A Wet Weekend

After the warmest May on record, winter has finally hit Melbourne hard.  Strong bitter southern winds, bringing lots of rain and flooding to many parts of the city.  On the plus side, it means we can put our new ducted heating system to the test, and so far it has passed with flying colours, well worth the investment.  The rain did not stop us taking a day trip up to Daylesford this weekend to visit Barnadi's friends Leah and Evan.  The trip was rather spontaneous in its complete lack of planning, we had been taking Goofy for a walk when the rain began.  Cutting the walk short we headed back home, but Goofy had hardly had enough time to stretch his legs, so we got in the car, planning to drive to Bundoora park where we could let him off the lead a bit and he could have a run around.  Before we even pulled out the driveway Barnadi suggested we make a day of it and head down to Williamstown, this sounded like a good plan to me so instead of driving to the park I took us up onto the ring road.  It was here Barnadi changed his mind again, we hadn't seen Leah and Evan for a while, and last time we drove up to Daylesford to visit them, the house they were building by the lake was still far from finished.  It seemed then that a visit was well overdue and we got off the ring road at the Calder freeway and headed north-west. 


Trentham Falls

On the way we stopped briefly at Woodend to buy a bottle of wine and a small house plant, it was rude enough of us to turn up uninvited, but to turn up empty handed as well would have been unforgivable.  We stopped again at a little place called Trentham, every time we had been to Daylesford before I had seen the little brown sign to Trentham falls and thought I would like to go there and yet we never quite managed it, until now.  Just of the main road a potholed little driveway lead us to a small car park, surprisingly busy for such a miserable day.  From the car park it was a surprisingly short 70 metre walk down some muddy steps to the viewing platform.  An impressive cascade over columnar basalt cliffs, made all the more impressive by the rain we were now enjoying.  Once we had our fill of falling water, we got back into the car and made the short final leg of our journey into Daylesford.  We weren't the only uninvited guests to turn up that day and Leah miraculously managed to throw together a delicious impromptu lunch.  After lunch Leah took us on short walk to the Mill Market where she had a stall selling vintage items, Evan stayed back tasked with baking some scones for tea.  By this point poor Goofy was getting rather fed up, what began as a trip to take him for a walk had ended up with him being tied up outside in the rain most of the day or stuck in the back of the car.  The walk to the market at least gave him the chance to feel involved again, and the walk back via the lake gave him the chance to get even wetter with a quick swim. 

Mill Market

Along the pier a there was a buzz of activity as three boys were busy tying balloons along the railings, lighting candles and setting up a stereo.  On quizzing one of them about what was going on, it transpired a friend of theirs was about to propose to his girlfriend, and they were helping to make it as romantic an occasion as possible.  Our thoughts were with that couple as we headed back up to the house and the rain once again came down, the heaviest it had been all day.  Would the girlfriend still agree to walk around the lake in this weather?  Would the candles still be alight, or the stereo work?  Would she see the romantic side, being dragged around the lake in the cold and wet?  I guess we shall never know.


Fed up Goofy

Despite his modesty Evan's scones were perfect, and went down exceptionally well with a hot cup of tea.  It was just what was needed to thaw out after the chilly walk by the lake.  Realising Goofy had had enough, cold, wet and muddy as he was, we decided it was time to say our farewells and head back home again, where we could give him a thorough wash.

Solstice

The winter solstice brings the longest night, but also sees the return of the Light in Winter festival in Federation square.  This years centrepiece was an installation by UK architect Asif Kahn named radiant lines.  Also located around the square were home made shrines, totems and some creepy puppets by the Indonesian Papermoon Puppet theatre.  The solstice also marks the one year anniversary from our move to Bundoora.  It may have only been a year since we moved from Northcote to our house, but it feels like a lifetime ago.  Lodgers have been and gone and our two beautiful children arrived. 

Radiant Lines

Having children, even non-human children can become very stressful at times.  Poor Goofy took quite ill last week vomiting twice and loosing all appetite.  For a whole day he didn't eat a thing, but he was still drinking water and wasn't showing signs of dehydration so we didn't take him to the vet, but it was a close call.  By the next day he begun eating again, but only small amounts of plain rice.  He is now back to his normal naughty self, which although frustrating is a great relief.

Goofy is not the only one who has been sick.  Barnadi caught the flu very badly this year and had to take a whole week off work which is completely unheard of for him, he has now vowed to get the flu jab every year from now on.

The arts

Our spate of cultured nights out to the opera did not stop at two.  After the Turk in Italy we went to see Carmen, the most famous of the operas we saw and this was followed the next week by La traviata.  La traviata might have been the lowest budget but they had a novel set design, involving laying the back drop canvas on the floor and suspending a large mirror over the stage.  A trick that worked really well for the big party scenes, but didn't quite work so well in the country house where the lead male actor looked like he was sleeping on the walls.  The opera season has now ended, so we will be returning to plain old musicals for future theatre excursions, the King and I, showboat and Guys and Dolls being just some that we are planning to see.

At the start of this year I set myself 5 seemingly unobtainable goals, and yet I have now completed one.  As a child I was always writing stories, but a life as a pharmacist following guidelines and evidence based medicine had pretty much killed my imagination.  I had an idea for a story or two buzzing around my head, but never found a way to get them out.  Then one day earlier this year inspiration struck, the first day back at work after white night, Cameron and I were having a conversation.  It started with a single phrase.

 "The Camerosaurus and the Peppermint princess made their way through the aftermath of the battle between the White knight and the peoples of Swanston"

And from here a whole story grew, and as of today the first draft is now complete.  Ironically enough this original phrase no longer features anywhere in the story.  Now begins the long and painful journey of editing, something I have never had that much patience with.

The Dogs B*****ks

Having Goofy de-sexed was a lot less traumatic than Jessie.  That is not to say it was without risk, as all surgery carries some risk.  His recovery was much quicker, he was a little wobbly on his feet for the next couple of days, but otherwise he seemed unfazed and it wasn't long before he was up to his normal naughty tricks.   While exploring around the new University Hill development in Bundoora he ran off after a mob of kangaroos and disappeared without trace for a good 15 minutes before we found him again.  We left him at home in the garden whilst we went to the opera, and he reached his head through the catflap and pulled through and shredded a new rug.  He's not always naughty though, he joined us at the Indonesian Street Festival at Victoria market and won a free Javan bandana for his dancing.  A busy week for a dog who is meant to be convalescing.  His stitches are now out and it is like nothing ever happened.




Dancing Goofy

We have been very cultured this month, going to the Opera twice in as many weeks.  The first was a Tchaikovsky work, Eugine Onegin.  I had never heard of this opera before, and it was an extremely melodramatic tale of a young man who rejects the advances of a girl and dances with her sister.  The sister's boyfriend just happens to be his best friend, but jealousy makes him challenge Onegin to dual.  Pride forces Onegin to accept and so he ends up shooting and killing his best friend.  He then goes a little off the rails and travels around aimlessly for a few years before returning to St Petersburg where he finds the girl he rejected at the start of the opera is now married to the prince.  He decides now that he wants to make a go of it, and she tells him where to go.

The second opera could not have been a bigger contrast.  The Turk in Italy by Rossini, but modernised, well brought into the 1950's, a ridiculously riotous romp tracking the love life of an Italian woman, bored of her husband and sleeping with pretty much every man in town.  When a Turkish boat lands she goes straight after the womanising Selim.  Selim himself has another admirer a concubine that had fallen in love with him.  After much farcical partner swapping and mistaken identity the woman finally reconciles with her husband and the Turk returns home with his concubine.  The whole situation is constantly being overseen and manipulated by a struggling poet looking for a good story to write a play about. 

Slightly less cultured than Opera last weekend was Eurovision time again.  As Sam and Athina are currently crossing the border between China and Kazakhstan, they were unable to join me this year.  Instead Cameron came over and I cooked a Lasagne for dinner.  This years entries were much better than last in my humble opinion and I couldn't decide on a favourite between Hungary, Ukraine and a few others.  That's not to say there weren't a few duds  Belarus with the Cheesecake song and Poland with the butter churning.  Still it was no surprise when the Austrian bearded lady Conchita Wurst won, with her song about a phoenix, an allegory for her own sex change.

Adventures in the top end

Why is the Northern Territory still just a territory and not a state? This question has bugged me for ages, and after our recent trip to Darwin, I'm still non the wiser.

Florence Falls, Litchfield Park

For our Easter break we decided to take a trip up to Darwin, even Barnadi had never been to the Northern Territory before, so it was going to be a new adventure for both of us.  Getting off the plane it felt like we had touched down in another country.  Leaving behind the cold wet autumn in Melbourne to arrive in the tropical humid heat of Darwin, we could have just as easily been in Indonesia.

Darwin

We had hired a car as part of the package, although Darwin itself is small enough to walk around in a couple of hours it was not the main attraction for our visit.  In fact after just one night it was clear Darwin as a place to visit had very little going for it.  Historical buildings don't really exist as much of the original town was destroyed during the war or by tropical storms.  The CBD that exists stretched out on a peninsula between two harbours is growing with new tower blocks emerging all over the place, but there is a complete lack of any heritage buildings such as you would find in most other state capitals.  Despite being the capital city of the Northern Territories it seems everything shuts down on public holidays and Sundays leaving the place feeling more like a provincial town.  The few places that did open charged a significant premium for doing so and seemed to mainly cater for the enormous backpacker community.  The same backpackers that left Mitchel street feeling more like a Spanish island resort, with drunken louts clogging up the streets all night.

Magnetic Termite Mounds

Cathedral Termite Mound

We get up early the next day, our first diversion was to Litchfield park.  The closer of the two national parks we had planned to visit this trip.  Litchfield is a mere one and a half hours out of Darwin and boasts many beautiful waterfalls and colossal termite mounds.  The roads in the Northern Territories are some of the emptiest and fasted roads I had driven on in Australia, speed limits extending to 130km/h in some areas, the drive was long and tedious but well worth it (and still only a short ride compared with what we were about to attempt), our first stop was at the magnetic termite mounds, so named as their flattened structures all aligned perfectly north to south.  There were of course plenty of the Cathedral mounds to admire as well, incredible to think something so small could construct something so big.  Once we had seen enough termites we continued on through the park to Florence falls the only waterfalls that we visited where it was safe to swim in the plunge pool.  Crocodiles are endemic to most of the waterways in the NT, fresh water and salt water making swimming a very treacherous past time.  The number of people already swimming at Florence falls however reassured me that if a crocodile was present, it would surely have had its fill by now.  After enjoying a swim in the deep clear waters we dried out on the rocks and ate a small lunch before we continued once more on our Journey.  The next waterfalls we stopped at were the Tolmer falls and we could only admire them from above, as there was no route down to the bottom, we didn't stay too long there before we got back in our car to our final waterfall of the day, the Wangi falls.  The Wangi falls are usually open for swimming, but due to high water levels the risk of crocodiles had forced the park rangers to close the area.  We attempted to do a circular walk here, but that path was closed too as the heavy rain had damaged one of the bridges.  So we just sat and admired the water so tempting to swim in, but so deceptively deadly.  We had dinner at a stake house that served crocodile, so I feel suitably assured we got our revenge.

Wangi falls, Litchfield Park

Rock Art

The next day, Easter Sunday we took on the challenge of driving all the way to Kakadu national park., world heritage listed and possibly the NT's second biggest attraction after Uluru.  The world heritage status however is under threat thanks to one foreign invader, the cane toad. The drive just to get there takes a good three hours and as the park itself is so vast you've still got another hour or so driving just to get somewhere.  The drive is not too dull as it passes through a variety of landscapes including forests, flooded wetlands and it crosses several giant majestic rivers,  The amount of dead Wallabies on the road however reminded me how important it was to get back before dark.  The most exciting spot along the road was the dingo, I haven't seen a wild dingo before so to just see one trotting along the side of the road casually turning his head to watch us pass was a real treat.  I'd picked two main areas I wanted to explore in Kakadu, Nourlangie Rock, a site of ancient aboriginal cave paintings and Yellow water a good spot for a cruise and some crocodile spotting.  The road to Yellow water unfortunately was closed due to flooding so we ended up with only one proper stop.  Luckily Nourlangie was worth the trip all by itself.  Before getting to Nourlangie itself we stopped at a neighbouring rock, which we climbed and were blessed with views of not only Nourlangie, but the vast flat plains bellow and the dramatic vast sheer cliffs that followed the horizon right down to where the Jim Jim falls would presumably be.  The rock art at Nourlangie was interesting and the cool shelter between the imposing rock faces made it an obvious choice for those early nomadic tribes to call home.  But as is usually the case in these matters, where man has done something impressive, nature has always trumped him.  The end of the track around the paintings took us on a climb to a lookout so stunning we could have stayed there all day, that is if the heat and the flies didn't force us to retreat back to the car and its life saving air conditioning.

Nourlangie Rock, Kakadu

We then spent what we thought was going to be our last night and day in Darwin.  Our flight wasn't until 6pm so we had a whole day to kill.  After checking out of our budget hotel we did a little drive following the coast North.  We took stops at the Botanical gardens and the Darwin museum, which was free to get in and so was well worth a visit as an air conditioned diversion.

As we arrived at the airport that evening, we dropped off the keys to the hire car and made our way to check in only to hear our flight had been cancelled.  Now Darwin really is the arse end of nowhere and there were no alternative flights we could get, and as driving would take several days longer than simply waiting for a replacement flight the next day we were completely stranded.  The airline did at least put us up in a nice hotel and provide dinner vouchers, so all was not lost as we guiltily made the most of an extra night in Darwin, knowing we should be feeling bad for missing a day of work.  Luckily both our bosses were understanding of our situation, not that there was anything that we could have done if they weren't.  More worryingly we had to arrange extra care for Jessie and Goofy.

21 hours later than planned we finally left Darwin.  All in all a good trip, but 2 important lessons were learnt in case we ever ventured to the top end again.
1. Go in the dry season
2. Don't stay in Darwin

Seaside living

Last weekend we said goodbye to our house guests from the last 4 months as they resumed their travels around Australia, next stop Sydney.   In celebration of Adam's birthday we took Adam and Coralee for lunch in Williamstown.  Barnadi found a nice looking seafood restaurant called the Strand which had views across the bay with the city skyline as its backdrop.  We shared a couple of starters including a selection of various sharing dishes and some soft shell crab.  For mains, Adam had lamb an unusual choice for a seafood restaurant.  Barnadi had the salmon after a difficult decision between the salmon and the risotto.  Both Coralee and myself had the Barramundi, we were all very happy with our choices and still had just enough room to try a little dessert.  We walked off our big lunch along the rocky seafront between the harbour and the beach.  The walk left me with a sense of envy as we looked at the stunning mansions along the shore with their even more stunning views.  An earlier check at a property website revealed that most of these foreshore mansions would require funds in the millions to acquire.  It is therefore an unrealistic dream that one day we might be able to move to a sea front property in Williamstown. 

View from Williamstown

The other big change in our household this week was the addition of central heating.  Despite Melbourne being hot in summer and cold in winter, insulating never seemed to play a part in building designs.  With our heating now installed the next step is to improve our insulation, double glazing being our first big priority, although at a cost of $13,000 + it may have to wait a little bit longer. 

We have created another area of poor insulating recently by installing a cat flap into our back door.  The flap itself didn't last long as Goofy constantly banging his head through it has successfully removed it permanently.  Jessie is really enjoying her new found freedom, having lots of space to run around and learning how to climb trees keeps her occupied most days.  She has even started hunting, although starting small, her current quarry is crickets.  She catches one and brings it into the house minus its back legs, she then lets it run for a bit before pouncing on it.  This process would be repeated indefinitely until the cricket gives up trying to escape, then she gets bored and leaves it alone, shaken but still alive.

Goofy trying out Jessie's new cat flap

Trials and Tribulations.

So finally after 3 long months of waiting I have started my new job at the Alfred, working within their clinical trials department.  It is strange to be back working on clinical trials again, and yet it is also all so familiar.  Thanks to the implementation of ICH GCP guidelines, trials are conducted in almost identical ways in most countries around the world.  Working in clinical trials is certainly not everyone's cup of tea.  It is highly regulated and involves excessive amounts of record keeping to the point of OCD.  It is also quite reassuring to see how similar the trials department here in Australia is to what I was doing back home, as where I worked before I was the only clinical trials pharmacist and with the help of my one technician I pretty much had to work it all out for myself.

Goofy has now finished his 5 week puppy school and his behaviour is much better, although that may also be linked simply to his maturation.  Goofy has pretty much got a full set of adult teeth, but unfortunately that hasn't really stopped him wanting to chew everything.  He does seem to be getting better with Jessie and isn't biting her quite so much.  Barnadi was unable to join me and Goofy for the last 3 lessons, as he had to work instead.  The dynamic of the group changed over those last lessons quite drastically.  Daisy continued to be hyperactive, but the others got bored of her antics and tended to ignore her.  Romeo got much braver, and seemed to latch on to Goofy as his new best friend.  Mr Fitch turned quite grumpy and Austin was growing into quite a precocious young upstart, in the final week he even tried to violate Goofy....Goofy being Goofy however, didn't even seem to notice.