Hepburn Springs

Last weekend we went to Hepburn Springs for the weekend. It was kind of my birthday gift (even though it isn't my birthday until next week). We went to see Henry Wagons (of the band Wagons that played at our wedding) play a solo gig at the Palais in Hepburn. We stayed at the Hepburn Motor Inn which was right next door to the Palais.
I love how vegan friendly Hepburn Springs and Daylesford are.
Saturday night I was hoping we could have the banquet at the Hepburn Retreat Centre (formerly the Continental) but they didn't have enough bookings so it was cancelled. Instead we went to the Electric Sitar in Daylesford (4/27 Albert Lane). It's an Indian cafe/take away place. They only have a couple vegan items on the menu but the 2 we had were both really good (eggplant masala and a chickpea dahl).
Sunday morning we went to the Harvest Cafe and Organic Grocery (29 Albert St. Daylesford) for breakfast. We both had the scrambled tofu which was good although I thought it had too many olives in it (and I like olives).
Sunday afternoon we discovered a new pub that we had never been to in Hepburn (in a part of Hepburn we didn't know existed--where a lot of the locals live and go to school): The Old Hepburn Hotel. A Melbourne band (The Brothers Grim) was playing there in the afternoon so we thought we'd try to find it and check it out. The pub had both Coopers Dark Ale and Pale Ale on tap (but no vegan food other than the veggie toastie without the cheese). It felt a bit like we were in Portland, Oregan when we walked in the pub. It was a great place.
Sunday dinner was at Jasmine Thai (right across from the Palais). They have all their vegetarian items that can be made vegan clearly marked on their menu (the ones with the asterisk next to them in the photo below). The food there is good and soooo filling (and no doggie bags).
Henry's gig was really good (and the 20 of us that had pre-purchased tickets had couches and chairs reserved at the front). It comes second with only the time most of Wagons played at our wedding being a better gig.














Monday morning after a bit of a battery issue with our flexicar (which we're pretty sure wasn't our fault but possibly an issue with their swipe card thing which could drain the battery) we headed to The Chocolate Mill before heading back to Melbourne. We arrived just as their morning demo was finishing and a woman was explaining that the chocolate they use (Callebaut)-- also the brand my parents used in their chocolate factory-- has always been fair trade but at the start of this year the became properly fair trade certified. The dark chocolate is vegan (Zac discovered this a few years ago at my mom's place so whenever we're there we go looking for dark chocolate things left in the disused factory) and they clearly mark all their vegan friendly chocolates in their display. I got a chocolate orange piece and a chocolate covered candied ginger. Zac got 2 mint chocolates. We then stopped in their cafe and got a vegan hot chocolate (the photo was taken before I stirred the chocolate through the hot, frothy soy milk).
















It was the perfect relaxing weekend away.

mallacoota again

Last week we spent a week in Mallacoota to celebrate Zac's mum's birthday. I took about 700 pictures (and now I have to get really good at hitting the delete button because there are way too many photos and a lot are very similar-- trying to get that really good shot). I couldn't choose just a few to put on here (I have about 90 of my favourites on facebook) so I made a few collages (click on the image to make it larger).
Wombat had the best time (and didn't get sore feet the entire trip-- a first for her. I think it was because we brought all her different meds for allergies with us so of course we didn't need them). She ran free on the beaches every day:

She spent her evenings charming everybody and getting fed way to much junk food from people. We had our own unit at the Adobe Mudbrick Flats (same place we stayed last time) and Zac's mum hired the penthouse for the week. We spent most of our time at the penthouse and just slept, watched the sunrise and had short quiet breaks at our unit. The penthouse has a huge balcony with an amazing view and a bird feeder on the rail where dozens of birds feed all day long (at our unit we had a bird feeder just outside the floor to ceiling lounge room windows and a small outdoor space where we could sit next to the bird feeder).
We did a lot of bird watching at the units and around the area:

The bird feeders attracted lorikeets, galahs, rosellas, red browed firetail finches, fairy wrens, king parrots (who would feed from your hand) and sparrows (and I'm sure I'm forgetting several other birds). At the beaches and in the inlet and up in Eden, NSW (we took a day trip up there) we saw lots of sea eagles and pelicans. It was pretty amazing seeing so many birds everywhere we went.
I got up for the sunrise 3 or 4 mornings while we were there (not something I usually do but I was accidentally awake the first morning and then after that I kept waking up and then didn't want to miss watching it. One of the rooms in the penthouse faces right out across the balcony straight towards the winter sunrise. The woman staying in that room watched the sunrise every morning with no chance of sleeping through it (there are no curtains on the floor to ceiling windows in that room). Even the morning it rained, the sun was pretty amazing when it broke through the clouds (the black and white looking images are from that morning-- I didn't actually alter the colour on the photos-- it was very grey and shots taken into the light look very greyscale). The colours of the sky during sunset were also amazing with lots of pink clouds. The rainbow in the bottom left of the collage was in Eden. Just as we finished taking Wombat for a short run on the beach there, the rain clouds broke. As we were getting into the car we noticed a double rainbow over the water so we had to stop and take some photos.

We spent about an hour a day at the beaches. I could have sat there all day watching and listening to the waves roll over into tubes and crash on the rocks.

On the way home we spent a night in Paynesville. I convinced Zac we had to make a quick trip over to Raymond Island before the sun set so I could take photos of koalas on the small island (there is about 258 according to a count done a couple weeks ago). We managed to find about 5 (including one really alert one that was watching us and the other people walking around the trail below her) in the half hour we were on the island. We spotted the kangaroos relaxing in someone's front yard at Gypsy Point (a slight detour on the way out of Mallacoota).

Mallacoota is totally worth the 7 hour drive from Melbourne (and the pub even has vegan risotto on the menu which was an exciting bonus when we went there for dinner one night). I'm glad Zac's mum lives at about the halfway point though so we can have a stopover night along the way. Wombat LOVED her holiday but was completely exhausted by the end of it (and I'm pretty sure she's gained a kilo or 2 from all the food people gave her even though she did a LOT of running at the beaches).

beach trip

to celebrate our 3rd anniversary last month we went to the beach. we were sad to find out that the holiday house we've stayed at for the past 2 years in barwon heads doesn't seem to be available to rent anymore. we found another pet friendly place in our budget in queenscliff that worked our really well though. another sad thing was the vegetarian cafe place that we had our wedding reception in barwon heads has completely closed down (they were just mostly doing catering and take away on weekends from shortly after our wedding but now its a whole other cafe. we didn't really look at the food there but they did do nice soy coffees (with fair trade coffee).
unfortunately we can't seem to take wombat anywhere with out her sensitive skin acting up (we think she's allergic to the beach-- especially the beaches around melbourne because she's not nearly as bad in paynesville or mallacoota).
poor dog licking/eating her toes:

having fun in the water:

playing ball in the big yard:

being lazy:

yes, our anniversary trip (as always) ended up being about wombat but we wouldn't have it any other way.
it'd be nice if her skin didn't seem to react to everything new. we did bring her vet prescribed cream with us but i don't think it did much. we had some left over meds from last time that we started giving her as soon as we got home and she mostly cleared up in a few days. her back toes are still raw and gross but we're not sure if this is from the beach (almost 2 weeks ago) or if she's irritated them with something else.

mallacoota

last weekend we went to mallacoota with zac's mum (she has been raving about it for ages so we finally made the effort to get out there-- soooooo worth the long drive).
wombat had the best weekend ever! she has never been able to run so free on a beach before usually when we let her off near barwon heads we play sort of "pig in the middle" fetch with her and we're constantly watching for other dogs. here there were beaches enclosed by high cliffs with only one set of stairs coming down and rocks going out into the water to keep her from running off forever. she got to run and chase crabs and swim.

(click on the photo to see it more clearly-- the top left picture of wombat is pretty funny)
we found a great, warm river to swim in at one beach so we took wombat in there and discovered she can swim better than we thought she could but she is pretty top heavy and struggles a bit with it. she would go swimming for a stick though.
i love pelicans:

so amazing something that big can actually fly (and do it gracefully).
we stayed at the adobe mudbrick flats. zac's mum had stayed there several times before. it's a pretty amazing place. we tried to get the penthouse but it was already booked so we stayed in one of the other units. floor to ceiling windows overlooking the ocean with a large bird feeder and tons of seed. the mudbrick walls had bottles embedded in them to make great designs.

wombat enjoyed spending her time watching the wildlife (the place is very wildlife friendly as well as pet friendly). she loved the watching the brown antechinuses (a marsupial mouse). she also enjoyed bird watching.

just some of the many birds we saw from our window:

wombat was exhausted after her weekend of running on the beaches, swimming and animal watching. i came back feeling much more relaxed and ready to face the few busy weeks of work before i have 6 weeks off for summer.

only annoying thing that happened was my camera lens decided it was no longer going to auto focus for me (i think it's the motor in it) so it made it really hard to take action shots (i have lots of great shots of wombat running but she's blurry). fortunately i have an old (not quite as nice) lens from the camera zac drowned a few years ago so i can use that until i can find out how much it's gonna cost to fix the better lens.

maggie and townsville

i'm finally getting around to posting about our queensland trip (feels like it was ages ago we got back but i guess it's only been 6 days). our flights up were ok. we had a 3 hr layover in the gold coast which we spent just hanging around the small airport. when we took off on our next flight we realized a nice beach was just across the freeway from the airport. we could have gone to the beach!

this was the view from our balcony at the hostel we stayed at on magnetic island:

we stayed at magnums at alma bay. there was some confusion when we arrived and the hostel had been overbooked. they put us in a room that cost $10/nite more than what we reserved but it didn't really matter. we had the best room at the place (the one the manager stays in when he/she is there). it was the only one with fly screens on the bathroom and entry way windows and i think the only one with a (small) full sized fridge and some plates/bowls. the only annoying thing about the hostel was the hiring of pots, pans and cutlery for use in the shared kitchen (if i had brought my camping cutlery set i'd looked at when i was packing we would have been better off). basically to hire a pot set and 2 sets of cutlery (which had bowls/plate included that we didn't need cuz our room had some) it was a $70 deposit every time (and they didn't have enough to go around so it's best to return them when finished).
we did a lot of hiking during our stay. i worked it out one nite and figured we did around 10km each day the first 3 days of hiking/walking trips (and that doesn't count the bits we walked around town). we did see some amazing views though:

the forts walk:

nelly bay:

the reason we didn't end up snorkeling:

we had even borrowed snorkeling gear from friends in melbourne that we hauled up for the trip but we found out about the croc with a google search the day after we arrived. that sign was the only sign we saw on the trip (and i think we found that on our 4th day). we saw this sign after we had walked about a km along the waters edge of the beach this sign is posted on.

wild rock wallaby:

rock wallaby and joey:

the rock wallaby's lived at the edge of the bay across the road from our hostel. at dusk they come out and people feed them.
horseshoe bay (one of the furthest beaches from the crocodile siting, the only one we saw a lot of people swimming in. we went swimming briefly twice here):

a kite (i can't remember what kind):

it was sitting in a tree and i took a couple photos. just as i was adjusting my position he took off and i just managed to catch this shot as he flew over me.

picnic bay:

on our last nite we went for dinner at a restaurant that had mexican food (as well as an international menu). all the write ups i saw about the place talked about the wildlife around while you dine. i was assuming they meant curlews and other birds. there were possums as well:

the staff encourage them to hang out by feeding them tortilla chips. probably not the best thing for them. you'd think they could get some proper possum meal (or even veggies) for them but it was kind of cool to see that they were keeping the wildlife around the restaurant instead of trying to get rid of them (and the animals didn't bother anyone).

our last 2 days we spent in townsville. unfortunately we found out as we were trying to book accommodation that the v8 races were happening while we were there. it made townsville a not very fun place--especially since a huge number of out of town bogans seemed to be staying at our hostel and just hung out drinking and squawking all day and night. i had wanted to book nice accommodation in townville but everything was either booked up or had tripled their prices for the weekend. this place sounded nice and had kept their prices normal. i'm sure is normally a nice hostel when it's filled with international backpackers but it was a horrible place with the number of aussie bogans.
boats on ross creek:

the strand at dusk (i didn't have a tripod with me but this shot isn't too shaky):

the view from our hostel pool in townsville:

our flight home ended up taking a couple hours longer than it should have. we had an hour layover in syney but either because melbourne was having bad weather or there was a fault with the original plane that was coming from melbourne to sydney for our flight (we had 2 different stories for repeated delays) our flight kept getting pushed back and we ended up leaving sydney about the time we would have arrived at our house if the flight had gone on time. virgin was nice enough to give us all free in flight tv service (normally $4.90) so at least that was a little compensation for the delay. we ended up getting home just before 9pm (instead of just after 6pm) and having to cook a late dinner (we didn't know how long our flight was gonna be delayed so we didn't eat in sydney and just snacked on muesli bars and rice crackers and nuts all afternoon). it was really nice just to get away for a week to somewhere with warm weather. another month or so of winter here and we should start getting some warmer days (maybe a possible "t-shirt weather" day or 2)

victoria and northwards

the sea wall in victoria:

snow on the mountains by port alberni:

one of the coombs goats (they live on the roof of the buildings in summer-- they're covered in grass but this time they were in a large area out back with a cliff and a house with a bridge over the cliff)

he kept looking at me like this:

duncan's claim to fame: world's largest hockey stick and puck

scenes around victoria

fountain in front of the legislative buildings:

totem (i wish i could remember what the plaque said it was for-- this is why i need to photograph the plaque too i can never remember the info about the things i take pictures of):
another totem:

the harbour with some ominous looking clouds (fortunately the rain held off til i was on the bus home):

spring time in canada

there were tulips and daffodils everywhere!

and baby goats! these guys were at the beacon hill children's farm. i wasn't gonna go in because i didn't really like the idea of small children mauling little animals but when i looked in the fence it was all very nice and the goats were coming up to children who were patting or brushing them and they were sooooo cute so i ended up going in and not being able to drag myself away until all the baby goats were put away for the evening.

on easter sunday the local tv station (which i guess couldn't find anything worth broadcasting) put on a few hours of these baby goats (and their moms). it was a 45 minute loop of the goats playing in their yard that kept repeating over and over (and i watched a good part of it over and over cuz they are sooooooo cute and i had nothing else to do since my easter tofurkey dogs weren't gonna take the whole day to cook like the "small" turkey my mom was working on).