Outstanding

Awesome nearly 100-year-old Japanese Maple

I had my performance review today at work. I'm "outstanding". Yay. Hopefully outstanding enough to get a pay rise, because my rent is going up soon. (Boo.)

Luke made creamy chive mashed potatoes the other night, just like you get in nice restaurants, with lashings of butter and cream. Delicious. Will eat again.  

I had a lumbar puncture on Friday (not a gleeful event, although it was much less painful than anticipated). I asked the doctor what spinal fluid looks like and she showed me a vial of my own spinal fluid, which is kinda cool. Surprisingly, it looks exactly like water: clear and...watery. I thought it would be more viscous. 

Misty, but still colourful 

Luke and I visited Cloudehill Gardens in the Dandenongs on the weekend and it was lovely, despite the rain that started not long after we arrived. It was awkward trying to juggle an umbrella and keep the rain off my camera lens, but mostly it was quite delightful being in a garden in the rain, listening to the sound of drops pattering onto leaves and seeing the clouds close in around us. 

The lyrebirds seemed to like the rain too - we saw four of them! I'd only seen four in total in my whole life until then. They look funny when they run and I never noticed before they have big feet.

Lyrebird not hanging around for photos

Flowers and bees and a mantis

I cut through the south end of the Botanic Gardens on my way to catch a tram on St Kilda Road this morning. As soon as I set foot inside the gate near Guilfoyle's Volcano I was greeted with a riot of beautiful cactus flowers.  

  

A bee photobombed some of my flower pics, which always pleases me. I asked a bee-keeping friend about the blobs of pollen on the bee's leg and she told me bees collect pollen in "pollen baskets", which delights me. Baskets! They are also called "corbicula", which also delights me because I love words that end in "icula(r)", like funicular...and other words I can't think of right now. 

I visited the gardens three times today. I cut through again on my way home just after lunch and then I had a more leisurely wander around on my way back from the city. 

This fuzzy ferny bud was conveniently located in a shaft of sunlight in an otherwise shady spot. I didn't notice the little insect on it until I uploaded it to Instagram. 

I visited the Ian Potter Children's Garden on my longer wander because I haven't been in there in years.  There's some ace stuff in there, including fruit trees, herbs, vegetables and flowering gums that are just starting to burst into bloom. I think I was the only person in there without a child in tow, but my inner child enjoyed it.

This bee was so intent on filling its pollen baskets that it was oblivious to my camera hovering right over it. 

 Pretty flower

Anyone know what flower this is? 

I unintentionally made a praying mantis very cross. I was taking photos of some shrivelled berries and I was so focused on them that I didn't realise I'd invaded the personal space of Mr(s) Mantis. It gave me a little scare until I realised what it was (or what it was not).

Do you mind? I'm trying to pray here. 

Just before I left the gardens a Nankeen Night Heron landed nearby and sat there...and sat there...and sat there...I was hoping to see it catching its dinner, but maybe it couldn't see anything because of the weed cover, so it just sat there like a little birdy hunchback. I was still happy to see it. 

NaBloPoMo: day 20

Have you seen this amazing footage from David Attenborough's Planet Earth II? It's heart-stopping! 

We had a fun day out for Luke's sister's surprise 40th birthday party today. She had no inkling whatsoever, so the look on her face was priceless. Her three-year-old daughter, who was in her arms when we yelled "Surprise!", had not long woken from a nap and she could not have been less underwhelmed by the whole thing! 

The food at the winery was tasty (Cheese! Slow-cooked lamb! Pavlova!) and the weather was warm and sunny, albeit a little too warm where we were sitting. I was well and truly ready for a nap by the time we left, but I haven't had one, which is actually a good thing because, after two bad nights' sleep, I need to maximise my chances of a good eight hours tonight. 

Fantastic Mr(s) Fox

This fox! Its face! It's so urbane. If it could speak, it would have a very cultured accent and utter things like, "Oh, I say".

It's a Himalayan sand fox - footage is from David Attenborough's documentary The Himalayas. 

Crazy frog

This frog - the desert rain frog - is an actual real creature, not a squeaky toy. Really. 

Bus stop cat, nap, Brisbane - day 2

Remember this fluffy ginger cat I patted on the way home a few weeks ago? Today I walked past its house again and it was sitting at the bus stop - actually sitting on the seat beside a woman who was waiting for the bus. She said it's not her cat, but it often sits at the bus stop and its even tried to get on the bus a few times! Funny kitty. 

I did a yoga class this morning. I wasn't sure how I'd go because my abs were sore from previous exercise efforts, and I felt weary after walking most of the way to the class (30 minute walk). But I did well - it was challenging, but not too hard - and I liked it. I'll go back (even though it means I don't get a Friday sleep in).

I walked all the way home from yoga which meant I had done 11,200 steps by about 12.30. I was rather sore and worn out. I couldn't resist a nap, and it was awesome. I cannot adequately describe how much I love my bed. 

Back to my holiday! On my second day in Brisbane, I met Gillian. It was weird because it was a little like meeting someone new, but mostly like catching up with someone you know. It felt normal, but also surreal to finally be in the same place after 10 years of being friends.

We went to Old Government House for the Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries Costume Exhibition. I don't watch the show, but I've see enough to know the clothes are stunning - as indeed they were. Gillian and I were 'oohing' and 'aahing' all over the place. 

Eveningwear 

We weren't allowed to touch the costumes, but it was SO hard not to. I'm very tactile - I love to feel fabrics, and these fabrics were all so beautiful - silky, filmy and floaty, ornately beaded and sequined, and even a bit of faux furriness. Many costumes were displayed with sample fabrics - I could have run the silky, chiffony fabrics through my fingers all day. 

 A swimsuit from an Ethel Mermanesque scene

The descriptions of how the costumes were made were fascinating. Some are vintage and some new, and some are a mix - for example, new fabrics with vintage lace trims.   Some things were dyed and manipulated in other ways. There was also a mix of original and new jewellery and accessories. They were sourced from all over - some donated, some from the head costume designer's own collection, some from vintage stores. 

Some costumes turned out not to be suitable - like the a gauzy nightwear-style jacket that was to be worn by Miss Fisher in a scene with a tarantula, but the spider, being rather hairy, got caught in the fabric. I bet Essie Davis enjoyed having to get changed and do that scene again.

Beachwear

The exhibition included a mock up of designer Marion Boyce's workroom, which had work benches covered in all sorts of bits n bobs - beads and lace and fabrics, but still we couldn't touch! There was a video showing Marion at work - she didn't even use patterns; she just cut up a piece of fabric freehand and bam! A gorgeous dress!  (You can get a better look at the Miss Fisher costumes and Marion's other work here.)

I left the exhibition wishing I could be a costume designer (alas my sewing skills extend to hems and buttons). 

After the exhibition, Gillian and I strolled through the Botanic Gardens, which are right on the edge of the CBD.  

 Lizard, hanging out on the steps, eating bugs

 African Sausage Tree (really!)

 Pretty pink tree (a tabebuia, I learnt via google)

Big old tree

Platypuses and wombats and devils oh my!

We went to the Wine and Wildlife event at Healesville Sanctuary today. Despite living in Melbourne for 20-something years, I've never been to the sanctuary before. I guess I prefer to go see more exotic animals like they have at the Melbourne Zoo and Werribee Open Range Zoo, but  I did enjoy seeing my first platypuses, Tasmanian Devil and conscious wombat. 

I don't have any pictures of the platypus and Tassie Devil worth sharing because they were constantly on the go and it was dark in the platypus house, but here are my other photos. 

 A critically endangered Orange-bellied parrot

 This leggy fella is a curlew (also endangered)

 A rather bedraggled Tawny Frogmouth

 A more dignified Tawny Frogmouth  

 Some other bird I don't know the name of 

 Sooky young wombat who just wanted to hide 

between her keeper's legs

 Awe-inspiring massive Wedge-tailed Eagle, Australia's largest 

bird of prey with a wing span up to two metres

 Baby freshwater crococile

 I spy with my snakey little eye...

We visited the animal hospital where a stick insect was among the patients. The vets actually operated on it and put it under using gas. When they were done, they used superglue to 'stitch' it up! I don't know how they knew it was sick or what was wrong with it, or how they worked out how much gas to use so they didn't kill it. 

Oh, I also tasted some wine and chocolate.      

Sunday drive, llama guards, dream glee

The jacarandas are flowering in Melbourne

Luke and I went for a drive northwest of Melbourne today. We stopped at Hurstbridge for lunch and continued on to Kinglake, then back home via Yarra Glen, Christmas Hills and Warrandyte. The drive between Hurstbridge and St Andrews is quite lovely - it's a narrow winding road through hills covered in native bush.   

I saw a mother and baby emu in a paddock near Yarra Glen. I've never seen emus that close to Melbourne before. We also saw a trio of large alpacas on the bank of a dam. Could they have been llamas? Do we have llamas? Yes, we do, Google says. Guard llamas! They are used to protect sheep and goats from predators.  Llama guards! I think they were llamas.  

I had a dream Saturday night that I saw many frogs - green ones and brown ones and black ones. I was in a laundry looking down a drainpipe and saw them hopping about on wet rocks in the dank, dimness below the house. My dream self thought, "Oooh! Frogs! I need to write about this on Gleeful!" 

Twelve working days until my holidays. 

  

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.