Travels, tribulations and trivia
Doug’s taking the easy road on the painting front (not really.) All the time he’s been working on the deck, he’s had a sidewalk supervisor keeping a very close eye on him, although I can’t swear Mr Wallaby isn’t much more … Continue reading →
Doug’s taking the easy road on the painting front (not really.)
All the time he’s been working on the deck, he’s had a sidewalk supervisor keeping a very close eye on him, although I can’t swear Mr Wallaby isn’t much more interested in any food items the humans may have about their persons.
It’s a lot cooler today, as evidenced by the return of the morning fog. The wallabies love it.
We’re about half-way done with the renovations, but this last weekend, the extraordinarily hot weather meant we just had to stop completely. 41°C in both Kingaroy and Dalby, and 35°C up there on the mountain. It wasn’t safe for Doug … Continue reading →
We’re about half-way done with the renovations, but this last weekend, the extraordinarily hot weather meant we just had to stop completely. 41°C in both Kingaroy and Dalby, and 35°C up there on the mountain. It wasn’t safe for Doug to be working outside in those temperatures, so he came inside with me and hid in the airconditioning. The wallabies were all tucked away in the shade, but all the wildlife seemed to be suffering. A poor young kookaburra sat on the deck rail and just looked at me with his beak open. I put water down, but I don’t think he knew what to do with it, unfortunately.
Today was supposed to be cooler (it wasn’t) but we both woke early after a humid night, and at 5 am, the world was a cool and lovely place to be. (Also noisy because something had excited the cockatoos and they were being incredibly loud!)
The wallabies, on the other hand, are much quieter creatures
But it got up to nearly 40°C again in Kingaroy, and Doug had to throw in the towel at lunchtime. The cool change has come through, thankfully.
Tomorrow it’s supposed to be 10° cooler than it’s been. Hope so!
We’re about half-way done with the renovations, but this last weekend, the extraordinarily hot weather meant we just had to stop completely. 41°C in both Kingaroy and Dalby, and 35°C up there on the mountain. It wasn’t safe for Doug … Continue reading →
We’re about half-way done with the renovations, but this last weekend, the extraordinarily hot weather meant we just had to stop completely. 41°C in both Kingaroy and Dalby, and 35°C up there on the mountain. It wasn’t safe for Doug to be working outside in those temperatures, so he came inside with me and hid in the airconditioning. The wallabies were all tucked away in the shade, but all the wildlife seemed to be suffering. A poor young kookaburra sat on the deck rail and just looked at me with his beak open. I put water down, but I don’t think he knew what to do with it, unfortunately.
Today was supposed to be cooler (it wasn’t) but we both woke early after a humid night, and at 5 am, the world was a cool and lovely place to be. (Also noisy because something had excited the cockatoos and they were being incredibly loud!)
The wallabies, on the other hand, are much quieter creatures
But it got up to nearly 40°C again in Kingaroy, and Doug had to throw in the towel at lunchtime. The cool change has come through, thankfully.
Tomorrow it’s supposed to be 10° cooler than it’s been. Hope so!
Whatever we’re doing up here, there’s always time to stop and look at the wildlife Thanks to the hard work of Paul Reeves and his team from Kingaroy, we now have back stairs from the deck, and a brand-new hardwood balustrade … Continue reading →
Whatever we’re doing up here, there’s always time to stop and look at the wildlife
Thanks to the hard work of Paul Reeves and his team from Kingaroy, we now have back stairs from the deck, and a brand-new hardwood balustrade on the front verandah. Airconditioning went in a couple of weeks ago, and boy, we’ve needed that on a few days. The new fridge with its bigger capacity was also welcome, as were the powerful new pedestal fans we’ve bought for the living room and bedrooms.
We finally sorted out the issue with the Telstra Smart Antenna—it was simply faulty and has been replaced. Now we have moderately decent reception inside the house, at least for a few hours a day. Not much help to our guests on other networks, but the Optus reception tends to be better without any assistance anyway.
Doug has painted the floorboards and balustrades on the front verandah, and the house exterior is almost completely repainted. Inside the house, we’ve replaced the mattresses in the queen and double bedrooms, purchased close on $3000 worth of art, mostly from local artists, got rid of a lot of the old, tired furniture, and replaced it with new stuff waiting to be set up once the kitchen and bathroom are finished. Lots of new rugs and brand new bedding to go in too.
Michelle and Clinton Hansen of Hansen Kitchens will be installing our new kitchen on March 2, and Paul Reeves will be working on that and our new bathroom around the same time. On March 1, we get new window screens and a new water tank!
Still to be done. Painting, painting, painting! Washing all the things! Buying all the things! Carpet cleaning! Running around and waking up in the middle of the night wondering what we’ve forgotten!
Oh yes, the life of a new holiday home owner is a nonstop whirl 
New stairs in, new front balustrade in. Lots of painting to do, new kitchen and bathroom by start of March.
Argh!
Anyway, this is a picture of the house with the front painting half complete. The sides of the house are now cream, and the balustrade will be the paler green.
And a small sample of the wildlife visible from the verandah:
Can’t wait for it to be finished!
The good news – we’re still going to Tasmania for Xmas/New Year.
The bad news – not to the nice resort we had booked, and not with the neighbours. Turns out when someone claims you are like their sister and insists we consider them our family, it means they are going to behave just like my real siblings, screw us over, treat us like dirt, and spit on everything we’ve done for them in the last three years (including spending over $20,000 on them, their kids, and their house, not to mention hundreds of hours of free babysitting, gardening and repairs). Oh, and still be happy to go to Tasmania at our cost because we had promised to pay and I didn’t want to upset the kids, while still shitting on us and our generosity. I thought I had seen it all. I wish I could say I was totally surprised. At least I don’t have to pretend any more that I don’t find him a bit creepy and that she isn’t three apples short of a picnic. A+ acting abilities though.
Yes, we’re bloody fools, in retrospect. But one never expects to be taken quite this badly by people you live next door to.
So we are going to a rather shabby little villa on the west coast, and hopefully the posher one next year. Doug has a bottle of Talisker Lagavullin for his birthday, and the holiday for his/our Xmas pressie. The whole trip will involved over 5,000 kms of driving, and we will be away almost exactly four weeks.
More good news – house purchase is going ahead and we complete on 10th January, two days after we return from Tasmania. We have already spent mega bucks on furniture, air conditioning, soft furnishings, and art, and that’s before we renovate the bathroom and kitchen, and add stairs to the back deck. Or paint the whole house 🙂 So the good news is that it will be fabulous. The bad news is that we will be exhausted and poor by the time it is 🙂 (not really poor, but definitely exhausted!)
Our sunroom is currently full almost to the ceiling of purchased stuff to go up there in the new year. Still haven’t bought the new fridge, dishwasher, cooktop, oven or television yet.
So if anyone is coming over here in the next few years, please do feel welcome to stay at our new house, in one of the most beautiful places in Australia.
We went for a short break in the Bunya Mountains and came home having put in an offer (which was accepted) on this place which we will use as part holiday home, part investment. It needs a little tarting up on the decor, and we’re going to extend the deck and put a new kitchen in as the old one is seriously dated, but it’s on half an acre, and the patch of rain forest behind (included three enormous strangler figs) are all ours.
The local wildlife are very keen on house buyers
And we get our own
And though we won’t own these, we’ll see them around 🙂
Because
Therapist: Relationships are best measured by farting.
Peter Simon: Excuse me?
Therapist: The stages of a relationship can be defined by farting. Stage one is the conspiracy of silence. This is a fantasy period where both parties pretend that they have no bodily waste. This illusion is very quickly shattered by that first shy, “Ooh, did you fart,” followed by the sheepish admission of truth. This heralds a period of deeper intimacy. A period I like to call the “Fart Honeymoon”, where both parties find each other’s gas just the cutest thing in the world. But, of course, no honeymoon can last forever. And so we reach the critical fork in the fart. Either the fart loses its power to amuse and embarrass thereby signifying true love, or else it begins to annoy and disgust, thereby symbolizing all that is blocked and rancid in the formerly beloved. Do you see what I’m getting at?
I recommend seeing it like I did, with good friends, but perhaps without the attention-seeking three year old. Booze definitely an option 🙂
Remember the grubs from hell?
Hi Christine
These are sawfly larvae, but they are not bottlebrush sawflies. They are true spitfires (subfamily Perginae), which are quite diverse and not easy to identify from the larvae (for examples of the diversity in this group see: http://www.brisbaneinsects.com/brisbane_sawflies/Perginae.htm).
The tapping behaviour that Christine has observed and filmed occurs in response to disturbance. The larvae also use this as a form of communication to reform the group after some individuals have become separated. Most species feed on eucalypts, and if the larvae are disturbed at close range on a tree, they will typically rear their heads back and exude a concentrated solution of eucalyptus oil. The larvae extract the oil from the leaves and then store it for the purposes of defence. There are two reasons for the larvae leaving their host plant as they have done in the supplied photograph. Firstly, if the plant that they were feeding on has become defoliated, the larvae will move elsewhere in search of an another food source. Alternatively, if the larvae are mature and ready to enter the next stage of development, they will leave the food plant and find a suitable place to burrow together (such as the soft organic matter at the base of a tree) before transforming into pupae. I suspect that in this case the larvae may be ready to pupate because they look quite mature, but it is hard to say for certain.
Thanks for your query and the video!! Actually would it be OK for us to use your video at the museum at some stage to show their interesting tail wagging behaviour? If so , could you confirm this be email reply.
Colleen
Colleen Foelz
This is disturbingly plausible 🙂