Weekend with Ryan

I met this crazy but loveable character, Ryan, in April 2011, in Cairns, on my way to Madang, PNG (see Blog April 2011: Walking in the rainforest near Kuranda). He and I hit it off pretty well straight away - Ryzie has a BIG passion for plants and nature and environment (though not so geeky about animals as I am) and we spent much of the night we met sitting on various seats on Cairns Esplanade talking and looking out across the inlet. He took me for a walk up into a couple of national parks on the tablelands the next day. We've kept in touch via various social media since then and in that time, Ryan has been back to Canada (yes he's a Canuck) and he has now received permanent residency, which he is ecstatic about. So, on his way back to resuming his life in Cairns, he flew in via Brisbane and spent a few days with us. He hadn't met Steve previously, but the two of them also got on really well.

One of the great things about having friends visit is that this provides an excuse for us to go exploring the region. I have to be honest and say we really haven't done all that much exploring at all since we've been here, and there are just so many fantastic places within a couple of hours of our place. So, while Saturday was a pretty regular Larnook day beginning with our trip down to Kyogle (which Ryan really enjoyed), doing some stuff around the property and then having Glen over for dinner and a movie, Sunday was quite different. We decided to go and explore Bald Rock National Park, about 25 kms north of Tenterfield. The day was perfect - cool but still and sunny and discovering this batholith (that's its technical form) was amazing. It's granite country and Steve and Ryan give some indication of the scale of the boulders that lie strewn around the base of Bald Rock.

 It's a very easy hour or so walk through some lovely open forest until you actually start walking on the exposed surface of the rock. White markers guide you safely up on to the summit itself and the view is well rather spectacular. It is just such an incredible landform and you get an incredible view up into Queensland and the craggy volcanic peaks of Mt Lindsay.

 We had our lunch at the summit and then walked back down the face of the rock.

 Up near the summit are these massive boulders called The Brothers.

Once we left the national park we continued driving north towards Woodenbong, a small town with an unlikely name about 80 kms west of Kyogle. On the way there we stopped at a Lavender Farm and as we walked into the gift shop the lady who owned it uttered 'oh boys, you won't like this, this is all too girly'...but I did buy some lavender essential oil which I will use in my massage practice. We had a nice talk with her and she told us all about the secrets of growing and distilling lavender. Soon after leaving the farm we found a sign to Fagg's Road...so what's a couple of fags to do?  (OK so it's a bit naughty).

Once at home we relaxed in the Larnookian way - a pleasing combination of alcohol and the hot tub, before having a nice night sharing photos and eating massaman curry. I took Ryan back to Coolangatta airport on Monday morning for his 8am flight - necessitating a 5am start. But even that was brilliant because as we approached the Wollumbin caldera the sky was just starting to glow yellow and crimson with the coming dawn. We look forward to Ryzie's next trip down to Larnook.

Weekend Visitors

OK, so the first of my visitors isn't necessarily a visitor and probably lives here, much to the horror of some of my friends on facebook, it seems. I was walking down the hallway from our bedroom yesterday afternoon and happened to spot the python crawling along the roof. This shot was actually taken this morning (Sunday) when we saw it again, this time taking full advantage of the sunny warm morning. I was hoping that one of the pair of wedgetailed eagles, in whose territory we live, wasn't going to be flying overhead this morning, otherwise it might have made a rather nice raptorial breakfast. Very unusual, though, to see a large python out and about on a mid-winter's day. The ideal house that I had dreamed of when we decided to move up here was going to be a classic Queenslander with a resident carpet python in the roof. Well we didn't buy a classic Queenslander, but we do have that carpet python on, if not, in the roof!

So, the sighting of the carpet python put me in a very good mood as I prepared for Glen and Vaughan, who were going to be doing a sleep-over on Saturday night. (This was Vaughan's first visit). The boys arrived around 4.30 and after showing Vaughan around the place we settled into the hot tub to enjoy a few glasses of bubbly while the sun set. Dinner and a movie followed (though I fell asleep during the movie) and this morning we enjoyed breakfast after we had been for a walk around the property.  The boys left around 11 and I had a lazy day in the sun, reading out on the day bed, before doing some last minute tidying up before Steve arrived back home from his 4 days in Newcastle.

Death of a wallaby

It was a misty early morning start for me last Thursday and as I drove along the Rock Valley Road I noticed a red necked wallaby that had been hit by a car. It was also obvious that the poor thing was still alive. I pulled up and walked across to it and it struggled to get up but it was badly hit and just flailed around. The various options about what to do rushed through my mind as a couple of other cars came hurtling along the road.  By this stage I'd looked into its eyes and so there was no way I was going to be able to run over it to kill it now. The only option was for me to pick the animal up as gently as I could (and hope that it didn't struggle too much) and put it in the back of the suzuki and take it to the vet in Lismore which had treated my egg bound goanna a few years ago.
I grabbed the wallaby (which was a medium sized male) at the base of the tail (lucky I had years of handling wallabies and kangaroos when I worked at a wildlife park in my teens and early 20s) and then put my arm around its body and it accepted this without too much resistance. I placed it on the old doona that we have in the back of the car and headed down to Lismore. About 10 minutes before I reached Lismore it made quite a lot of scratching noises and I half expected it to lurch itself on to me as I held on to the steering wheel (but that was just me being my near-hysterical self).
I pulled in to Lismore Veterinary Clinic (yep it's a well-deserved free plug) just as two of the staff were arriving to open up the place. I greeted them and then explained why I was there and they were very fine about me bringing the wallaby there. I opened up the door to the back of the suzuki only to find that the wallaby had died en route, probably when I heard it making the noise. So there I was at 7.30am at the vet's with a dead wallaby in the back of my vehicle, half expecting them to say, 'well thanks, but we don't really want to accept a dead wallaby' when the young woman reached in and grabbed the animal and hauled it out of my car. 'Leave it with us, it's no problem at all' she said. 'And thanks for doing that, at least it died in the back of your car on a soft blanket and not by the side of the road'. So thank you Lismore Veterinary Clinic.

Sunday: dead possum and Channon Markets

We were breakfasting in the sunshine on the back verandah this morning, when, much to my surprise, I noticed what looked to be a dead possum in one of the gardens at the base of our house. Closer investigation revealed that the poor poss wasn't quite dead, though as close as you can get to being dead without actually being dead, if that makes sense. So I gently put it into a box with soft sugar cane mulch and let it die. Which it did soon after. The poor thing had either been attacked or it had some kind of mange on its back end as you can just make out in this pic. Animals die. And when you live in the country you see so much more death than you tend to do in the urban environment. We wonder if this was the lemon-skinning possum that had gone through so many of our lemons. 

It was a lovely morning, and Steve was keen to get some more goats milk soaps (without even a whiff of palm oil I say quickly) from his favourite soap seller at the Channon Markets. So off we zipped to the markets, which takes about 40 minutes to get to from our place. This sign was propped up next to a tree at one point. I like it. Alas, the soap seller was not at the Markets today, but we did buy a beautiful cinnamon scented candle from a handsome young candle maker.

It seems I have a large black cock

I had been noticing, lately, that the black 'hens' that I purchased back in April were starting to butch up a bit, but I really hadn't paid too much attention. However, Julia (aka Shane) pointed out the obvious to me when he was down here last week with cub. 'Claire (that's me) I think one of your black hens is a cock, a rooster'. Hmmm, this could be a problem. We really don't want another rooster. What to do? What to do?

Well, one thing we won't be doing is dumping our unwanted black cock in this park at Murwillumbah. 'Cock-dumping' is a practice with which I was naively unfamiliar until I moved up to the northern rivers, but it takes place with alarming frequency. This particular park, (which bears the name Bruce Chick Park - oh come on!) is sometimes full of big angry roosters all trying their hardest to be the top dog (so to speak - apologies for mixing my animalian metaphors). The sign tells people not to dump their unwanted animals here because of a rare native snail that also lives here. Somehow I doubt that information will dissuade your average cock dumper from, well, dumping their unwanted cocks. 'Rare snail.....oh pulease' they will chortle as they liberate yet another unloved leghorn from the chaff bag.

Archive Books, Brisbane

We headed up to Brisbane last Saturday to see Hairspray the musical (Harvest Rain is the company that produced it and it was brilliant). Anyway, Glen had organised a two bedroom apartment in the city and while we waited on his arrival, Steve and I did a bit of shopping. Steve then ventured into JB HighFi, while I made my way to my favourite bookshop in Brisbane, Archives Fine Books 'One Million Books on Every Topic'. Now, I don't think they mean that literally, otherwise they would have a staggering number of books, but they possibly do come close to a million books on lots of topics.
As many of you know, I'm a bit of a bibliophile and have a number of types of books that I collect including: books on Papua New Guinea; natural history books; the books of Gerald Durrell; and marriage guidance books published up until the early 60s. I love this place. I never know what I will find.