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We started March off with a double wedding weekend. One on Saturday in Ballarat with work friends, and one on Sunday in the Yarra Valley with board game friends. Big weekend of driving and canapes. Both fun. Took me three more days to recover.

Home invader.

We went to the opening game of the AFL season: Melbourne Demons vs Western Bulldogs. A Grand Final rematch. The first time that us Melbourne Dees fans got to see them play since they won everything last year while we were stuck at home in severe lockdown.

The first quarter was so good it brought a tear to my eye. Then the second quarter was very bad. Then in the exact same way as the grand final last year, the Dees pulled ahead in the last half of the game and got the win. It was great.

(Belated) January #SMAJ was a meal at The Boiling Crab. It was… OK. Partly because I don’t think boiling in a bag is necessarily the tastiest way to cook seafood, and partly because we really do not know how to break down crab. So much work with so little pay off. Also food gets cold quite quickly when it’s just poured onto the table.

I went out to do trivia with my pals at a new place in Ringwood. We won three out of four $20 vouchers and none of us were drinking so we decided to order the “Celebration Brownie Tower” because why not. When the staff brought it out it had sparklers on it and they all started singing Happy Birthday and everyone playing trivia joined in and the host asked us whose birthday it was and we were like “umm… no one…”. It was pretty funny. We also won second place overall which had a prize of six take home cocktails. Very good haul.

I went out for noodles and bingsu with internet friends. Yum.

OK apparently all we did lately is EAT. (Belated) February #SMAJ was a dinner out at a Japanese BBQ restaurant. We splurged and got a set meal that came with delicious fancy beef and a bunch of other stuff. It was very very delicious.

I did a weightlifting competition in Geelong. The timing of the comp worked well to squeeze in one last max out before our Canada trip. I really wanted to snatch 50kg and clean and jerk 60kg for a while now and have been sooo close to getting to do it. It was a bit of a drive to get to Geelong but my coach actually lives there so at least that part was convenient.

However I missed my second snatch attempt at 48kg so I didn’t get to try 50kg on my third attempt as planned. :( Extra annoying considering I snatched 48kg really nicely on my third attempt. Clean and jerks were better, at least I got to try 60kg on my third attempt but unfortunately I didn’t catch the bounce well and didn’t stand up the clean.

I snatched 45/48x/48, and CJ 54/57/60x for a 105kg total. No PBs. Next time.

When I signed up for the comp I assumed that I would be in the first session like usual and have to weigh in quite early in the morning, so I booked us an Airbnb in Ocean Grove to make a weekend of it. Turned out I lifted in the last session and I probably should have just cancelled the Airbnb booking so I could have slept in my normal not-extremely-squeaky bed and eaten my normal food but that didn’t occur to me until it was too late to cancel.

So we ended up with a lot of time to kill and the weather wasn’t great. We went to a CHEESE TRAIN, like a sushi train but with plates of cheese. We drove around Queenscliffe. We tried to find things to take a picture of with my new telephoto lens. We ate burgers. (Much nutrition, maybe this is why I didn’t lift the best.) We watched two games of footy at the same time. We met up with Scott’s school friend for coffee. We went to the Geelong Art Gallery and were amazed by this lino print art piece that went around a whole room. We went to the library and read our Kindles.

Unpictured stuff:

  • I did a lot of on call and extra shifts because of people having covid. This meant I reached my budget target for a telephoto lens much earlier than predicted! Pretty exciting. I haven’t really gotten to use it much yet.
  • We saw the new Batman movie with Jemma. It was very dark, literally. Apparently if you are rich you never turn the lights on. Also I giggled every time thinking about how he would have to put his eye makeup on super fast every time he had to get dressed up.
  • We had a family dinner! On a Sunday with everyone there like the olden days!
  • Scott went to Ballarat to see his school friend who is visiting from Scotland.
  • We were supposed to go to another wedding this weekend, but it has been postponed because they have covid. Oops.

I actually haven’t been doing that much lately besides work and gym because we leave for Canada this week and I am paranoid about getting covid and ruining all our plans. Only a couple more days to go!!!

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We had a much more relaxed third day. We stopped in Eurong to buy some breakfast ice cream and then headed down a bumpy track for more lakes.

Us being very responsible and checking water depth before driving through. :)

First lake was Lake Birrabeen, which has very nice clear water and doesn’t get crowded. Unfortunately it was very windy when we were there so it wasn’t that great conditions for us. 5/10, probably a lot better on a calm day.

Next was Lake Boomanjin. The largest perched lake in the world, stained with tea tree. Now this was neat! So colourful!! Apparently it is good for your skin and hair. 7/10, bring your polarised sunglasses for maximum rainbow.

Monopoly Deal is srs bsnss.

We drove back to Central Station to camp that night. Rosemarie cooked us steak. We had showers. It was still pretty uncomfortable but at least this time we had bug spray.

The final day. Another lake. We hiked into Basin Lake, a teeny tiny lake that doesn’t get very busy. Scott walked all the way around and saw a snake. 6/10, nothing too special, by comparison.

We noticed on the hike to Basin Lake that there was a turnoff to hike to Lake McKenzie, our next stop, but only Scott was interested in extra walking so he went off on a solo hike and Rosemarie and I went back to the car and drove to meet him at Lake McKenzie. He still beat us there by like 30 minutes because the driving tracks around the inside of the island are bumpy AF!

No one wants to see a lizard from above!!!
Nic’s right though, this is a pretty epic shot.
Katrina for scale.

One last dip in Lake McKenzie before heading back to the ferry. I did some broad jumps in the water to keep the legs alive. This time we got to the ferry way too early, due to past trauma, haha.

Us with nice clean car in Hervey Bay.

We had a hotel in Hervey Bay that night, where we attempted to clean ourselves up. But no matter how many times you shake out your shoes, more sand comes out. We got way too much fish and chips for dinner that night and then stayed up late to watch the final heats of the ladies skeleton in the Olympics. The whole country was HYPED because Jaclyn Naracott was sitting in first place after the first two heats. Amazing. She ended up finishing silver, still an incredible result.

The final morning we woke up to emails from Jetstar saying that our flight from Sydney to Melbourne had been cancelled. Rosemarie tried to do an online chat and the dude told her that there were no possible other flights but we could cancel and get our money back if we wanted. Not very helpful considering Scott and I had work the next day, but also didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars trying to get home on a new flight.

After getting breakfast we decided to just head to the airport early, ready to negotiate either a new flight or a hotel. We check in and the lady didn’t say anything at all so we said “Um, I think the second part of our flight has been cancelled?” and she was like “Oh yeah, nah they put you on a Qantas flight at the same time, here are the details, just walk to the other terminal in Sydney and check in again”. Was anyone planning on telling us???? Anyway despite the sketchiest “boarding pass” in the world, it all worked out and we even got a hot snack (arancini) and wine on the flight!

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I was so excited to take Rosemarie and Scott to Fraser Island. We used the same company as when I went with Natasha in 2017, Fraser Dingo 4WD, who prepared us an epic 4 day/3 night itinerary. We had a blast!! Prepare for a lot of pictures!!

The trip did start out a little stressful. It took the guy a bit longer than expected to go over all the safety information and itinerary with us, and then we didn’t follow their advice of going to the close grocery store for supplies, which resulted in a serious race to get to the ferry in time. We made it, but like… barely.

Scott letting the air out of the tires to prepare for driving on sand.
Me supervising Scott letting the air out of the tires. :D

Our first stop was Lake McKenzie. It has got to be one of the most pleasant places for a swim in the whole world. I just love that the sand is so soft, with no rocks, and the water is beautifully clear. 10/10, maybe 9.5/10 when it’s windy.

That night we camped in Central Station, in the forest. I recognized the exact campsite I stayed at in 2008! We set up camp and made dinner while getting laughed at by tons of kookaburras, and getting our ears buzzed off by seriously loud waves of cicadas. None of us had ever experienced that before, it was crazy, borderline painful. There were also tons of mosquitos so we decided we were just going to stay on Melbourne time and went to bed quite early.

The second day was going to be our only possible beach driving day, so we had to get up very early to maximize our chances of making it to the Champagne Pools, something that I didn’t get to do in 2008 OR 2017 and was dying to do.

Despite the 4WD guy making it sound extremely treacherous, we made it up to the Champagne Pools with no issues whatsoever. I actually really enjoyed the bit where I had to keep up speed to make it through the deep soft sand. Exhilarating! Rosemarie did ask if I wanted to the passage again just for fun and in hindsight maybe we should have!

Us dumdums didn’t realise there was a second parking lot so we drove back down and parked on the beach and walked back up!! Doh.

Me being a whale.

The Pools were awesome. Nice shallow spots protected by rocks, so when the waves crash in it splashes up and bubbles around you. It’s not safe to swim in the ocean anywhere else on Fraser so it’s extra special that this place exists. 10/10. Amazing.

The trail up to Indian Heads was closed for maintenance so we didn’t get to go up there, but it wasn’t whale season anyway so oh well.

Rosemarie and I on a “hike” at The Pinnacles that turned out to be about 20m long, hahaha. Good thing I brought snacks.
Maheno shipwreck.
No one wants to see a shipwreck from above!!!

We actually stopped at Eli Creek on the way up the beach first thing in the morning as well as on the way back down. I had such fond memories of it we didn’t want to risk missing in it so we did a couple loops first thing in the morning. We were the only ones there and it was REFRESHING. And of course Rosemarie loved it as much as me so we stopped there again in the afternoon and did another few laps. 9/10, needs to be longer.

Then our last activity for the day was Lake Wabby, in the dunes. We had to walk in from our beach campsite for that evening so it involved quite a bit of sand walking, but we all survived and the lake at the end is a pretty unique reward. Scott was very surprised that the lake was literally right at the edge of the dune. There are some huge fish in it as well. We had the whole lake to ourselves for quite a while too, since we were there so late in the day. I did some hill sprints to keep up my fitness. This was Scott’s favourite lake. I give it an 8/10, fish nibbling a bit and hike too long.

Visitor to our beach camp site. Scott chased him away with our Dingo Stick.
Stir fry on the dune by our beach camp site at the end of a huge day.

To be continued….

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We took Rosemarie down to The Prom for a camping weekend. It’s one of my favourite places in Victoria. I was excited for her to see wombats!

We saw this blonde one on the side of the road almost right away! I wonder if he is elderly? He looks like he’s been through some stuff. Rosemarie was surprised how big it was.

We did the Wildlife Walk at dusk the first night. We saw lots of kangaroos hopping around and a few wombats munching on plants. Got lots of great pics. We couldn’t find any emus though, even though a lady told us they saw tons right before we got there.

Tidal River and Bear Gully campgrounds were fully booked so we stayed at a private campground in Yanakie. It was nice, the sites were pretty spread out.

Tongue Point hike. That water!!!

Little photoshoot at Norman Beach. The weather was beautiful but none of us felt motivated enough to swim, haha.

Picnic lunch and a wade in Tidal River.

Of course we’re going to play some games! Kub and Sagrada. Waiting for sunset.

I complained all the way up Mt Oberon. I hate walking up hill!

Made it! It is a nice view. Legs dead.

Then we spent 2 hours playing Carcassonne in the car at Squeaky Beach waiting for full dark because I had heard that the aurora australis forecast was pretty good that night and we were in such a great location to look south. Unfortunately it was super cloudy. We waited as long as we thought we could, but we were all so exhausted from such a big day we gave up around 10:30pm and decided to head back to the campground (45 minutes drive).

After 30 minutes of driving I kept looking out the window because it looked like the clouds were clearing and I could see tons of stars. Scott said he would turn around and drive back if we wanted, and Rosemarie agreed, so we did a u-turn and drove 30 minutes back to Squeaky Beach. … And straight back into full cloud coverage. So frustrating. We saw SOOOO MANY wombats on the side of the road though… like 25. That kept us alert.

We still at least got out of the car and walked down to the beach to see if we could see anything at all, but nope, way too cloudy. So we gave up again and drove 45 minutes all the way back to the campground and passed out immediately out of pure exhaustion.

We only wanted to do flat walks the next day haha. Lilly Pilly! We got lucky and saw an echidna! I haven’t seen one since I’ve been back in Australia. My friend told me I should have lay down on the ground to get a better picture. Next time. Rosemarie asked why Australian animals are so ROUND.

And then we drove home via Gurneys Cider, which was great, as usual. I probably bought a few too many to take home considering I almost never drink any more.

Awesome weekend!!

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OK maybe I should do some blogging again… especially considering we had such an awesome summer!

So around Christmas last year, we realised that instead of waiting for ScoMo to open the border to tourists, we could just buy Rosemarie a Working Holiday Visa and she could come visit right away. After a couple days of back and forth messaging and research, she booked some flights to come visit us for six weeks, starting from the middle of January!

She arrived with an entire hockey bag full of treats!! Best sister!!
Scott for scale.

We weren’t expecting Rosemarie to show up so quickly so Scott and I were quite busy with work for the first couple weeks. But we used the time to get organised (Perkins love a list!) and Rosemarie cooked us lots of elaborate foods. Looking back, we still managed to squeeze in A LOT of fun stuff between all our commitments.

New steamer with 400% more capacity!
Homemade shrimp har gow with garlic Chinese broccoli.
Rosemarie made radish cake! It was delicious. With bbq’d zucchini from the garden and homemade chili oil (unpictured).
We also played lots of games, of course. We were excited to play some games, like Orleans, with three players for the first time ever.
Rosemarie beat us at everything.
We went for a walk in the hills, looking for lyrebirds, didn’t see any. Went for a swim in Lysterfield Lake afterwards.

We got cheap grounds passes for the Australian Open one night, which ended up being quite fun! We watched a couple games in outdoor court 3, walked around a bit, had food truck food for dinner, tried to get in to watch Nick Kyrgios’s match but didn’t realise you had to pre-reserve your seat. The spectators were rowdier than I expected. It was my first time being in crowds for quite a long time, which felt weird, but I kept my mask on as much as I could and that made me feel better.

Rosemarie and I went to Gumbaya World on my day off. It was horrendously windy, which made waiting in lines for the water slides quite unpleasant, but the water was very warm so that helped. They also have animals so we got to see kangaroos and wallabies and koalas and birds and stuff. We went on a swingy ride that was too EXTREME for Rosemarie. She has gone soft. I got a big dent in my car from someone else’s car door.

We went to the South Melbourne Market to try Agathe pastries. Verdict: very nice, but I think I like Lune better because they have savoury options as well.
I also had a fancy oyster.
Rosemarie and I deciding which family pie to buy, we decided on Beef Burgundy and it was great.

Rosemarie learned how to do weightlifting! She came with me almost every single session. My pal Bach coached her. It was cool to have her there and I think she enjoyed it quite a bit.

Rosemarie took a sneaky pic of me doing my squats.
More games.
Australia Day beers with some of my Discord friends.
Scott prepared classic Australian birthday treats to celebrate Rosemarie’s birthday at his parents house. Top left is chocolate crackle, top right is fairy bread, with a slice of Vienetta (he didn’t make that).
Brunch at a nearby cafe, Jake and the Beans Talk. My breakfast gnocchi put me into a coma.

Unpictured:

  • Went out for parmas with more Discord friends.
  • Phoenix Weightlifting AGM where I got elected Ordinary Committee Member.
  • many pies