Labour Day Weekend

Nate had Monday off from work for Labour Day, so we took advantage of the long weekend and stayed two nights in the Gold Coast hinterland to celebrate my birthday. We stayed in a resort in the Binna Burra section of Lamington National Park. It's about 30 km from the Pacific and 900 m above sea level. It was the first time in months that I've felt cold - it was wonderful.

Most people travel to this area for bushwalking. There are over 160 kms of walking trails and we managed to squeeze in about 12 kms. It is the one of the largest patches of subtropical rainforest in the world and has a lot of endemic flora.

Inspecting the leaves of the Antarctic Beech, Nothofagus moorei. Nate has described an insect species that occurs on this plant and the stand in Lamington NP is the northernmost occurrence of the plant in Australia.

Kweebani Cave - Aboriginal hiding spot from inclement weather.

Pademelon! This was the best picture I could get of this cute little marsupial that crossed our path early one morning.

We were so stoked to see these Frogmouths, or Froggies, as the locals call them. Do you see the one on the right has turned his head to look at us? They roosted on a stump just down from our balconey all morning. (Mom, are you jealous!?)


Our 'rustic' room. No tv, radio, internet, and we had a lovely Huntsman living in the shower door. It was great.

This spider scared the living daylights out of me. I pulled down the bathmat that was hanging over the shower door and she was underneath it! She stayed in that position for so long that I thought she was fake! She finally moved when we moved the door to take a shower.

Our resort's dining room at sunset. At dinner, we sat with a man who studies koala ecology for the National Parks in New South Wales. He told us he saw koalas during his walks in the park, but we didn't spot any.

Another sunset shot from the resort's BBQ area.

Queenslanders love Lord Lamington, their governor in the late 1800's. Not only is a beloved National Park named for him, but the cake pictured above is called a Lamington. It is a sponge cake dipped in chocolate and coated in dessicated coconut. Eaten with cream, of course, just like every other dessert here. This was our first delicious Lamington... the first of many, I hope.

Just like a real Australian! Eating cake with my tea!

Roxy used Daddy's hands as walking poles and held onto them for the duration of our hikes. She'll be ready for the John Muir Trail in no time....

Well, maybe we'll give her a few years...

On the way home we stopped at a roadside cafe and enjoyed a delicious pizza on their patio protected from a rainstorm. It was a fantastic weekend and a wonderful way to welcome my 30's!

Nate calls this my, "Hey! I'm 30!" picture.

We will definitely return to this park, but we will probably camp instead of staying at the resort - that was definitely a birthday treat.

Tickets purchased! (Let's hope the local cat burglars don't read our blog)

We've got tickets for our trip home in May. We'll be in California from May 22-June 6. Thanks to the weak Aussie dollar, we got a great deal on our tickets with Air New Zealand. Another bonus - because we are traveling with an infant, we get to sit in the front row of the plane (big planes have bassinets that fold down like a tray table from the dividing walls), so we can be the first ones off the plane (and the last ones to get on, which I think is a bonus)! I guess that's probably the only upside to being on a 14 hour plane ride with an infant.

(On a side note - Air New Zealand boasts that their customers can choose from 20 different diet-specific meals on their flights. I was perusing the list and right there with the Kosher and Gluten-free options was Seafood. Are they serious? It's like that joke, "I'm on a seafood diet...I see food and I eat it!")

The coconut crab - part of Air New Zealand's seafood meal?

We're flying down to Sydney in a couple of week to work out Roxy's citizenship at the U.S. Consulate. There is no permanent U.S. Consulate in Brissie, only an office that opens up a couple of times a year. They were supposed to open up in January, but pushed it back to April. If we wait until April to file paperwork for Roxy's citizenship, passport and SSN, then we might not get her passport to us by the time we need to fly out of the country. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we get her SSN before April 15th so that we can claim her on our U.S. tax return without a problem.

I don't want to post without another picture or two, so here you go:

The spider that lives next to our compost pile.

The peacock that lives in the food court at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

Those black splotches are some of the thousands of flying foxes that live just up the river on Indooroopilly Island. We see them flying every night at twilight and they're starting to visit the guava tree in our backyard. Nate found remnants of half-eaten guavas!

A couple of flying foxes just starting their night (picture taken from our back steps).

Thanksgiving, wildlife, signs of Christmas and baby update

Thanksgiving feast

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Friday with Nate's boss (an Aussie), his American wife and their kids. We had turkey, roasted veggies, stuffing and cranberry sauce. We made a rum raisin apple pie. Nate made the crust - we couldn't find vegetable shortening in the supermarket, so we had to make do with a block of lard - and I made the filling and put it all together. It was my first pie with a pastry crust and we ate it with vanilla ice cream.

Apple pie, ice cream, cheesecake, bottles of wine (emptied by the end of the night).

We are getting used to living in a house without screens and with large gaps between the floorboards and under the doors. We've got geckos living behind the fridge, plenty of bumbling beetles that come in for a visit and end up on their backs, unable to right themselves, and ringtail possums walking across the roof (possums haven't come in yet, but I saw one saunter across the carport roof about three feet from the open kitchen window).

The possums here are much cuter than their American opossum cousin:

(photos from Wikipedia possum page)

I had a big heebie-jeepie encounter the other night. After dinner, I saw a small beast scurry across the kitchen floor and towards the trash can. I figured it was just a (very fast-moving) cockroach. I turned on the light with Nate's cockroach-smashing sandal in hand and this is what I saw:

A lot bigger than it looks.

Yikes! Check out those chelicerae!

We grabbed our copy of the Wildlife of Greater Brisbane (thanks Pete and Penny!) and flipped through to identify this new visitor. It wasn't too hard to find it - it's the first species listed in the spider chapter because it's pretty common in households. It was a Brown huntsman spider. We are a spider-friendly household, so after shining a flashlight and bugging it for a while, we left it alone and minutes later, it scurried out the front door, just as it had entered.

We learned that the bite, although painful, isn't too venomous, but that if you squish it, the explosion could lead to a couple days of blindness. I can't imagine squishing something that size anyway!

Signs of Christmas are everywhere. Santa Claus is featured in every other TV commercial and there are fake trees popping up all over.

Brisbane's Christmas tree

The far more festive Poinciana trees are blooming all over town. I think they fit the season and climate much better than a plastic pine tree.

One of many blooming Poinciana trees in and around Brissie

Baby Update!
We had a ultrasound last week (required by the hospital) and the tech told us that bub is pretty big already - not fat, but with above average sized head and femurs (femora). She estimated that bub weighs about 3.5 kg (the same size as the turkey we ate for Thanksgiving). Bub certainly feels pretty big to me. I've got those long legs firmly planted in my ribs and that above-average head sitting right on my bladder. Really, really looking forward to finally meeting bub!

I'm starting to feel (and look?!) more and more like this:

Brisbane public transportation signage

Pregnant goat from the business end (as drawn by my grandmother)

We met our neighbors yesterday and found out that the mother/wife in the family is a former midwife at the hospital I will be attending. What are the odds?!

Here I am just this morning with two weeks to go:

Thank goodness for big t-shirts. The maternity shirts don't quite cover the belly anymore!

Nate (two weeks to go until daddyhood) showing off his sympathy belly - yeah right!