in the environs of Nimbin. We did a spot of gardening in the sunshine, hung out at the pool, and caught up on our movie backlog (The Road, Moon, Fantastic Mr Fox). Moon, I have to say, is bloody good. Why can't more people make that good a movie with that little cash?

National Parking

We have been taking advantage of sunny days and my mum's remaining time in the country to do some camping and exploring.
Gheerula (North of Maleny) for rolling green hills, swimming holes, and forest walks, followed by a day at the beach at Surfers' Paradise.
Surfers is not somewhere I'd normally go, but I thought it made a perfect counterpoint to the joys of the hinterlands of Nimbin and Maleny.
The following weekend, we went camping again, this time high on the plateau East of Surfers', in Springbrook National Park. Our walks took in underground waterfalls, wildlife and cliff-top ocean views (not to mention a land mullet, two pythons, and a black snake).
Once back in Nimbin a friend invited us for afternoon tea at their place at a nearby MO community, and we discovered yet another great swimming reservoir - so big it's almost a lake, and beautifully warm - ideal for lazy afternoons on a lilo. It's starting to dawn on me that we are poor relations in Nimbin, in that we don't have easy access to a creek or a swimming hole, and most people we know do.
Not having enough of water, I also got stuck into repairing the broken ornamental pond in our front garden. It has not been usable since we moved in (in 2006) so I figured I should try to get it to the point where I can stock it with some fish. Many man-hours later, the bloody thing finally (finally) holds water. All I need to do now is rig up a pump and a filter, and then buy some fish. Photos will follow, if I ever get that far. If anyone has experience keeping cold-water fish in an outdoor pond, please get in touch - I have lots of noob questions (basic things like, how do you stop predators eating the fish, and how much do I need to feed them, and how big a pump do I need to keep the water oxygenated).

Solstice, Xmas, and New Year

Final new decade's resolution: Blog at least 45 times in the 48 weeks that are left of 2010.
Party season is more or less over, and not a day too soon.
Noven and Ngatina kicked things off - as pagans they have a jump on the christians (and the rest of us defaultarians) by having their big party on the solstice. They put on an amazing spread, and as C & I were able to leave K with my mum, much fun was had without having to worry about bedtimes or disrupted sleep patterns (except for ours).
K's birthday was next - C and F organised a toddlers' bash on the deck, and the kids were amazingly fun and friendly - nary a tantrum between them in over 4 hours, and actually sharing their toys and playing together on the swing and slide.
Last year our Christmas day was somewhat desultory, but this year Junior and Vanessa had us round to their new place. People were out in numbers, and Junior kept the braai turning out food at a rate of knots - it was a Christmas day to remember, not least for those adults kidnapped and held captive upstairs by the roaming bands of feral-child prison guards.
The next day, boxing day, Steffan and Iris had a party by the creek at their place, and again people were out in force (some of them, clearly, not having slept since the day before). The temperature was in the high 30s by the afternoon, so a swim in the creek was welcome.
Amongst our friends heading off to Woodford were K&C, keen to have someone look after their place while they enjoyed the festival. My mum volunteered to feed their chooks and keep their swimming pool in good order, and we took advantage by leaving K there overnight a couple of times - bliss. There were a couple of rest days, and then a full-on NYE party at Bishops Creek. No photos from that one, as this is a family blog and the theme of the fancy dress was "lingerie". Let's just say that Junior proved that tight lycra tutus are available in a size 26 in Australia.

Fuck CleanFeed

Stephen Conroy, apparently, wants some.
Mandatory blacklisting, nationwide?
We'll fight this, politically, technically, media-wise, and directly.
And we'll win.
I urge everyone to sign up to EFA and NoCleanfeed updates, and to help out, protest, donate, or all three if you can.
This is a line in the sand. For our (and our children's) freedom, this filtering plan must be stopped, and will.
The world noticed the groundswell of public anger that kept filtering off the agenda in NZ. Let's make the same thing happen here.
www.TheGiftofCensorship.com is a good start.

Urbeach, Real Beach

This is the longest gap I have left between blog posts in almost three years. The occasional hiatus is good - it teaches me a lesson.
We threw a fondue party for friends. It was great. People turned up with everything from specialty breads to spicy courgette sticks, and we made a traditional swiss-stye emmenthal fondue, and a chocolate fondue for afters. I had feared it would be an inappropriate summer meal, but the opposite was true: we put the fondue kit out on the deck, and people piled in with the fresh veggies and bread and so on, and then arranged the dipped sticks on their plate to cool, and ate them at their leisure.
The following weekend we headed South for a beach camping trip at Woody Head, and made side-trips to check out Yamba and Maclean. Maclean struck me as a very pleasant town, and it's twinned with Portree of all places (due to a history of settlement by highlanders and islanders).
progress on built-under has been swift due to Fran's imminent arrival - we have prepped and painted and sealed and sanded with gusto, and the place is now basically finished except that the cement floor needs tiling, a job which we're hoping to do the easy bits of ourselves, while paying a professional to come in and do the hard parts, such as the joins between different cement slabs.
Last Sunday I found a fruit bat stuck on a cactus on our deck. The poor thing must have flown into it at speed and got itself stuck. I freed it (being very careful neither to rip its wings, nor to expose myself to scratch or bite) and then fed it some peach, which it sucked rather than chewed. After a few minutes, to K's delight, it spread its wings and flew off into the trees. For all I know it may have died of its injuries later, but it certainly looked fine at the time, so I like to think it at least stood a chance of survival.
This weekend we headed up to Brisbane where we're picking Fran up from the airport. I had agreed to give Aaron two banana trees from my garden, so we met him and his family in West End, and he headed off with two large buckets each filled with loam and a banana tree, hopfully destined to fill his garden and fruit copiously.
We spent a morning with K on city beach. This was almost unbearably exciting for her - the noise, people, fountains, toys and city vibe left her completely unable to take her customary afternoon nap, and yet, bizarrely, in a good mood. Which goes to show you never can tell. We also walked along Queen Street with Oscar and Aida and Hannah and Samir - taking in the window displays and the George Square Xmas tree, and catching up on the big-city gossip. Finally, we caught up with Naomi and Behruz too...They have finally bitten the bullet and bought a house They have a nice little place near Holland Park - very tucked away and overlooking a bit of greenery, and convenient to the city and the freeway. They'll be seeing more of us in the near future.

Another case of "blogging under duress". Toddler energetic and frenetic. Painting and decorating the studio downstairs reaching that "last 10%" which always takes impossibly longer than foreseen. Brew club came to mine this month - IPA was brewed and bottled. It's still "green", but it tastes like ale, which is a bonus. The solar panel array is finally reaching 100% capacity for several hours on Sunny days - the buzz of the inverter as it feeds power back into the grid is a very satisfying sound. Our peach tree provided enough ripe fruit for a large crumble, and should do the same again next week.
I organised a presentation here in Nimbin by a guy from the Institute for Complementary Currencies (www.baroondollar.org). It will be a long slog to make a complementary currency actually enter circulation, but until something puts me off, I'll keep pushing the idea forward - it feels like something Nimbin should have. I am updating the progress of this side-project on twitter.
The sunny weather has warmed up the Nimbin pool - it's now a great temperature for just lounging in (and beside) on sunny days. In addition to the sunny days, there have been some great "storm season" nights: - I had always thought the expression "rolling thunder" was a turn of phrase. Last week though, I heard thunder that sounded as though a zorb the size of the death star had been filled with shrapnel, and then rolled around the ridge beyond the valley - it went on and on,getting neither louder nor quieter, but moving steadily, at around 100 kph, until it went out of earshot to the Southeast.
As Calvin & Hobbes might have it, the days are just packed - we've had a fancy dress halloween ball (I went as Rincewind, C went as Agnes Nutter). We've had 3 bub birthdays. We've had the Nimbin Blue Moon Cabaret (highlight: Rendition of the girl from Ipanema that blew that tune's elevator muzak connotations out of my mind). I've had book club, brew club, creative writing class, and . K has had her first ever swimming lessons and her first . I've made this year's batch of fresh chilli oil.
I rounded off the month with a climbing trip with mates Aaron and Jonas up Wollumbin. It's more a walk than a climb, but with my current fitness levels, I'm filing it under "climbing".
The panorama photos are views from the walk up Wollumbin.

Okie Weather

I saw the big Sydney dust storm on the news, and assumed it must've passed us by. But that same evening the sky darkened too early, and the next day there was wave after wave of gritty, chewy dust in the air, and deposited across everything, including my lungs. I'm still finding things that are covered with it and wiping them clean three weeks later.

Our genocidal campaign to rid the bottom of the garden of camphor laurels has resulted in an ever-growing view of Blue Knob and Sphinx Rock from the back verandah - I'l put a photo up once we can actually see the whole ridge of the mountain.
We have booked a local tradesman to insulate the roof, to take advantage of the federal rebate of $1,600 for insulation materials. With luck that should be done before the height of Summer, and should make a big difference to how long the house stays cool on Summer mornings.
We've been busier than ever at work - tackling multiple projects and keeping fingers in various pies, including our first ever local client - the excellent networking wizards at www.magedata.net.
I was very excited that our friends from Wisconsin, Alex and Linda, were sending us a present. Unfortunately, the Australian customs did not approve of the packet of (doubtless delicious) wild rice, and confiscated it all. Probably to make a risotto.
My latest improvement to my diet is learning how to make chocolate walnut liqueur brownies. The way I see it, at least I know what's in them (fat, carbs, and alcohol) so that's got to be healthier than eating shop-bought biscuits. There's a picture of K tucking into a plateful on her blog here.
The first weekend in October saw us at the Nimbin A&I show (what would in England be called a country faire - local crafts, farm produce, awards for best iceberg lettuce and so on). This was a rare opportunity for us to mingle with the "other" Nimbin - the respectable one. And extremely nice folk they are too.
Apart from the always excellent Perch Creek Family Jug band (shown above) the most interesting event was something I had always assumed would be very much in-your-face in Australia, but which I hadn't come across until now - snake education and awareness. Radoa did an outstanding presentation, and condensed into five minutes all the information required to not die when coming face-to-face with taipans, death adders, and king brown snakes, all of which are native to this area. Any doubts about the danger posed by the snakes the presenter was handling were dispelled by counting the fingers on his right hand. Later the same week, Ben, who is helping us sort out the studio downstairs, spotted a red-bellied black snake in a wood pile less than ten foot from the door (yes, yes, I know, I shouldn't have a wood pile ten foot from the door).
On the following Friday we took advantage of a very generous invitation from Marcus to share his campsite at Woody Head for a night (he had 2 large tents set up, and it was just him plus his daughters, so there was plenty of room). It only took an hour and 40 minutes to drive there, and it is the prettiest campsite I've seen in Australia so far, and far and away the best for a family camping trip, with a safe beach, rock pools, gum-tree forest down to the sand, and great facilities including a cook-to-order facility for those days whenyou don't feel like camp cooking.
When we got home, we discovered our mulberry tree was heavy with fruit, so we got busy picking the ready mulberries (K on a strict rota of one for her, one for the pot of course, followed by a very generous impulse to share the sweet black juice with all the soft furnishings in the house).
Now I must stop blogging and get busy making a mulberry and apple crumble. And custard.