muppinstuff

just ten things

Because I haven't blogged in a while. From Felicity.

I like to bite off more than I can chew and then procrastinate about doing it. Urgh.

Cherries. Cherries are my favourite fruit. Even more than peaches, mangoes or raspberries. Grace finds this hard to believe - she can't choose. We've been making decadent tropical fruit salad a lot for Monday night dessert. With mango, passion fuit and pineapple. And blueberries. Yum. I love how Grace goes wild for passion fruit. I think we'll plant one over the shed.

Oh and other food related things that are good now - grilled artichokes, asparagus and caramel ice-cream with bananas and cherries.

Oh lord, it's wonder I'm not as big as a house. Oh wait, I am pretty big. So, whatever. Bite me.

My recent eye test revealed that I really can't read the fine print anymore. Apparently crafters are amongst the first to turn up at the optometrists. While I wait for my new occupational glasses, I'm using the cheapies from the chemist when I fixing mistakes in my knitting and it feels like I am in an arty photo with a very shallow depth of field.

Hate how cynical this election has made me. The high school in Coburg issue has caused me to look closer at things like state education funding than ever before. I'm just not sure I can vote Labour any more and besides having nothing to offer me, the Liberals just make my skin crawl. Looks like I might have turned Green. Not sure how I feel about that. Suspect I might need to write about how I feel about political identity at some point. Maybe after the election.

Ebay is my new secret vice. Awesome canvas tent, soft footbed birks that are the most comfortable sandals I have ever worn, even if the top is birkiflor rather than leather (serves me right I should read product descriptions better) and maybe a party dress for Grace (bummer, missed out - but 50 bucks is too much for a second hand dress even if it did have sequins, butterflies and elephants).

Driving makes me unbelievably tense and anxious. So much so that I avoid doing some things because it involves a driving on a freeway or roads I am unfamiliar with (luckily I can cope with the Tullamarine - there is only one point that makes me sweat). Apart from the fact it would make aspects of my life somewhat inconvenient, I could easily become one of those people who doesn't drive. Must get over that one methinks.

I really, really love knitting. More than I expected I would. Long boring bits of knitting. It seems to do something very pleasant to my brain. Kind of like what birkenstocks do for my feet after a day in other shoes.This is interesting to me, because it is as much about the process as the result and as a consequence, I don't mind ripping if I decide to do something different.

Just the other day, it came to me that I could plant fancy dianellas amongst the irisis in the front yard. Sort of like Monet meets the bush. I think I would like that.

holiday snaps

Finally loaded the rest of the holiday snaps onto Flickr last night. I've been looking at the pictures again, especially the ones from the second camp site, which was much nicer than the first one in amongst all the powered sites, and remembering bits of the holiday. Like the big family group camped across the flat who were from suburban Melbourne and somewhere in Eastern Europe, Russia perhaps. And they seemed to be having the best time. All day, when they weren't walking or visiting the caves, they collected wood. Huge amounts which they dragged back to one of the fireplaces. The first night they sat around a small fireplace, toasting marshmallows and singing. Beautiful songs in another language, accompanied by a blue guitar. However they built such a big fire that the fire truck came and their singing was cut short. On the second night, they collected even more wood but used a big fireplace and settled in for the night. I worried the singing would keep me awake at night but it was rather pleasant.

Life since then seems to keep getting busier and busier. Each day seems jam packed. It's the school term I think. It's all good - but I'm starting to look forward to the holidays again. 

Oh look at the time, must go to bed. Have been cooking for the stall tomorrow at our Playtime in the Park event. Yo-yos, chocolate peppermint yo-yos, lemon slice and I made pumpkin pie for dessert tonight. Not sure whether pumpkin pie is my sort of thing, but it does use half a pumpkin which is a bonus. Particularly if everyone else is also eating said pumpkin. Oh, and before the playtime in the park, where I will be rushing round like a mad thing taking photos and talking and helping out, is another community event to save our open space. Where I also want to take lots of photos. At some points of the day I will want to be in two places at the same time. A tardis or some for of instant transporter would be handy. 

the pool and the caves

Apart from the thrill of camping, sleeping on the only lilo of three that didn't completely deflate each night, in a tent between mummy and daddy, Grace was most taken with two things. The pool and the caves. The first thing Grace wanted to do was swim in the pool and really, she would have been happy to spend a large part of each day there. The swimming pool is set into a rocky outcrop and water flows in from an under ground stream the cave system and is cold. Like swimming in an icy pole cold. At the other end of the pool, the water flows out again under the road and into a creek and so although it's really cold, it feels very clean and un gunky. Refreshing. All around are big pine trees and the overall feel is quite European or American (or so I imagine - never having actually camped in either place). The stone works and old signs add to the overall effect. Buchan Caves Reserve was first developed in the 1930's I think, and the trees were planted then. Not like your usual Australian national park, but interesting for a change.  

On one of the days we were there, it was very hot and muggy and plunging into the water was just delicious. Other days, you just had to remember that no matter what, it was bloody cold. So I tended to dive under very quickly and swim about until my body stopped feeling so shocked. Grace I suspect has ice in her veins.

 

At first Grace needed a little convincing to visit the caves. And I needed to calm myself. Caves freak me a bit but it was OK, very accessible with hand rails and lights and steps and a guide. Even so I wasn't keen to visit a second cave. Something about the clammy, cold air. And a kind of panic that remained with me for about an hour afterwards. I think it's fair to say, I'm just not a cave person. Grace on the other hand pestered her Dad to take her to other one. They had a great time while I has some peace and quiet, read the paper and had one of my two solo showers of the trip.

Mandatory picture of cave decorations above. They remind me of the kind of art one of my stoner housemates in a previous life used to like. Give me the pool any day.

Oh, oh look at the time! We have school tomorrow!

camping, first days

I had meant to write a post about our trip everyday since I got back but as you all would know, life tends to get in the way of blogging.

Anyway, we ended up having two camp sites at Buchan reserve. The first was one that you can book through Parks Victoria* and it was right on the edge of all the powered sites. Under a street lamp and next to the sewerage plant. Not to mention two doors down from the family with four children whose Dad, despite being a nice guy, played AC/DC loudly late into the night. Walking through the site to the toilet block at night, I was surprised by the number of DVD players and war games I heard. Coming back, I saw a man playing solitaire on his laptop while his wife slouched in a chair nearby. Part of me wished I'd had my camera with me and was game enough to take a picture and document the scene. Electronic games seem to be a new development since we last stayed in a camping ground about five years ago. In the end though, it was the street light shining in our tent that really motivated me to move site.

This site did have some nice points though, a picnic table with a grassy bank behind it. We bought our folding table to sit at and a little table to cook on. In the absence of a picnic table I would normally sit on a milk crate to cook and use the esky to rest the chopping board on. The picnic table was very civilised in comparison and we ending up using our tables for other things.

When we were packing there were some things in the kitchen box that I'd forgotten the function of but dragged along anyway. Like the cake rack that enables the coffee maker to sit on the hot plate. The coffee maker is a beauty. Not only does it make superb coffee but the billy with the coffee tin sits under the spout when it's all packed in the kitchen box. Very compact. It was lovely to get out the night box again, which is the blue box above with the chess board pattern on top. G made that for me after our very first camping trip together (to Adelaide via the Murray to see Carlton play). A peace offering, perhaps. There were some rough edges between us, as I remember. A camping trip being a pretty ambitious first date. The night box has a compartment for the lantern top and a little section for some chess pieces. It also hold candles, mosquito coils, a pack of cards and sometimes chocolate and other night time type treats. 

* If I were staying at Buchan Reserve again, I would try to get through to the actual reserve and book a site on Combi flat which is where we eventually moved to and is much nicer.  

so we dusted off the camping box and set forth

It's sad but until last week we hadn't been camping since the great central Australian road trip of 2004. When I took six weeks leave at half pay (hah, try doing that now) and G and I set off to see Uluru and everything in between. It was a fabulous journey, and as a major bonus I came home well and truly up the duff. Camping and car touring have always been something we both loved, we see new things, relax and seem to get back in sync with each other. I'm kind of surprised that it's taken us this long to find our way back again. 

Anyway a while ago, we decided that before Grace starts school, we should take her camping. She was pretty keen on the idea and as luck would have it, I had leave during the school holidays approved and so just before Christmas, I cracked the shits with our indecision and booked a site at Buchan Caves. Not exactly bush camping, but somewhere we'd never been (although I think I may have passed through on a feminist collective camping trip when I was twenty), close to some more remote areas to explore and far enough away to give the sense of a big journey. Packing took us at least two days and we had to borrow a tent as although we have two tents, one is very attractive but not at all waterproof and the other is too small for two, let alone three. We also went to Ray's cheap shit Camping and bought some cheap shit lilos to sleep on (more about those in the next post) as our old foam bedroll decomposed under the plum tree at the old house and even if it hadn't, it would no longer fit in the car.

We are slow travellers at the best of times and because it's all about the journey and how many country op shops you can cram into a trip - we stayed overnight on the way. There's a lovely caravan park at Moe but for some reason we pressed on to Traralgon and ended up staying in a cabin rather than an onsite caravan as planned. Nonetheless, Grace was thrilled. She insisted on going for a swim even though it was cool enough for a hoody. She loved the dodgy bunks (except for hitting her head) and whooped it up in the even more dodgy rec room, pretending to learn to play table tennis. That was pretty hilarious. There were boats and motor homes, lots of things to see. It was all rather fascinating and she told us she loved staying a hometel. Later at night, she started to learn to sew!   The next morning, the old car packing mojo swung into gear and we pressed on. Once she got settled, Grace was content to talk, read, draw and play with her toys (they have long conversations with each other at the moment) in the car and eventually fall asleep. She is astonishingly easy to travel with in that respect. 

Tomorrow night, Buchan.