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Target 140

We just received our quarterly council rates notice in the mail and of course the first page that everyone in Brisbane turns to at the moment is the Water Advice. I present to you our water advice page.

water advice

We are a family of 4 adults and in the most recent reporting period we were using 308L a day which works out to be 77L per person per day. The target that the BBC and Water Commission are promoting is 140L per person per day. Looking at our notice that is what we were achieving 12 mths ago. According to the Water Commission, the average per person per day usage is currently 137L in the region.

It will be interesting to see what we achieve for this period as our rain tank is now feeding the washing machine which saves about 50L per load, which will add up.

In addition to having a front loader washing machine, we don’t own a dish washer, the garden is been left to fend for itself except a few plants that get the water from the shower whilst waiting for the hot water to kick in. It is all about just taking a millisecond to think when you turn a tap on, is this necessary? Am I able to reuse this water? etc.

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Eungella National Park

We ended up spending three nights in Eungella and not once did we utilise the QPWS campsites that we had booked before leaving. The reason you ask? We were prepped and ready to attack the Mackay Highlands Great Walk. We had been looking forward to it for months now. Mackay is in the tropics. That means they have a Wet Season and a Dry Season. It is meant to be the Dry Season at the moment. Well as a further example of the really weird weather we are having in Australia at the moment. It decided to pour for the first couple of days that we were up there. We are talking constant rain for days. Rain that made it impossible to complete the walk as planned. Instead we walked parts of it and the final two days will have to wait for another time.

I think I have mentioned before how much I love backlit foilage, so here is another healthy dose of it.
mmm backlit goodness Fern
Palm Green is Life

The stinging tree aka Gympie Gympie (Dendrocnide moroides) is one beastly plant. Yes in Australia, we don’t only have animals that attack, we have plants that attack. There are six Dendrocnides in Australia ranging from 40m trees to shrubs. Native animals are not harmed by the stinging tree but humans and introduced animals are. In having a closer look at the plant and picking a few of the berries so that Mum could have a closer look, I brushed my hand on the stem and by boy did my hand feel like fire when it got cold in the week following my attack. Touch wood that it doesn’t flare up again.
Looks are deceiving

These are just some general snaps from the walk.

Crossing a stream
Crossing Broken River
Broken River
Lunch on Broken River
The trio at the river crossing

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damm my brother

Now, my brother currently lives in Iceland (actually four of my five brothers live in Iceland but I am referring to the first born son of my mother), the brother who has probably shaped my musical tastes more than anyone else. My brother gets to go and see all those cool Icelandic bands that I only get to listen to on myspace or on the CDs I get sent for Christmas.

What trigged this post you ask?
Karl, the aforementioned brother has just posted his photos and write up from the music festival that he went to over the Easter weekend. We both spent the Easter long weekend at music festivals which were on opposite ends of the festival spectrum. I went to the East Coast Blues and Roots Festival, Karl went to Aldrei fór ég suðuror I never went South. A music festival in Ísafjörður, which is the town where Karl was born and the largest town in the Westfjords with a population of about 2750. The festival is 110% free, the bands play for free, the events are free with the town pitching in to make it happen, all ages and true all ages in that the crowd ranged from babies to oldies. Best of all, it seems most of it happened in a fish shed, embracing the true roots of the Westfjords.

I was happily clicking the next button looking at all Karl’s photos and I came across this photo of Lay Low at which I jumped in my chair and made some noise along the lines of argrh as to the fact that I want to see Lay Low live dammit! I have been thinking about throwing it all in and going to Iceland Airwaves this year though I don’t think that will be on the cards till I have actually got a real job. Or figuring out a way to get Lay Low and some other cool Iceland bands to come to Aus and do a tour. That would perhaps be even cooler.

What is the point of this post?
Just me been envious of what my dear brother is getting up to in Iceland of course and making those envious feelings public, nothing more than that. Also admiring just how cool his photos from Aldrei are.

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big weekend

This past weekend has been the Queen’s Birthday long weekend and what a weekend I have had. Saturday I worked as usual. Sunday, Mum and I did a 22km kayak round Coomera River and Sanctuary Cove with NPAQ. Sunday night, I went to the Wallflower Records launch at Bar Soma. Monday morning, I went to work as usual at 5am and then met up with the POTN Brisbane photographers in the City for a day of camera filled fun. When I went to bed on Monday night at about 8ish, I had had just 4 hours sleep in the previous 38hrs so I was buggered and I have about 350 photos to go through. That would be fine in terms of processing them all if I hadn’t spent the last 19 hours in bed, I have come down with some sort of bug which has really not been kind to me. I woke up in the middle of the night with a really sore stomach and a headache and I am very lucky that I decided to get out of bed and go to the toilet as I then proceeded to be quite sick. Luckily though I haven’t vomited since then and am slowly starting to feel a little bit better.

Lots of posts to come in the next couple of days hopefully.

Here is one photo from yesterday I processed last night before I went to bed, one of the guys lent me his Sigma 105mm macro for the day yesterday I had a ball with it 🙂 There was actually lots of lens swapping yesterday and on my part camera stealing where when a few people were not looking I would pick up their camera and take a few random photos for them :p.

A cimbing vine

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Sundays at the Farm

As we normally do on a Sunday arvo, we went to visit Grandad yesterday and had a ball. Grandad is well Grandad. I mean if he was mmm sixty years younger and not my Grandfather well what can I say. He is a smart, has a sharp sense of humour and I am going to miss him terribly when the time comes.

Every Sunday we do pretty much the the same things.
We get to the farm and walk into Grandad’s bedroom where he is normally laying on his bed reading. He spends a lot of time reading on his bed as he needs to keep his feet up to reduce swelling. Mum, Matthew and I either find a spot on the bed or lay down on the floor or curl up in the window seat where we chat about what we have been doing in the past week, any interesting news we have read and just hang out. Pabbi comes in with us to go “Hi Lorry” and then goes outside to have a smoke and wander round the yard. After a while Matthew moves out to the kitchen or lounge room to do school work or read. Grandad, Mum and I move out into the garden to collect the harvest (which at the moment is Custard Apples, Cherry Tomatoes, Passionfruit and Avocados) and I of course spend time taking photos. During this time Pabbi either wanders into the garden to help or reads his book.

Once it gets too dark to work outside or everything is collected it is back inside to start tea. Grandad goes to put his feet up and we get to work in the kitchen. Either Mum or I cook tea and then either Matthew or I will make dessert and Mum makes the custard. We have dinner, chat, wash up and then pack the car and head home to the start of another week.

Grandad on his bed reading and Mum about to lay down in the background.
Visting Grandad

We have had a bit of rain recently and when we got to the farm it had just stopped raining and there was still nice water drops on the flowers. I grabbed my camera and tripod and set to work, doing what I do best. As the light was almost non-existent I grabbed my favourite lens (70-200mm f/4), reflector, flash and off camera cord and had fun lighting the scene myself. These Crucifix Orchids of which there are at least 3 different colours have been on the patio outside the kitchen window at the farm for as long as I can remember.

Magenta Crucifixes
Orange Cruifix satu, dua! greens

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Mum, a (semi) self-portrait

This is my Mum. Well her interpretation of a drawing that one of her students did of her a few years ago. Mum and a few of her friends are responsible for organising activities for the night meetings of Queensland Quilters. This month’s challenge was to make a self-portrait quilt.

The blue and green fabrics have been painted with sun reactive paints with leaves, lace and shells used as masks. To stitch the face she used the Stitch a Sketch technique by Faye Anderson in the June 2005 issue of Quilters Newsletter Magazine. She has a few more things to quilt on there yet but I wanted to show it off 🙂 I took it along to the meeting on Tuesday night as Mum is currently spending 3 weeks exploring the country west of Longreach and Birdsville. We had a phone call from her the other day and she is having a ball, lots and lots of native plants and birds to look at as well as seeing some very different country side to what she has seen before.
This was the roughly planned itinerary however I know it has changed since they have been out there due to where the rain has fallen and what creeks have flooded etc. I really recommend jumping on to Google Earth or Google Maps or whatever you like to explore the earth from above with.

To start at Longreach on May 2nd and travel to Birdsville by the shortest route. From Birdsville, travel down the Birdsville Track to Goyder’s Lagoon Waterhole where we will spend a couple of nights. From there we go to the Warburton Creek crossing, past which we turn back and travel up the northern side of the Warburton / Diamantina River, between the river and the bottom of the Simpson desert. This route will eventually bring us out at Birdsville or the Big Red sand dune west of Birdsville.
From Birdsville the course will be north by north west to Muncoonie Lakes from where we begin to follow the watercourses that flow here from the north.
Immediately above the lakes, the Mulligan River joins Eyre creek and after negotiating their confluence we will follow the Mulligan north through the western edges of several cattle properties. Crossing the Bedourie – Ethabuka access road we continue on up the river until we are near the source and as far as we are allowed to go. This point is on Glenormiston station and from there we travel back to Ethabuka, where we will stay, provided our interest is sustained, for 5 days. From Ethabuka we will return to Longreach by the most direct route hoping to arrive on May 23 or the morning of 24th.

and here is the quilt 🙂

Mum, a self-portrait