Fairies in the woods

 A Sunday morning walk along the Orara River.

We have chilly nights and mornings, but once the sun comes through the trees it transforms in a glorious day with temperatures in the twenties.

Unlike the hot and muggy Summer, these beautiful sunny Winter days are very tempting to get out and catch some sun.

Now the nights get colder, Fireweed is starting to show again. It’s a real pest in the area and thrives here, seed heads like dandelions get happily blown around. We don’t like to use chemicals, instead we go out with gloves and garbage bags every couple of weeks and pull it out, root and all. Last year we would have picked 40 garbage bags. It seems to be paying off, because this year not a lot comes up, that’s something, but until the pasture improves and the ground cover becomes denser, we are a sitting duck for all those weeds growing on the other side of the boundary fence.
No, that’s not me nagging about our neighbours, we are very fortunate with them. We all do what we can and will be the first to help each other out. Our next-door neighbour has been slashing the paddocks and forest maintenance track for us. The paddocks were overgrown waist high with blady grass, it’s nasty stuff and a fire risk. To keep mowing it should give room for other grasses to grow. Having paddocks around the house, will also become a bit of a firebreak. Now it’s only a matter of getting money saved up for a 800m fence and a couple head of cattle. Although our whole property is fenced off, we want to keep cattle out of the forest and the gully.
To bad that copping a double mortgage is leaving no room at all for savings for our very long wish-list...

Visitors

For a couple of days we had Stephan, Tim and Nadia over.

Our Tim was very much impressed that there was an other Tim, so much that he even offered his bed and slept in Sophies walk-in-closet during their stay.

It was great to catch up with Stephan after having not seen each other for years, Nadia and Tim offered to babysit while we went sightseeing in Grafton. The kids had a ball!

Nothing better then a good Aussie barbie to welcome visitors from overseas.

A meal with entertainment provided, everything to keep our visitors happy...

And the choice beach or mountains. It became Washpool NP in the World Heritage listed Gibraltar Range, not too many leeches this time.

Photo's are all by Nadia ten Wolde.

Springbrook NP

Natural Arch - World Heritage listed

Camping for a long weekend in Springbrook National Park. The bush camping was ideal but like most quite simple. We looked up many waterfalls, not only because they are just about the best you’ll ever see, but also a necessity to get your daily shower!

Picking native raspberries:

We did a couple of the shorter walks with the kids, so proud of them, they did so well.

Not only the waterfalls were there in abundance, so were the leeches and the ticks.

Long weekend

A long weekend: Visting friends at Mount Tamborine.

And camping along the beach (Fingal Head)

Mount Tamborine

Visiting our friends Sanne and Jaap in Mount Tamborine.

Grafton - we're home

We're done traveling, we're home.

We have ended the locum work with the Rural Doctors Network. Sander has signed up with the Queen Street Clinic in Grafton, where he'll start in a week or so.

While waiting for the paperwork to come through, we have some time off.

We're surrounded by National Parks, rivers and farmers. Grafton might call itself a city, really it's not more then a country town, just what we need. We're having a ball and have started looking for a house to buy. Until that time we're living in furnished accommodation in the centre of Grafton, my luck has it that it turned out to be above the Grafton School of Yoga. While Sander has found his luck with a new volleyball team.

Sanders mum, Evelien is over for 10 days, we're making the most of it: white water canoeing, rock climbing, bush walking, cinema and dinner for two. While the kids are having a superb time with "Oma". A holiday for all of us. All those rivers close by are fantastic for swimming and a picnic, no more crocs to worry about in this part of Australia!

Our "new" car.