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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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The Final Countdown

The day that will have the biggest impact on my life so far is almost here. In three days time I will be at the board presenting myself as best I can. The last couple of days I have been busily going over my notes, talking to people, writing new notes, reading reports and more. My desk seriously looks worse now then it ever did when I was at uni.

We picked Mum up from the airport this arvo. It will be a bit of a change having her home again after three weeks away. We have fallen into a system since she has been away and as of tonight that will all be out the window and it will be back to how it was before she went away. In saying that though it very nice to have her home again and to hear all her stories about the sights she has seen out west.

There was an excellent piece of news tucked away in the Higher Education supplement of The Australian yesterday about Asian Studies or more precisely titled the return to Asian Studies not only in universities across Australia but in the school systems as well if Labor wins the upcoming election. I let out a little cheer in the tearoom at work where I was reading the paper and then proceeded to send messages out to various friends either current or former Asian Studies students telling them of the story. In particular it made me think of one of my dear friends Sam who I met in my first year Indonesian class and in a couple of weeks will complete her degree to be a secondary Indonesian teacher and the fact that if Labor wins (as they very well should) her future looks much brighter if a greater focus is made on putting Asian languages and in particular Indonesian into more schools across the country. Kevin Rudd is an Asian Studies man, he did his degree though at ANU and had first class honours to go with it. The electorate that he represents though is Griffith, the very electorate that holds the university that I went to, Griffith University and when Griffith Uni was opened in 1975, one of the four subject areas it offered was Asian Studies. It all seems quite linked together when you look at it. Here though is to the future of Asian Studies not only in Australian universities but Australian schools.