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I have been wanting to go to the poop plant for a while but you need to go with someone who has a permit. I was pleased it showed up on the Birdlife Photography group itinerary on a day that I could finally actually go!

We all met up at the entrance and then merged into small groups with people with cars and keys and they drove us around all morning.

The area isn’t actually used for treating water any more (they do it in a different way now), but the land can’t be used for anything else because it still has traces of poop. It doesn’t smell though. There are rules like you can’t eat anything while you’re in the area and you have to wear pants and closed shoes. There’s a lot of standing water, which means there’s a lot of bugs, which means there are a lot of birds. It’s the best area in Victoria for birdwatching.

Brolga
Black Swan and Australian Pelican
Whiskered Terns
Singing Bushlark
Red-necked Stint
Red-necked Stint

Red-necked Stints are migratory waders that are born in Siberia and somehow make it all the way to Australia for the summer. Fascinating.

Growling Grass Frog

One pond was full of these frogs. You could hear them, and see them poking their eyes out of the water, but as soon as you get closer they duck under. They must be pretty massive.

I saw a lot more birds but a lot of the pictures we took later in the day were affected by Heat Haze, which made the pictures look like watercolour paintings (not in a nice way). The whole group together logged 107 different types of birds, in one morning!! I look forward to going again at a different time of year.

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August was a busy month. Scott worked his first graduations days, and we went to Vietnam for a week, and in between we squeezed in lots of activities and some tasty meals.

We went hot air ballooning, and then went out for breakfast at Warung Coffee. We got a beef rendang toastie and a mie goreng toastie and they were ridiculous and salty and delicious. Yes that is a sandwich full of noodles.

I made Scott come with me to a birding photography outing to Muckleford and Newstead Cemetery. It was a cold but pleasant day. We saw a few new birds, but I didn’t get any particularly great pictures. At least now I know where to come back to try to see the rainbow bee-eaters this summer though.

Australian Pipit

We knew the steam train would be passing through around noon so everyone stopped birdwatching and changed their camera settings and got into position to best photograph the train… and then waited… and waited… and then finally fifteen minutes later it slooooooooooooooooooowly came around the corner. I think you could walk faster than this train haha.

Trivia. It was so loud. We didn’t do well.

Malaysian food all day every day. We went to Pappa Laksa again and had Pappa Special Laksa and Beef Rendang Nasi Lemak. Delicious.

RTE Pork Adobo and cucumber salad. Tasty, and affordable!

Trying out different methods of Brain Off time. Paint by numbers was pretty fun. Good ol’ Kmart.

Tiny bit of progress on the cable knit blanket.

Slow progress on Lauren’s hat. I only manage to get a couple rounds done at a time on my lunch breaks at work. And the pink thing was a project for Lara which I have now abandoned. Knitting it was going way too slowly, and crocheting was turning out way too heavy. I think a sleeve scarf would be a better project for someone with a knitting machine. (Can I buy a knitting machine??)

Unpictured stuff:

  • We took my whole work team to play pickleball at Pickle Play. Almost everyone came! We had to rent three courts! It was chaotic at first trying to teach them all how to play, but once they got the hang of it it was very fun. And no one hurt themselves. Success.
  • Scott took Beau to open day at UniMelb. They went to a bunch of science lectures and had KFC and had a good day together.
  • I’ve still been going to Bodypump pretty regularly. It is kind of stupid but at least it’s something.
  • And of course, still pickleballing. I usually do one drills session, and two social sessions per week. Still loving it.

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OMG I’m so behind in blogging I can’t really remember what we did on this trip. So how about I just show you some pictures.

Winkipop
Bells Beach
Amazing ENORMOUS seafood platter
White-faced Heron
Spicy momos at the farmers market
Boardgames at the Airbnb
Ramen dinner
Entertaining ourselves while we waited for brighter aurora
Lil’ smudge of aurora
I like that the signpost looks like a microscope pointer. Exhibit A: Milky Way
Knitting in the sun

Scott did a good job of planning the whole weekend (other than picking another Airbnb that has no bathroom door). It was a nice relaxing weekend away with delicious meals.

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Lots of parties in December!

Started off with an unpictured pizza party at Naomi’s house with the old EH crew. Always nice to hear all the updates that have happened throughout the year. Since I didn’t go to school here in Melbourne I don’t really know that many people in the nuc med community, but now my old coworkers are spread out all over the place and it’s a nice little network for me.

We went to an Italian restaurant for our work Christmas lunch this year. This was my favourite dish, which was actually a special one for me while everyone else had a super duper dairy pasta dish. It was a seafood risotto, very yum. We also had really nice tender steak. Thanks Doctors!

Scott’s birthday was the same day as our pickleball club’s Christmas party. It was super hot, humid, windy with occasional downpours. Not great outdoor pickleball conditions but it was still a pretty fun party. We snuck out when the some of the oldies started getting pretty loose and got sushi for dinner on the way home.

I may have played a few too many games because I think I actually got heat stroke. Why am I so competitive??

Also LOL at how close that house is to the pickleball area!!

We had a party at our house! We made shawarmas and we played crokinole, Camel Up and Wits & Wagers. Ol’ trusty games. It was fun.

We went camping in Gippsland. Scott organised everything, including driving 45 minutes each way to look at this Shipwreck. :P

Rainbow Lorikeet
Superb Fairy-wren
Grey Fantail
Little Black Cormorant
Little Wattlebird
A lot of birbs

We stayed at Emu Bight, which had A LOT of bird activity. At any moment you could pick out at least 5 different bird calls. We even got a new lifer, a Red-browed Finch, but it flew away before I could get a picture. We saw quite a few fairy-wrens, Olive-backed Orioles, emus, and Eastern Spinebills, and all the usual suspect birds as well.

Hey dear.

Other than the birds, we got a bit bored. The first couple days were too cold to swim, then it got hot but we were far away from the water, and then the flies came out and it started raining off and on. We ended up packing up a night early.

We went to a few more rallies. I feel a real sense of despair about all of it. At least we’ve been able to catch up with some friends at the same time.

Scott made us a gingerbread village to decorate. Gingerbread brings up lots of memories for me, of mom and Jane, Emily, Rosemarie, Natasha and Eric. Nice memories, a little bit sad at the same time. It’s a fun tradition though.

I liked Scott’s reindeer decoration.

Christmas was pretty chill this year. It was a small Christmas year so there weren’t as many children as usual. Plus the Jorna boys are getting pretty old now! We had the usual lunch of chicken and salads. No one seemed to care that my Nanaimo bars were the ugliest batch I’ve ever made!!

Check out this amazing tea towel that Rory gave us. He designs a new one every year. I love it!

Christmas zoom with the fam back home.

Trying on my latest knitting project to see if I wanted to add an extra row of design or not. Of course I do, #longtorso.

I just had a craving for hotpot. This time I picked a broth that wasn’t spicy, after burning my face off last time. Much more enjoyable.

I got a new board game for Christmas from my Kris Kringle. It’s called Welcome To and apparently you can play with 1-99 people. I don’t think it would work very well with more people that can sit around a table though, unless you had like a projector or something. We did play with Rosemarie remotely though which was fun!! Good recommendation from Lesley.

Unpictured stuff:

  • So much more pickleball. Indoors, outdoors, Ashburton, Hampton. I still love it.
  • Did the computer at the Phoenix Christmas Hit Out. I didn’t compete because I was still doing my strength program. That’s finished though so I’ll compete again in early 2024 probably.
  • Ethiopian food for Sonika’s birthday. Delicious. The vegetarian dishes are always so good.
  • We watched a lot of movies between Christmas and New Years: Riceboy Sleeps (sad), Grease (lol), The Holdovers (good), Air (ok), The Grizzlies (cheesy), Tetris (surprising), The Mirror Has Two Faces (wtf).
  • And then I went to bed at 9:30pm on New Years Eve. :P

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Last month we decided to take advantage of Scott not working with a budget-friendly trip to the Mallee. We left on Sunday afternoon after pickleball and drove north to Swan Hill.

We stopped at an Ibis Rookery along the way. It had an excellent bird hide. We saw a lot of ibis and cormorants. Like.. A LOT. There were also a lot of mosquitos so we didn’t stay too long.

A cool sunset. I thought it kind of looked like a bird as well.

Big Cod in Swan Hill.

Singing Honeyeater

The next morning we got tradie bacon and egg rolls for breakfast and then drove to Goschen, which is just a little bushland reserve recommended to me by one of the Birdlife photographers. We saw a couple new birds: White-browed Woodswallow, and White-winged Triller. And a lot of flies.

Then we continued on to Hattah-Kulkyne National Park, which is near Mildura, where we camped for three nights. It is a nice park, desert-y, but with water. It was pretty quiet, with tons of birds and reptiles. And wild goats!

Our campsite was right on Lake Mournpall, which had a lot of jumping fish in it, which entertained us in the evening. We also spent a lot of time walking, birdwatching, reading and knitting.

My DIY Detachable Lego Fly Deterrer actually worked pretty well, except for when I accidentally swatted a brick into my nose. Did I look stupid? Yes. But did it work? Yes.

Warepil Lookout Mallee sunset. Very flat land.

A visiting family.

I think these are called Shingleback Lizards. I called them Road Sausages. Or Turd Lizards. They are so stumpy!!

There was a little scenic nature circuit that you could drive around. We saw this cool Lace Monitor and lots of birds.

One day we did the slightly longer Lake Loop walk, which started off pretty fun because it’s a little bit free-form as long as you find the next sign post.

But I got pretty tired by the end because parts of it were a bit flooded and it was hard to find the next post. And the last hour or so was walking through all this stupid loose branches filled with burrs, on top of sand.

We drove out to the Hattah Outback Roadhouse for ice cream and a shower after that. I couldn’t believe the showers were free! It was very needed and appreciated.

The astro conditions were perfect so we saw some pretty good night sky. Unfortunately the aurora alarm didn’t go off while we were there… we were planning on driving back to the lookout platform if it did. Not sure we’d be able to see anything since we were quite far north anyway though? But there certainly wasn’t any light pollution.

Splendid Fairywren. So pretty! We saw a bunch of these on our walks.
A fluffy Mallee Ringneck. There were lots of these around the campsite but they were hard to get a good picture.
Cute Galah couple.
Peregrine Falcon wayyyyy up at the top of a big dead tree.
Apostlebird. I think these are special to the area but they were a bit nasty imo.
Wish I had gotten a better picture of this Bearded Dragon.

The weather was absolutely beautiful for our whole trip until the last day. We managed to pack up camp before the weather turned, but it was a long dreary drive back to Melbourne.

We broke up the drive by stopping lots of times.

  1. Lake Tyrrell. Cool to see the big pink lake, and a new bird (Bluebonnet), but it was very chilly so we didn’t stay long.
  2. Sharp’s Bakery in Birchip for 10/10 vanilla slices. They really did live up to the hype (has won best in Australia a couple times). Perfectly crisp pastry, smooth custard, and the perfect amount of icing. My controversial opinion is that vanilla slices should be half as tall, but I know that most Australian’s would disagree.
  3. Wycheproof Bakery for a panini for lunch.
  4. Bendigo Woollen Mills to replenish the yarn stash. Scott got some cotton to make another amigarumi, and I got some variegated wool that I’m not sure what to do with yet.
  5. McDonalds drive through for some fries because I was dying of starvation.

It was a great trip! We were actually supposed to go the week before but the forecast was HORRIFIC so we postponed one week and that worked out perfectly. Scott and I both ended up with covid but thankfully it didn’t come up until the last day of the trip too. We saw so much cool stuff, but no budgerigars or pink cockatoo so now I want to go even deeper into the Outback!