The Kilimanjaro Journals

October Pictures

This past month we drove through the South Coast for a little weekend camping trip. It's a fairly nice little drive through these quintessential little Australian towns, like Gerringong, Culburra and Thirroul, which was D.H. Lawrence's home while he wrote his novel Kangaroo. 

Our first stop was to the Nan Tien ("Paradise of the South") Buddhist Temple. It's the largest in the southern hemisphere and features Japanese garderns, a pagoda and lots of cement buddhas. This one looked rather malevolent.

We camped at a small tourist park in Jervis Bay. The beach was just a short walk. Unfortunately the water is still too cold to get in. But it was gorgeous.

On the way home we drove through the scenic Kangaroo valley. A beautiful stretch of vineyards and cattle farms.

We stopped off in Budderoo National Park to see the water falls.

Waterfall.

Cate Blanchett, AC/DC and Granny Smith apples: just a few of the many contributions Australia has made to the world. The first Granny Smith apples were cultivated just a few blocks from our house. Our city had a big festival for them last weekend.

Our first 'Roo spotting of the year.

Seeing Nick Cave in Australia is like seeing the Beatles in Liverpool or seeing Fela Kuti in Nigeria. It was awesome!

Facial Hair Rock!!

September in Pictures

(As always, click to enlarge.) With September winter was officially over. We did some spring cleaning and have been spending a lot of time out on the deck. Slip loves it out there and spends most of the day laying in the sun and sniffing the breeze.

Joe took her to the vet for her annual shot. Its a shot to protect her from one of the two rabbit-killing diseases carried by mosquitoes. There is no legal vaccine for the other. (Anybody know of any black market ones?) The Australian government started this war on rabbits in 1950 because of severe over population.

Who would want to hurt this baby??

A couple of weekends ago we met some friends in
the city. To make a day of it we decided to take the Ferry from Meadowbank (5 minutes drive from us) to Circular Quay, where the Opera House lives!

The ferry only costs about a dollar more than the train and takes about the same amount of time. A pretty nice alternative!

Last weekend was a three-day weekend (Monday was Labour Day) and we planned to go camping. Unfortunately there wasn't much planning involved and the national park we wanted to stay at was fully booked. Instead we ended up at The Entrance, a small coastal town famous for its pelicans.

On an early morning walk along the beach we spotted this white-faced heron hunting its breakfast. It was successful! Not two meters from us we saw him chop and squish this lizard to death and swallow it head first. Cool!

We made an early lunch on the public barbecues and then settled in the grass with our books. At 3pm the pelicans started to arrive for their daily feeding. A fish shop started this tradition decades ago and the birds keep coming back. Pelicans are huge, oddly prehistoric looking birds, and there were masses of them. A crowd gathered around as the Official Pelican Feeders came out and gave us a show worthy of any zoo. Afterwards we grabbed some ice cream and packed up for the ride home.

On the road back to Sydney we drove through Ku-ring-gai National Park and noticed a lot of smoke in the air. Surely enough on the news that night were the first bush-fires of the season. Oddly, often started by arsonists.

So its looking like its going to be a hot one this summer! We're holding on to these last few days of spring as long as we can. Slipper may not like it outside on the deck as much once it hits 40ºC!