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).

pumpkin

we went to empire cafe for lunch yesterday to try out some more of their new vegan menu. i did take a couple photos but we were in the back room and it was dark and i didn't put the flash on so i have a couple dark blurry photos of sandwiches which i won't bother putting up. i got the vegan pumpkin sandwich (roasted pumpkin strips, vegan cheese and spinach-- there were supposed to be pine nuts as well but the supplier hadn't arrived yet with them. it was still really good even without the pine nuts). it was exactly what i wanted for lunch on a cold, wet day. zac went with the vegan blt and a side of wedges. he really enjoyed that. it ended up costing us $33 for lunch and 2 coffees (and one was free with the last free coffee on my punch card they no longer do). seems a bit pricey for a couple toasted sandwiches, a side of wedges and coffee but it was really filling. and really good.
we were at the supermarket later in the afternoon and i saw this:
i wonder how many people actually buy "halloween pumpkins" for $3.98/kg (there was a kid begging his dad to buy one as i was taking this photo. dad wouldn't give in though). i said to zac, if this was north america it wouldn't just be 8 pumpkins on a little table display but it would be anywhere from 3-8 gigantic (hot tub sized) boxes out front of the supermarket where you could get pumpkins of every size (and i'm sure they must cost a lot less-- i never really priced pumpkins in canada). halloween does seem to be getting slightly bigger here (even over the past 7 years i've been here).

only in oz

so the AFL grand final went pretty much the same way as the election: nobody won. i think that's gotta be the only major sporting league in the world that a final game can end in a tie and "see you again next week for a rematch"
the up side is that next week we'll be able to watch the game at a pub with some friends. this week zac had a gig so i watched it at home and then ran up to the gig as soon as the game was over.

melbourne drivers

i think i've posted about melbourne drivers a couple times. this article sums up my thoughts nicely. i do like his term "vehicular dickheaditis" and i'm pretty sure it actually exists. i've seen zac (who is usually quite aware of what of other people and fairly giving) get behind the wheel and become an egocentric warrior focused on cars owning the road and the car he's driving being the most important of all. it's pretty shocking. the article is entertaining though.

waitin for the change

it's 9:30pm and it's still 33C out. the change (and a bunch of rain) is supposed to come tomorrow. hopefully the rain will wait until after we get to paynesville but i'd be happy if the cool change came now (especially since the house is probably still much warmer than the 33C outside).
i also just noticed on the forecast the overnite low: 26C!!!! ugh.
i got bitten by this guy earlier this evening:
i'm pretty sure it's a black house spider (which isn't poisonous). i had just come in from the garden and was standing behind the couch when i felt something prick the side of my foot. i rolled my foot a bit to try to rub the pain and when i looked down i saw something big and black next to my foot. at first i thought big, black bumblebee type thing but when i looked closer (it was curled up a bit) it was a spider! i realized a minute later that it was still alive so i got a clear glass bowl to trap him under and identify it. i think i may have stopped him mid-bite when i rolled my foot. there's no swelling or anything-- it just went a bit red and hurt a bit. i don't know if he came out from under the couch and i just happened to put my foot a bit to close to it and scared it or if it got a lift into the house from the garden on me and just happened to fall and then bite me at that point. i'm just glad it wasn't the redback that i found in the garden yesterday.

dual

i am officially australian (and still canadian). i had the ceremony last nite where i said the oath with around 130 others and then we each got our certificates of citizenship, a native plant and our electoral enrollment papers. the only minor stress was the start of the evening. we had a flexicar booked at 5pm. the plan was to go get zac's nanna who lives nearish to the town hall in coburg where the ceremony was taking place and then get to the town hall for me to register (i had to be there between 5:45 and 6:15). i had gone online to add a half hour to our original flexicar booking and the site told me to pick a different car because that pod was out for maintenance. i called flexicar yesterday morning to ask why my confirmed booking was no longer available and why nobody had told me because the only reason i knew is because i decided to change my booking. they said the car had been in an accident the day before and was out of service. they knew about my booking for the evening and would be replacing the car so my booking was ok, it would just be a different car there. i rode past my booked car spot mid afternoon and the damaged car was in the spot with its back end crunched in a bit. when we walked up just after 5pm there was no car there. i called flexicar a bit panicked because i didn't know if we'd have time for whatever alternative they would offer. of course the office closed at 5 so i had to go through the whole long voice mail message before it would allow me to speak to the on-call person. i got to her phone and it rang a lot and then went to voicemail! i left an urgent message explaining what was going on. at that moment a girl zac knows through work (she works at a different organization but zac had been in touch with her several times in the past few weeks) drove up to the line of traffic at the red light. she asked us if we were waiting for a flexicar. i said we were but we were pretty sure it wasn't coming since we knew it wasn't just somebody else that had the car out past their booked time. she offered us a lift which we gladly accepted. turns out she lives in boronia (which is about an hour in the opposite direction she was taking us, past where she'd just come from). sooooo thankful for her and her perfect timing. flexicar called while she was driving us and the on call woman said she was going to have to call the operations manager because she was also under the understanding that there would be a car there for us too. i explained someone had helped us and we wouldn't be needing flexicar that nite. she's gonna make sure we get some extra driving credit added into our account for all the stress it caused us. we also had to get zac's sister to pick up nanna and then drive us home afterwards. other than that mix up, it was a good nite. after, we came home and celebrated with an aussie dinner of (vegan) meat pies and coopers beer (i should have gone for the more aussie vb but its not good and probably not vegan). then we had dessert of canadian thanksgiving pumpkin pie. it worked out ok-- it was almost proper pie consistency (just a bit less firm than it should have been) but it doesn't taste great. its ok but i think maybe i needed more sweetener or something to make it taste like proper pumpkin pie. the soyatoo whip cream helped though. (that's the first slice. the one i had today was a bit less sloppy looking)

gianormous

this "little" guy was in our house last week:

i started to take photos but only got 3 (and no really good ones) and then i started getting creeped out that he was gonna jump at me (as far as i know they don't jump but maybe this one knows how to do things the others don't). i would have tried to put an object next to him for size comparison but that would have required putting my hand close to him since he was on the wall. for an idea of his size, that rectangular shaped dent in the door frame that his back left leg is just touching is about 10 cent piece size across (nickle sized in north america). he was one of the bigger ones i've seen in the city (the get MASSIVE compared to this in the country).
today on facebook i saw this:

definitely looks like a huntsman but it's legs are HUGE! very creepy.

the one in our house-- i used a cup and piece of card to get it outside to the far end of our small garden and hoped it crawled into our neighbours shed and hid to avoid death by the neighbours hand. zac won't go anywhere near 8 legged things so that's my job. he does the cockroaches because for some reason they creep me out more than spiders.

i don't know why

i don't know why but every time i see this ad it makes me laugh.

i think it's because they've "australianized" it so well (a lot of american products sold here will just have the american ad dubbed over with voices with australian accents). or maybe its the whole aussie bloke-iness of the tough, meaty soup.
every time the ad ends though i'm left with this weird feeling in my gums. its the feeling i'd always get when i'd have that soup as a kid. i grew up with a lot of canned soup and i have to say that that campbells chunky was my least favourite. the beef chunks took way too much chewing (and even before i went veggie beef was one of my least favourite meats) and my gums would always feel weird eating it(i think from the amount of hard chewing).

fun4paws

i spotted this on another blog and thought i'd post it too. i wish we could take in one but our little beast wouldn't like a housemate of the 4 legged variety.

Fun4Paws - Dog respite care for bush fire victims needed

Fun4Paws is currently offering emergency respite care to the animals
affected by the bush fires, however there are many more animals than we have
carers.

There are large numbers of owners with nowhere to place their dogs. If you
are able to offer a place to a dog in your home, please contact myself of
Lynne Fitzsimmons and we will coordinate.

Luke - 0415 104 044 contact@fun4paws.com.au Lynne - 0428 844 810 or
lynne@fun4paws.com.au

If you are interested please let us know when your home would be available
(dates) and if you have any other pets for us to consider when placing.

Dog Listeners Australia wide have pledged $1000.00 the assist in the costs
of food, petrol etc. so we hope that all costs of looking after a dog will
be covered.

Please assist us by forwarding this email on to all of your contacts so that
together we can help the hundreds of dogs in need of temporary homes.

fires

the bush fires here have been horrible (as any person in australia would know and even some friends and family back home have contacted me after hearing about them on the news). its horrible seeing the number of deaths increasing every time i turn on the tv or computer (every time i log into yahoo i get the news briefs and at least 3/4 if not all the headlines are bushfire related). so many people have lost everything: home, family, friends, pets....
a lot of wildlife has also been killed or injured by the fires too
(photo taken by russell vickery/herald sun)
anyone wanting to make a donation can do so thru the red cross (as well as thru many other organizations)
for wildlife and pets/livestock donations can be made to the rspca or wildlife victoria

5 years

today marks 5 years that i've lived in australia. i celebrated by having a tooth pulled. last nite most of a tooth came out when i had my first bite of my dinner (gnocchi-- not even a hard food). it was a pretty decayed tooth that had a root canal done and there wasn't much left to it. i was able to get a dentist appointment this afternoon and had the rest pulled. i HATE dentists because i had a horrible one as a child and i associate dentists with large amounts of pain (even for a checkup). the guy i had today was really good. the only time i was in pain was when he did the forth and final needle to numb my mouth (and he warned me beforehand and apologized that that one would hurt). it took him ages to get out just because he couldn't get a grip on it but i never had any pain. i went straight back to work when he was done (much to everyone's shock). the dentist warned me to take pain killers before the numbness wore off and i did as soon as i could feel a bit of aching pain. i made it thru the afternoon and its still not bad (i'm a little worried about tomorrow though because even though it wasn't hard to pull, he was poking at it for about 45 minutes so that's gotta make the gums a bit tender and sore by tomorrow). fortunately i was already planning on making vegan cream of broccoli soup tonite before the whole incident happened so i had an easy meal to eat (chewing is just way too much effort when i have to do it all on one side).
crazy to think 5 years ago i arrived here on a 1 year working holiday visa, moved into a share house on brunswick street, had no job, very little money to my name and wasn't sure how long i could go without a car. now i have a nice 2 bedroom house (rented), a dog, a husband, a good job with people i like, permanent residency and no reason to own a car.

the country/continent shaped like a dog head

when i was in grade 3 my teacher taught us to identify australia as the continent shaped like a scotty dog's head (with a slightly deformed ear). i thought everyone knew that australia looked like that. apparently not. zac thinks i'm crazy. i did find a couple random websites that mention it but that's all. look at the comparison though:
pretty similar. the fact that this country looks like a dog head (and that they have some of the coolest animals like koalas, kangaroos and platypus-- what's the plural of that???) always made me interested in this country and i wanted to come visit (then i met zac, came here and stayed). i definitely looks like scotty dog though.

only in oz

outside my door is the music from the ice cream man's truck (and when he pulled up the streets i heard the screams of several children as they ran over from the park). only here could the ice cream guy actually sell enough ice cream to make it worth his time in winter (its only about 13C but it's the ICE CREAM MAN!!! and you have to buy his overpriced ice cream, even if its not actually "ice cream weather"). funny cuz this morning it was not even 2C with the wind chill and it was FREEZING!!! now its actually pleasent enough for the ice cream man to come around and i just got back from an extra long walk with the dog (where i was pretty warm by then end with my 5 layers).