Eight weeks (part 2)

April arrived in Canberra complete with an April Fool's Day joke from Mother Nature:

...making our local landmark, Black Mountain, topped by the Telstra Tower, disappear in the morning...

...and reappear in the afternoon.

Other highlights of the month included our quarterly care package of American goodies from sister/aunt L...

...two weekends at the coast - one to Kioloa...

...and one to Durras Beach in Murramurang National Park...

...where we got up close and personal with some of the locals...

...and admire some of the oldest gum trees still standing anywhere in New South Wales.

Most of the rest of April was taken up with a combination of school holidays and solo parenting, which meant juggling work with activities around Canberra - and Miss B's and my now-traditional Sunday breakfast of crumpets when DP is away - making the batter the night before is definitely the key to success.

And my latest foray into flower arranging brings us up to date, with autumn taking hold in Canberra - the heat is on, the nights are drawing in, and the slow cooker is getting a workout. What's happening where you are?

Silent Sundays

A selection of photos from our second week of school holidays - a road trip to the Great Ocean Road:

Bay of Martyrs

Twelve Apostles

Typically subtle Australian signage

More breathtaking coastline

The Grotto

London Arch

Hiking, Cape Bridgewater Seal Walk

Seal colony and cliffs, Cape Bridgewater

Surf, Cape Bridgewater

Frolicking at Bridgewater Beach

Admiring Cape Bridgewater, post-hike

Local seals mooching freshly caught tuna, Portland Harbor waterfront

 

Inquisitive (and large!) stingray, Portland Harbor waterfront

The road home and the Pyrenees hills

March round-up

March has turned into what the Fantastic Mr. Fox would call a clustercuss, and life, cooking, and posting have suffered accordingly. But there are a few highlights to share:

Speaking of foxes....Now that the weather is cooling off, we  are seeing more of the local wildlife - including this recent backyard standoff between 2 invasive non-indigenous species. (Spoiler: despite the considerable size differential, the cat won this bout hands down. The fox slunk away and has not been seen since. S/he had no comment, so we still don't know what the fox say.)

I went to a back-to-school cookie swap which had originally been scheduled as a Christmas cookie swap, but got postponed when the hostess' December turned into an even bigger clustercuss than my March. Highlights from this included lots of delicious cookies, entertaining local gossip, and one attendee's excellent idea to provide her contribution as unbaked dough for freezing and future use (see rolls at top left), an idea which I am totally stealing for future cookie swaps. My contribution features the poofy blue tissue-paper flowers, inspired by Celia when I had to MacGyver up some fancy packaging from supplies I had on hand at the last minute. (My contribution.)

I have become an inexpert maker of inauthentic sushi, as evidenced by my latest batch. The process for basic inauthentic sushi is pretty straightforward - cook some sushi rice; when cooked, season it with sushi vinegar and let cool while you finish prepping the fillings (Miss B's preferred inauthentic sushi fillings are thin strips of cucumber and carrot, topped with chunks of canned tuna). Then assemble, wrapping fillings and rice in a nori sheet. It's here that my inexpertise becomes manifest, as clearly my rolling technique needs work. One of Miss B's classmates brings homemade sushi to school every day, and apparently his never disintegrate during the eating process, unlike mine.

 

In the interests of focusing on things I can control, last weekend I chose to cope with some of March's WTFery by cleaning out and reorganizing my pantry cupboard. Here is the result - a small island of order in a sea of chaos, but it's like doing 5 minutes of deep breathing exercises just to open it up and stare into it.

And this is rather nice to stare at too. Thanks, everyone!

Now roll on April 1, say I. Hope all is serene in your neck of the woods.

Melbourne highlights

I wouldn't want you to get the impression, based upon yesterday's post, that I didn't have a smashing time on my Melbourne trip, because I did - even with tech struggles and unseasonably cold and wet weather and  occasional homesickness. Amongst all that, there were work sessions in cafes fueled by delicious coffee and cake:

A visit to the Yarra Valley, the wine region outside Melbourne, featured a trip to Healesville Sanctuary and an amazing show displaying some impressive Australian birds, including this gorgeous parrot:

And of course, the obligatory sleepy koala, which never gets old, no matter how many I get to admire (hint: not enough):

I also got to eat this indescribably delicious breakfast at another local cafe, which I had heard about from a friend pretty much the day I arrived, and finally procured on Sunday morning - a multigrain bagel topped with smashed avocado, crisp bacon, poached eggs, and chili oil. Totally transcendental:

I was also fortunate enough to be staying a block away from a cooking store I've been wanting to visit for years, after hearing about it from a friend and fellow cook on my way out of Australia back in 2009. (And it turns out there's one in Canberra too, o joy and impending bankruptcy!)

The Melbourne store is conveniently situated on the edge of Prahran Market, Melbourne's oldest food market and bursting with fresh food of all kinds. We had a long stroll around on Sunday morning, and I only wished that I could have come earlier and stayed longer - and had a stocked kitchen handy to do justice to the lovely meats, fish, cheeses, fruit, and veg I could only admire longingly.

To say nothing of the delicious sushi, felafel, homemade pasta, and Thai noodles I sampled at other meals - all within a block or two of my hotel  - and Melbourne hospitality that we experienced at every turn. You should all go and visit immediately, while I get on with Thanksgiving prep. (More on that tomorrow.)

Local wildlife

Today Miss B and I joined forces with another temporarily single-parent family, and took a trip out to Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, 40 minutes south of Canberra. The big news around town is that Tidbinbilla recently brought in a new batch of koalas (four mother-and-baby pairs), so we went to take a look. We were only able to spot one pair, snuggled in a tree and sleeping soundly (not even awakened by the squeals of three enchanted children), but we had an enjoyable bush walk and saw lots of other Australian critters, including a couple of emus, lots of cockatoos, several mobs of kangaroos, and a few southern brush-tailed rock wallabies:

Even after nearly three years of living in Australia, I still feel almost as excited as the kids every time I see Australian wildlife. Going about daily business in Canberra, it's sometimes easy to lose sight of the fact that we're having kind of an amazing experience just having the chance to live here.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Come to Australia, they said. See amazing wildlife, they said.

Wild things

Sometimes it’s easy to forget the fairly amazing fact that I’m living in Australia. You know, I’m going about my daily business—kid stuff, working on the computer, running errands housework cooking blah blah blah—and after a while the different accents and shop names don’t seem so exotic anymore.

And, after all, they’re not what really makes Australia special for the non-Australian, are they? It’s seeing the local wildlife firsthand that really brings it home. These sightings seem to be coming more frequently lately, as autumn starts to make some inroads and the days get shorter. I mentioned the Festival of Cockatoos, and there have also been increased numbers of king parrots around our complex. And for the last few weeks, we’ve been getting regular visits from a mother and baby brushtail possum after dark; at first, mum was climbing up to our balcony with baby peeking out of her pouch, and now baby clings to mum’s back as they nose around for runoff water from the plants (or in the bowl we've been leaving out for them). They haven’t agreed to pose for any pictures, but they don’t seem particularly shy of humans, particularly since they generally announce their arrival by knocking something over. Best of all, when DP was closing the curtains last night, he saw a kangaroo standing on the grassy median which runs down the boulevard behind our apartment, patiently waiting until a truck passed before bouncing across the westbound lanes and disappearing down a side road.

(Have I mentioned that where we live is about a 10-minute walk, or a one-minute drive, from the busiest part of Canberra’s downtown? Perhaps this is why people say that, in spite of being the nation’s capital, Canberra is really just a big country town.)

Every time it happens, I feel as excited as if I were still Miss B’s age. And it goes without saying that all of these sightings are vastly preferable to close encounters of the eight-legged kind.

Al fresco

Just so you know, it’s not only my own food I’m interested in. I’m chronically nosy about what everybody is eating. Sometimes even non-humans.

This morning, Miss B and I were hurrying off to preschool. As we got to the end of our block, we heard a noise that sounded like someone either a) popping popcorn overhead or b) sitting in a tree madly popping bubble wrap. We didn’t have time to take a good look, so peered up into the trees as we passed, trying to find the source of the noise while dodging the shower of tree bits coming from overhead. Miss B's observations: "Mummy, what's that noise?" and "Look, somebody made a mess!" And she was right; the ground underfoot was covered with leaves, small branches, and some kind of small berries or nuts that had been cracked open.

I had a bit more time to investigate on the way back, and coming from that angle, was able to identify the source of noise, that you can see here if you look closely: about a half-dozen sulphur-crested cockatoos, feasting on this one tree. I haven’t been able to figure out why this tree was suddenly The Cockatoo Place To Be, or even what kind of tree it is (other than that its trunk has rough bark, not the typical smooth bark of Australian gum trees). I’m still working on my Australian plant-identification skills. Goofy newcomer that I am, I’m too busy being flabbergasted by seeing gangs of birds roaming around Canberra that I previously would have expected to see only in pet shops or zoos.

Nature. Eeeeew.

Last night DP and I had a typically Australian experience. Or, perhaps more accurately, a typical clueless-expats-in-Australia experience.

To set the scene: we had all gotten back a bit late (ie after dark) from dinner with a work friend of DP’s and her partner. We came home, flipped on a few necessary lights, and began bustling between the bedrooms and bathroom to get Miss B ready for bed. When Miss B was bathed and in her pajamas, DP handed her off to me to help her brush her teeth and hair while he did a couple of other things, among which was to turn on some more lights in the living room.

Suddenly I heard a strangled voice from outside the bathroom door say, “Come out here. Now. Please.”

I walked into the living room to find DP staring fixedly at the TV set. Not another natural disaster? No, wait, he’s not staring at the TV set. He’s staring at the HUMONGOUS spider on the wall behind the TV set.

(I should mention here that DP, generally among the most fearless people I know, is a major-league arachnaphobic. Weenie Boston spiders are enough to make him hyperventilate, and the occasional jumbo spiders we used to see in England (jumbo by English standards—say, about 1.5 inches including legspan) practically gave him heart failure.

Thus, disposing of spiders is traditionally my job.)

People, this thing was easily 4 inches from leg-tip to leg-tip. Its body alone was well over an inch long. If I hadn’t known better, I would have said it was a skinny tarantula. However, I had been forewarned by our friend and landlord G. that we could expect to see Huntsman spiders around the place from time to time: brown, hairy, and horrifying. BUT: unlike most Australian spiders, harmless. Huge, but harmless.

But huge.

DP evaporated as soon as I entered the living room, ostensibly to read to Miss B and put her in bed. I stood there and stared at our uninvited guest, trying to figure out how I was going to get rid of it. You can’t exactly squash a four-inch spider with a tissue; for one thing, that would involve getting close to it. I was pretty sure G. had left some insecticide under the sink, but I couldn’t bear the thought of watching its chemically-induced death throes. In fact, I wasn’t sure I could kill it at all; any critter that big practically qualifies as an animal.

I considered knocking it into a shoe box, slamming on the lid, running out on to the porch and flinging it into the night; but again, too close. When DP returned to the living room, I had put a bucket on the floor underneath it and was standing there with a broom, nerving myself to knock it off the wall and into the bucket…hoping it would actually land there….

DP sussed what I was up to immediately. “That is NOT going to work,” he said categorically. “Give me that broom.”

And, taking a deep breath and conquering his most visceral fears, he stepped up into classic batting stance, and swung the broom with all his might.

I won’t go into any further gory detail except to say that that sucker took a lot of killing. When it was over, I disposed of the remains using an empty spaghetti box.

You may have guessed that I won’t be posting a recipe today. I’m kind of off my food at the moment.

Oh, and I haven’t posted a picture of the critter either (unless there’s one lurking in that gum tree). If you really want to see it in all its hairy majesty, follow the link above.