Backyard Billabong Bunyips

A while ago I posted about some bunyips playing in a billabong in my backyard.  I thought since I am so crazy-busy this week with all the usual stuff, plus bridesmaid stuff for my sweet Em's wedding on Saturday, I would show you the rest of the photos of my darling bunyips trashing our backyard.

The littlest bunyip so very much wanted to play too but there was no way I was dealing with that mess!  He was sitting on the edge of the patio with me as I tried to restrain him and take photos.  He wasn't too impressed with his end of the deal.  I'm not sure what was in that truck in the last photo, I think it was just water... possibly dirt and water... not real exciting but it held their attention for ages!

Peer Pressure

Hi there, If you've popped across here because you've clicked the link in Lisa's post today under the misguided impression that you were going to be taken to a site all about Australia's vast beauty and desolate nothingness then I'm pretty sure the first post you see shouldn't contain huge amounts of ranting about the fact that my son wont poop so I thought I'd better get something else on here quick smart!

If you have come across from there please make yourself at home and start cleaning up a bit, the washing needs to be taken out of the machine, the dishes need to be loaded in the dishwasher, and the lounge room needs a good clean... leave a comment.  I'm pretty okay with most of this blogging stuff but I just can't figure out that stat counter thingo and how to tell who came from where and all that sorta stuff so please say hi, even if you are so scared by my rantings that you are never ever going to return.

If you would like to know about Australia might I point you here to see some of our local wildlife.  If you would like to learn the language my Australia Day posts from last year and this year may totally confuse you help you out.  Info on crocodiles that may or may not be accurate can be found here and here.  Feel like being thankful you don't have our spiders?  then go here.  Want to meet some more of our wildlife and find out about our day to day interactions with them? then this is the post for you.  One last little known beast that calls Australia home can be found here.

So, I hope you have fun finding out about our beautiful country.  One exciting piece of news is that we seem to have a man eating bird making his home in our back yard.  We are strangely excited by this.

Here's the big boys pointing to him (what? he's a man eating bird, not a boy eating bird!) under our poor little mango tree.

and here is a really rather dodgy close up of him.  He looks ferocious doesn't he?

So, kick aside the dried up bodies of our beautiful native green tree frogs and Barra frogs that have managed to get inside the house and not back out again (or perhaps had their insides turned into milkshakes and sucked out by those freaky spiders) and pop out onto the back patio to check out the lucky one that I rescued this morning, lovingly removing the dust bunnies from him and leaving him sit in a little dish of water to revive... or possibly leaving him sit in a dish as a meal for a snake.  (this link will bring up all the other snake related posts for you... you're welcome).

So, I'm sure this was all a part of some devious plan by Lisa to get me to do a new post and I have given in to the peer pressure by recycling all the old stuff and disguising it as new... clever aren't I?  She'll never notice.  Perhaps one day I will get a chance to do a post about our other native animals but everyone knows about our beautiful ones.  The Koalas, the Kangaroos, the Emu and the Cassowary.  Did you know Wombats poop is square?  Oh, man, I've turned it into another post about poop.  Time to go.

Stone The Crows!

Strewth Mate, it's Australia Day again!  A day full of national pride, dunny races, roach races, thong throwing and meat pie eating competitions.  You can hear our national intelligence on display with chants such as "Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi" and C'mon Aussie, C'mon C'mon, C'mon Aussie C'mon" filling the lamb chop scented air.

Damper cooking in coals... except that most of Australia is on a total fire ban or has so much rain we can't light a match let alone a fire so I'm guessing damper everywhere got whacked in the oven like ours... People choking on coconut as they try to carry on a conversation while eating a lamington... 213 teams battling the Goldfield Ashes... That's basically a giant backyard cricket competition in Charters Towers... Other people with their own backyard cricket matches with screams of "Over the fence is six and out" or "No tipsies for grown-ups"...  That's all part of the day.

So what did we do today?

I made a bonza Damper undercooked to perfection so that it glues your mouth closed as you try to eat it coated with half a tub of butter and a good drizzle of honey or golden syrup.

It was WAY too wet here to cook on the barbie so I threw the lamb chops on the stove.

We ate lamingtons.

And we did little else.

We had a lovely low-key day.  We skipped the annual church cricket match for a calm day at home trying to space out baby feeds and ironing uniforms for school tomorrow.  Wolf ploughed through a few more episodes of a DVD series he's been trying to watch, I cleaned the boys room and hung some new organiser thingos in their cupboard to make the most of the limited space.  Monkey behaved like one of those babies that you only hear about, sleeping for more than 20 minutes at a time and going for at least three hours between feeds.  Lion made Lego creation after Lego creation.  Dragon... well... Dragon got under everyone else's feet.  He was there whenever I turned around today.  Sometimes we just have those days.

Wolf did take them out into the rain this afternoon to test their raincoats...

That seemed to wear off a bit of their energy from being cooped up inside all day.


So I think I used up all my ockerisms last year and I gave a damper recipe last year too although this year I did 3 cups SR flour, 80g butter, pinch salt, 1 cup water and it was fine.  Also, there was another Sam Kekovich ad this year



so on that note I'll wrap up my Australia Day and go cry myself to sleep as I think about my baby heading off to school tomorrow.

Up What Creek?

Saturday we had a little family trip. We dumped the kids in the car and took off to Alligator Creek*... Or rather, Alligator Rocky Creek Bed. I realised it's been a while since I've been there. Wolf and I were trying to figure it out on the way there, we think for both of us the last time we were there we went together but it was before we were dating so it's around 10 years ago... it's only 20 minutes out of town and it's been 10 YEARS! Oh well. Some things were the same, no change to the overall layout of the area, lots of rocks to climb over, scrub turkeys to chase, wallabies to hunt, stuff like that. Some things were different... like... there used to be water! I am sure it will come back in the wet season which starts soon but I have NEVER seen it with whole dry sections.

I remember times it was flowing so fast when we were there with friends we all had to wear life vests and the dad of the other family tied a rope from one side to the other and we had to stay up-stream of the rope so we could save ourselves with it if the current got too strong (MUM, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING LETTING US GO IN LIKE THAT???). I remember other times that it was flowing so fast the ranger had closed it! Today there was just a sign saying the swimming hole was stagnant and swimming is not recommended. There was spots like this all over the place too...

Still, after I got over my initial concern about where the turtles and eels are living while there is a severe shortage of suitable homes for them we had fun clambering about on the rocks.

The boys straight away wanted to climb up on the biggest rock around... Mean mummy insisted that Daddy go up there with them... I don't know what I was worried about??

I made sure Wolf got some proof that Monkey and I were there as well. This is how the littlest McTavish spent most of his afternoon

The extra muslin around the outside was his shade cover, I would tuck it in up at the shoulder strap when we were in the sun and he would whinge and chuck a fuss and then when we went back in the shade I'd take it down and he'd go back to sleep. Dragon asked me "Mummy, are you a kangaroo with a pouch?" He was very interested in spotting some little wallabies and hopefully one with a joey in it's pouch.

I remember this rock being underwater when I was REALLY little. Then a cyclone changed the way the creek went a bit and it was out of the water anywhere from a few centimetres to a metre.

Now it's almost entirely surrounded by sand and rocks and is about 2.5 metres high.

We headed back up to the picnic area to see if we could spot some wallabies... we saw one from the track as we were walking up, we saw one as we got up there UP ON A BBQ! I got some really bad photos of that on the other camera but they are REALLY bad. There was one little girl who wanted to be browsing the picnic area but didn't want to be near us so we pretended that we didn't see her as we posed for photos...

and then when she was feeling a little more comfortable we got some shots of her...

I think she's a Pretty Faced Rock Wallaby. Her face markings weren't really prominent though. Unfortunately she wasn't fond of being photographed and took off. So I took some photos of that too :)

I love the way they jump!!!

There was another visitor after we finished our box of Tiny Teddies... He just sat and watched for a bit, I was starting to get concerned he thought my Monkey was a little morsel of food for him to snaffle.

This is a Blue Wing Kookaburra, BEAUTIFUL! These guys only have half a laugh and apparently they need two of them to laugh... but I am pretty sure we have just one that laughs for us at horrible early morning hours in the tree outside our house.

I think I was feeling kind of wonky on Saturday because all the photos I took seem to be on a bit of a lean, one way or another. Could have been the little joey in my pouch tipping me off balance too.

It was a lovely afternoon, I can see us here in a couple of years when all the kids are walking, Wolf and I on camp chairs reading, the kids traumatising rock wallabies and scrub turkeys. It was nice to be away from the smoke that has engulfed our house and annoyed my sinuses (on top of the cold I've picked up) and in spite of the horrible high temperatures we've been having it was nice and cool in the shade... We will be back... before another 10 years passes!

*It's just a name, we have no Alligators in Australia (not in the wild anyway). There are Crocodiles further down stream from here but this is a safe swimming hole... or so we are lead to believe.

Bird Spiders

Ah, Momstheword wants to know about Bird Spiders... you can read all about my exciting interactions with them here. But for some more information I offer you...

THE MUMMY McTAVISH GUIDE TO FREAKY BIG SPIDERS

Cute isn't she? Yeah, I don't think so either. Bird Spiders are also known as Australian Tarantulas to give you an idea of their general appearance. I have an eye witness account of a dinner plate sized one crawling into the "smallest room" while the loo was in use. I'd say that's the best place to be if you see one of these guys because they do make you want to... um... evacuate your bowels (being polite). They don't have scientific evidence that they eat birds (although this Australian spider obviously does) but what is scientific evidence? Do they throw a lame sparrow at it and if it gobbles it down it can keep the bird eating label and if it just gets cranky they taunt it by re-naming it The Australian Whistling Spider. I can hear the "scientists" laughing now... "haha, that'll show the big pansy spider... we'll give it a girly name since it can't even eat a bird". It can kill a doberman (I don't want to know how they got that scientific proof) so I'm figuring I'd rather not have one nip me, and I certainly wont be taunting one... well, not again, I didn't know what it was capable of last time I did that.

Around here they probably feast on our frogs (kinda like the snakes do) apparently their venom kills the creature then gets down to business digesting the innards of the animal while still in it's skin so that the spider can just suck all the froggy goodness out like a milkshake, sorry, frogshake. Sounds like fun, hey?

They can jump too. You can just see a spider the size of a VW Beetle pouncing after me ready to fang me and turn me into an MMM (Mummy McT Milkshake). Can you tell I'm freaked out by them?

Momstheword, the best time for a visit to North Queensland is now! Not too hot, not to cool, should I make up a bed for you?

Happy Australia Day

Okay, the plans didn't go quite according to, well, plans. It was raining and although that isn't enough to stop the church cricket match it was enough to stop the Australia Day grinch (a.k.a. Wolf). So we stayed home and had a relaxing day.

But we did make Damper!

Damper is a basic bread created by the early stockmen. It has very basic ingredients because they weren't able to carry a lot of provisions with them away for weeks or months at a time.

The basic ingredients are...

3 cups of self raising flour

3 tablespoons of butter

salt

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup water

2 adorable helpers to make a massive mess.

We added some herbs so that we could have it with our spaghetti for dinner (I know it wasn't lamb but I didn't have any lamb)

You can add sultanas and other dried fruit and some sugar for a sweet bread.

Now it's time to get your hands dirty! Put all the dry ingredients in a basin and rub the butter through with your hands until it is like fine breadcrumbs.

Make a well in the centre and add the milk bringing the dry ingredients together to a dough.

Once it's all together tip it onto a floured surface and knead for a minute or two, while wearing some fantastic hats.

Shape into a disc, slice the top (Dragons was sliced in wedges, Lion got a crisscross pattern), brush the top with milk and sprinkle with more flour (or more herbs) and place on an oven tray.

Lion's loaf

Dragon's loaf

Bake in a moderate oven for 10-15 minutes until golden brown.

Tear it apart and eat it while still warm with lots of butter.

Have some lamingtons for dessert.

Lamb '09

I fixed the Kekovich ad in the previous post and found the 2009 ad. Just a warning, aparently we allow less violence on our TV shows than a lot of the world but our language is worse than most (hence our tourism ads being banned world wide, what's the point in that???) So I apologise for his language. Also if you are a Wall Street type person you probably dont want to listen to this.

Maaaaaaate

Mate, Aussie Day is coming up. Fair dinkum, you'd 'ave to be a Galah to not know (Jan 26). We'll be chuckin' the food in the esky and headin' down to the church cricket match to sit 'round and eat while not playing cricket. Those playin'll be flat out like a lizard drinkin' so that's more tucker for us. Probably eat a lamington or 7, maybe some lamb chops for dinner.

Not disapointing - Sam Kekovich has another Lamb ad this year. I can't find the current one but this is the original ad that stirred up trouble and started the yearly wait for "The Lamb Ad".

So wrap your laughin' gear round some pav, chuck another prawn on the barbie (next to your lamb) get fair dinkum about it. Show your true blue colours and start gettin' ready for Australia day. If you're not gettin' the day off call the boss and chuck a sickie (I am not at all condoning this, I am just trying to fit in one more ockerism) head down the beach in a pair of budgie smugglers and thongs. The sand'll be hotter than a kangaroo's tail in a bushfire but she'll be jake. Don't forget your drinks, the day'll be dryer than a dead dingo's donger, especially out at the Goldfield Ashes. Stone the crows, don't sit there like a stunned mullet, it'll be goin' off like a frog in a sock!

Now don't come the raw prawn with me, I'm as busy as a one legged man in an a*** kicking contest and I'm gettin' involved. So don't be a Drongo, crack open a coldie and drink it down with an Aussie salute and a toast...

May your Chooks turn into Emu's and kick your dunny down.

There were so many others that I couldnt include on a family blog, so many ockerisms have swearing in them! and an Aussie salute is shooing the flies away.