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Day 5:

A quiet day hanging around Cape Tribulation.

Red-capped Plover.

The beach at the campsite. So peaceful. Everyone says Cape Tribulation is where the rainforest meets the ocean. You can’t swim there though, too many dangerous things in the water.

At the end of the beach there is a short trail that leads to this stunning creek. I had heard there was a four meter croc that lives in the creek but didn’t know how hard it would be to see.

Turns out NOT HARD AT ALL. I walked about another 50m down the path around that bend and saw this big boy lying on the other side of the creek!

I’m glad he was on the other side. That was my first crocodile sighting on my own ever.

Accurate signage.

I walked the last boardwalk that I hadn’t gone on yet. Still no cassowary.

I did an exotic fruit tasting. We got to try:

  • Bread fruit – Roasted like chips. Very potato-y. Apparently a very sustainable food.
  • Soursop – Fruit salad flavour, cotton wool texture.
  • Yellow mangosteen – Extremely tangy like sour candy. Yum.
  • Ice cream bean – Soft fluffy mild fruit. The beans grow to like 1 meter long!
  • Black sapote – Mild chocolate pudding, v creamy.
  • Turmeric – Spicy carrot.
  • Cacao – Slimy nice fruit around a bitter seed that you can eat
  • Mamey sapote – Kind of the texture of avocado, but sweet.
  • Nagami – Like a mini-orange but you can eat the whole thing, peel and all. Delightful!
  • Yellow sapote/canastelle – Like a cooked yam.
  • Abiu – Watery, sweet, nice.

Overall very cool. All of them were pretty nice, probably the Yellow mangosteen and the Nagami were my favourites. And I didn’t get itchy!

That night I did a nocturnal tour. It was a semi-interesting tour… we saw a few sleeping birds (cute little balls of floof), another Forest Dragon (much further away), a cool triangle-shaped spider, and a few other things. The guide was a little strange, very dry humour which was hard to interact with. I didn’t take any pictures because I don’t really have the right equipment for that, but I did learn a bit about spotlighting and I would like to do that again.

Day 6:

I did one last cheap crocodile cruise because why not and also I thought it might be another chance to see some fun birds. We did see quite a few crocs but surprisingly not a single bird. The boat captain looked about 95 years old and I was not entirely sure he could see ANYTHING, but he did point out all the crocs somehow!

Then I drove to Port Douglas. I stopped on the way for a scoop of mango sorbet, and did another quick lap of the Jindalba boardwalk, but still no cassowary.

I booked snorkeling for the next day and had a fancy lady late lunch in Port Douglas. But I got overwhelmed by how busy it was everywhere so I just grabbed some groceries and headed back up the squiggly road to the Tablelands.

The van. Organising and charging stuff.

Day 7:

More snorkeling! #YOLO. The boat was much bigger so even though the weather wasn’t great again, it was slightly more comfortable for the much longer trip.

We went to three different spots on the Agincourt Reef.

The first one was much deeper than the other day. The coral was not as colourful and the current was much stronger. I saw one very massive fish that both me and my snorkel buddy immediately looked at each other and were like WHOA BIG FISH in sign language.

The second one was two “underwater mountains” you can snorkel all the way around, however the current was very strong on one side and it was quite hard work. Didn’t really enjoy.

The third one was the best one!! No currents! It was deeper, and had these massive coral walls. There was one spot we went in that was almost 360 degree bowl of amazing coral all around us, but then the guy in the safety boat told us we had to go out of there because soon the tide would be down too far and we might get stuck. We saw lots of interesting fish: long skinny yellow ones, ones with unicorn horns, ones that bury themselves in the sand. It was nice and relaxing where you could just float in one spot and just spend some time looking around at everything.

Proof of life photo.

Super low King tide. Even the guides were surprised to see so much coral sticking out of the water. It can’t be good for the coral. But also it must be fine because this is a thing that happens every year. And aren’t ocean levels rising?

I didn’t really talk to many people on my whole trip so I think this is my only non-selfie picture of me, lol. But my snorkel buddy ended up being quite interesting, even though initially I didn’t really want a snorkel buddy. I’m not sure how we started on the topic but he was actually a big board game enthusiast and we spent the whole boat ride back talking about games.

Day 8 (Last Day):

Went to a mango farm in Mareeba to try mango wine. I wasn’t a big fan of the wine but I found the farm interesting. Apparently December is when everything just goes bonkers and there’s tons and tons of (delicious) work. I want to live there.

I quickly stopped in to Barron Falls for a last ditch attempt to see a cassowary. I’m pretty sure this is where MEP saw one!! I did not.

I had a quick sushi lunch and visit to Birdworld in Kuranda. There were indeed a lot of birds in there but zero educational info, which I found to be a bummer. Also I don’t think people should touch birds.

I came back to Cairns and cleaned up the van. I had a bit of extra time so I went to the Esplanade again. Even at low-tide, and only in about 20 minutes, I saw a lot of humongous mud crabs, a Masked Lapwing, Sacred Kingfisher, and a Scaly-breasted Munia. I was quite pleased. Apparently you can see even more when it’s high tide because the water pushes all the birds closer.

I had to drop off the van at 4pm, and couldn’t really do anything more since I had my suitcase so I just went to the airport, even though my flight wasn’t until 8pm, which got delayed to about 10:30pm. Got a lot of knitting done, the first time I’d gotten it out all trip. I got back to Melbourne at 1:30AM, yuck. Took an Uber home and collapsed in bed and slept for ages.

Overall the trip was 10/10 amazing. I spotted 71 different types of birds. Saw impossible looking insects. I learned about rainforests and mangroves and other nature-y things. I learned new birdwatching and spotlighting techniques. I got to do so many fun activities and also relaxed a lot. I read 1.75 books. I sweated. I’d go back any time!!

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I had a lot more holiday than Scott and was feeling cold so decided to go on a trip by myself. I flew up to Cairns, rented a campervan, and spent a week traveling around Far North Queensland. It was great.

DAY 1:

Had to wake up at 4am to go to the airport. Scott drove me even though I insisted that I could just take an Uber. Why is he so nice.

Esplanade Pelicans.
The Prawn Star boats.

I spent the first day in Cairns. I picked up the van and then checked out the Brushturkeys and mosquitos in the Botanic Gardens. Then headed into town to eat some seafood and get supplies for the week ahead.

Then I drove up the hill into the Tablelands to spend the night at the Mareeba Drive-in. I had a vegan burger and watched Where The Crawdads Sing and then fell asleep 20 minutes into the second movie. A long day.

DAY 2:

Sarus Crane.
Straw-necked Ibis.
Cattle egret.
Great Bowerbird and bower.
Chestnut-breasted Mannikin on sugarcane.

Woke up at 6AM to drive to Atherton to meet a bird nerd for a birding tour. There was another couple around my age from Sydney on the tour as well, which was cool. We drove all around the area and looked at tons and tons of birds. The guide, Patrick, knew every single bird and was very good at making sure that each of us got a good sighting of each bird. It was very cool, and very overwhelming. I really want to get a nice pair of binoculars now, it makes a huge difference.

I didn’t get many good pictures that day because a lot of the birds were teeny tiny or fast moving. But I saw heaps of cool birds like Pacific Baza, Blue-winged Kookaburra, Red-winged Parrot, Pale-headed Rosella, Scaly-breasted Lorikeet, Red-backed Fairywren and tons and tons more.

The Bowerbird was probably the easiest bird for Patrick to show us, but was still one of my favourites. They’re just so weird and unique! Great Bowerbirds like white shiny objects (and Satin Bowerbirds like blue things).

Bananas in bags.

After birding all morning I made a quick stop at Granite Gorge to see the tiny rock wallabies. Then drove down the twisty road towards the Daintree. I saw lots of banana, avocado, mango and sugarcane fields. Why do I love seeing different crops so much.

Big tree at the caravan park in Daintree.

DAY 3:

The Daintree River.
Rainbow Bee-eater.
Azure Kingfisher.
Great-billed Heron.
Shining Flycatcher.
Common Tree Snake.

6:30AM wakeup! This time for a morning bird watching river cruise. Was cool to get a bit closer to the birds. I think that Rainbow Bee-eater pic is my favourite of the whole trip. We also saw a few snakes and crocs.

Tropical AF.
Boyd’s Forest Dragon

I continued driving towards Cape Tribulation, constantly on the lookout for cassowary. Jindalba Boardwalk is supposed to be a common place to see them but all I saw was a stupid dragon. Just kidding, the dragon was SUPER AWESOME. I went around the boardwalk two times.

I remember stopping at this ice cream place FOURTEEN YEARS ago. This time I was very happy that they had a dairy free version of their special tasting cups. This had coconut, mango, soursop, and something like razzleberry?? I couldn’t really understand what she said. They were yum.

Mangrove snorkels.
Catacanthus punctus, aka Man-Faced Stink Bug

The boardwalks around Cape Tribulation are awesome. Madja Boardwalk was very mangrovey. I saw this crazy bug! How does this exist in real life?

That night I went out for dinner and had to eat on a couch because I didn’t make a reservation (Queensland tourism is booming yo). I felt like I was at home. Then I read my book and went to bed early. Delightful.

DAY 4:

7AM wakeup for snorkelling! The company kept telling us that it was going to be a really rough day. It definitely was a very moistly boat ride out to the reef. Thankfully it was only a 30 minute trip, which is very short for the Great Barrier Reef. And thankfully we had wetsuits and raincoats to help with the constant drenching splashes.

The weather was great out at the reef!!
Nemo.
Big ass clam.

The snorkelling was ok! I thought the reef would be in worse shape, tbh. I saw a turtle, some type of ray, a few clown fish, lots of other fish, and heaps of really really big giant clams… like as big as a car. They look like galaxies on the inside.

It was not the easiest snorkelling, a lot of waves and a bit cold. Visibility was great though. I was extremely greatful for a hot shower afterwards.

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The lunar schedule aligned with a weekend with no hockey so I booked us a weekend away in the country to attempt to do some astrophotography.

We went out for dinner at Fergusson Winery in the Yarra Valley on the way out. Good thing I made a reservation! Haha. I told Scott I reserved the whole restaurant for a truly romantic experience.

We had cured kingfish and beef carpaccio, Angus beef and confit duck. Everything was lovely except for the potato with the steak, very paste-y.

The Airbnb had a wood-fired hot tub. Like Kyla’s hot tub! They had it warm for us when we got there, so we stoked the fire and sat in it until we got too cold. We could see a bit of the milky way but by the time we got out of the hot tub it had clouded over.

The cabin was on a little farm overlooking a valley. Very scenic.

It was a cold weekend. We spent a lot of time on the deck with the heat lamp blasting, reading and knitting and crocheting. Very cozy.

I also spent the entire second day trying to heat the hot tub up again. It took FOREVER.

The lamb was only one day old!!!

Scott doing a dramatic horse rescue. The horse had hooked himself on to the fence and we knew the owner was going away that day! Scott used my advice of saying “easy” a lot (I learned that from Heartland), and managed to set him free. Good job Scott.

Trespassing (not really) to look at birds. My friend helped me identify a new to me bird: Grey Shrikethrush.

How is this comfortable for either participant?

Kind of a nice picture until you realise that they’re standing in a horse poo and their beaks are covered in poo from them digging around in it for snacks. Yum!

I don’t have any astro pics to show you. The second night was even cloudier than the first. A lot of things have to come together at the same time to be able to shoot the milky way. Especially when really don’t like staying up very late. I probably won’t have another chance until next winter, but I’ve resolved to plan a bit more ahead next year.

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I had a great birthday. It started with breakfast sashimi and a vegan cupcake. Then we went to Boronia for lunch to celebrate all the June and July birthdays: mine, Pat, Jemma, Michelle, Vicky, Luca and Brett. I was very spoiled with gifts, lots of amazing bird things.

Then Scott and I went out for a nice dinner at Entrecote. Didn’t see any fights. We had a seafood platter, beef tartare, steak and chips, lemon tart, and a couple macarons. Too much. Despite taking several Lacteezes I felt very ill afterwards. Learned my lesson.

We had our board game friends over for a falafel feast. I made falafel, harissa eggplant, salads, turmeric rice, and garlic sauce and didn’t take any pictures of the spread. Trust it was perfect. We played 7 Wonders and Camel Up. Chaos ensued. Fun was had.

Possums keep eating all the peel off the lemons on our tree so we decided to harvest ALL of the lemons. Even after giving a bunch of them away I still squeezed 1L of lemon juice. My hands felt like they had been ceviche’d. I poured half of it into ice cube trays to freeze in cubes, and froze two smaller jars of juice for future baking or lemonade.

Our tree isn’t even that big! But perhaps we need to prune it back a bit.

Beautiful Bendigo Woollen Mills yarn for future sweaters and ponchos.

A month of progress. I went to a crafternoon where my friend helped me get started on my next knitting project: a sweater. I’m using a pattern that she recommended that is good for beginners, lots of support online like videos and stuff. Plus she is making one too so she helped me through some of the tricky parts. I’m now up to the body part where I just have to knit stitch for eternity (especially since I have such a long torso haha).

We went to Shira Nui for our (12th!) anniversary. We’ve been there a few times and just love it. We got the omakase again, where you get two pieces of nine types of sushi. I liked all of them except the grilled oyster one is probably my least favourite. Unfortunately it’s like their signature sushi so they always have it, lol.

My friend really wanted to go out for lasagna. I ordered a vegan truffle lasagna. It was extremely creamy, possibly too truffle-y, but nice. The others had ragu lasagna and duck lasagna, which I tried bites of. A good evening out.

Michael and Gina had us over for Christmas In July. Scott and I made stuffing, and green bean halloumi salad, the others made charcoal chicken, roasted vegetables, a mushroom Wellington, Yorkshire puddings, and sticky date pudding for dessert. We also had mulled wine and eggnog. It was an amazing meal.

Scott left to play hockey so we took advantage of having five players and played a new game: Concordia. I didn’t quite understand what was happening at first but once I finally kinda got the gist I liked it a lot. It takes too long with five people though, Scott came back to pick me up and we still weren’t finished playing. We decided to artificially shorten the game so that we could all go home, and then I won, which Michael wasn’t happy about, haha. I put an asterisk next to my win in my app. :P

Unpictured stuff:

  • I helped out at a Phoenix weightlifting competition by taking pictures and videos. It felt very weird not participating, because usually I do, but it was too soon after having covid.
  • We had a good bye dinner for one of my co-workers who left for an office job. It was the first time our team had gotten together outside of work since before covid. We actually never had a welcoming dinner for her, haha.
  • I got a massage at a new place and the guy’s hands were like popsicles. Wasn’t very nice.
  • We went away to Flowerdale, VIC for a weekend. I actually have lots of pictures from this, it will get its own post.

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Ridiculously late. I have so much to catch up on.

We started the month by Scott falling off the front step and spraining his ankle. We were on our way to Betty’s Burgers with his parents for his dad’s birthday, which we still went to (I drove), but when Scott couldn’t walk back to the car afterwards we knew something was really wrong. I dropped him off at Monash ED and he found out he had an avulsion fracture, which is treated like a very bad sprain. It took him quite a while to recover from that. He was most sad about not being able to do all his weekly sports.

We went to the Melbourne v Collingwood game on Queen’s Birthday. Nice crowds and sunset, but Melbourne lost and that part wasn’t that fun.

We also went to the Melbourne v Brisbane game at the MCG with cousin Shaun and his family. Maybe you can tell from our faces who enjoyed it more.

Our June SMAJ activity was portrait painting and charcuterie. It was silly and fun. I accidentally painted a very smug version of Scott and I couldn’t fix it. It really makes me laugh every time I see it.

We drove really far North one night to try Dingo Ate My Taco birria tacos. I loved them. Would eat again but hopefully closer.

We went out for pizza at Deep End with Sophie and Joel. It was all of our first time trying deep dish pizza, which we found ok but maybe a bit… wet. If I was going to have it again I would order one that didn’t have vegetables in it and maybe that would be better. We also had a Detroit-style pizza which I enjoyed more. It was like pizza made on delicious oily focaccia.

On the way home from the restaurant Scott got pulled over. We were very surprised because he hadn’t done anything sketchy. But turned out his license had been suspended for like 3 months because of a pending medical check that he never received notice for. Thankfully Scott doesn’t drink so he blew a 0 breath test and they let me drive home instead of impounding the car.

It took a week or so to get that sorted out before he could drive again! It’s all because VicRoads know he has sleep apnea and now apparently he has to get a doctors note every couple years. Such a pain.

Scott’s ankle was finally good enough to play hockey again but the poor guy wasn’t allowed to drive. So I drove him all the way to Reservoir and attempted to take a few pictures while I was there. It was not the most interesting hockey I have ever seen…

My next knitting project after the scarf was this basketweave headband. It was originally going to be a bag type thing but I got pretty bored of it.

I was making overnight pizza dough but our house is freaking freezing in the winter and our oven light was burnt out. I couldn’t think of anywhere warm to let the dough rise so I took it to bed with me and my electric blanket. Worked perfectly.

A super rich slow cooked beef stroganoff. Love how tender cheap beef becomes if you cook it for long enough. This was extremely delicious and made about 10 servings so I was able to freeze some for later, which Future Katrina was very pleased about.

A deconstructed chicken shawarma and garlic potatoes. Needs pickled turnip.

Unpictured things:

  • I pulled off a minor unintentional vacuum repair scam and managed to get our vacuum repaired for $30 instead of the $400 the dude was quoting.
  • Trivia in Knox with Ash and Charlie with very strange service from the bar staff.
  • A free screening of Jurassic Park Dominion care of our mortgage brokers. Terrible movie but excellent (free) snacks.
  • An amazing pizza brunch party at Naomi’s with the old EH gang. Her new house is amazing.
  • Saw Top Gun: Maverick and really enjoyed it!!! It was like a movie version of a roller coaster. Very exhilarating. If you want to know what sliding skeleton in Whistler feels like, watch the valley sequence of the movie.. I’ve never heard anyone else describe the feeling before, outside of skeleton. So fun.
  • Bach and I helped Doreen compete at Victorian Masters Championships. I loaded her warm ups for her and tried to make her sit still and rest (very difficult).
  • Scott started his new job. He has more support in this job and doesn’t have to do as much of the annoying things like spending hours on the phone with Telstra. He is also doing less work in the evening. He seems overall happier!