It’s orchid season. No mowing here!

The only thing making our holiday return bearable (yes, I’m still moaning about it) is that we have come back at my favourite time of year, orchid season.

Firstly I should explain that our garden is a long narrow half an acre, and that I use the term ‘garden’ loosely. In front of the house we have a traditional garden, then immediately out the back door is the grassy standard all the way to the Hills Hoist. After that however, the land starts heading skywards, that half of the block is what we call ‘The Hill’. The Hill is just that, and is populated by gum trees and scrub and much ground level greenery, none of which was arranged by the hand of man or could be even vaguely described as lawn.

One of the lovely things about it is that it is made up of locally native plants, so every time we are wandering around up there and see something weedy that doesn’t belong it is quickly yanked out!

This time of year the Man is not allowed up there with the mower, even when the grasses are getting a bit too long, he just has to bide his time. In amongst those grasses are a selection of small native orchids that I call my babies. He starts up the mower near the back door and I shout out “Don’t you dare go up there mowing my babies!” Sometimes, when the flowers are just coming up and quite hard to see, everyone is banned from walking around up there with their big stompy uncaring feet. It is hard to ban the dog, but she has tiny little feet and I just have to pretend that she isn’t up there at all.

Waxlip orchid.

This is the time of year that my camera and I talk walks up on the Hill and everyone knows to stay away. It is also the time when the neighbours probably think I am crazy, walking slowly around looking at the ground, stopping every now and again to take a photograph.

One of the first ones to come up in our garden are the purple Waxlip Orchids, this is the same time the tiny carnivorous plants start flowering too, so there are beautiful purple flowers standing high in the grass and tiny pink ones topping the sundews.

Over the rest of the year different kinds of orchids will come up at different times but the very first ones to come up are the Greenhood orchids. They live in a large patch just over the fence in the corner of the (nice) neighbours block. I have invited them over but they stubbornly remain on the wrong side of the fence. The neighbours don’t mow much so these little guys are safe but their appearance always alerts me to the fact that the mowing activities of the Man need curtailing for a while!

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!

Safely home (no thanks to the GPS), and none too happy about it either.

On Friday we finally bit the bullet and decided it was time to return to reality. We had spent the last few days of our holiday within 3 hours of home, doing our best to pretend we would never have to go back, but, as always the day came when we couldn’t kid ourselves any longer.

Usually on a morning we are moving on the kids are ready early, with all of their stuff packed up before the Man and I have even crawled out of bed. Friday morning was a different story. None of us wanted to get going, and the kids climbed into bed with me and moaned while the Man made a start on packing up.

We were grumpy too….

Eventually we were ready to leave although it was in record slow time, all with sad faces. This evil eye I snapped, glaring out from a hole in a tree on the side of the road, perfectly fitted our mood too.

We stopped at the Bridgewater Bakery for some morning tea. The town of Bridgewater is only small, and a pub and bakery are pretty much all of it. On Thursday we had a counter lunch* at the pub, and dessert at the bakery next door.

Both of them do exceptional food so the chance to get morning tea as we were driving through the next day was too good to resist. The kids wanted to stop for lunch but we knew if we stopped we would never get going again!

With the dubious help of the GPS we were lucky to make it home at all. At the time I voted for listening to her directions, if we had we would still be out there, driving around aimlessly instead of being home.

No, we didn’t need her, we have been to Wedderburn a number of times before, but we are always interested to get the opinion of a person reading the maps from another reality and so we turn her on, purely for entertainment purposes. (I have posted about her crazy directions before).

Can you see the imaginary road through the windscreen?

As you can see in this photo she has no idea where we are, although we were driving on the Calder. The only road she could find was that small purple line in the corner of her screen, not the major highway we were actually on. We will have to update her soon but I would like to know what reality she is from so we can send her back to her own spacetime.

When we do get a new one I hope to fulfil a not-so-secret desire of mine download the Darth Vader voice for it.

After seeing this clip below I am not sure having that voice directing us will get us where we should go without a few unexpected turns though. If I was driving I can guarantee I would make a wrong turn far more than was necessary just to be reprimanded by Lord Vader!

One of the things you pass when you drive on the freeway into Melbourne as we did, is the Melbourne International Gateway. This is one of the first things international visitors will see. I didn’t know it was called the Gateway until just now when I searched ‘cheesestick’ because, well, that’s what everyone calls it. I think you can see why. I want to hate these sticks but I can’t. The sheer silliness of having a giant yellow beam leaning over a road lined by red sticks just makes me wonder how much money the designer was paid.

It makes me sad that international visitors see this first instead of the wonderful historic terrace houses and cottages that are in the area.

It just needs some giant crackers…

I will probably be doing holiday posts for a few more days even though we are home. I am in denial…..

________________________

*A counter lunch (or counter tea) is an Australian tradition. It is a meal in the lounge at the pub. (The menu for the bar and the lounge are different.) Traditionally a counter meal was sausages and mash, steak or a parma** served with either vegies, or chips and salad, but these days pubs don’t just serve snags, steak or parma, they serve gastronomic delights. I had a field mushroom stack, with grilled capsicum, feta, fresh spinach and balsamic vinegar jus on Turkish bread. Yum! Of course there is nothing wrong with a good parma, that would have been my second choice if the mushies didn’t sound so good.

**chicken parmigiana

Random roadside entertainments.

One of the things I love about driving around is seeing the amusing things people have left about the place to amuse us.

Here are some of the things I have managed to snap through the (smeary) car window as we are driving past;

Ned Kelly, waving his stick hand happily at passing cars.

Roadside Ned.

A group of Ned Kellys standing lookout in a paddock.

Suspicious Neds.

And this sign at the end of a driveway. Only Australians will see the funny side of this*

Do Kerry and Billy have a neighbour called Tony?

*Kirribilli House is the name of the official Sydney residence of the Prime Minister of Australia, and is a piece of prime real estate situated right on Sydney Harbour.

Captain Melville, gentleman bushranger.

At the beginning of European settlement of Australia was mainly populated by means of the transportation system. That means most levels of society were filled with people who had begun their residence in Australia in chains.

Life was pretty terrible as a convict and often those who escaped lived out in the bush and took to robbery under arms (highway robbery) and stealing from homesteads. Often they were helped by sympathetic ex-convicts who supplied information or food.

The Sydney Morning Herald 12 Mar 1947 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18006254

Bushrangers like Captain Starlight, Ned Kelly, Bold Jack Donohoe, and, the star of todays post, Captain Melville, had something of a celebrity status, with their exploits dramatically recounted in the papers.

Captain Melville was touted as something of a gentleman, chivalrous to women and reportedly returning money to poor settlers on occasion.

This article from 1947, 90 years after his death, tells the story of the night he called on the startled McKinnon family for a night of musical entertainment. Reports like this no doubt helped cement the romanticized reputation of bushrangers that still carries through to today.

Francis McCallum, (1822-1857) arrived in Van Diemens Land in September 1838. By 1851 he had become a bushranger known as Captain Melville whose range covered a large part of western Victoria.

Wedderburn, where we are staying for the next few days, was a rich goldfield at that time, and attracted many people hoping to make their fortune. Captain Melville was no exception and had a hideout on nearby Mt. Kooyoora known as Captain Melville’s Caves.

The ‘caves’ are not really caves as such, the mountain is populated by huge granite boulders, the ones the we see have been weathered out over the years. Captain Melville’s Lookout and his namesake caves are the ones most exposed. The wide view from the Lookout is spectacular, and I could imagine someone sitting up there watching for gold escorts.

Small part of the view from Melville Lookout.

We climbed down the path to the caves, the upper is supposedly where he kept his horse, sleeping in the lower. He must have had a thin or extremely agile horse if it could get through the tumbled boulders to the upper cave without getting stuck though!

Melville Caves 2012.

The upper and lower caves are really just one space with a big step up in the middle. There have been sturdy steps built for us to walk between the two although one of the lowest steps had been smashed by a rock falling from above. Not the best thing for number 1’s confidence. He had taken one step inside, looked up at the tonnes of perilously balanced boulders over our heads and said a bad word.

We walked through and I wondered how much time Captain Melville had actually spent in here. It was cold and damp and dark. A settlers hut down the hill would have been far more pleasant. This photo makes them look far more airy, bright and inviting that they really were.

Off to the right was a track that headed down, winding steeply through the boulders and making the kids very happy with another excuse to climb and jump around. We followed it for a while until the Man and I realized that by the time we made it to the bottom the car would still be at the top. We turned and climbed back up, kids moaning all the way.

Our trip in to the caves had been an amusing one, we had arrived by default. We were aiming to go there but had taken a back road and done a bit of exploring first. As usual we had stopped for lizards and kangaroos and interesting sights on the way, bemoaning the lack of signage and not finding any bitumen until we actually parked. Then we realized we had come in what was effectively the back door and that it was well signposted from the other side of the hill….

Oh well, going the back way meant the photo opportunity below; a farmer moving his sheep between paddocks. Sheep walk very slowly unless being chased, and he had two dogs to do all the hard legwork for him, but he still drove his car.

sheep crossing