D'Arcy Developments

I remembered that some of the regular visitors to my blog are not Australians. Did you need an interpretation of the photo below? Well, here is one anyway....It is a Ned Kelly costume. Ned is a folk hero. He was the head of a bushranging family in Victoria. The family was involved in a big shootout with the cops in country Victoria, and so Ned made himself some armour in preparation. He didn't get shot, but was later arrested and hanged in Melbourne in...um..1880(? - sorry, vague moment there). Bushrangers were robbers - Australian highwaymen - and typically are glorified in folklore. Kind of weird. Lots of songs and stories about them.There is a sense of Robin Hood-ness to them, although most were in it for private gain. Ned and the rest of the Kelly Gang in particular. Remember that the country was colonised by criminals and their keepers, and some people who could afford to buy large quantities of land and tell everyone else what to do...

So this has led to some weird conversations in the household....We know that stealing is bad, and that the police are good. The folklore, however, suggests otherwise. The first fantasy role-play based on this legend involved 'helping the police to get the robbers and put them in jail'. Since talking to his daddy over the weekend though, D'Arcy has reverted to the glorified version, and now will 'help the Kelly Gang get away from the police'. Odd, but not too surprising that the country's heroes are criminals.

On a completely different note...I had a birthday recently and on being reminded that it was coming up D'Arcy said "Yes. I was planning on getting you the 'Spooks' DVD (my fav TV show)...or perhaps a new house" I nearly cried.

In the end neither of these eventuated, but as they say "it's the thought that counts".

There is another meme doing the rounds "a photo of your child wearing a hat". Well, it's not exactly a hat, but I think it will do. One of our Thursday activity places has these cool dress ups, and Ned Kelly was the choice of last week. We caught the bus there 'cos petrol prices have hit the roof and then some, and I've had enough of spending $70/week. The bus ride was fun, but long, and oil prices are still rising, so I guess we'll be doing it a bit more often now...Well, it must be bed time...11.15 pm, and another big day tomorrow.

Reading Becky's blog got me doing quizzes... and here are the results of one for me...

You're Thailand!

Calmer and more staunchly independent than almost all those around you, you have a long history of rising above adversity. Recent adversity has led to questions about your sexual promiscuity and the threat of disease, but you still manage to attract a number of tourists and admirers. And despite any setbacks, you can really cook a good meal whenever it's called for. Good enough to make people cry.

Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

I should do it for D'Arcy and see where we get to...

You're Australia!

You're easy-going, relaxed, and yet somewhat tough and hardy all at the same time. You can appreciate culture, scuba diving, and even safaris. This makes you pretty interesting and intriguing to others, though also really unpredictable and even wild. Your knowledge of nature is unthinkable to most of those around you, even though your respect for it is sometimes less than perfect. People really like your accent.

Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

Well, I have to admit I rigged it once I could see where it was going to go after question 3 "no" to spicy food was followed by "i am a rock, i am an island" vs "no man is an island". it was obvious that the next answer to "do you feel like you're in exile from your true home" was yes and that a bar-fight was more exciting than a parliamentary fight... the first time I did it with him in mind I got China!

Thanks for some diversion BBFK...

and thanks to Lever for all the html help!

It's been really f@^$%*g cold here lately and a few days ago it snowed, so yesterday we drove up the mountain and played in it. Pete is throwing a snowball at me, while D'Arcy ducks to avoid being hit by the fallout. Great morning was had by all!

D'Arcy has been with his dad for a few days now, but came into the shop this evening. The feeling of looking up and seeing that gorgeous face and orange hair is indescribable. He leapt into my arms and enthusiastically showed me his fishing line and float, and told me stories of catching toadies off the wharf...

I do miss him when he's not with me, although I also like the space. I stay up too late when he's not here too, so the challenge is to figure out how to take care of myself, as well as D'Arcy, and to totally love the time we spend together.

Righty-Oh. Sorry for the delay. So our days were spent on the beach, digging holes, picking up coconuts, building dams, swimming....and then eating and sleeping...it was so hard.

A friend of mum's who became known as 'sunburned Pete' who was also staying in the house, visited a sugar cane farm and brought back a piece of cane for D'Arcy. He loved it, and we cut bits off it for him to chew on for the next week.

We made days trips to Tully and Innisfail. Tully was great. It's tiny. It has a thumping great sugar mill in the middle. Everyone wears gumboots, or no shoes. It has the highest rainfall in the country. The Big Gumboot (pictured) celebrates the highest rainfall ever (195something) 7.9 metres!!! That is a lot of rain. That is one of the reasons everyone in Tully wears gumboots. Three other reasons are that everyone works in the sugar mill, the banana plantations, or the sugar plantations. If you work in any of these locations you wear gumboots. Lots of Japanese tourists on working holiday visas.

D'Arcy's observations about Tully were "there are lots of people here without their shoes" and "there are lots of people here without their mums". Both of which were true. It is warm enough not to wear shoes, and it is small enough that you can be 10 and ride your bike around - to the shops, to visit your mates - without your mum having to chaperone you all the time.

We spent a day on Dunk Island, which was good, but a bit disappointing. The reef is a long way out, but there used to be isolated bits of coral colonies on the island which you could see when you were snorkelling 30 years ago. Now, however, those are all silted up and the coral is dead. This is true for large chunks of the reef. Agriculture on the mainland (sugar, bananas) has meant that there is a lot of run-off of fertilisers, and also of dirt, so the sparkling tropical water tends not to be so, especially after rain. This is true all up the coast. So in some ways we didn't do anything differently that day to what we would have done on the beach at Bingil Bay.

Innisfail is bigger than Tully, but not as much fun, for my money - I like smaller towns I think. But I did get to buy Harry Potter from the Target there for $27.95 instead of $45. We tended to go there more than Tully though - better shops, and Pete had his plane at the Airstrip there - but Tully, yay. And my favourite road sign was on the road to Tully. You'll need to check out the Flickr photos if you haven't already...

After some days of trying we finally saw a cassowary. We drove to the next beach round, where we knew there had been recent sightings, and found that there is a sanctuary and captive breeding program there. The second time, we were there at dusk, and sure enough there was a cassowary wandering around in the bush near the road, feeding, and not at all concerned about the human noise coming from the nearby houses. I guess it was used to hanging out there, near the captive breeders, and hence near the humans. It was pretty exciting. There are so few of them left in the wild - maybe 1600. There are certainly lots in PNG where they are also native, but hardly any here. LOts of them get killed on the roads - they are a bit silly, and they are attrated to the verges, where the rainforest fruits they eat are easier to see in the short grass on the edge. Plus, they are really aggressive birds, and people who wanted to look at them used to feed them from their cars - safari style - so a generation of them got used to running up to cars...Bad plan for the cassowaries. D'Arcy was pretty happy, but it was his plan all along to see one. They make the best poos. They eat fruits with big seeds, that pass through their digestive systems unharmed to be deposited on the ground in some useful compost, so they are integral in the regeneration of rainforests. I love them...

Near Innisfail is a crocodile farm where we went the day before we left, They had some captive cassowaries too, so we got to see some up close, behind a fence. D liked holding the snakes, but he also liked watching the crocs get fed. It was a pretty cool day, so the crocs were not very lively...they needed a fair bit of poking with the plastic rake, and tempting with chicken carcasses to move much.

One day, we saw Ulysses butterflies flapping around the garden....They rock. So big and silly, but so beautiful. Other interesting things in the wildlife stakes were the HUGE spiders, the geckos that live in houses and eat the mozzies, and the massive praying mantis that we watched on the outdoor chair...

We spent our last day of the holiday in Cairns with the lovely David and his household. They had moved up that week from Brisbane, so they were a bit disorganised, but enjoying living in FNQ. D'Arcy loves Davy, so it was great to see him, and spend time with him. Also good was that Davy's housemate Carmen had a big bucket of Lego. The day before we arrived they had found not one, but two snakes in their garden. One python and one poisonous. Yuck.

I didn't manage to eat nearly enough pawpaws, but did get some fabulous passionfruit. Tried black sapote (chocolate pudding fruit) but was disappointed there. Enjoyed carambola. Loved star apples...and of course it wasn't mango season...

There you go, I hope you all feel brought up to speed on our lovely tropical holiday. D slept all the way from Brisbane, and didn't even wake up when the plane landed.

It was bloody cold getting home, and I spent the next week trying to convince myself that I didn't really want to live there, and thinking perhaps I need to have a holiday there in December (when it rains all the time, is really hot and sticky, and you can't swim in the beautiful seas because of the incredibly poisonous jellyfish...and then there are the cyclones, and the crocodiles...) in order to realise this. I think I'm over it. almost. It would be lovely to be close to Davy though.