Uncallosed hands

Foolishly tried to do some work while I'm back home on the farm for a month. This resulted in a few hand fulls of blisters after just a few hours of removing battens from a fence. I then foolishly decided to go kyacking today for two hours. Luckily the scenery was really good and that distracted me from the pain.

The christmas tree

The seven different branches strapped crudely together that some euphemistic individual proclaimed to be our christmas tree is still standing there slowly decmposing and crumbling and looking even more miserable than it did when it was obscuring the presents under a haze of dropping pine needles. Might sacrifise it to the bon fire tomorrow if I'm not to lazy.

Christmas

Had a pretty good christmas altough I didn't eat anywhere near as much as I should have. The surprise has gone out of it though as all of my relatives just ask me what I want for christmas, still that's better than getting unending supplies of socks. It was nice to catch up with all my cousins even though they are all taller than me now, even my 12 year old cousin is only 4 inches shorter than I am.
A few people even managed to sort of teach them selves to drive in the paddock racer which was interesting.*



*This is a pretty boring post.

The bronze crayfish

Finished off my christmas shopping today in the local craft shop now I just have to work out who to give the life sized bronze crayfish to.

The dentist.

Went to my friendly dentist today and his assistant poked around in my mouth for an hour causing me to lose half a litre of blood in the process of her trying to scratch off some small calcified deposits on my teeth but generally missing and getting the gums instead. Have to go back tomorrow to get a few fillings as well, luckily going to the dentist is alot cheeper in New Zealand than it is in Australia.

Back Home

Arrived home yesterday after a rather harrowing flight that had numerous delays and hour long cues to get through immigration. I was eventually greated by a rather bleak day of constant drisle and eight degree celcius temperatures. It was certainly colder last night than it has been all year in sydney and I had a lovely relaxing sleep with no mosquitoes or giant flying cockroaches pestering me through the night, its also quite nice not to have to pull your curtains as there is no street light or city light out where we live. Might even be able to see the stars if it ever stops raining and the clouds clear.

One more day of heat

Only one more day to go before I get to go home to New Zealand and finally be able to stop sweating uncontrollably and I might even get a good nights sleep.
The weather looks like its going to reach a scorching high of 12 degrees at home today compared to 25 for Sydney and 34 for Sydney on Sunday.

Also taking a break from being a glorified property press the SMH copied this article from the AFP today; Bloggers stars of the net.

Christmas Party

It was alot of fun and people certainly seemed to enjoy themselves, I certainly rapidly deteriorated once the beer had run out and the wine was started, luckily I only fell over once though and I blame the slippery floor for that. Didn't win the bloody hamper again must be rigged.
Speaking of rigged the commonwealth bank has installed a diebold ATM machine at my local bank, made sure I got a paper trail when I got my money out.
Watched king arthur last night on DVD it was interesting mindless fodder which was probably good as I was still feeling rather poorly at the time.

All the best leave

Well I did anyway although its questionable wheather I was ever in the top 50 % let alone the best.
Anyway wouldn't want to stay as there is too much chance of being raped by an all black (see post below).

Off to join the brain drain

Blue Gum Forest (II)

Some pictures from the blue gum forest walk.

Beaucamp Falls


The fog on the first morning.

Go the homeland

Kiwi shearer fastest in world

NZ in midst of obesity epidemic - report

It's all in the fine print.

Please read the footnote especially if you are from southland.

http://www.longdistancewalks.com/hollyford-pyke_route/day04.html

Blue Gum Forest

I did the blue gum forest walk over the weekend with Adelle. The weather thankfully was quite cold for this time of year and when we started out everything was shrouded in fog and you could only see 50 metres. The walk from the blackheath train station to the start of the track was a dead flat 3 km that went remarkably quickly with a short side trip to the parks and wildlife building where I resisted the urge to further increase the weight of my pack with some of the lovely books that lay within. From Govetts leap car park we then had to walk to evans lookout as the track down govetts leap was closed due to a land slide. The walk to evans lookout was also dispatched rapidly as due to the fog there was little to see, however the fog started to clear as we approached evans lookout and it unveiled some nice views. The wander down to beaucamp falls was slippery but very interesting and due to the stream running through it was very wet and full of tree ferns which reminded me of home. At beaucamp falls we stopped for lunch on a large rock with splendid views of the valley and the falls. After eating so much we could barely walk we waddled on down to the valley floor passing some great swimming holes and a few eastern water dragons on the way.
We soon hit junction rock where we had a quick break before carrying on towards acacia flat on the way Adelle managed to catch a lovely little dragon which was quite friendly, although it eventually leaped to freedom and scampered off before we could get a photo.
After replenishing the water supplies at orangutang creek we headed on to acacia flat where we set up camp amongst some lovely blue gums and I discovered a leech had hitch hiked along in my shoe although for some reason it had not bit me. That night it rained steadily helping to lull oneself to sleep.
The next day we went for a quick walk through the blue gum forrest where we were attacked by hoards of hungry leeches luckly only one was quick enough to draw blood before I noticed it. After this it was time for the steep climb up to perry's lookout despite the sign at the bottom of the hill saying it should take 2-3 hours we did it easily in two hours with plenty of short stops to admire the view along the way. At the top we had a delicious lunch of soup and lebanese bread that Adelle had kindly hauled up the hill. All that then remained was a quick wander along the road to pulpit rock where we could join all the tourists gawking at the view from the cliffs as we wandered back to govetts leap car park. Had a good look around blackheath before getting some greasy burgers to subdue our hunger and a train back to sydney.

Hero

I went to see the movie Hero last night and contary to the expectations of the person I went with it was very good. It was by the same people who made crouching tiger hiden dragon and in many ways is very similar to that although the action is faster and not quite as unrealistic. Worth watching for the scenery alone I think.