Anniversary day tripping

Jindi views

Luke and I celebrated our six-year anniversary on Saturday with a day trip to West Gippsland. Flowers? Romantic dinners? Pffft. We went to the Rare and Unusual Plant Fair in the tiny picturesque town of Jindivick. 

We parked in front of a house with a large shady garden, and a couple of greyhounds came out to eye at us warily, much to my disappointment. I love greyhounds and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to love me instantly in return.  They could not be won over with friendly words and kissy sounds.  

Like the city slickers we are, we forgot to bring cash with us for the market. Jindivick is too small for an ATM so we travelled the windy road to Neerim South to get some cash. We had a bite to eat while there and bought a couple of yo-yo biscuits for later. They were probably the best yo-yo biscuits I've had, apart from those made by my Nanna and Mum.    

Back in Jindi (as the locals call it) at the market I bought a couple of succulents and another plant, the name of which I've forgotten (it might be an elephant ear philodendron). My indoor garden is getting quite extensive now. I think Luke and I should move house just so we can have an outside garden too. 

After the market, we visited the cricket ground, which has one of the best views - if not the best view - of any cricket ground in Victoria.  

From the crease

On the ground

We then took a stroll through Nangara Reserve (a reclaimed quarry) where I found a really long gum leaf. It's about 25cm long! (The tiny pine cone is from the Botanic Gardens.)

We headed back home to Melbourne through the Bunyip State Park, which brought us out near Gembrook in the Dandenongs. We caught a glimpse of Puffing Billy steaming through the trees on his way to the terminal in Gembrook. 

April is a big month of anniversaries for me. Tomorrow it will be five years since I started my job. There will be morning tea and (I hope) a bunch of flowers. 

Not rare or unusual, but certainly pretty

Something's coming

One of my fave songs from the new Waifs album

I have some fun stuff coming up in the next few weeks, which I'm a little bit excited about. 

This Thursday Luke and I are going to an Evening with The Waifs, the band's 25th anniversary show at Hamer Hall. They've been one of my favourite bands for years and they are fantastic live. I'm also (now-not-so) secretly pleased it's a sit down show because I've passed the stage where I want to stand up in a crowd for hours jockeying for a view of the band and being jostled by annoying people going back and forth to the bar.  This show will be far more civilised and we should be home by midnight. (Yep, I'm an old lady.)

On Friday Luke and I are going to the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show. This will be my second time, but my first visit was many, many moons ago and I wasn't particularly interested in plants and stuff then. But now, I'm obsessed with flowers, I have a growing collection of indoor plants and I love visiting gardens.  I can't wait. I expect to be overcome by the beauty.

Then for Easter Mum is visiting for the first time in ages and we're heading off to the High Country for a night. We're staying in Merrijig, which is close to Mount Buller. Luke has been before, but I haven't and I'm looking to it. I love the High Country and autumn is a great time to go.  We're also going to Werribee Zoo while Mum's here and there will also be a Meeting of the Parents (I guess it had to happen one day). 

I am full of anticipation. 

Birthdaytripping

Happy birthday to me (for yesterday)! We had a fun day out in the country. I particularly enjoyed the drive up to Woods Point because it was a very foggy morning, and the forest looked spooky and magical in the mist.  It was beautiful when the sun started to break through. 

On the Black  Spur between Healesville 
and Narbethong 

A little way past the  Warburton turn off on 
Woods Point Road

Most of the road between the Warburton turn off and Woods Point is unsealed. It was fairly smooth...apart from all the parts that were slippery with mud and riddled with potholes and corrugations. Luke did a very good job of avoiding most of the potholes, but some teeth-rattlers did sneak up on him. It's far from the roughest road we've been on, but getting back onto bitumen was still quite a relief. 

We arrived in Woods Point around lunch time, and parked our little muddy hatchback behind a row of even muddier four-wheel drives.  I think we were the only people in town in a two-wheel drive. 

I was careless getting out of the car and managed to get mud on my jacket, leggings (front and back), dress (front and back), my handbag and even my sunglasses, much to Luke's amusement. I had to leave my jacket in the car, but a tissue and bottle of water removed most of the rest of the mud on me. Luke also got some mud on the back of his calf getting out of the car. Fortunately, as we walked up to the pub for lunch, it soon became obvious that nearly everyone had a bit of mud on them. Woods Point is a popular destination for four-wheel drivers and dirt-bike riders, and most of the people in the pub were there for one or the other.   

Waiting for lunch. No 9 on 9 July

The Woods Point hotel is one of the most isolated pubs in Victoria (it's beyond the reach of the internet!), so I was quite surprised to find a young English woman working there. She'd been there for six weeks and was enjoying it - even the lack of internet access wasn't bothering her as much as she expected. I doubt I would cope with the isolation or the lack of net access. I should add here Woods Point is a very small town of only about 100 people. There's a police station, a school, a mining company office, a general store (which was closed yesterday). 

Luke and I both had a chicken schnitzel sandwich for lunch. It was made with supermarket white bread and Kraft Singles cheese, but it was greater than the sum of its non-gourmet parts. It was pretty delicious, in fact (just as well because we waited for more than hour to get it. I don't recommend arriving just after a fleet of four-wheel drives.)  

After devouring our schnitzel sangers in super quick time, we went for a wander. Woods Point is a great place to visit for someone like me who like things that are old, rusty and decrepit!

 Old, rusty, decrepit car

 Old, decrepit service station with rusty bowsers

If you do a google images search for Woods Point, you will see a lot of photos of this tiny service station. It's very cute and I love the old bowers. Here's a shot of the two on the right. 

Diesoleum!

Bowser detail

 Another little shack

 On a lean 

Side view. It appears to be held together with a 

bit of wire, a couple of rocks and a miracle

Before heading home we stopped at the cemetery. There were far fewer graves than I expected, but a sign at the gate explained why: in 1939 the Black Friday bushfires destroyed the town and burnt the wooden crosses marking most of the graves. Only some have been replaced with simple white signs bearing a name and date of death. 

High on the hill

No neighbours

Luke's car after the drive home 

All in all, it was a fun day out. You can see more of my photos here. 

I'm baaa-aaaack. Yet again.

OK, it's the first day of May - MAY, I TELL YOU! - and it's high time I got off my butt and wrote a damn blog post. You might wonder why I didn't just throw in the blogging towel since I've been doing such a lousy job of it for quite some time now. I did consider it, but decided instead to do the exact opposite: post every day, like I intended when I started writing Gleeful all those years ago. But I'm not just going to do it for a month this time. I'm gonna do it for-EVAAAH. Yup. 

So here goes. 

I've been having a pretty good year so far. My highlights reel includes a splendid Christmas/New Year road trip with Luke up to Mum's place. We stayed with Mum for about 10 days, eating lots of pavlova and tripping about the nearby rainforests, beaches and national parks, then drove home via the Tamworth, the Blue Mountains, Bathurst, Orange and Wagga.  I'll post some photos some time (or check out em out at Frisky_Librarian on Instagram).

We've ventured out of Melbourne quite a bit - day trips to the little town of Birregurra and the Great Ocean Road, the Yarra Ranges and Dandenongs, as well as an overnight stay at Mt Beauty in the gorgeous Victorian high country last weekend for the Bright Autumn Festival. The high country is now my favourite part of Victoria.  

Another highlight is a significant (and ongoing) improvement in my health. I've been seeing a functional medicine doctor (like a cross between a GP and a naturopath) who put me on a program to heal my gut through diet modification and supplementation. It's costing me a small fortune, but it's the ONLY thing that's made any real difference. (I try not to think of all the money I've spent over the years on allergists, dieticians and gastroenterologists who charged me hundreds of dollars a go for basically nothing). Progress is fairly slow, but I'm finally making actual progress. Hurrah! (I've also lost about 7kg while still eating bacon, cheese and sausages. Suh-weet!)

Another really good bit about this year is that I have dropped back to working four days a week. Woohoo! I've been having Fridays off for about 6 weeks now and I love it. So far I've mainly used the extra day for running errands and attending appointments...and afternoon naps. Three days feels like a decent weekend and I'm more positive about work on the four days I'm there.  Of course I'm earning less, but I've made up for most of my lost income just by bringing my lunch and snacks from home (which I had to do anyway because of my modified diet).

That's not bad for the year to date, is it? I'm pretty happy with my lot.