Musical dreams

I had a dream last night that Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were doing a gig at The Zoo and tickets were $36. Which is a pretty decent price for an international act at The Zoo. Somehow I don’t think that gig would be happening any time soon. I can still dream though.

We received a Christmas package from Karl yesterday and I got a CD that has quite possibly jumped straight into my top handful of all time albums. That is a pretty impressive jump for a new CD, normally they hover round the “this is cool” level for a while before I listened to it a few more times and it either floats up the list or sinks down the list.

Thirty seconds into the opening track Mojo Love and I was drumming my hands on the desk and grooving in my chair. The CD is the debut album from an Icelandic girl who goes under the stage name Lay Low called Please Don’t Hate Me. You can listen to four tracks off the CD on the Lay Low webpage or you can hot tail it onto a plane to Iceland, pop into a record store and pick yourself up a copy or find your self a loving family member who resides in Iceland. This is the video clip for the title track off the album.

If this CD is anything like the Benni Hemm Hemm CD that I received from Karl last Christmas, Time Off should review it in November. I was reading Time Off (a local street press) at work one day and flicking through the CD section I saw Benni Hemm Hemm mentioned and I just about fell off my chair at seeing an Icelandic group that is not Sigur Ros, Bjork or Emilíana Torrini reviewed. I will be keeping an ear out to see what Lay Low does next because I like what I hear.

Vegemite Gelato

Vegemite Gelato

Australia + Italy = Vegemite Gelato. Just for the Australia Day weekend. Just for the sake of it and the fact that someone in a kitchen said why not?

The colour was a lot lighter than I expected but I guess that is because not everyone likes their Vegemite as thick as I do and therefore not a lot of Vegemite is used in the process.

The taste was totally not what I expected. That also I guess comes back to the above statement that I will every so often grab a teaspoonful of Vegemite and lick it off the spoon when I feel like it.

My first tasting note is that it tastes like salted nuts as the first taste is quite nutty and you are left with a salty aftertaste.
My second tasting I started to notice how it tastes like a dark ale. I guess that would be the yeast extract part of the Vegemite coming though.

This isn’t Vegemite Gelato it is Pub Gelato! Beer and nuts in Gelato.

I managed to talk Mum into tasting a little, little bit of it and her comment was that very first taste you get is Vegemite. I then went for the itty bitty spoonfuls and you really do taste straight out Vegemite then.

πŸ™‚ I am more of spoonful girl though so I am eating a spoonful of Gelato and chasing it with a Vegemite lick. Now it tastes just like I imagined.

I am quite surprised that the Courier Mail did not have an article about it and instead I found out about via Slashfood and the Sydney Morning Herald. When I first saw it on Slashfood I thought for sure it would be in Melbourne or Sydney. I nearly dropped off my chair when I read Brisbane in the article.

Gelateria Cremona, I hope you have Vegemite Gelato next Australia Day as I will be back πŸ™‚

Mum and I went up to a friends property for Australia Day for a bit of tree planting. The whole team which was probably easily 20 adults plus kids built tracks, planted 500 trees, cleared Lantana and other weeds. Mum and I each ended up with a mattock which we swung and swung and swung some more digging holes for the kids to come behind us and plant the native trees in. It was a nice day out “on the land” and we were given a very impressive spread for morning tea and lunch.

Lunch

This was our lunch yesterday.

Lunch

Simple, easy and oh so yummo.

I made the bread, not the best effort as I sort of forgot till it was too late the lack of gluten in corn flour. This meant that it was slightly lacking in the bread department and more in the chewy department. Nice but not what I wanted. Maybe next time.

I made the pesto as well (of course :)). I had been on the eye out for good looking basil at the fruit shop for quite a while now and it was always wilted and sad looking. On Sunday Mum and I went to a local farmers market where I picked up the freshest bunch of basil I have ever seen. The smell was gorgeous.

The grape tomatoes came from the markets for something like $2 for a large bag which was a total bargain.

To day Mum, Matthew and I are off to the Brisbane markets at Rocklea to explore and to pick up some gorgeous bargains in the way of fruit and veg. I know last time we picked up 5kg of cherries for $20 at a time when they were selling for $20/kg in the shops. πŸ™‚

Tonight I am off to see Madeleine Peyroux. Ohh it will be a delight. I was so delighted when I saw the ad in the paper back in October advertising the tour. I bought my ticket the day they went on sale I think πŸ™‚

Banksia robur

The robur probably provided the most delight for as their colours were just so gorgeous. So let us have an almost complete flower time line of the Banksia robur. It was also one of the most visible plants of the heath due to its general size and colours.

Banksia robur

This green so reminds me of our school uniforms
Banksia robur

Banksia Flower DoF goodness I

Bankisa in Bloom

Banksia robur

Dead

Then it looses the tips and starts to look like a seedpod though I don’t seem to have a photo of that stage.

Wallum Heath

back of "campsite 3"

I spent two afternoons exploring the wallum behind the campsite. The first afternoon was a botanical “walk” through the heath with 2/3 of our party where we were scratched to near an inch of our life. However, the scratches were relieved with a dip in the river afterwards.

The first plant that I spied were some Christmas Bells (Blandfordia grandiflora). Which were of the yellow variety and not the red and yellow as I am used to seeing.

Christmas Bells

Just as you entered the wallum from the campsite there is a clearing for helicopters to land when needed and covering the ground there was scores of Trigger plants (Stylidium graminifolium) and baby grasstrees.

Trigger Plants

Past the clearing we entered the area that you can see in the first photo of the post, the main plants you can see in that photo are the Banksia robur and Grass Trees (Xanthorrhoea sp.)

Banksia robur.
Banksia robur

Grass tree (Xanthorrhoea sp) with Banksia robur in the background.
Grass Tree Dead

As you started to get to closer to the heath however you could hundreds of other plants from Boronias to Leptospermum to Yellow pea flowers (that Mum has always said there is way too many to be bothered identifying them all) to more Drosera (sundew) to Hibbertia sp and a score to two more but I can’t recall or find the names at the moment. There was at least two species of Boronias and a score of different Leptospermum.

Leptospermum are such gorgeous plants and whilst the various species are similar in many ways they still all look so different.

Leptospernum?

This is Cathy with one of the pea flowers.
Cathy and a pea flower

The second afternoon it was just me, however it was relatively still which meant that you could smell the plants and it was the most delightful scent I have ever smelt. It was floral and delicate yet still bushy and oh so very Australian. I wonder when I will see it on the shelves in Myer and more importantly which “celebrity” would they use to advertise it?

I didn’t just go for a walk in the heath but also through the dry eucalypt forest that bordered it and just had to smile at the Scribbly Gums. 99.999999% of all scribbles you see on a Scribbly Gum are made by the larvae of a wood-boring moth. However, in places where humans, generally of the young male category frequent you often see scribbles that were certainly not made by larvae πŸ™‚

Scribbly Gum

One of the other ladies on the trip went to school with Mum and she said that a couple of places reminded her of poems they had learnt in primary school. For me however, there was many places where I just paused and said “This is Australia”, I truely do love a sunburnt country. Which of course comes from my favorite poem, is a poem that many Australians know well and I discovered recently that the author was only 22 when she wrote it. I am 21.

My Country.
Dorothea Mackellar (1907/8)

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die-
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold-
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land-
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand-
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Isn’t it beautiful?

Canoe Trip

The Noosa River, hey.

Day 1 was filled with logs, branches, tree trunks and more. As we maneuvered our canoes over, under, round the logs in the creek. They had a pretty decent storm in the area a couple of weeks ago which had of course brought more trees down into the river. However, we are all tough and after a handful of hours we made it to the junction of Teewah Ck and Upper Noosa River.

We were extremely lucky that we only had one big log that we had to totally unload the canoes to lift them over for. Whilst at times it felt crowded with 4 canoes in the creek, at times like this you really appreciate having multiple canoes as you have an easy place to unload gear into.

Going Over

Thinking back now, we did have a smaller log that we had to partially unload for but it was nothing compared to the one in the previous photo. Mum and I took water twice in the space of about 30/45mins on Teewah Ck when we didn’t quite aim for an opening between logs correctly. We of course also took water easier since our canoe had relatively less gear in it than the others since we were the only “couple” on the trip and thus shared a tent, cooking etc etc.

Whilst there were quite a few logs you could slip under by tucking down in the canoe or standing up and stepping over the log, there were still quite a number which you needed to walk the canoes through due to the mess the river was in. The one below is a two huge trees that had fallen across the creek with a lot of branches in between them. I was given the job of photographer up on one of the logs taking photos of everyone as they came through the logs etc.

These two photos also show a pretty good idea of what the creek is like for a fair bit of its path. How fun does it look?

Going under logs
The other side

(I should make a note, that along vast sections of the creek, the vertical banks were covered with sundews and I managed to spot a few with flowers still even though their flowering period ended in November. )
Like many Australian children, May Gibb’s Snugglepot and Cuddlepie was a large part of my childhood (coincidently today is her 130th birthday), so seeing the seed pods of the Banksia aemula or Wallum Banksia and then making the link to “Big Bad Banksia Men” made me smile. I also then referred to the the seed pods as Banksia Men whenever I saw them again.

Banksia Men
Doesn’t he look bad?

Here is Mum and I paddling in a pretty open section of the creek.

Mum and I

We were extremely thankful when the creek started to open up and the water began to get deeper as that meant we were closer to the mouth and then the short paddle down the river to Campsite 13. Just as we were last time we were “led” down the creek by an Azure Kingfisher (Alcedo azurea). It was cute to see it “wait” for us before flying further down stream.

I shared one of my reflection photos from Campsite 13 in the previous post so I will share the other one now. In the early morning the water is dead still and looks like a large mirror.

Reflections

Day 2 was a relatively short paddle from Campsite 13 to Campsite 3 which only took 3 hours or so. Just before we reached Campsite 3, we stopped at a little sandy beach for a long lunch.

Lunch at the Sandy Beach

After we had set up camp, some people had a lazy time and the others explored the Wallum Heath behind the campsite, where we found an incredible range of plants. (I will post photos from here in the next post). Later that night

There is one thing in life that extremely freaks me out and that is cane toads. As far as I am concerned the sooner they find a way to destroy them, the better. Of course, Campsite 3 had to have some of the biggest toads I have seen, though thankfully, they seemed to limit themselves to down near the river and not up at the campsite. That however did not stop myself from wrapping myself up in my sleeping sheet, tucking my quilt round me and moving my thermarest more towards the middle of the fly.

Helen sleeping

I can report that whilst the cane toads stayed away from me the mozzies didn’t. (Why do I have to be the mozzie magnet?) Though thanks to the magic of the 80% Deet in Bushmans and Fexofenadine in Telfast, I was able to reduce the edge off the bites.

Day 3 was an optional trip up to the Cooloola Sandpatch and then over to the beach and back again. 2/3 of the group went on this walk. I don’t have photos from the trip. Think about that :). The other 1/3 of the group spent the day reading by the river, chatting to those who went past, swimming and napping.
This is the view up the river from the campsite
Upper Noosa River

Day 4
It had rained on and off through the night as it had the previous night and it was actually the rain that sent us all to bed the night before. We got up at 5am, had breakfast, broke camp and was on the river shortly before 6:30 as we aimed to get to Lake Cootharaba as early as we could in the afternoon before the wind and waves would arrive.

In the early morning the river was magical and we enjoyed observing the reflections, animal life and the changes in the vegetation as we changed from fresh to salt water as well as just the general vegetation changes due to the lay of the land. We stopped at Harry’s Hut for morning tea and a chance to take photos of the resident Lace Monitors (Varanus varius). I have to make a mention here of the wonderful morning and afternoon teas we had been provided by Aunty Susan in NZ. When Mum went over for NYE, she brought home a big slab of cathedral cake (stained glass cake/jeweled cake) which was pure heaven in a mouthful. When we go over in a couple of weeks for my cousin’s wedding I am getting that recipe!

Lace Monitor 1 at Harry's Hut

We kept up the pace and made our way through the everglades to Fig Tree Point where we went on a short boardwalk that took us through a range of vegetation but mainly through a Cabbage Tree Palm forest.

Cabbage tree palm
Boardwalking

Then it was another shortish paddle to Kinaba Information Centre where we had our lunch on the decking, relaxed in the shade, watched the mullet swim in the waters below the centre, re-applied sunscreen and decided on the best course of action for crossing the lake.

Helen and Liz taking off

We were extremely lucky with the lake in that the wind was relatively low and hence the waves were not so rough. When we crossed it the last time I know we walked the canoes over a fair section of it (it is quite shallow in parts) so that we would actually make progress. Stopped in for a quick breather at Mill Point and then made the short distance to Elanda Point. Where we unpacked and throughly enjoyed the hot showers to remove the sand and dirt from the last couple of days. As well as the chance to stay under the shower for that little bit longer than we do in Brisbane due to the water restrictions.

On the way home we enjoyed a bite to eat in Pomona with Cathy and Liz, a visit to a patchwork shop just off the highway near Yandina and a visit to Grandad.

Over the course of the 4 days we paddled the 32km or so from Campsite 15 at the mouth of Teewah Creek to Elanda Point plus whatever the distance is from the Teewah Creek Pumping Station to the mouth of the creek. All in all I think it was a very successful outing for NPAQ with five members and one guest.