the bunyip

Though we've become expert keepers of the secret, it's bloody hard when everyone is having babies.

Yep, we are growing ourselves a little bunyip!! I am nearly 15 weeks!

It's been hard to believe it's real, considering my general wellness. Though the exhaustion, ravenous hunger, sore boobs, canine sense of smell and cravings for orange juice (and a nausea-induced pie and chips binge) are giveaways. Oh and the small bump which I can now tell is not just gas and bloating. Which has swallowed my waist and half my wardrobe along with it.

It all became a bit more real at the 12 week scan. According to the scan lady, our bunyip's a 'sleeper'... it had its head buried in the placenta and would not budge, despite her furious prodding. Not even after the doctor was called in and made me do star jumps in an untied gown! It dug it's heels in (like someone I know) and showed the camera its little bum (that one's from the father's side - not kidding).

According to the genetic counsellor at the scan place (Betsy Peach - how cool is that name? - perfect for a fast-talker with a thick Yankee accent), I have the lowest risk rating possible for chromosomal abnormalities. According to Betsy's computer's calculations, my risk rating (slightly elevated to start with because of my age) based on the scan and blood test is on par with that of a 15 year old! Woot!!

Am also feeling pretty chuffed that I've kept up walking to and from work every day: an hour all up, and getting longer (in duration not distance!). Though the walks home are becoming harder, mostly because of the hills and because I'm totally exhausto at end of day. Lucky for me, K walks in to meet me and pushes me up the hills while administering back rubs. :)

I got a second sneaky look at the bunyip yesterday at an echocardiography appointment (for a 'flow murmur' which is apparently a harmless and pretty common thing in pregnancy) - and it was waving its arms and legs and rolling all around! So maybe not a sleeper.

Well, this'll test if anyone's still reading this thing!

#madeinvictoria #janfebmarchaprilmayjunejulyaugseptfast

fillings and gaps

Poor neglected blog. Thank goodness for Firefox's password memory thingie, as I doubt my own would have got me any editorial privilege here. If you've stumbled here from somewhere else, you might like to keep stumbling to my other blog where my online energies go (as opposed to this one where they clearly don't).

I guess a small bit of updating is in order. *Applies time-lapse technique.* So. December, we visited Uluru. Pictorial evidence here. Christmas, Binginwarri, shamefully scant pictorial evidence here. (Oh and finally upgraded my Flickr account - way less commitment than setting up a new photo blog... refer first point.) Stayed dry through the floods and gagged on my overuse of the word 'surreal'. Baked a little, and found myself inadvertently on a small bandwagon. Got totally addicted to Twitter, various blogs and my mate R's little bub (not in any particular order of course). Went swagging in the rain at Brunswick Heads. Despaired the lack of sunshine. Saw Sufjan Stevens, most awesome Christmas present ever. Whistlestop visit to Melbourne to see Mum in hospital. Started yoga classes after the longest absence. Discovered a genius recipe for steamed chicken.

On the work front, I moved back to the old policy job, after the person who's seat I warmed for a year in manager-land returned. The old-new job has proved thusfar better than expected. Enjoying being back in the policy head space, and actually doing something quite different to what I'd previously done (win). In other work news, the Uluru job didn't eventuate :( ... which is not to say it mightn't yet. We're staying put in Brisvegas for now and K is continuing to build the web empire. Anyone need a WordPress site built or hosted?

There was probably some other stuff in there too. Oh yeah, I finally twisted someone's arm to play Scrabble with me!

Well, there is some other news, but that deserves its own post. ;)

hell or high water

Inner Brisbane, January 29, 1974. Bruce Postle/The Age

I wasn't quite sure how to start this post. It's been a while and I'm out of rhythm here. But today feels quite surreal. So I'll go with that. 

Went to work this morning after having yesterday off - sick all weekend with throat lurgie that migrated to chest. Anyway. Woke up nauseous but optimistic so K (now in lurgie-dom too) dropped me in. We'd been shocked last night to see images of the devastation in Toowoomba. Early reports were saying the floodwaters were headed for Brisbane and these would coincide with a king tide. It wasn't talked up, but K had picked up some stuff from the stupid-market and fuelled the car. At work I was whisked into a meeting straight off the bat. But after that, everything seemed to grind to a halt. It was all flood talk, people checking the news, calling family, wondering whether to leave. News reports were now saying the flooding would rival that of the mythical 1974 floods.

A colleague walked by my desk and recalled a photograph from the '74 floods of someone diving into the water from an awning at the old Festival Hall, where high rise apartments now stand in its place. 'Festival Towers' are just round the corner from my work. 

Albert Street, CBD, January 1974.
Copyright State Library of Queensland, author unknown

Our executive director came round several times telling people to leave if they needed to. I encouraged my team to leave and made sure everyone was OK to get home. Just after lunch, I left, worried that if I stayed it might be difficult to get home, which is across the river. I'd already seen photos on the ABC news site of the river encroaching on Davies Park at West End, just down the road from us. 

I was one of the last to go. It was eerie outside, the middle of the day but like peak hour with everyone heading home. Traffic was banked up. People were running. Rain fell from low grey skies - as it has for several weeks months. I wondered whether I'd get home my usual way, across the Goodwill pedestrian bridge. I always walk, even in the rain. (My pack-cover and wet shoes have become normal.) Anyway, the busway on the southside had closed at 12pm. K came to meet me, as he usually does. We walked along the river in the Botanical gardens. There's a looped boardwalk out through the mangroves there we often take on the way home. It was underwater. Surreal.

The Goodwill bridge was fine and gave us a birdseye view of the now very high and fast-flowing river. Full of debris. Gangways to floating CityCat pontoons were angled upward to meet the river, instead of their usual downwards tilt. The pontoons were at the very top of the pylons. We wondered what would happen to the pontoons as the river continued to rise beyond the pylons. I've since heard people say they've seen pontoons unloosed and flowing down the river.

At home we hovered over our computers, where K was streaming some tap to a police scanner. I thought Twitter might explode and cursed people jamming up the qldfloods hashtag. Tweets were running so fast as to be an illegible blur on TweetDeck. Anna Bligh held her first press conference at 3pm. I fell in hero-love. She was calm, in control and sympathetic. Clearly teary, even. Twitter subsequently went mad again in praise of Premier.

Tonight we helped K's brother's girlfriend and her sister move their furniture and stuff to the top floor of their townhouse. They (and their poor little spooked kitty) are staying at K's brother's place which is probably one of the highest points in Brisbane. Leaving their place it was odd to see people still sitting inside neighbouring townhouses watching TV. Everyone in their street had been warned to move cars etc to higher ground! People are strange.

So tonight we are fine but feel kind of useless. I heard that 75 percent of Queensland is underwater. Our place is safe and will continue to be so - high on the hill. Everything is damp as it has been for days and we have garbage bags over a window that doesn't shut properly. But we have water in jerry cans and non-perishable food. And internet connections, for now.

I have no idea whether I'll be able to get to work tomorrow. I suspect it's not such a good idea.

All is eerily quiet. For now.

greener pastures

It's been so long that I've gone beyond filling in the gaps. So I'll just start with now. Now, we are preparing to visit Uluru. This time next week, we'll be out there for a mini-break. Well, the break is for me. K has an interview for a ranger job. For a range of reasons it makes sense. If When he gets it, he'll move out there, working a ten days on-four days off roster. I'll stay here for the time being, til we see how things pan out. We'll see each other once a fortnight. It will be hard. But good, in many ways. I'm excited by the prospect of getting to discover the place. I have not been there since my first visit as a sixteen (?) year old. And excited to be moving forward with life-plans. K, I think, will enjoy the return to a social workspace, after months of web design from the spare room studio. And it will put us in a position to do something about our renewed case of Tassie Mania.

Indeed, it seems the stars are screaming change. At least two group-lings we know are moving to Melbourne town. (And hey, if they must move, what better place?) Mum is finally getting some traction with the medical world, after a fruitless year. For me, the current work gig is coming to an end, and I can't help but embrace the change. I'll be back to my policy post. And if all goes well in the desert, moving out there.

Anyway, that's probably all I've got for now... we are off on this very wet, blustery eve to hear Joel Salatin talk. Which I just know is going to make the Tassie Mania bug latch on.

a general malaise

Perhaps not quite the headline you'd expect after the preceding tales of love and seaside holidays. If, in fact, you were expecting anything at all, following an entirely silent September here. Life's been roaring along. But something's amiss. I've not been able to quite put my finger on it til today. Self-diagnosis: a delayed bout of post-holiday blues. Fuelled along by an unusually rainy and grey Spring. I've never seen it rain like this... nor missed the sun so much in Queensland.

As usual, work is the nub of my irk. The return from holidays was not so bad... in fact, work was entirely reasonable for a couple of weeks. In the post-holiday glow, I conceded that I would never be entirely on top of it all. Seven peeps to manage, a shirtload of work and an information environment that makes my multi-tab webtrawling a playground. Nevermind that it is kind of a playground. Anyhoo. So the work is amping up. And I've come to a disturbing realisation. Sheepishly, kind of late in the piece. After most of this year warming this particular roost, I've realised that perhaps I don't really like it so much. I don't want to be responsible for other people any more. I don't want to continuously struggle to stay on top of the ridiculous information flow. I'm sick of churning out god-damn widgets. And I hate having to always be 'on', no matter how crap I feel. There's no checking the news, attending to personal errands or taking time for lunch. Sure, I was happy to give it a whirl, and hang about for a bit while they needed me. But now, on the cusp of potentially yet another extension, I feel very much backed into a corner. Like I've been stealthily groomed for it. Maybe I'm naive. I should have anticipated. It gets worse. Next week I am being the Director (bah!) and have to go to Sydney to represent Queensland at a national thingy. Sheesh. I do not feel the love.

Anyway, it all still hangs. Perhaps I'll get to go back to my policy post. I'm trying to remember why I latched the desk shackles back on, chill out a bit and enjoy all the great stuff outside work. But still. I went to the fabulous Women of Letters last week (my cousin said go, then K's sister invited me: fated?). The premise is that a bunch of talented writerly folk read letters they have penned to their most treasured posession. It was funny, inspiring and revealing, and totally worth it even though it made me feel old. (Especially so when I heard the next day that, after I'd bailed, K's sister who is an editor partied on into the eve with the booky-cool crowd, performing a karaoke duet with Marieke Hardy!) Anyway, moving on. Reflecting on the evening's monologues, I realised... I could write like that! I can write like that! I did write like that, once! What has happened to my writing?! Of course, thus ensued my own monologue, along the lines of 'what am I doing with my life, I'm creatively driven, why am I still chained to this god-boring public service desk? Gah! Double gah!! Holy GAH!!!'.

And that's where I'll end this little rant. It's way past my bedtime. And I'm 'on' first thing tomorrow. Any advice about what to take for a general malaise would be much appreciated.

winter beach wanderlust

We headed south along the coastal road from Brisbane, clutching a map and our weary souls. Excited not to have a destination. And to be taking our first holiday together. ♥ We spent nearly three weeks swagging, mostly in national parks. Oh, the beauty. Spectacular! And places I hadn't heard of. Bundjalung, Yuraygir, Crowdy Head, Hat Head and many more. 

What I loved? Being present for dawns and dusks. Open fires and woodsmoke. The chill, clean salt air. Horizons. The endless magnificence of sky. Its shifting constellations. Observing the passage of time by the moon, from new to full. Watching dunes dance with coastal heathland, wetland dance with the beach, playing out a milennia-long negotiation of habitat borders. Wildflowers coming into bloom. Everywhere, the heady scent of Acacia longifolia. Banksias so fulsome, like baby echidnas up trees, bristled snouts pointing skyward.

I positively lusted for the subtlety of colour in the landscape. The windswept coastal daisy, bloom and foliage so pale as though its colour's been blown out of it. Driftwood like dirty snow. Creamy paperbarks and late afternoon ice-pink rockpools. Opalescent shorelines. Midnight blue lakes and barely-purple dune shadows. Amber-rimmed pandanus and casuarina silhouettes. The cool molten twilight sky.

We saw whales - indeed we were close enough, from a headland in Hat Head National Park, to hear one breathe. Saw another crashing its fluke amorously into the water. And met one poor fellow, long dead and washed up on a beach at Lake Arragan. Came face to beak with a coastal emu. And stumbled one night by the campfire directly into the gaze of a tawny frogmouth. Watched pelicans coast. Dolphins surf. Saw a turtle poke its head up for a fleeting minute in our world. And magpies, perhaps the most polite of the sociable birds (and who uncannilly seemed to be named 'Michael' everywhere we went), would join us for breakfasts, sometimes chortling a morningsong.

We slept and rose early, calmed by the never-sleeping surf and the whispering breeze through casuarinas above our heads. Watched meteors slip cross the sky from our swag. Found mystical middens, their powder-white-and-purple shells, mosaic-like amongst water-rippled dunes. Picked up heart-shaped rocks. Saw an eternity of designs in the humble shell. Our quiet insignificance, witness to ancient rhythms.

We didn't venture far from the coast. But mused much upon the ubiquitous concrete abominations to nature, sprawling low brick mansions with kept lawns and sparkling four-wheel drives. Huddled together. Ugly, inward looking, and utterly out of place. In ironic denial of the coastal landscape they intrude upon.

What we relished, simple scenes of oyster farms, dirt tracks and fibro shacks. Our little lunches of sardine sandwiches. Billycan dinners. Unlatching ourselves from clocks and computers. After nearly three weeks, our bones chilled by aberrant north-westerlies, our souls renewed. Toes numbed by dawn and dusk wanderings across cold sand, hearts alive. 

The days went quickly. We got as far south as Hawks Nest, on the northern shores of Port Stephens. We'd love to have gone further, and would have - indeed will, in time! As much as 'we love camping' (our catchcry every time we fumbled with crud in the back of the car), we were happy to return to our cosy little house at the 'Hill. With a renewed appreciation of the present. And a scribbled note to self, which, amongst other things, aims to remind me to take greater care with the work/life divide, including taking holidays more often.

As for photos, well, there are a few. I've been kicking the wheels on a few Wordpress themes, and thinking about a photoblog. But perhaps, given my awesome decision-making prowess, I'll start by upgrading my neglected Flickr account.

One more week of holidays. To dream and do. Til next time. Which won't be so long.

a love story

Oh, there is so much to catch up on. K quit his job, and I've just started five weeks of humungously overdue holidays. Last week we bought an old Landcruiser (I officially own two cars at the same time - woe, the excess!!), which we've been furiously kitting out - K built us some nifty storage boxes which double as a base for our swag, so we can sleep in the car if it's cold/wet. We've restocked on all the tools and camping gear that went AWOL in the back of Barry. We hit the coastal road south in about ten minutes! But that can all wait. First, I'm going to recount a little love story. Because it's worth sharing... even though the photo-feature is already out there.

Flashback, January 2009. I was house-sitting in the boondocks of Brisvegas. Minding a demanding cat. Had just returned from Gippsland to city life, and to 'work' after my little wanderings and forced spell of introspection. I spent nights cooking tofu, web trawling, and feasting upon the entire Love My Way boxset. During the web trawling, I *fast forwards a little bit* happened upon a guy. Who lived in a bus called Alice. Looked like a bushie. Spoke a desert language. Created amazing landscape photographs. And was migrating from the outback to the coast, just south of Bris-vegas. I emailed him. He emailed back. I emailed him again... and all went quiet.

I moved into a little house on the 'Hill. I went to work, went to yoga. Kept cooking. Unpacked a little. Relished domesticity, and being still.

Fast forward six months. Not looking, I found him again. And this time he wrote back, many times. I counted eleven thousand words in one week. So I invited myself for a visit! We met on Sunday 12 July 2009, at Tallebudgera. We had a nervous cup of tea in the bus. Then went kayaking on the creek. Further upstream than he'd ever been. (Unknowingly, I almost killed him - we'd left without food...) After emergency first-lunch back in the bus, we wandered into Burleigh for fish and chips on the foreshore. At dusk we had beers on the beach. And at twilight, walked back through the Burleigh headland, where our path was lit by fireflies. Dazzling.

It was a huge day. Driving back to Bris-vegas, my whole being raced. I had some mad inexplicable conviction that I was either going to marry him, or he was going to break my heart. Later that week his brother moved in around the corner from me. Of all the burbs in Brisbane! So we met for the second time, and it was sealed.

So much has happened since then. It has been as difficult, at times, as it has been wonderful. We got over some early speed wobbles. And moved on to the greater challenge: longeivity. I can only think to explain it like this. Imagine a forest of really old trees. They survive because they've put down deep roots. Maybe buttresses too. And they need space from other old trees, for the roots to absorb the goodness from the earth, and for the leaves to draw sunlight and moisture. Now imagine, if two of the trees tried to share the same space. How to refashion their trunks to fit the other? How to each get what they need from the world? Maybe it's not a perfect analogy, but it makes perfect sense to me.

A few weeks ago, we went back to Burleigh to celebrate our first year. (We count the day we met as our anniversary.) Sunrise at Currumbin Rocks (above). Beachside carousing. And fish and chips on the foreshore. Where we made it official. The betrothal, I mean. Can you believe the Relics already knew?! And with that, completing the loop on that mad, knowing conviction.