It was our twenty-third wedding anniversay on 20 July (!!), and we spent it at O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat in the Lamington Plateau. This was our second visit there, but last time we went in summer. This time, it was mid-winter, and during a cold snap. Like last time we went for an all inclusive package (excluding lunches), so we could do pretty much what we liked. Continue reading “Our stay in the rainforest”
Author: Chris BJ
Answer to the mystery nest mystery
Remember this?
Well, I sent the photo to the Queensland Museum and they said, much to my surprise, that the nest belongs to a Mulga Ant Polyrhachis macropa. There’s even a photo on Wikipedia very much like mine.
So awesome of the museum to get back to me so fast, and to have the right answer!
And we’re back!
Actually we’ve been back since last wednesday. Shattered doesn’t begin to cover the mental exhaustion caused not only by flogging the car on the roads for three days straight, but also contending with the worst sequence of roadworks I’ve ever seen in any country. On our last day we literally could not go for more than twenty kilometres at any point without being slowed, stopped, or diverted, and all with billboards screaming about accidents and speed cameras. The information overload and the concentration involved damn near killed me. Continue reading “And we’re back!”
Week one on the road
It feels like we’ve been away forever, but it’s only a week! Driven 3500 kms and burned through god knows how many litres of overpriced petrol, and I regret none of it 🙂 It’s been amazing.
Quite a few piccies under the cut. Click on them to see them full size.
Can you guess where we are? :)
Just a taster – longer blog post to follow this arvo.
Route map
This is *very* rough as everything after Adelaide is up for discussion/changing, but this will give the non-Aussies a little idea of where we’re going in relation to the continent:
We’re off to the desert!
Taking the new car (zoom zoom) off to Uluru on Monday. We’ve only booked accommodation to Coober Pedy on the return from Uluru, but Adelaide is likely, as is Warnambool for southern right whale spotting.
So, will keep you posted 🙂 We’ll be away for three weeks, I hope.
Surgery update
Well, I had the surgery on Friday. It all went surprisingly smoothly and was a million times less traumatic and painful than the wisdom tooth extraction last year.
Today I got the dressings off. To my relief and my surgeon’s surprise, all the incisions have healed nicely, and now it’s just a question of the scars all settling down, which he expects they will do quite well. It was a whopper of a tumour – 35mm by 24mm in area, 11mm deep, and a mere millimetre from muscle. Had he had to cut into that, I’d be looking at much worse deformity. And had I (a) not been fed up enough to finally do something about it; (b) not spoken to my beautician about it and got a recommendation which in a roundabout way led to an excellent surgeon; and (c) we hadn’t had that windfall from Doug’s mother’s estate, I would probably not have done anything about the ‘scar’ until it was damn close to either killing or maiming me. So I’m amazingly lucky, and grateful as hell for my good fortune.
Pictures under the cut. Warning, pretty gross (no open wounds though). Remember, if you can’t login on my WP site, I will authorise you and email you as soon as I get the failure notice, so don’t panic! Continue reading “Surgery update”
New Zealand photos – a slide show
I can’t be bothered rehashing every minute detail of the trip after Rotorua, as it wasn’t the happiest time, although it was the best scenery, which is what you’re here for, right?
So, look at some pictures (110 of them so it might take a while to load)! The order gets a bit wacky towards the end because we were using two cameras with two sets of images numbers but you’ll work it out 🙂 Continue reading “New Zealand photos – a slide show”
Rotorua – the unsuckening
If I sound like a misery guts about the trip so far, I’m afraid I’m guilty. I’ve enjoyed bits of it but it’s just been a lot of very ordinary or crappy travel with some momentary not too crappy bits. Continue reading “Rotorua – the unsuckening”