Foggy, creamy, trippy

 

Looking back towards Morell Bridge

It was a fabulous foggy morning this morning. I got up at 7.00am and couldn't see even a hint of the city buildings from my window, and they still hadn't emerged by the time I headed off to work at about 8.00.

The sun didn't start to break through the fog until I got to Alexandra Gardens. 

But there was still fog shrouding parts of the city when I got to work and it hung around for ages. I love fog - it makes for great photos and usually means a sunny day ahead.

Luke made creamy chive mashed spuds again tonight. Yum. 

Luke and I didn't go on our usual road trip back in January, but we are hoping to hit the road for an extended driving holiday in July. I'll say more when our applications for leave are approved.*crosses fingers*

NaBloPoMo: day 28

I can't wear my earphones in my left ear at the moment because my piercing is tender. The left ear bud must have known it was going to be out of a job because it stopped working a few days ago. 

I walked half way home after work and the tram arrived just as I got to the tram stop. Perfect timing.

I have only 15 working days left for the year. I'm flying up to mum's for Christmas on 24 December and coming back on the 30th to spend New Year's Eve with Luke before returning to work on 4 January. We'll do our annual road trip later in January or February when he can take leave. We want to go back to the Blue Mountains since it was cold and wet with almost zero visibility when we passed through in January.  

   

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. 

November: day 6

My boss approved my Christmas leave today. I'm off work from 23 December and go back on January 11 - almost THREE WHOLE WEEKS! I can't wait. Luke and I are combining Christmas at my Mum's near Port Macquarie with our annual New Year's road trip. 

We'll take two days to get to Mum's travelling the major highways - it's about 12 hours away, although holiday traffic might slow us down. After spending some time with Mum, we'll meander our way back home taking the road less travelled. I don't know about Luke, but I haven't seen much of the country between Sydney and Port Macquarie - only what I saw zipping through it on the train once years ago and I remember it being very picturesque, so I'm keen for a closer look.  

Now that my leave has been approved, we can start thinking about which places to visit, but as is our usual way, we'll make most of it up as we go along.  Forty-eight days to go! 

New Year road trip: our last day

We were met with gloom and drizzle when we emerged from our motel the next morning, although it wasn't cold. Despite the expected limited visibility, we headed back to Powers Lookout, which I had managed to locate on a map in a tourist brochure on the Prosecco Road I picked up in nearby Milawa. (Side-note: this part of Victoria is called King Valley and it's notable for its food and wine offerings. And I like prosecco.) (Further side-note: I just spotted Powers Lookout on the map I had with me the whole trip. Map-reading fail.)

We couldn't see a thing when we got to the lookout. It was more a case of no visibility rather than limited visibility.

 Nice um...tree

 Anyone for a picnic?

Oh well. The King Valley isn't that far from Melbourne and there's plenty of other things to see/eat/drink up there, so we can come back again in better weather.  Not that the weather bothered me much. Yes, it would have been nice to see the reportedly amazing views from the lookout (a friend had recommended we take a small detour to see the view), but the low hanging cloud/fog was quite picturesque in itself and added a dramatic atmosphere to our photos that's often missing when it's a sunny day with blue sky. And besides that, the rain made the bush smell AH-MAY-ZING. All fresh and eucalyptusy. I love it. 

The rain was widespread in Victoria that Saturday, so the clouds stuck with us most of the day. Our next stop on the way home was Mansfield, which was conveniently located at the end of the road we travelled on to get to Powers Lookout. Road trip serendipity. Serentripity. 

We stopped for a quick look around Mansfield - the bakery, the lolly shop, the gun shop, the horse shop (no, it doesn't sell horses, just horsey stuff, including horse shoes that are like human shoes that you actually slip your horse's hoof into). Although I grew up on a farm, the gun shop and horse shop felt like being in a different country. My dad had a gun, but I don't remember seeing gun shops in town. And I was scared of horses from when I was a small child. (I'm still not a fan.) 

But Mansfield is in the high country, a long way from where I grew up, and guns and horses are clearly an integral part of the culture there. We even saw people - young people! - walking down the main street wearing cowboy hats. Nobody wore cowboy hats in the Western District where I grew up. Yes, we giggled at them. 

Next up, we hit the road to Alexandra, which felt like a verrrrry long drive on more winding roads through the mountains, skirting Eildon National Park and past Lake Eildon.  

More photos of rural serenity...and cows. 

These cows retreated to a safe distance before stopping and turning around to watch us intently as we took photos. We saw a lot of cows on our trip and few sheep. Clearly east of Melbourne is Cow Country and west is Sheep Country. Maybe that explains the lack of cowboy hats where I grew up...
  

 Lake Eildon (an artificial lake, hence the drowned trees)

Lake Eildon again

 This might be the Goulburn River? 

Or maybe is isn't big enough? I dunno

We stopped at Snobs Creek to visit the falls, another spontaneous decision as we'd never heard of this waterfall before, despite its relative proximity to Melbourne. The actual creek that Snobs Creek takes its name from is a pretty insignificant watercourse, so we were surprised when we got to the falls and water was fairly thundering over the rocks. 

 The top of the main drop (hard to get more than this in shot)

 Above the falls

The cascades

I've said after previous holidays that it's not a proper holiday without me falling into something (e.g. a creek in Tassie) or stepping in something gross (stagnant mad that looked like beach sand on the Coorong). This time I slipped and fell on the rocks, hurting both wrists and my left shoulder, and getting a wet patch on my bum. Kind of serves me right because we had slipped through a gap in the viewing platform and walked out onto the rocks to take photos. Miraculously, the family that was at the viewing platform mere minutes before wasn't there when I looked up, and Luke had his back turned. That's called winning at falling. 

Our next and final stop was Alexandra, where we stopped for a late lunch before thee final stretch of highway that took us home. It was sort of nice to be home - I really enjoyed sleeping on my own pillow, which I had forgotten to take with me - but honestly, I wish we could have just kept on driving. One day, I'd like to take several months off work, and just drive keep on driving.    

A note about my photos: I've realised I need to recalibrate the colours on my laptop, which is why my photos probably look over-saturated on your device. They look fine on mine!  I'll fix that when I work out how to do it...

New Year road trip day 4: Eden and Cooma

Luke was up earlier than I the next morning and took his camera for a stroll around Mallacoota. He returned with a seal story - this one about a big, grumpy seal sunning itself on a jetty which barked at him when he got too close.

We went past again after breakfast and it was still there, snoozing in the sun. The jetty was fairly narrow and the seal was completely blocking the entrance to it. 

A guy berthed his boat at the jetty while Luke was there in the early morning and as he started running up the jetty Luke alerted him to the presence of the seal. He responded with something like, "Oh, not that bloody seal again", so obviously it's a regular hang out for the seal. It's near a fish cleaning station, so perhaps it was waiting for fish snacks.

Speaking of fish, every time I think of this seal or see photos of it, I will remember the bloody awful stench that filled the air near the jetty. I don't have a particularly delicate stomach when it comes to bad smells, but this nearly made me lose my breakfast. It was putrid. Upon investigation, I discovered a fisherman had thrown a small shark's head down onto the water's edge and I don't think it was recently. Not sure why the seal or some other scavenger hadn't eaten it while it was fresh.  

  Zzzzzz

My original itinerary had us travelling from Mallacoota inland to Jindabyne, but we ended up continuing up the coast to Eden in New South Wales. 

 Boats in the delightfully named Snug Cove 

  The garden of Eden is really a 'mongrel landscape' 

After a quick information-gathering stop at the local tourist info centre, we backtracked to visit an old whaling station and the Green Cape Lighthouse, which meant more driving on bumpy, rutted gravel roads. (Finally getting back onto smooth bitumen after bumping along for kilometres on gravel roads is one of life's less common simple pleasures.)  

 The old house at the Davidson Whaling Station, 

which dates back to 1896

The house and other buildings are run as a small museum. On the day we visited a descendant of the Davidsons was there to hand over an old gun to go on display. Our guide pointed out his mother sitting on her mother's knee in a photo on the wall of the house.

Kiah Inlet: calm and serene today, but once where the Davidson

 family brought ashore the whales they hunted for oil

There was an old photo in the house of a man embedded in the blubber of a dead whale. Whale blubber was thought to be good for rheumatism, but anyone undergoing the treatment had to have someone keep an eye on them so they didn't pass out from the heat and stench, and suffocate in the blubber. Thank god for modern medicine.  

Another surprising thing we learned: the whalers took advantage of killer whales' status as the only predator of southern right whale to help them catch their quarry. Packs of killer whales drove the southern rights into shore where they attacked them, making it easier for the whaleboats to capture them. The whalers let the orcas feast on the whales' lips and tongues, and they took the rest of the carcass. Bizarre.  

The Davidson whaling station was set up in 1866 and closed its operations in 1929. It was the longest continuously operating whaling station in Australia.   

Yacht parking to the right please

  

 Next we headed to the Green Cape lighthouse. 

 Disaster Bay on the way 

 Luke's car after another, mercifully short, stretch of dirt road

 Said lighthouse

We had lunch back in Eden, then continued up the coast almost to Merimbula, but then we turned off the highway and took a road less travelled on the way to Cooma (which sadly meant we bypassed the amusingly named town of Numbugga). We were back in gorgeous lush, hilly farmland which had us 'oohing' and 'aahing'.  

 Impending storm

Curious calves

When we stopped in the driveway of a farm to take photos the calves in the paddock on the opposite side of the road mooed at us until I paid them some attention. Once I took their photo, they lost interest. 

A guy came out of the farm on a quadbike and stopped to ask if we were OK. I guess being off the highway they don't see a lot of tourists. When we told him our destination and confessed we weren't certain when were on the right road, he said we were and told us about a lookout up in the nearby mountains, which was on our way.  Unfortunately by the time we reached it (the Bemboka Escarpment), it had started to rain and we couldn't see much. As we got further along the high, winding mountain pass the clouds in the photo above let loose a proper downpour. 

On the other side of the mountains, we arrived at Cooma, which is only just over 100km south of Canberra and notable for its history as headquarters during construction of the Snowy Hydro Scheme (a hydroelectricity and irrigation complex) between 1949 and 1974. 

After finding a room (and breaking an arm off my glasses which I had to mend with a Band-aid), we set off on a walk around town. 

A highland goaty-oaty-oat?

We saw quite a few goats on our travels, but our favourite was a black goat with huge horns we saw near Agnes Falls and dubbed Devil Goat.

Dinner was at the art deco era Alpine Hotel (scotch fillet again), then it was bedtime.  

New Year road trip day 3: Mallacoota

On the third day of our road trip we had a quick look around Lakes Entrance before setting off for Mallacoota at the pointy end of Victoria.

 A yacht just after entering the eponymous entrance

 Synchronised preening near the North Arm Bridge

Nigel No Neck tries to act natural

Our first stop was Marlo, a small coastal town where the Snowy River flows into the Tasman Sea. We saw seals! There were a few people fishing from the jetty and the local seals obviously knew they could expect some fishy tidbits to be thrown their way.  There were two of them and they were very playful. Only one got a fish while we were there because the fisherman only caught one. 

 The mouth of the Snowy River

The man with a baby for a head

We continued along the coast, stopping at Cape Conran and Cowrie Bay. We took a short walk along a trail through banksia scrub to the rocky beach. 

 Old banskia, new banksia

 Slabs of rock with sharp vertical corrugations

 Smooth blue-grey rocks as big as cantaloupes

Beach art (not of our making)

I picked up some small smooth stones from the beach - there's something very pleasing about holding a smooth stone in the palm of your hand - and we hit the highway again, where rolling hills and farmland had given way to native forest on either side. Next up was Cann River for lunch.

 Charming little church in Cann River

We attempted a walk beside the river after lunch, but unlike most signposted walks, the narrow trail was just a narrow path of flattened grass through the bush. We're all for getting off the beaten track, but not if there's a strong risk of a surprise encounter with a snake (especially as we had bare skin at snake height). It was hot and super humid anyway, so I didn't mind getting back into the air conditioned car. 

While zipping along the highway again we spotted a turn off for Genoa Point in the Croajingolong National Park and hung a rightie onto the gravel road.  Like a lot of places we visited on this trip, this was a spontaneous side-trip. I did do some research before we left, which is where I read about Agnes Falls at Toora, but other stuff we saw signposted along the way and decided to visit on the spur of the moment. We also stopped off at information centres to investigate local walks and attractions. Planning ahead is good, but I think the essence of a road trip is to make it up as you go along.

Anyway, this gravel road was rough, rutted and winding and consequently it felt very long. We finally got to the car park for the walk to Genoa Point to find that it would take a few hours to get to the peak and back, which was more time than we wanted to invest in it. 

So it was back onto the rough gravel road again. We did see a goanna, so it was a worthwhile tangent. 

Tree hugger. It was about a metre long

Ready for his close up

We arrived in Mallacoota around 5 o'clock and booked a motel room. Apart from our first night in Foster, we didn't book any of our accommodation in advance. I think a lot of people must have gone back to work on 5 January so we didn't struggle to find a place to stay anywhere. 

We put our bathers on and headed for the beach - First Bastion Point for a view of Gabo Island. This is the island I mentioned previously that is often mentioned on the ABC weather report (which is because it's a shipping reference). In the end we didn't visit it, but we did see it and its pink granite lighthouse in the distance. 

 Teeny weeny lighthouse at far right 

Closer (hazy) view

It doesn't look it from a distance, but the Gabo Island lighthouse is the second-tallest lighthouse in Australia. 

A beautifully refreshing sea breeze was blowing as we walked along the beach to where the sea and the lake system meet, so we didn't end up going for a swim. I did get my feet wet though and picked up some shells. 

There was an information board at a deck overlooking the beach with information on local flora and fauna, including the Gloomy Octopus. The Gloomy Octopus!!! I thought this was hilarious. How do they know it's not a happy octopus? Can you pick it? 

Yeah, I know, it's hard enough to see the thing, 

let alone determine its emotional state

Then we headed to Betka Beach, on the recommendation of our motel caretaker. During a stroll along the beach I found this blue creature. 

At first I thought it was dead, but as my poking finger got closer to it, it started to wave that tentacle around. Consequently I kept my finger to myself. I guessed it was a blue bottle jellyfish, which I knew to be a nasty customer. When I got home I  googled it and discovered a blue bottle is the same thing as a man o' war jellyfish (which isn't actually a jellyfish). Definitely a nasty customer - its stings are extremely painful and, in rare cases of allergic reaction, can cause deadly side effects. They can still sting for hours or days after death so if you see one on the beach that looks dead, no poking! 

Betka Beach also had a lot of rugged rocks, this time with beautiful ochre seams running through them. We were there during the golden hour, which made them even more attractive. 

Looks like the beach artist was here too

Another local 

Betka Beach - mouth of Betka River in the foreground

From Betka Beach we set out on a coastal walk, much of which took us through tunnels of ti tree that were otherwise deserted and quiet. It was a little spooky. 

 

Dinner-plate-sized spider webs, 

for added spookiness

By now it was dinner time so we headed back into town and ate in the motel restaurant (more scotch fillet and chips for me). Luke had a swim in the motel pool, but I was too tired. Another early night ensued.