Antechinus or anticlimax?

Image: Queensland Museum

A couple of weeks ago I was startled by a loud girlie squeal coming from the downstairs bedroom. Rushing in I found our Helper, Charly, standing on the bed with a somewhat terrified look on his boyishly handsome face. 'What's the matter, matey?' I asked quickly. 'A rat, it was a rat', he gasped. 'That's no rat, that's just an antechinus', I offered reassuringly. I'm not sure he was so reassured.

But yes, we have a resident antechinus who made his presence known on a number of occasions over easter as well, much to my delight and our friends' initial horror. Our friends quickly discarded its real name for 'anticlimax', and the little marsupial could often be seen scampering across the kitchen floor to take refuge under the fridge or one of the lounges, usually followed by 'agh there's the anitclimax! We think it was loudly vocalising on Sunday night just as Graeme and I were beginning our nightly ballad renditions. It was either the antechinus or a dolphin. But if it was a dolphin we probably would have seen it.

Easter Part 2: Geocaching

Sim and Graeme introduced us to one of their new interests...geocaching, which is basically a high-tech treasure hunt in which you use your smart phone as a compass as well as the clues that are given to track down little boxes full of trinkets and things. The pleasure is in locating the cache and entering your details of when you found the cache and by whom in the little notebook that is always in the box when you found it. You also upload this info through your smartphone or computer. Anyway, unbeknownst to me there is a hugely number of people worldwide who go out looking for these caches on a regular basis. Sim and Graeme have found 42 and have hidden three of their own. So, on our drive yesterday to Border Ranges National Park, we took the opportunity to search for a cache that was hidden at Hanging Rock waterhole, about 10 minutes from our place. Simeon's phone is showing how many metres we are away from the cache and which direction it is located.
Of course, each of us thought they knew exactly where it was. We had to walk along a rather overgrown track down to Hanging Rock Creek - all part of the fun. Once we got to within a few metres of it then the search was really on. This particular cache had quite good clues but nevertheless...
we got fooled by a decoy! This stubby looked like it could have held a cache but was filled with nothing but water. Some further searching revealed the true cache, however
which was cleverly hidden under a flat rock at the base of a big tree. Once found, we entered our details and took one of the items which had a name I can't remember - but it's meant to be removed and placed in another cache - so that it moves around the world. Lots of fun....www.geocaching.com.au if you are interested. We also found another at Kyogle, so the boys thought a two cache day was pretty good.

Easter 2012 Part 1

Let's start with a food shot (of course). The salad on the left is beetroot and basil (the beetroot bought from Kyogle farmers' market on Saturday morning and the basil from our place) and the salad on the right is a green salad with quail eggs. How very lah-di-dah. Our friends, Simeon and Graeme, Vivienne and Jenny arrived on Friday and headed back home this morning (Tuesday) at 6am. We had huge fun with them - they are all such wonderful friends, so it's all very easy. We enjoyed lots of wonderful meals of course....
had plenty of wine time (=quality time) in the hot tub every afternoon, evening
visited Nimbin
and the Channon Markets. We were fortunate to have perfect weather for the entire five days - unheard of!
The Markets were terrific as they always are, lots of great stalls, lots of interesting people..it's a fantastic place for people watching. This is the chai tent, quite a famous part of the market, where there is always a banner encouraging some kind of action to help make the world a better place.

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.