Category: Wildlife

Camping at Christmas

Our Summer holidays camping, in which my hair bleached many shades lighter, we bonded with wildlife, relaxed in our new/old tent, read books, fried in the sun, adopted our summer skins,tried fishing, collected a couple of mussels, explored rock pools, ate only the foods we liked, welcomed cousins/family, went blueberry picking on a sweltering summer’s day in which my bag strap melted onto my top, drove down dusty roads, discovered elfin rain forest from the Gondwanan era & just enjoyed being a family all together and also, importantly, on our own, just us.

January 3, 2014
Tidbinbilla

For a very long time I’ve been wanting to make the easy and stunning drive down to Tidbinbilla in Australia’s Capital Territory. Not just Tidbinbilla, but the entire surrounding landscape is one of my favourites. Nearby Corin Forest is the stomping ground of the new-ish festival of Corinbank, and when it is not hosting said festival it is a popular family picnicking spot with a cafe, flying fox, toboggan ride and water slide with kangaroos and the odd bit of wildlife moseying about.

Namadgi is a hop, skip and a jump away as well. The harsh beauty of Namadgi guts me every time and I can barely speak when I see it. It is a striking contrast to the groomed and tame city of Canberra. All I can do is absorb. There is a haunting loneliness to Namadgi. The ancestors of the original Australians seem to hang here, at least I feel it and it’s not very scientific or logical, is it, but who can really judge?

As my dad says in all his wisdom: ‘we know nothing.’

Anyway. Tidbinbilla: Finally we jumped into the car and had an all too short visit to this great ‘animal park’ as we were calling it. After a bit of traipsing around we were rewarded with many an animal sighting. After the Emus and Kangaroos at the park, the elegant Brolgas were our first find, stalking about on their long, crane like legs – in fact they are Cranes, Australia’s only one. After reading Olga the Brolga by Rod Clement I am a fan of this bird. Next up were many birds: Magpie Geese, Australian White Ibis, Water Hens, two very large Pelicans who were sunning themselves on rocks in the middle of the lake, a Red-Belly Black Snake, many lizards and a water dragon and most exciting were two – two! sightings of the shy and very elusive Platypus (whose name has no confirmed plural), the very first real live platypus I have every seen.

October 8, 2013
Possum Visit

We have a ‘pet’ possum who lives in our roof. Every now and then she thunders across our ceiling or over our roof. There is a tree right up against our house and it forms a bridge to the plum tree at our fence. That is where she feasts every night on plum leaves and whatever she can find on the lawn. We toss our apple cores under the tree and I guess she picks them up. Actually, there are two. A mummy and a baby. I’m not sure if baby has grown up and left home, and I’m not sure if our visitor the other night was mum or bub, but it was one of them.

And actually, on thoughts, it might be that baby as Henry has been feeding it out of his hand since he was able to toddle away from his mummy months ago. And we fed this one.

He also weed our food – after we had eaten it all. It was perfect timing actually – if being weed on can be thought of like that. Pete and Jen had just taken the last bun and filled it with the Philly Cheese Steak filling, noone was sitting at the table at this point and then down came a shower! We couldn’t eat any more of that Cheese Steak, but there wasn’t much there, and when you have dogs and chooks food is rarely wasted – especially steak. Chester was pleased!

Speaking of chooks. We have them no more. We were oh so sad to see our lovely chickens off to Pete and Jens new place this night. They are the loveliest chickens I’ve ever had. We are only happy because we have sent them to a good home. We are very happy about that.

Today is full of cleaning blinds, flyscreens, bathroom and prepping for Sophias party. Goals. Wish me luck!

Even though we are having a PINK party, she is dead set on a Merry-Go-Round cake, and so, thanks to Canon Creative Park, I am making a paper merry go round for the top. This week is not the week for complicated cake decorating! I just hope I get it all done. If I get off the internet now I guess I will! Farewell.

If things go quiet, you will know that I am caught up with the move.

xo

April 5, 2013
Camping

What drives us to camp? Is it a cry back to our primal days? A chance to live as we used to? To absorb nature? Is it the dream of rest and relaxation? Because all these things seem to exist more in either the anticipation or in the reflection of the actual event. The actuality is full of modern contrivances so that we do not have to live as ‘primitively’ as we might like to think ourselves capable of. In part I might welcome the opportunity to sleep out in the open and live off bush berries for a few days if it seriously cut back on all the cooking & cleaning I had to do!

But, the memories make it worth it…

The Australian bush is beautiful and it was fun to cook on the fire, build sandcastles, collect shells, discover our own ‘Mermaid Cove’, swim with the fish, dive in the surf. And we saw a lot of wildlife, from crabs to possums, a red-bellied black snake, a very friendly goanna and of course kangaroos and a wallaby.

We slept to the scratching and scrounging of who-knows-what animals, and gum leaves and sticks falling on our tent, in fact it was an area prone to trees falling and we saw one suddenly & entirely collapse only a hundred metres from our campsite. Which kept me awake at night! In the morning it was noisy! So many birds just having a party.

I felt absolutely exhausted by the end, cooking & cleaning in makeshift conditions, dragging the kids around the beach and back, but times like these call for extra effort and the memories will always be special.

December 15, 2012