Kakadu Sprinkler Kids

...lot of fun, the running through the sprinkler bizzo. Not much of it happening in Melbourne these days....

Visiting Kakadu & Darwin

...or, as my 2 year old says, Visiting Cockadoodle and Darling...

Hey, it's true what they say, it's really hot up there! They call it their cold season. Mental note: do NOT visit over summer, it may kill you. As it was I loved it. Loved it loved it loved it. Felt amazing. Want to do it or something similar every year. Healthy thing, to get out of our damp damp winters.

The added attraction with Darwin for us was fabulous family members I haven't had the chance to catch up with for some time, so we did lots of dinners and markets with our awesome kin, who also put us up in their apartment, kidlets and all.

Strange thing, a city with hardly any historical buildings- as we all know, historically they were all either bombed to smithereens in ww2 or blown away in 74. I can't honestly say that the architecture is in general much chop (their parliament house is cool tho). But they have a dem fine waterfront, with a humongous wave pool. If it was Melbourne, a 33 degree day would see an outdoor inner city wave pool crowded out, but the crowds were pleasant rather than over the top. It's a little town, really, and 33 degrees is just another July day, nothing to go for a swim about...They also have a gorgeous sunset market at Mindil with heaps of performers, food, etc etc.

On to Kakadu: we stayed at a place called Cooinda, which is in the middle of the park. Awesome lagoon pool, with a waterfall, which is just as well, since all of the real rock pools and waterfalls are croc prone (and were too far to get to with small kids anyway). We learnt quickly to take ki sightseeing early morning or early evening and spend the hot middle of the day sleeping or at the pool&cafe/bar...

Stand out experiences: driving through the park late at night, past bush fires burning merrily next to the road ( lit deliberately by the indigenous owners & park rangers). Territorians shrug & are confident their patchwork burn off policies have been working since before the word policy was introduced , courtesy of the local aboriginal tribes. Us Mexicans have a different modern relationship to fire in national parks. It creeped me out.

Yellow Waters Billabong is a World Heritage listed wetland. Husby said "I feel as if someone's crept in just before we got here and strategically placed truckloads of animals around our tour, because it feels impossible to believe that there's really this many animals wandering around freely anywhere, let alone in front of us".

Wot else? Rock paintings, lookout points, buffalo, crocs, spending an entire 7 days in the company of my family without us killing each other....And the kids got to run through a sprinkler. What with ten years of drought and water restrictions I don't think ever of my kids has ever seen a water sprinkler before let alone got to run through one. If I can download my photos I'll do just that.

Book/s review: Hearts of Gold (Catrin Collier)

Blimey Mavis, I got all caught up in historical fiction during moi holidays. There's a looong series of these books, all set in Wales pre and during WW2, in a town called Pontypridd (which is also in real life the birthplace of Tom Jones, but he has nothing to do with these novels). Anyways, they're better than average historical fiction and they're only a few bucks each via Kindle. Well written soap opera with evocative historical accuracy. I've had fun..You might too....7/10

Grumble.

"Youre not yourself at the moment", says husbot. " Youre grumpy. Complaining about your weight, for crissakes. Talking about going to a gym & dieting, what the hell. glued to the iPad. Not doing any of the things you normally do. That job of yours has you in highs and lows all of the time.."

Now, it might be, just might be,that the aforesaid grumpiness could be attributed to husbots continued inability to see dirty dishes without having them pointed out (and then I'm nagging). But he still has a point. I haven't been doing the things I normally do (like blogging). I do want to join a gym. And it's easy to be grumpy with your job when you've had a week hanging out with gorgeous northern cuzzies, swimming in a tropical lagoon and touring world heritage wetlands. Jobs don't usually match up to that kind of bizzo. But I still prefer myself chatting on here to ranting at my family about work in between breaking dirty dishes and throwing them in the bin before my hoarder of a husband can find them and try to glue them back together. And them leaving them for me to wash again.

So...
You two still around? How's work Betty? How's your veggie patch darth? Still up for September? :p

felicities and such

one week late, but never mind the bollocks. so anyway, teachers had a rest day on monday, so short week - in which a hausfrau naturally endeavours to cram as much of the 'can't do during school hols' stuff as poss.  leaving me here, at friday, finally with about 58 minutes free time before I retrieve the spawnies and plunge into materdom for the weekend.

I see some of you have been croc hunting and sipping mai tais in the damp tropics, others have been train spotting and not reading books with hausfrau friendly hunks in 'em.  all good - hope to hear more in due course.  I've been nowhere and haven't caught a train in months, but busy as blazes nevertheless.  kid#2 has her selective year 5/6 entry exam thingo next week so much practising on clock watchery and guessing.  kid#1 missed out on selective high by 2 points out of a possible 300.  he was actually cranky - which is impressive.  he's loathe to muster any sort of emotion as regards academics usually.  anyhoo, he gets another bite of the cherry given his high-ish ranking so he may end up at Big Bang Theory High after all.  blah blah. 

So now I'm waiting for Betty to text me about a coffee and chinwag :p

Hello Gorgeous Bloggers

....been in Kakadu
Stay tuned for a rant. Just got back, got back to work, hit the ground running. Give me a mo to catch me breaf .......