Alessio comes to visit

It's great meeting up with old friends, especially when it seems like you only saw them yesterday and you can just pick up where you left off.

Our friend Alessio came to visit this weekend. We hadn't seen each other for five years or so, so it was wonderful catching up.

Al was on a whistle-stop tour of Australia and so we managed to cram the sights of Canberra in to one day! (including the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, New Parliament house, Manuka, Lyneham and the splendid new arboretum as well as a trip to Kingston model railway to see Thomas the Tank Engine!)

We stopped for a while to chat to a couple of guys at the tent embassy and Al was interested to discuss the differences in rights and prejudices between New Zealand Māoris and Australian Aboriginals and we both visited the National Parliament - a significant landmark on Canberra's skyline. There was obviously lots of places we didn't get to, but the main thing was seeing each other and catching up on news.

Audrey and Eli loved having Al visit as well. He provided them with constant amusement and bounced with them on our trampoline. I rather suspect they could have gone on a lot longer than he could! We were all sad to see him leave.

Alessio at Dairy Farmers Hill (National Arboretum)

At Kingston model railway museum

This Blog as a Wordle

I've been to a couple of presentations where people have pulled out a 'Wordle - 'word cloud' powerpoint slide and everyone has gasped in amazement.

Actually they're really easy to generate - a great website wordle.net allows you to provide text and draws you a 'cloud' in a few seconds. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

I thought I'd put the text from this whole blog through it (excluding this post) and it came up with this one..

There are some interesting things;

1. Poor Eli doesn't get as much mention as the other three of us (although he obviously doesn't feature in the blog posts pre-2009).

2. Canberra, Warsaw, Poland and Australia get a mention - but I imagine some of the word usage has grown while others shrunk.

3.  Some nice words feature - friends, Christmas, children(!), enjoyed and loved.

4. I also really like the word 'really'!

Have a look and draw your own conclusions - perhaps some of them have more to do with my (rather limited) writing style!

[Update] I had a thought overnight that the count probably also included mentions of 'Trevor and Amy's blog' (which when you export all of the posts are attached to each post and therefore skews the result). So I've re-run it - excluding this and found myself significantly relegated. It now appears as if Audrey dominates and my name appears as a tiny font size on the right hand side! Still, it probably shows reality!

More Camping Pics!

A couple of the other Dads on the camping trip took some more pictures which you can see by clicking here or here

Here come the Bogongs! (Australian Wildlife Encounters No.9)

Around this time every year moths descend on Australia's capital as they migrate to the high planes.

They're called 'Bogongs' (apparently meaning 'Big Fella' after the mountains they head to). If you want to know more then the wikipedia link is here (which even mentions Canberra by name!).

They're not particularly sinister and (unlike a big majority of Australian wildlife) are harmless. Indeed indigenous Australians are known to have feasted on them as they have a high fat content, though I'm not sure I'd fancy a mothy meal.

They congregate around (well lit) public buildings. There were swarms of them when I went to the supermarket a couple of nights ago.

In the Parliamentary Triangle (where a lot of large public buildings are) apparently they get trapped as there are so many lit-up buildings at night they fly around in a daze.

We had one in our bedroom the other night (and Amy has been dive-bombed by them at work!). Friends have also reported finding masses of them in washing on the line. Apparently the swarms this year are earlier and bigger.  In case you're wondering...here's what they look like...

Dads' Camping Trip to Wee Jasper

I was invited along to join a group of Dads on a long weekend camping trip to Wee Jasper. I didn't really know the other guys terribly well before we set off, but they were an easy going bunch and we soon built friendships.

Monday was a public holiday in Canberra it was pitched as a Dads and kids only trip to the country which afforded the Moms a bit of a breather and also bought us back some favours (we all discussed how far in 'debt' we were regardless of taking children away for the weekend!)

Wee Jasper is only a shortish drive away from Canberra. I'm amazed we've not been there before as it's quite possible to do as a day trip. The scenery around there is amazing - big plains and mountains and a really diverse geological landscape - with folded limestone hills and ranges of both volcanic and sedimentary rocks (that bit is just for you Graham).

The campsite was promoted as offering 'real bush camping' what that meant in reality was that there was no hot water or power to the site, but at $9 a night it was hard to complain.

We pitched our new tent (recently bought from an amazing store called BCF - "Boating, Camping, Fishing" - essentially blokes paradise) alongside the other Dads' equally new and shiny tents. I think we probably gave the game away that we were all amateurs!

The party was (I think) 6 Dads and probably 9-10 kids. It's hard to say exactly how many of us there were as it was all a bit 'fluid' with Dads coming and going, some staying 3 nights, others 2 and others just along for a single night (we stayed Saturday and Sunday nights).

Everyone got along fantastically well. The kids loved being in the wilds - there was a beautiful river which although too cold to swim in was great for perfecting stone skimming and the entire park was both picturesque and relaxed to be in.

We had a pleasant afternoon in Carey's Cave despite the rather strange guide who was more into terrifying the children rather than showing us around, perhaps that's what comes of being a tour guide in a cave for any length of time.

One of the Dads (Andrew) had some experience of caving and on our final day, Audrey Eli and I found ourselves deep underground with torches strapped to bike helmets on our heads. It was a real scramble/climb to get up and down but really good fun.

The days were long and sunny but at night the temperatures dropped down and we shivered a bit in our tents. Still the kids loved the camp fire, roasting marshmallows and the glow sticks which John brought along.

Here's some pics..

Our tent (and firewood) in the background

breakfast with Koby and Harry

by the (Goodradigbee) river with Sam and Harry

Carey's Cave

Maya and Audrey

Rainbow over the tent

Audrey (in the dark) with a glowstick

How it looks with the flash on

How it looks with the flash off!

Caving!

John and Andrew

The cave we climbed down into

Heading home

Kangaroo Comedy

We're still a long way from this situation, but I was amused by the kangaroo cartoon in Private Eye magazine...

River Healing Ceremony

Along the (beautiful) Urierra Road which winds out of Canberra, we went to an indigenous ceremony to 'Heal the River'.

The traditional owners of the land in and around Canberra are called the Ngunnawal (quite what 'ownership' entitles them to is not entirely clear - probably not much) and they met up with another couple of tribes from South Australia called the Ngambri, Ngarrindjeri and Ngarigo people.

The night promised a night of singing and dancing. Unfortunately (due to bedtime requirements!) we left before the ceremony really got going and I had to resort to reading about how it was the next day in the paper. Nevertheless, despite our early exit the kids still had loads of fun playing with boomerangs and face painting (with ocre and mud). I got swooped by an aggressive magpie. After the attack Eli turned to me and said "Daddy why are you lying on the ground?"

Events like this always attract a strange crowd - from aboriginal people through to bohemian city dwellers filming the event on their ipdads.It was a beautiful calm evening though and we played down by the river and listened to some soulful music.

Here's some pictures of the kids having a good time.

Eli, whose hair Amy and I had cut earlier that day with some clippers!

 

hotdogs on the sand

The Molonglo River