Three days in Oz

As you may have guessed, I'm way too busy having a holiday to blog constantly, but am taking a few minutes now to do so before you all think I've died or something.

We've been out and about quite a bit. On Monday, it was a bushwalk along part of the Great North Trail that runs from Sydney to Newcastle (160km, but we only did a few km near the house) for Gramps, me and grandkid. We spotted strange fungus, interesting plants, a river in a gorge, and a few hard-to-see birds, including the whip and lyre birds. Too cool! Photos were taken of many arb things, but that's what cameras are for. Later in the day we fed kookaburras, cockatoos, rainbow lorakeets and king parrots off the bedroom balcony. Wow...

Tuesday was a walk of another kind - our long-awaited mall-crawl. Unfortunately we had a mere 2 hours to check out 3 layers of shops, and didn't get further than one side of the promenade. But we DID see some pretty cool stuff. My son now has a wonderful winter jacket and pants, and lunch consisted of divine ice-cream, donuts and chips. Sometimes one has to splurge and forget all healthy living. We'll be back to check out the rest of the mall and buy some stuff we've seen and given thought to later this week. One thing one never sees in SA is pet-shops selling puppies, which I saw in this mall. They are the cutest things, going for astronomical prices, but I left feeling heartsore that these wonderful creatures had to spend their days behind glass, on shredded paper - no running, no loving, no nothing. I wanted to gather them all up and take them home to Real Life for Dogs.

Today it was off to Koala Park for Gran, me and grandson, while Gramps and his son (my one brother arrived yesterday) hit the driving range with their golf clubs. Took LOADS of pics of every creature we came across. Digital is so cool, you can happy-snap everything in sight, and I suspect I rivalled the Japanese tour group we came across for number of pics taken... :) Got to see my first dingoes, and nearly had a corella parrot take my nose off thanks to talking to it a bit too close.

This afternoon I had a hair appointment, which required a long, hard walk through the valley and up the other side. I gave Jess free reign to do an "extreme makeover" with my tired, and tired-of tresses. Unfortunately she really liked both the texture and colour of what I already have, so I only ended up with piles of layers, extra-curls (need to stock up on gel and hairspray to get the same effect at home!) and a suggestion that I don't do a thing to the colour. Here I was hoping to go back dramatically different, but it appears the best me is already what I've got. Ah well. I'll have to live with it I suppose. That was my first real haircut in many years (usually just take the scissors to it myself when it starts irritating me), and I think I'll keep it up in future.

Right now mom's out at the doctor (her hands are so swollen from chemo and she's coming up in sores everywhere, so has gone to have a hard word with her doc re steroid treatment as a counter-measure and leaving off chemo in favour of quality over quantity of life....), dad and brother are camera-shopping for him, and son's downstairs - yet again on the newly-discovered internet that keeps him busy for many hours each day. The galah parrot Dory is awaiting my shoulder while I tackle dishes and Fishbone the cat wants a scratch. Life is good on holiday!

And yes, someday there will be pictures, as soon as I can upload a few to Flickr.