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Not really the best year… we spent at least part of 7 out of 12 months in lockdown here in Melbourne. I got pretty depressed, especially when I thought about how long it had been since I saw my family, and how much longer it was going to be.

However we have really learned to take advantage of what you can do when you can do it and still managed to squeeze in a fair amount of fun stuff.

Some good things that happened in 2021:

  • We still managed to find new places to explore in Victoria. We went to Bright, Echuca, Pyalong, Warburton, Little Desert, and Walkerville (post to come). I think the only corner of the state we haven’t visited yet is Mildura… maybe next spring? There’s a good birding area near there.
  • I got to go to Adelaide twice.
  • I made a lot of new friends through a Melbourne Discord group.
  • I picked up a few new hobbies: photography, knitting, pottery, weaving, and bird watching.
  • The Dees won the AFL Grand Final.
  • I became Australian.

Work has been fine. We were pretty busy, but I am lucky that my hospital is a “clean” hospital and we don’t actually have any covid patients. Occasionally we have to put on all the PPE for unvaccinated patients, or lung scans, but in general I have it pretty easy compared to many other healthcare professionals.

Same questions as last year:

PBs: snatch 47kg -> 47kg, C&J 55kg -> 58kg. My back squat also improved a fair bit. Not bad for mostly training alone in the garage I guess. I’m glad my clean and jerk improved but I wish I didn’t waste a snatch attempt at my last comp and didn’t get to try for a new snatch PB. I knew I could do it! Hopefully we get to compete more often next year.

New board games: Only one… Caverna. Thank you to Vicky and Pat for mailing all their children a gift card to buy something to cheer ourselves up during the darkest part of lockdown 6.

Books: I didn’t read that much this year. I spent most evenings trying to get dopamine from endless Instagram scrolling. I have lots of books on my list to read next year though. Here’s the few I did read:

  • Sins of the Brother: The Definitive Story of Ivan Milat and the Backpacker Murders – Les Kennedy and Mark Whittaker – disturbing, interesting, not the best to read right before bed
  • American Dirt – Jeanine Cummins – page turner, people hate this book though?
  • Anxious People – Fredrik Backman – hard to get into at first because writing kind of weird I think – didn’t finish
  • Boy Swallows Universe – Trent Dalton – writing a bit funny and hard for me to follow but then got good, Australian
  • Nothing To See Here – Kevin Wilson – strange one, i liked it
  • The Midnight Library – Matt Haig – corny, predictable
  • The Song of Achilles – Madeline Miller – someone on instagram tricked me into a reading a mythology book! I wish everything I had to read in school was written like this.

Great New Recipes: Again, didn’t really cook that well this year. Just didn’t have the energy. But here’s a couple:

Oh and a cheddar update for Rosemarie: I just cut open the bag, which had a disturbing amount of liquid squishing around with it… and NOOOO… it smelled like winey-cheese-barf. Did not try. I put it in the bin.

2020 Thoughts: Super grateful that we had our own comfortable house to lockdown in. Grateful that neither of us lost our jobs. Grateful for my home gym and remote coach. Grateful that the hard work all Victorians did during the winter lockdowns paid off and we actually get to enjoy our summer Covid-free (so far). Come on vaccine. I would really like to see my family again.

Well we got the vaccine at least… Scott and I are both triple vaxxed as of a few weeks ago.

Last years goals: Whatever man. Just survive. (yep, accurate.)

2022 Goals: I dunno. Not get covid?

2021 Final Thoughts: This year is finishing off pretty nice… the weather is great, we got to have a normal Christmas, and it’s summer fun times all the time. The government has completely changed their stance on covid and now we’re just letting it rip? We’ll see how this goes. I’m just hoping it lasts because we have a few big things planned in 2022 and I REALLY hope they don’t get cancelled.

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No major issues at the state border. The border permit check took about 10 minutes, but the roadside covid test took over an hour as there was only one poor nurse swabbing every single person in every single car. I felt very bad for her, I hope she was getting paid well. At that point you didn’t have to isolate after getting that test so we continued on.

We arrived in Adelaide and checked into the hotel and then I went straight to the gym. I had a competition the following weekend so I didn’t want to skip training! I found a weightlifting gym (Athletic Compound) very similar to my club willing to let me drop in. I was nervous to go in but it was fine once I started.

Then we went out for an Afghan dinner with Cristoforo in Port Adelaide, of which I took no pictures. It was a funny dinner, we were the only customers in the restaurant and I’m not really sure they really wanted customers? Food was good though, and enormous. Then we went for a drink and saw a crazy man with a dog and a bicycle. Fun.

The next day we caught up with Jill and Cassia and family. M REALLY did not like Scott. From the very first second. She pretty much cried any time that he was close by.

We did lots of walking and talking and hanging out at their house, because they were leaving for Spain a few days later they, understandably, really did not want to accidentally end up at an exposure site. I just wanted to hang out with them anyway, so it was all good. We did go out for a lovely patio dinner at the Lion.

The jacaranda were in full bloom. I never remembered seeing them before? Neither Scott or I knew what kind of tree they were and were pretty convinced that there aren’t any in Melbourne. However since returning I have seen approximately 90,000 of them, including about 50 between our house and my work. I seriously don’t know how we didn’t notice them before.

They had a goodbye party in a park with their friends and some family. Scott finally won M over (temporarily) by pulling her and C around in the wagon. Lots of happy giggling.

The last day I went to the gym again to train. They gave me a t-shirt! And then Scott and I went out for dinner at Laura from Masterchef’s pasta restaurant. It was nice! We had burrata with beans, zucchini and pickled cucumbers, gnocchi with artichoke and asparagus, and rigate with goat.

Then we went for one last hug goodbye (although maybe not too long until we see them again, if we are actually able to rendezvous in Ottawa in April, fingers crossed). The next morning we got up early and drove all the way back to Melbourne in one go. Scott did 75% of the driving, he is the best.

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South Australia finally decided to open their border, JUST in time to squeeze in a quick visit to see Cassia before they moved to Spain. By chance we already had a few days booked off at the same time to go camping at Bear Gully, but we cancelled that booking and decided to roadtrip to Adelaide instead, via Little Desert National Desert, which is about half way between Melbourne and Adelaide.

One of the creepier giant things in Australia. Near Grampians National Park.

Tis indeed a dry place. SO MANY FLIES.

Thank goodness it also had a river flowing through it because it was FLIPPING HOT when we were there. The water felt amazing and also gave us a break from the flies. We spent many hours floating on our water hammocks (in our full body bathing suits), something that I have been craving for the last couple years.

Camp shrimp stir fry.

We went for three short hikes. We were hoping to see different birds due to the different landscape and area but spent most of the time swatting flies instead. Some of the hikes had information sheets available though with lots of fun facts, which I enjoyed.

We learned about the Malleefowl, an endangered bird that makes stupidly complex mound nests out of sticks and sand and then lets it decay and compost to get it to the exact right temperature to incubate the eggs. Didn’t see any, as expected.

We decided to stop in Dimboola for a post-hike ice cream. I noticed an error on their sign post…

This guy was waiting for us back at camp. What a ridiculous bird. How can a wild bird be so big??????

Scott spotted this guy from the car as well. I had to get a friend to help identify. It’s a red-rumped parrot, even though we can’t see the red rump at all. He also had a beige female friend as well, but I cropped her out of the pictures haha.

There were a few Eastern Rosellas flying around camp too, but they were hard to get a good picture.

The campground was very quiet the second day so the bouncy boys came a bit closer. Scott took those pictures before I woke up.

We left fairly early the last day to get a good start on the rest of the drive to Adelaide. We didn’t know how long the border check and required covid test would take.

Quick photo stop at the Pink Lake of course! So salty!! Crusty AF! So cool!

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Thank you to Scott for being a great photography assistant for all of these shots!

Six shots stacked.

I forgot about taking multiple pictures of the same thing for stacking until the very end, whoops.

Tried a bit of light painting. Plus a plane in the background.

(BUTT)

I would like to try again. I’ve booked some time off for the new moon in September, hopefully we’re not in any kind of lockdown then. We kinda need to go even further away, Melbourne was still so bright we couldn’t really take any pictures in the south direction.

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Scott and I took a few days off the other week to head out to the country. I booked us a cute little Airbnb cabin in Pyalong, about 90 minutes north of Melbourne.

We stopped at Lune on the way out. They were selling the banh mi croissant that the dude on Masterchef invented. It cost $15 ahahahaaa we are suckers. It was good, but small and sort of weird that it was sweet.. we decided we’d prefer to get two full regular banh mis from Bun Bun for the same money.

They were sold out of a lot of other options so we just got a pain au chocolat, ham & gruyere, and a cheese & vegemite escargot. All nice.

Scott should use that picture for his LinkedIn, y/y?

We also went a bit out of the way to go for a walk at Lerderderg Gorge. It was a nice gorge, but there were a lot of people around. Scott did spot a nice yellow robin though.

There’s a part that you have to step across a series of rocks to cross the water, which was fun, but scary when you’re carrying a lot of camera equipment!

We arrived in Pyalong just before sunset. The property was stunning. Apparently the granite boulders were dropped by glaciers. We wandered around taking a million pictures because everything was so photogenic!

Happy 11th anniversary.

The first night was clear enough that we could take some night sky photos, which I’ll save for another post. It was my first time trying astrophotography, and we got some cool shots, but also made a lot of mistakes. Unfortunately the other two nights were extremely cloudy, rainy, windy, so we weren’t able to try again.

Foggy rainy days. It was ok though, we didn’t really have anything we needed to do, and the cabin had a very cozy fireplace (once you got it lit). We played many games of Orleans, read, photo edited, ate snacks, and just relaxed.

We did venture out to the Pyalong Railway Bridge on the way home. Pretty rickety.

A wedge-tailed eagle flew across the road very close to our car. It was neat seeing it so close. They are huge!