Eco-success

Woo hoo..what a wonderful sight greeted me when I was having a walk through the Big Bush Garden late this afternoon. I hadn't had a proper walk through since before I flew out to Hawaii and to my great delight I discovered that we now have a resident satin bower bird who has constructed his sticky love platform just under one of my favourite plants, the Australian mint bush. At present he has only included one blue object together with a small spray of flowers from a wild tobacco plant, but with time I'm sure his bower will be festooned in blue.

I get such a thrill from this - it's great to think that this bower bird thinks so much of my bush garden that he wanted to locate his bower here. So good, so nice.

Meet Charlie and Cyril

Charlie, on the left, and Cyril, arrived at Larnook last Wednesday as our latest HalpXers. Yet again, some great people staying with us from France. Here they are aggressively pruning back the hydrangeas in preparation for another excellent growing period next spring.
And here they are enjoying Steve's spag bol last night.

Images from Bangalow Market 25 March 2012

Army Worm Onslaught

Our lawns are being attacked by a troupe of army worm which is doing its spineless best to destroy the grass - but leaving the weeds intact. One of my colleagues, Diana, also has the pest invading her lawns. I don't really want to use insecticides so if anyone has any non-chemical based suggestions, please let me know.

Waikiki sunset

Aloha

I recently spent 5 days on the Hawaiian island of Oahu visiting my friend, Rob, who is studying over there until May. I got back last Tuesday evening. This was my first trip and I had a great time. Behind Rob is the coral reef formation of Hanauma Bay, about a 40 minute bus ride from Waikiki where we were staying. We enjoyed the snorkelling and saw some beautiful fish, including some brightly coloured parrot fish, foraging amongst the coral. I giggled at the shuttle bus available for people to get from the top down to the beach - 75 cents down and $1 back up. We managed to see a mongoose, as well, flitting between the gardens, no doubt doing its feral best to scavenge for left overs.
We also visited Pearl Harbour which was impressive and interesting, and, as a visitor attraction, extremely well designed, as I thought it would be. We took a boat out to the USS Arizona Memorial (where most of the 1100 or so crew remain entombed in the warship which is clearly visible under the memorial) and we also took a look at the Bowfin Submarine which is where we took the pic above. It would be a very crowded existence to have been a sailor on this submarine.
Rob in front of an interpretive panel at one of the museums on the Pearl Harbour site.
We celebrated my last night in Waikiki with a pretty delicious dinner at Azure Restaurant located in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel which is the gorgeous pink building behind Rob. Azure was just off to the right of the pic. Really lovely night, beautiful food and wines (and great company, hey Robsta).
And, yep, that's right....spam is quite the popular food in Hawaii and you can even get spam flavoured macadamia nuts...yummo...not! So, a quick but enjoyable and interesting trip: snorkelling coral reefs; climbed a crater - a very, very, very steep crater; visited Pearl Harbour; and even bumped into friends of Steve's and mine from Newcastle, Kerry and Charlie...three times, in fact...who would have thought....

Nice Weekend

Let's work backwards. So yesterday we had a very enjoyable lunch up at Mavis' Kitchen at Uki, with Steve's work colleagues and their various husbands....
in the shadow of Wollumbin, Mt Warning
Steve rather liked the pav
Saturday was a regular kinda day, but we did buy a few bunches of these gorgeous lilies from a lily purveyor at Kyogle market in the morning, which have prittied the dining table up a treat. We were still recovering a little from a fabulous night on Friday soent with our friends Glen, Dale and Lou, celebrating Steve's 56th birthday at Banzai, the Japanese restaurant in Lismore. Great fun, but alas, no pics.
And just an update on the ever-smiling Cal. We took Cal up to Coolangatta last Saturday (when we were flying down to Sydney for Mardi Gras). Cal caught a bus up to Brisbane to catch up with his friend Margo before flying to Sydney on the following Monday. He is now doing a surf trip from Sydney down to Melbourne. Hopefully we will catch up with him in the middle of the year in Darwin and failing that at my 50th birthday party in September. We celebrated Cal's last night with us with a night at Cawongla Store eating their wood fired pizzas. Yum.

A surprise visit

I was very surprised when I walked past the screen door that opens on to the middle deck on Saturday morning to see two hatchling eastern water dragons clinging to the gauze. The only water dragons I've seen on our place have been beside one of the creeks. I'm just surprised that a female would have chosen to lay her eggs so far away from the creek because I can't imagine that two babies like these would have made their way, Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee-like, all the way up from the creek to our deck. They disappeared as quickly as they appeared, although I did see one scuttle quickly from the edge of the pond on Sunday morning. Note to self: remember I found the first toad in what I thought was a toad-free pond, a few weeks ago. Toad was quickly removed.

yucko

I've been meaning to take a pic of this rather cruel way of catching unwanted rodents for some time now. That's right, it's a glue board...the poor varmint walks across the pad and gets stuck to it and just waits until its fate is decided....tossed into the garbage to die a slow, lingering death or perhaps plunged into a bucket of water? I'm just really surprised that its legal.

Mardi Gras pics

We spent most of the night dancing in the RHI, the Royal Hall of Industries. This is our usual habitat at Mardi Gras. We tried to stay about 5 metres in front of the mirror ball looking towards the stage. Various friends drifted past us or stayed with us throughout the night including Mr and Mrs White Trash and Grant and Kelly.
Colour and movement and uplifting vocals....hmm I think Kylie was there somewhere
The balloon drop at the end of Kylie's performance, which ended at 2.30am (we left at the end of the party at 8am - yep we still got it)
just some happy punters with their hands in the air....

The Grave of Kevin Budden

Once the Japanese group had left Cairns on Friday morning, Cal and I hired a car and did a trip from Cairns to Trinity Beach then up to the tablelands where we walked down to look at Barron Falls and then to Lake Barrine, one of the volcanic lakes on the Atherton Tableland. However, before we did that I wanted to re-visit the grave of Kevin Budden, who at the age of 20, travelled by himself to Cairns from Sydney, in search of a taipan that he could collect and send to the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories in Melbourne so that work could be done on the development of an antivenom. This was in 1950 when a bite from a taipan meant death.

After several weeks searching the Cairns district, Kevin did catch a taipan that he found while in the process of eating a rat. He managed to catch it but was unable to safely bag the snake, so with a firm grip around the seething animal's neck, he hitch-hiked back into town (yes a passing driver did give him (and the almost 2 metre long taipan) a lift.

Unfortunately, when he was attempting to put the snake into a bag at his friend's place, the taipan managed to free itself from his grip and snapped quickly at his hand. And in a fragment of an instant, the deadly snake had changed things forever. Kevin Budden died the next day in Cairns Base Hospital, but the taipan was sent, on Kevin's wishes, to Melbourne where it was milked by David Fleay and the venom was used in early experimentation for the antivenom which became available in 1955.

There's a beautiful piece written by his friend, Neville Goddard, who had accompanied Kevin and another friend, Roy McKay, to far north Queensland, the year before, when they were unsuccessful in finding a taipan, on a silver plaque on the gravesite.

I am still hoping to convince Cairns City Council to memorialise Kevin Budden in a street name. My first attempt, several years ago, was unsuccessful but I will try again.