This week...30th July, 2011

...my library cleared out its biography section...

...the baby of the family started kindy,

without a tear nor a backward glance.

Mummy managed the "no tears" bit

but she will be looking back a lot, remembering those little babes that have grown way too quickly.

...I wondered, as I pulled out a few more grey hairs,

if I would have to stop soon or be increasingly bald instead of increasingly grey.

(And I also wondered, for the umpteenth time,

why men get sexier with their greying hair,

and perhaps even with baldness,

whereas women generally just look older)

...I decided that I love it when a plan comes together.

...I got bad mail (bills. Boo) and good mail

( some stunning yarn and thanks to Yvonne for the pattern)

...I bought a pdf book to help with my photography.

I have had a digital SLR for 6 years

and it is time that I learnt how to use it properly.

...I decided that I am lucky that I can do activities in the car without throwing up
(unlike my 8 year old who apparently can't)

(all on Rav here)

...my soul mate has been around for more than half my life.
(and given that he doesn't seem to mind my grey hairs,
I am hoping that he will be around for a few more to come)

Cold snap

In what I promise will be my last holiday post.
Truly.

Part of the reason for freezing our little tooshies off on this holiday

was that there was one requirement: show our kids snow.

In my procrastination, I did too little homework before leaving for our holiday

and merrily booked into Cradle Mountain

thinking there would be snow.

And there was.

But more by accident-of-Mother-Nature

than by good management or organisation.

There was unprecedented snowfall in the area.

So we lucked it in (but looked like absolute legendary parents in the process)

My parents had reported how cold it was

and how many thermal singlets we'd need to pack.

Many roads -including one that we usually travelled on to their home-

were closing here and there due to snowy conditions.

Fishing was halted.

Storms were causing blackouts.

We had to change our travel plans due to road closures

and spent an hour driving a snowy road very slowly,

finding out later that the road was closed soon after.

The kids loved it.
(while I was quietly shitting myself, thinking that 30-40kph was way too fast to be driving on a snowy highway)

We spent 2 days in the snow.

Doing all the things that you do in the snow...
Making snow angels;
making snowmen, snowballs, snow dogs, snow birds, snow anything really;
walking in the snow;
clambering in snowdrifts till gumboots filled up with snow
and 6 year old feet went numb,
trudging through snow storms backwards with our eyes closed.

And loving every single minute.

These are the tourist promotional snaps of Dove Lake, Cradle Mountain, that I am used to seeing.

(www.redbubble.net)

(www.redbubble.net)

This was our view...

After the snowing stopped later on,

we did catch a glimpse of the mountain for a second or two.

Two days later,
the car even started and we got out miraculously without a tow.



Cradle Mountain Lake St Clair National park is part of a World Heritage area.
We are looking forward to going back,
perhaps when it looks like the tourist snaps,
once the kids are a bit older,
so that we can do some decent bushwalks and other activities on offer.

Shocker of the Week.

(smh.com.au)

Toddler beauty pageants come to Australia.

You too can pop your little baby girl into a beauty pageant once she turns 6 months of age.

(theaustralian.com.au)

It is so, so wrong.

Don't get me started.

My happy space- 27th July, 2011



The days are getting longer and hint at warmer times approaching.

The sunny days are more frequent as the last of the winter leaves

are pushed aside by the green of Spring.

In our backyard, there is evidence of new life on its way.

It is making me smile today.

When city kids go bush

This morning we discovered that one of the small bushes in our backyard

has become home to an oh-so-small-and-delicate bird's nest.

That is right up there excitement-wise with our resident tart...er, spider

and the occasional blue tongue who visits

(albeit it at his or own own risk given our resident Staffy)

(As a side note, our spider disappeared one night just before we left on holiday.

I think she "did a Charlotte",

leaving behind an egg sac that is valiently trying to hatch before the brown and shrunken leaves that are protecting it give in to the demands of the winter fall.

I was glad to leave for holidays as our resident 6 year old humanitarian
was grieving)

I grew up being able to wander a few blocks away from my house,

seeing sheep, cows and horses on those grassy paddocks dotted through the country town.
It was a couple of minutes walk to the best tadpoling place,

especially after the winter rains.

Now that we are a nuclear family of city dwellers,

owners of 2.4 pets,

I am somewhat saddened by the huge novelty that sheep and cows are to our kids

when we venture beyond the boundaries of the city.

Heck, we get excited when we see a caterpillar or a snail on the way to school.

Our holiday this time round offered a plethora of opportunities to see wildlife and more unusual critters.
(More than happy to see those blue rings through glass and not from under my foot)

We even saw Highland Cows (I guess that the Tassie climate suits those Scottish cow genes.

I have loved these guys since visiting Scotland but didn't realise there were some on this side of the world)

It may be an urban myth that kangaroos hop down Australian streets

but I can say that wallabies or pademelons may well walk along the top of the beach with you.

A wombat was happy to eat its way through a photo shoot
while cars drove past and kids stood a metre away oggling.

Well, actually to be honest, it was the first stop since reaching the snow

so after 30 seconds oggling, the kids' interest turned to making snowballs.

In general, the winter wildlife were very friendly

(OK I am sure that they were scavenging for food...or "finger food"...

but let me be an idealist)

Our kids are not yet old enough to really appreciate the natural beauty on display

but give something feathers and fur or gills and that is a different case.

Even the local fibreglass cows were friendly towards tourists,
though I sense that they were gritting their teeth as yet another dag had to pretend to milk them.

Heading south for the winter.

Some of you, if Australian or living in Australia,
would know or would guess,

that my nickname Tas is due to my Tasmanian origins.

I was born in a small town in northern Tasmania
and grew up with no inkling of the ridicule and scorn that the Apple Isle attracted
from the rest of the country.

Perhaps the first time I recognised that my little state
was a little maligned was when we got left "off the map"
at the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games.

(Yes, we are still bitter about that one)

When I spent a year overseas as an exchange student in 1987,

I was more likely to be thought to be from Tanzania.

(which is in Africa, in case you didn't know)

I relocated to Melbourne for university
where, being left handed, Catholic and Tasmanian,

earned me a door note that the Guiness Book of Records was filming.

At my insistance that I was Tasmanian
came the equally insistant (but of course completely wrong) assertion by the mainland students
that I was Taswegian.

Also came every joke ever written about multiple headed, in-bred convicts.
Don't even try.
I have heard them all.

Hence I became Taswege.
Then Tas.
Cos we Aussies shorten anything if we can.

(One bright spark even ventured as far as tagging me "Map Of".
Say no more)

I haven't actually lived in Tasmania since 1986 now

and nowadays I tend to say that I grew up there

rather than I am Tasmanian.

It would be a bit like me saying that I am still on maternity leave
when I started over 8 years ago
and have a youngest child of 4 years of age.
(Which I do say.
Which my hubby rolls his eyes at)

Or that I am Catholic when I last took Holy Communion nearly 30 years ago.

We go back once a year to visit my relatives

but I haven't been there as a tourist since I was a child.

Seriously, people, at the risk of sounding like a tourist brochure,
you need to go there and be a tourist.

It is stunning, gorgeous and stunning again.

And it is so compact.

(Northern most tip to southern is 364 kilometres;

west to east 306 kilometres)

I think that it is one of the places in the world that offers up
some of the best examples of Mother Nature's work.

OK so it might be a tad cold at times.

Our family prefers to go in colder months as you only have to pack winter clothes.
If you go in summer, you still have to pack winter clothes as well as summer ones.

We are going to play tourists for a few years now as we go back to visit family.

This trip we took our kids to places that I haven't been to since I was their age.

Hands up if you knew that Queenstown still has a gravel football oval?

One day I will search my family tree.

I have always wondered if we came to Tasmania on the upper level of the boat with some social standing
or the lower level as criminals.
I will. keep you posted on my social standing.