Yarra Glen swap meet 2013.

On Sunday we made the trek to Yarra Glen for the swap meet. We went last year and were eager to go again this time.

Something for everyone. Jack stands, wheels, chooks…..

This swap meet (as are many of them) are really just an excuse for the owners of cluttered sheds to chuck everything in a trailer and try to make a few bucks from it.

Because of this you never know what kind of interesting treasures you might come across.

The Man had a wish list of parts for the cars he is doing up, but the kids and I went shopping with no expectations whatsoever.

To keep everyone happy, as soon as we arrive the Man wanders off to look for those special items and the kids and I just mosey around looking at everything.

When the Man gets to the end of his searches he calls my mobile to find out where we are and catches up to us. It is the perfect arrangement because, boy, is he whingy when the rest of us want to look at every single stand.

Masked monsters.

By the time the Man caught up to us Number 2 had spent his pocket-money on two treasures, an old, battered, carved wooden mask, and a spring-loaded toy lightsabre. Eclectic tastes, that child.

Number 2 had won over the guy who was selling the mask with his mad antics while wearing it, and ended up getting it for a fraction of the tag price with barely any effort at haggling.

The lightsabre salesman jokingly warned Number 2 to be careful with such a dangerous weapon, only to have his leg unexpectedly severed, complete with sound effects, as soon as the money was exchanged.

We continued on our travels and I found a man with a box of the old bottles I love. “How much are these, mate?” “Ummm… five bucks each”.

I love it when they don’t really care how much they make, they just don’t want to take the box of crap home with them at the end of the day.

We had a bit of a rummage through and I bought three. The kids also found one with a small amount of the pink contents still swirling around inside.

They asked the stall holder what it was and he had to admit he had no idea. Typical bloke though, he took the bottle off the kids, unscrewed the lid, took a big sniff, and pronounced it to be “A bit vanilla-ish”. He then crumbled to dust right in front of us.

Just kidding about that last bit…
I did suggest that he remember this moment if he was rushed to hospital later in the day though.

We bought the kids an ice-cream and continued our meanderings. We saw plenty of things we wanted but our budget didn’t lend itself to. Oh well, I am sure that we will come across them again at the next swap meet!

There were many lovely old cars both in the car park and in the grounds, and I am sure there were a lot of proud owners nursing their aching polishing arm and sitting off to the side watching their pride and joy shining in the sun.

Shiny.

An unexpected morning.

Apologies for the lateness of today’s post but my normally peaceful morning was interrupted by an unexpected excursion.

I am generally quite an organized mum when it comes to school stuff, I hand in notices on time and the kids have appropriate clothing and lunches for any school trips. Today though, I was a complete failure….

As Number 1 and I strolled towards his classroom this morning the PE teacher bustled up, a group of kids in tow and said something completely unexpected. “Hi Number 1, have you got your kayaking gear?”

Shit.

I looked at Number 1 and he looked back at me, equally horrified. Clearly the answer was “No.”

I had paid the fee, handed in the notice, and then completely put it out of my mind. Bugger.

I asked when they were leaving and the answer, of course, was “Right now”. Bugger again.

Fortunately there was a light at the end of this tunnel of disorganized doom. Our school is quite small, so when they arrange excursions like this (the lake is about 30km away) parents are usually the ones doing the driving and this time they had more kids than cars.

YAY! I stuffed three other kids into my car and raced home. Number 1 dived into his swimmers, we grabbed some towels and headed off. We made it to the lake only seconds after the other three carloads arrived and the kids all splashed off happily. Phew!

Instead of my normal leisurely morning of letting out the chooks, talking to my vegies, checking my emails and having breakfast I spent the first two hours sitting on the dock at Lilydale Lake watching the ducks, and the kids, taking a dive at every opportunity.

It wasn’t a bad trade at all, but boy was I hungry (and desperate for my morning cuppa) by the time I got home!

So, instead of a proper post, I am going to share the view I was treated with this morning. Normal transmission will resume tomorrow…. unless there is something else I have forgotten…..

My alternative morning.

A lazy weekend.

Well, Australia Day weekend is over. All around the country the barbeques need a clean, the beer fridges are empty, and the cars are still full of camping gear.

No-one wants to get back to real life but the kids are due back at school on Wednesday after 6 weeks off and there are probably many mums out there, just like me, who have more things to do than there are hours left.

I will be spending today (Tuesday) naming the huge amount of school books I picked up for the kids on Friday (and are still in the back of my car), finding school uniforms (that I have washed and put away carefully. So carefully in fact that we may not be able to find them), and hoping that there are shoes suitable for wear somewhere in the house; the weather has meant the kids haven’t worn anything other than thongs for weeks (no Aussies don’t call them flip-flops!!).

I also have to unpack the caravan as we decided at the last minute to go off camping at Heathcote with the fossickers for the weekend.

It was a great weekend for camping, the weather was perfect and we had a very relaxing time. I didn’t do much more than sit around and read and the kids threw rocks in the nearby dam and played with the dog. Yes, we were very lazy 🙂

Even though it was supposed to be the entire purpose of the weekend only once did we do anything that resembled fossicking. We went off with a few other to a nearby creek and did a bit of gold panning. We didn’t have much success, only a few tiny, glittering flakes. We are never going to make our fortune that way!

We had more luck finding wildlife though, and without even trying.

Minutes after we arrived a yabbie was unexpectedly shovelled up by one of the group and delivered to Number 2’s gold pan. He was examined and returned to a safer part of the creek.

Soon after that Number 2 moved a clump of floating weed and a few small shrimp-like critters jumped out and flopped around his feet. These guys were also scooped up into the pan, showed around and returned to safety.

Dragonfly nymph skin.

Number 2 was also excited to find a few recently shed skins of dragonfly nymphs just above the waterline. These guys didn’t need to be cared for quite so gently and were turfed into the bushes once they had been investigated!

We also found a small frog, beetles and other wiggly water creatures whose names were beyond our powers of identification.

The most interesting discovery of the day came once we decided to go back to the caravan and make some lunch.

We were wandering back along the edge of the creek heading towards the car and came across a huge red-striped leech hurrying towards the fossickers who were still left. Eeek! He was clearly on his way to lunch as well and we were glad we were going in the opposite direction!

Even though our bug-loving kids are usually my faithful photographic assistants and happy to hold any critters for me they were strangely reluctant to touch this one…. Ok, maybe their reluctance wasn’t so strange. The leech was as wide as my finger and twice as long, we joked that it was so big we could hear it sniffing for blood and its little jaws gnashing in anticipation!

We tried to move it on with a stick, gently encouraging it to go somewhere else and safely away from our friends but it seemed intent on its meal. Oh well, everyones gotta eat. 😉 We called out a warning to the potential meals still hard at work downstream and made our escape.

Later that night no campers reported damage, so clearly the leech either had no luck in the creek or was sufficiently sneaky and managed to feast unnoticed. 😀

Panning for yabbies.

Great Ocean Road, 2008 and 1923.

After inflicting my little rant on you earlier this morning I thought I would follow it with a photo post of something much nicer*.

The Argus 23 Oct 1923 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article1993552

The picture below was taken in 2008 when we were travelling home after a few weeks in the Flinders Ranges. We decided to take the long way home and turned down the Great Ocean Road for a bit of sightseeing.

The Great Ocean Road is 250-ish km of one of the most picturesque drives you can do in Victoria.

It was built by returned soldiers from WWI between 1919 and 1932 and is the worlds largest war memorial.

Much of it follows directly along the western coastline of Victoria, and there are many places to stop and marvel at the amazing views of rock piles standing out in the turbulent Southern ocean.

It is also known as the shipwreck coast, and is where the well-known wreck of the Loch Ard occurred in 1880.

The road is a hugely popular attraction to overseas visitors, and is the only place I have ever been that has the need for signs at each car park exit reminding the driver which side of the road Australians drive on.

Watch your step!

*Nicer, except for the little sign on that post. It is a representation of a person who strayed too close to the edge and is falling to their death….

Watching Miniscule things.

This post is about some of the bugs we saw on our holiday. As I have two young sons you can imagine that one of the things we see a lot of are bugs. That is fine with me, I love bugs and find them fascinating, and always a great photographic subject.

Silverton hopper.

I was presented with plenty of critters to take pictures of while we were away*, here is one of the bugs found at Silverton, a hopper who was well disguised for desert living.

The other thing I am posting about is a kids tv show. (You know I love them, don’t you 🙂 ) No I’m not going to post another Horrible Histories clip, this time it ties in with the bug part of this post, as the show is Miniscule.

Miniscule is subtitled ‘the private life of insects’ and is exactly that, what the insects might be doing when we aren’t looking. It is shot in the beautiful French countryside with the addition of animated insects in ridiculous situations.

When we were wandering through a supermarket while on our holiday the kids found a dusty dvd on a shelf (clearly the locals had no taste) and begged us to buy it. The Man and I love the show as well, and when they waved a chance to watch 24 episodes in a row under our noses (each episode only runs for about 5 mins) who were we to say no?

We also bought a packet of chips and the four of us went back to the caravan, smooched up on the bed, munched away and watched bugs do silly things for an hour. Lovely.

One of the episodes we watched was chewing gum, which I will share with you here. It includes one of my favourite Miniscule characters, the big furry spider. I dare you to watch it and not end with a smile on your face.

*One of the critters I snapped was a very interesting mantis that I am still trying to identify. If you know any good mantis identification websites please let me know!

A wandering drive and another lizard, a happier one this time!

We went for a drive through the bush last Tuesday. For us a drive through the bush means picking a track and driving until we find a more interesting one, then driving down that one, repeat, repeat, repeat.

We never get lost because we never have a destination, and we never really know where we are in the first place! The only rule is that we have to be looking for a main road by about 4pm-ish, otherwise it will be dark before we know it.

We have found the most unexpected and interesting things on these trips; ruins, bushfires, wildlife (scary and nice), giant mudpits that make the kids scream with delight…

Jacky Dragon.

Once we found some bushwalkers, one of their group had twisted his ankle badly and it was pouring with rain. We stopped and managed to stuff him, and his huge backpack, in the 4WD with us and give him a lift back to their camp at the bottom of the mountain. He was pretty lucky we chose that particular track that day, it would have been a long hop otherwise!

We always drive slowly, as we are too busy looking at the things around us to be bothered getting to the end of the track quickly.

This slow driving was helpful on Tuesday, when we were passing a rocky outcrop number 1 shouted incoherently from the back seat. The Man stopped quickly and it turned out that the incoherent shouting was “I see a lizard on a rock!”

We reversed back and sure enough there was a Jacky Dragon (I love that name!) sucking up the last few rays of the day. The kids and I got out quietly and wandered over to get a better look. The lizard was very cute and wasn’t too bothered by us. I managed to take a few photos before we left him to finish his sunbathing.

I couldn’t believe that number 1 had even spotted him as he was well off the track, and so camouflaged on the rock I needed him to be pointed out to me!

At least this lizard was a happier specimen than the last one I posted about. No grumpy hissing and tongue flicking this time!