The Dumps

I am literally in them.

I actually stayed in my bed today until about 2:30pm.. until one of my friends convinced me to go the hell out somewhere.  So I did.. I drove two hours to eat Italian and drove two hours back.  Granted it was the best spinach ricotta of my life, but if I know me at all (which I kind of do sometimes) I know that exaggerating actions are almost certainly a sign that I'm not doing so great.

That and wearing heels of the beach has to be a sign of madness.

But at least it was a great view.

Dad's Birthday

Today it was my dad's birthday.  In typical fashion my mum gave him the same ol' gift of Baileys, except this year she gave him two.  For some reason she thought it was a hilarious idea to wrap them both differently and then died of laughter when he asked which one he should open first.  Sigh, my mum..

We went up to Mt. Tamborine which is about half hour from my parents house and had a look around the gallery walk (which is a street full of little shops at the top of the mountain).  My favourite store is the German Cuckoo Clock store.  I went to Germany when I was 16 and pretty much love anything to do with the country - I am totally dirty that I never got to see the cuckoo clock place in the Black Forest.. one day.  I also love clocks, because my granddad was a watchmaker and I have very fond memories of all the amazing clocks that he used to make and fix.. he had so many around his house that every time I see a clock I think of him.  Here's a pic of one wall of the cuckoo clock place, so you have some idea of how jam packed this place is with clocks:

We were meant to have lunch, but we actually ended up getting up there too late for lunch and too early for dinner.. so instead we went for a walk at Curtis Falls.

What I really like about the walks at Mt Tamborine is that there's a real rainforest feel to them, with occasional bits and pieces of normal Australian bush.  The waterfall was beautiful, not flowing very much because of the lack of rainfall.  There's lots of birds in there too, you can always hear them chirping away and some random turkeys that go skittering in front of you as you walk along haha.  Definitely one of my favourite places in Qld.

Whitehaven Beach

Today we took a tour to the beautiful Whitehaven Beach.  It was a great trip with Fantasea off Hamilton Island, they served us lunch and afternoon tea which was yumm-o.  The scenery was fantastic on the way to Whitehaven and it just got even better once we landed.

As you can see the water is just unbelievably beautiful and clear.. the sand is so so fine and pristine.  Unfortunately it was a tad bit windy, so it made it hard to read or even lie on the beach without being covered in a fine blanket after 10 minutes!  Justin and his dad gave the metal detector's a swing with no luck - can't win them all I guess.

This is me giving the underwater camera a go (it's my housemate's camera, so I was super paranoid about dropping it in the water!).  If anything is a testament to how much wind there was, it's my hair right there.. outrageous!

This is Justin with a starfish he found in the water.  The photo doesn't show it, but this guy had really really bright red, nasty looking spikes on him.  It was really cool seeing such a big one up close and in the wild!  (The starfish of course, not Justin).  

I wish I could say the trip back was as nice as the trip to Whitehaven, but the wind really picked up and it suddenly become Hurlsville for me (I'm not great with boats that are moving around a lot).  But all in all I really loved Whitehaven and would love to go back there in the summer sometime. :)

Bird Invasion on Hamilton Island

It started with one little cockatoo.  I was eating my sandwich on the balcony of the lovely apartment we were staying at on Hamilton Island when it flew onto the edge of the balcony in front of me.  This cockatoo (who I would end up calling Bungy because of his mangled foot) looked at me expectantly and I thought 'Ah what the hell' and gave him some of my bread.  He took it very carefully and ate in a very dapper fashion.

Next thing I know Bungy jumps on the table, scaring the crap out of me and just when I think he's crossed boundaries he jumps right on my knee and gives me a long hard look with his head tilted towards me.  We would soon find out Bungy wasn't the only overly friendly bird on the island!

This is Justin's dad feeding Bungy nuts.  He would always take food very gently and get very very close, but he wouldn't let you touch him.

This is a kookaburra I found outside our door.  He was literally about 30cm away from me and the camera was about 10cm away from him when I took the photo.  Amazing how tame these birds have become.

And this is what happens when chips get left out on the balcony!  There are about 6-8 lorikeets you CAN'T see in this picture!  Boy were they loud!  

Leaving on a Jet Plane

It's been 6 years since I boarded a plane, the last time was to get on a very long flight back to Australia from Germany when I was 16.  Today I boarded my first Jetstar flight to Hamilton Island!  The actual flight was pretty non-eventful (No TV and no food will do that) but once we got near the island we got some sweet views of the islands around.

Once we landed on the island, I was thrilled to find out that we go our own sweet little golf buggy to drive around the island on - hell yeah!  Courtesy of our 5km an hour buggy somehow making it to the highest point by road on the island here is a shot of the Hamilton Island waters.

                                        

Day Walks in Brisbane - Apex Park

Today was my last day with my parents until we come back from out Hamilton Island trip (Wee!  8 days to go!).   Justin came to spend the day in the great area of Logan/Beaudesert, so we decided we'd go check out the new parklands they've made in Browns Plains - Apex Park.

From what I understand there's plains to extend the industrial park in that section so they are doing something similar to what they've done at Seventeen Mile Rocks and made a lot of the area next to it a parkland reserve.  So there's a big track going around a central lake/wetlands.  There's lots of nice trees and some wildlife - mostly birds from what I could see, despite a board saying there were heaps of different animals there.

This is my cute patootie demonstrating the walking track - for some reason it looks like I'm skipping, I can assure you I'm not..

And here Justin is making a normalish pose on the little bridge along the track.. kind of reminded us of the UQ St Lucia bridge in miniature!

Mt. Cootha Picnic, Magpies and Ants

Today my lovely boyfriend decided we should have a picnic. So after my class at uni, I came home and Justin was making some little lunch rolls and I cooked up some eggs and we hopped in the car to find a nice spot at Mt. Cootha. We are very lucky to live just a short five minute drive from the gardens and we've discovered lots of nice quiet areas that tourists and day visitors often don't drive to. So we stopped at one site surrounded by trees and not a person in sight.As we were unwrapping our rolls I noticed a few magpies (no surprise) making their way over to a nearby tree to scope out the sucker-value of these picnickers no doubt. Then quite suddenly we found ourselves encircled by an entire family of magpies (mum, dad and three babies) all very keen to have a piece of our lunch.

I honestly have never seen magpies get so close, Justin of course fed them from afar at first. Then we started testing how close they would come until I literally had one a few inches from my lap sitting on my satchel bag. At this point Justin could hand-feed them, they were taking it reasonably well from his hands. But it was seriously freaking me out, I thought we were going to get rolled for our food by this pack of magpies!

After we ran out of food, they eventually flew back to their tree. And then we had the displeasure of meeting the most vicious bloody green ants. One bit me behind the ear (Man, the pain!) and another bit Justin in the back of the neck. After spending half an hour in peaceful nature, the picnic had turned into a warfare zone and we decided get the hell out of there! I think next time we'll have to scope out the ant situation before we set up our picnic ;)