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Thursday 29 January 2009

Australia in pictures


My creation
Originally uploaded by Bearium

Well the title really says it all. I never did manage to take a good picture of the rain but one of the other really memorable things was the wildlife. It wasn't until we started going through our pictures when we got back that we realised quite how many we'd taken.

Wednesday 28 January 2009

Is it New Year already?

La la la, where does the time go? That seems to have been a fairly regular opener over the last few months but hey we're home, over the jet lag and settling back into our normal routine. I'm sat here feeling slightly soggy having just beaten up some hand spun and am contemplating heading back out into the drizzle to collect the 'Mighty Midget' from school. He stayed for his first ever after school club today so it's a late afternoon. Mind you I did find myself going out at my normal time - I knew something was wrong but it wasn't until I'd actually driven almost to school that I realised what it was. I was an hour early! Still, maybe I'll remember a bit earlier next week.

So how was Australia? Wet is the short answer. Yes, really! Australia actually has rain - lots of it apparently. I guess the tropical bit (in Tropical North Queensland) was somewhat of a clue but as the last time I was there it was early spring I wasn't entirely prepared for what turned out to be an early wet season. Or for the insects that came with it! Still, you can't dampen the spirits of a five year old and most of the time he didn't care that it was pouring or that we kept getting flooded in. It all adds to the adventure.

Needless to say, he enjoyed himself enormously. Although even he didn't need any encouragement when it came time to come home. Seven weeks is an awful long time to be away from family and friends. I wouldn't say we were homesick per say but we certainly missed the company of all our friends. It's incredibly isolated out there. I live out in the country here but where we were staying out in the bush makes my village look like a huge urban conurbation!

The MM pretty much ran wild for the whole time. I did manage to get a little school work out of him but it was a bit of an uphill struggle. He just wasn't interested for some reason. Too many new things to see I guess. There was certainly plenty of wildlife to distract him and also the mountain of presents that "santa" had waiting for him when we first arrived might have had something to do with it.

With it being such a long flight, I thought I'd want to knit on the plane on the way over and was all prepared with wooden needles etc (which incidentally went through security without raising an eyebrow, offensive weapon my a***) but I hadn't quite taken into consideration the effects of long haul travel. No matter how prepared you think you are, it sucks. Although, travelling with the MM wasn't as bad as I was expecting. His first ever experience of flying was on a jumbo with his own personal TV that not only could he watch films on, he could play games too. Talk about spoilt, he's going to be so disappointed the next time he flies as it's rare we would ever go far enough to go on such a big plane.

Anyhow, that's about it for today's rambling especially as this time it's picture free. Next time, spinning, knitting and a few snap shots :)