Carpet Python down by the creek

This guy may have been under one of the wild tobacco bushes down near our creek for about a week, judging by the indent he left when I had to persuade it to vacate as I mowed this morning. Found it yesterday, in the same position, still with a sizeable bulge inside it, so I suspect it had eaten a large bandicoot and it's been digesting quietly for the past week. It was well over 2 metres in length
and had a rather large head. The carpets I have seen up here tend to be darker than this guy who was much browner. Very lovely. It impressed our latest Help_Xer, Vivien, from France, who I don't think had seen such a large snake in the wild. He seemed pretty impressed anyway.

Wet, wet, wet

It's been a very wet weekend up here as it has been over much of the eastern half of the state. It began raining late afternoon Saturday and kept up over night and much of Sunday. But we only copped good, soaking rain - about 65mm worth over the weekend, not the 200mm that Murwillumbah, which is only 55 mins away - received.
Just before the rain set in on Saturday afternoon, Steve and I planted 9 trees and shrubs that we had bought or had given to us as presents since the beginning of the year. We'd been waiting for the ground to be nice and moist before planting. So in went three frangipani, a coffee tree, wisteria, yellow sapote, Thai guava and an Indian fruit tree starting with S that I can't remember its name.
The creek had risen above the bridge sometime during Sunday morning but had gone down by Sunday afternoon. Provided we don't cop a heap of rain today (which I don't think we will) we shall not be flooded out!

Disgusting in Brisvegas

I spent most of last week in Brisvegas attending the biennial conference of the Australian New Zealand Association of Leisure Studies. I stayed at the Riverside Apartments at Southbank but I wouldn't recommend it. It's the most reasonably priced of most of the accommodation in Southbank but the bathroom was shite. This was the first time I've ever gone back to reception and asked if there was a better room (I'm happy to pay the extra'). 'You've got the best room' came the curt reply. Just a really crummy little, very little bathroom, was my main gripe.

Anyway, the conference was really good, I even enjoyed it. Usually I loathe conferences: morning and afternoon teas and lunches I dread because I just can't chat sensibly with someone I don't know over a scone with jam and cream. In fact I'd like to run a conference with the title 'This is Not a Conference' Conference, but that's for another time. But the ANZALS mob are very friendly and I knew quite a few people there, having been involved with the organisation of one of their conferences in Newcastle in the early 90s. This time round I chaired a session, I assessed a presentation by a PhD student and I presented a paper titled 'The thrill of disgust, the attraction of repulsion: examining negative emotions in leisure and tourism experience', which was jointly written with a Newcastle colleague, Nancy Cushing, It went over quite well and seemed to strike a bit of a chord with a number of people, except I think one of the imported (and important) keynote speakers from the states who in his presentation argued strongly that leisure was only about positive emotions and indeed the study of leisure was in his words, 'the happy science'. Oh well, you can't please 'em all.

Kooky Kyogle

We were shopping in Kyogle this morning, buying our fruit and veges, chatting with Esther who sells all kinds of delicious things like chocolate fudge cake, samosas, little mascarpone tarts with blueberries and grated chocolate, buying the newspapers and what not. It's a nice little town, possibly still a bit red-necky in places and quite kooky from a retail point of view. 'How so?' I hear you ask. Well the Balinese curio shop (and indeed you may be asking why there would be a Balinese curio shop in Kyogle at all) doubles as the tobacconist and also sells home brew supplies; you buy your lottery and lotto tickets not from the newsagency but from the hardware store, which also does a nice line in children's apparel; and any problems with water pumps means you need to see the Holden dealership. Kooky.

Australia Day

We have a friend from the US, Mike, staying with us for a while, so yesterday we did a day trip up to a small town in Queensland called Rathdowny. This involved driving down to Kyogle and then heading north west and then north along the Lions Road. Very scenic drive that skirts along the Border Ranges National Park and then cuts through the park before heading down into Queensland. This sign was at the NSW/QLD border...I wonder what you get for heroin trafficking if keeping a bunny can cost ya $30k!

We were also intrigued by the number of speed/security cameras at the border, too. Count them, I think you'll find there are 4. Are they watching whose coming in or leaving, I wonder?

We enjoyed lunch at the Rathdowny Pub, before having an ice cream in front of the butchers. Mike and Steve in front of the window. We weren't sure what 'Service kills' actually means. We thought we'd give the tripe and lambs' brains a miss.

This is a very distinctive volcanic plug called Mt Barney that is a major feature of the Rathdowny landscape.

And we're always amazed at these 'forests' of grass trees that occur around our region, especially in the Kyogle area.

Hot weather brings out a baby bearded dragon

The weekend has been very hot. We mowed the lawns yesterday and this morning went down the creek early, before 8am, and mowed down there, too. The black cockies have returned in a flock of about a dozen which noisily tear apart the pine cones starting at around 6 in the morning. I was also lucky to see the pair of wedge tailed eagles and this year's offspring as they flew quite low over our paddock on the other side of McGuinness Road, yesterday afternoon. The pair nests in Jiggi, the next valley over, near where we were really interested in a house and almost made an offer. It's great we still get to admire this pair when they fly over our place.

And, the other neat little animal sighting today was this little guy, a baby bearded dragon. Not sure if it's the same one that I spotted on the other side of the house a month or so ago. It's a bit funny - bearded dragons should be fairly easy to spot, they love basking on the tops of fence posts - and indeed before we moved in to Maryville I did see one doing exactly that. But I haven't seen any adults here since then, and this is only the second sighting of a bub. Oh sweet mysteries of life.....

Melons and pumpkins

Just thought you might like to see what's growing in the gardens...we have a few rock mellon which are starting to look like what they are. This is the only plant that survived out of five seedlings I planted.
Very pleased with the water mellon too...hopefully should be ready to eat in a couple of weeks...
and we've got a few pumpkins on the vines that self sowed in the compost heap. This guy is hanging from the vine which has grown up on to the wire mesh between the shed and the garage.