Blogspot now lets you add photos

I've just discovered that you can upload photos to blogger. Previously I have had to find somewhere else to put them and then link to them from here but now I can upload them directly. So happy with this am I that I have decided to share with you a photograph I took of Toby last Saturday, running down the beach to jump in for a dip in the ocean.

Kookaburras and Clacking Evidence

"Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree, merry merry king of the bush is he."

What do you know, after bemoaning the fact that the kookaburras rarely grace our neighbourhood with their presence, both here on this blog a couple of days ago, and last night on the phone to "me mam", I heard a kookaburra this morning. Such a lovely sound, unfortunately drowned out a little by the surrounding clack-clacks. I only heard him call once and then again but further away so clearly the clack-clacks were too noisy for him too.

I have revisited my presumption that clack-clack is female. I'm so confused by all the different types of birds around our way and the different calls they have at different times of the day and for varying reasons, that there is no way I can tell for certain that the little bird I saw with her chick was Mrs Clack.

I also think I may have translated incorrectly, I think what is in fact being said is "this is my tree so stay out of it. And by the way, I was awake first this morning!" which leads me to the conclusion that it is a territorial call and therefore more likely to be coming from a male bird.

After sleeping late two mornings in a row (I was awake before Mr Clack, as were a number of other clack-clacks over the past couple of days), my bird was the first awake again this morning. Bless! Yesterday I recorded him so that I could share his beautiful singing with you all.

Play or download an audio recording in MP3 format.
Or, you can listen to (or download) a smaller .wma format.
Or, go ahead and view or download the movie so you can get the full effect, see just how dark and early it is and experience my blurry tired eyes. The movie takes a little while to load so please be patient.

If ANYONE can identify the bird by its call I'd really love to know what it is so please leave a comment.

Tick-Tick Joop Joop Click-Clack

I haven't started this week's post with a quote because the title is, in fact, a quote. I assume you're wondering what that means and what sort of crazy person would say such a thing so you mightn't be surprised to learn that it was not a human who uttered this nonsense. It was, in fact, a bird. And in Birdish it's quite a profound statement. It means "wake up. I am the [king/queen] of the tree and I command you to wake up. It's a beeeeauuutiful day and you're about to miss it, lazy bones." Or words to that effect.

And how do I know this? Well, I've been living with it on and off for the past 18 months. Let me introduce you to Mrs Clack (formerly, but not affectionately, known as The Clack-Clack Bird until we discovered her with a youngster and realised she was probably female, not, as we had previously thought, male). Mrs Clack is very fond of the tree outside my bedroom window and is fast becoming the bane of my life. At around 5.15am most mornings (the precise time changes according to the time of year because obviously birds go by the amount of daylight rather than the actual time but suffice to say there isn't very much daylight when Mrs Clack starts), Mrs Clack makes herself comfortable in the tree and then begins her call.

Tick-Tick Joop Joop Click-Clack.

The tick-tick bit is a little like the sound of dice rattling in someone's hand. Or, remember those percussion instruments we used to play at school which were marrow-shaped and hollow with corrugated wood on the outside and a stick you'd use to stroke it with? Kind of like that. A rapid sound. That's the warning that she's about to start.

The Joop Joop bit is fairly self-explanatory and nearly always precedes the Click-Clack and sometimes appears on its own. The Click-Clack sound is like the most horrendous squawking sound, more like a screetch really. Like Creek-CRAAAWK. Like fingernails down a black-board.

Mrs Clack doesn't seem to like incredibly wet, ridiculously windy or terribly hot weather. I seem to recall that she doesn't think much of particularly cold weather either. So around this time of year she reappears from wherever she's been over the summer and reclaims her position in my tree. And then clacks. Loudly. At 5.15am. Every morning. I am very tired.

On Sunday morning I was determined to lie in and catch up on some much needed sleep so I went outside and shook her tree. She got quite a shock and flew away. I smugly went back to bed but within minutes she was back, clacking away. I went out and tried to shake the tree again but this time she was ready for me. Knowing quite well that she was perfectly camouflaged she stayed very still and quiet, pretending that she wasn't there. Of course I knew that she was because I'd heard her, and certainly hadn't seen her fly away but try as I might, I couldn't get her to budge. Within minutes of me retiring to my bed she was clacking away again. I resorted to ear plugs, shutting the window and putting the fan on.

I'm still a bit tired but I'm starting to get used to her and I'm resigned to the fact that I have to wake up at 5.15 every morning. This is fine so long as I go to bed at 9.30pm. The problem I have with Mrs Clack is her inconsistency. She clacks you for months and then nothing. Peace and quiet. This goes on for months and then you get used to it and before you know it she's back. This morning I awoke at exactly 5.15am - before Mrs Clack. It was overcast, you see, so she got confused by the time. But she's got me into waking up at that time now and this will be my life for the next few months until I either figure out how to get rid of her or the weather turns too cold and she decides she'd like a cosier tree to clack in.

Kookaburras: cartoony
with funny dreams.

People living elsewhere in Australia are awoken by kookaburras. This usually happens in places known as The Bush, which actually means The Countryside. Kookaburras are very jolly birds. They look like cartoons of themselves and they have very funny dreams that means they wake up laughing. "Koo-koo-koo-hahahahahaha". They're noisy but they've never bothered me when I have heard them. It's a nice sound to lie in bed to. Unfortunately we don't have very many kookaburras where we live. We have lots of clack-clack birds though and they position themselves in various trees around the neighbourhood. Sometimes another bird wakes up before Mrs Clack and you can hear it somewhere in the distance. This can be beneficial as it can give you a chance to don ear-plugs, shut the window and put on the fan (such is becoming my morning ritual) before she gets started and wakes you up good and proper.

I'm not sure what kind of bird Mrs Clack is - I rarely see her and birds are hard to identify by their call alone - but someone once suggested a little friarbird and whilst this isn't her as she's much prettier, it's the nearest thing I've found so far to her call. Check it out and see how you'd like to listen to this constantly for about 15 minutes (feels more like 60!) every morning - and then multiply it by 100 because Mrs Clack sounds much worse: Little Friarbird call.

Tomorrow morning I will attempt to go outside and record Mrs Clack's call so that I can put a link to it in my next post and share it with you all. Watch this space!

Wild Weather

"It's raining men! Hallelulah it's raining men! Every specimen! Tall, blonde, dark and lean, rough and tough and strong and mean...."

It isn't raining men. It never was raining men. And I thank the Lord for that because I imagine going out in a manstorm would be rather perilous. Imagine being hit by a man landing on you from a great height. In the song the men came from The Heavens and everyone knows that The Heavens are up a great height so I think you might die if a man fell on you from that far. Certainly the man would die. No, really it doesn't bear thinking about and I am very glad it is just a silly song and not a freak of nature that occurs occasionally. That really would be climate change gone mad.

Straddie Main Beach in wild weather.

I started with that line for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's about rain (kind of. Perhaps "take me dancing naked in the rain. Cover me in ecstacy" would be a better choice but that's far too provocative for a family-friendly blog such as this) and we have had some wild weather lately that included lots of rain. Secondly, after last week's tribute to Jennifer Rush I decided it would be nice to start as many blogs as possible with either a song or a quote.

So, what was so wild about the weather? I imagine that I hear you ask. Well basically it was a non-tropical cyclone with lots of wind, lots of rain and huge waves. And what better place to go during such an event, than a beautiful tropical island in Moreton Bay. Yes, that's right, we all decided to go to Straddie (North Stradbroke Island) and an interesting experience it was too.

We drove down to the ferry on Friday night in absolutely bucketing rain. We caught the ferry over in absolutely bucketing rain and a fair bit of wind. We drove to the house in the rain. We woke up the next morning. It was raining. And a bit windy too. And then, the rain stopped. It was as dark as an English winter's day but it wasn't raining and so we decided to go for a swim. As you do. "We're on holiday and I don't care what the weather is like, I'm damn well going for a swim!"

The boys decided to surf. The girls watched them from the hilltop overlooking the beach and got a little bit freaked out when they realised that those little things that resembled pin heads floating in a bowl of tumultuous washing up water, framed by waves the size of a frying pan (we're sticking with the washing up bowl here although I concede that it's not a very good metaphor) were actually their friends, boyfriends and husbands. They jumped off the rocks and within seconds were pushed a kilometre up the beach and back to the shore. The girls heaved a sigh of relief. The boys ran back to the rocks and jumped off them again. The girls freaked out again. The boys were pushed up the beach and back to shore. The girls heaved a sigh of relief and ran down to the beach for a swim. Well, more like a frolic really. Swim here and you'll end up on Fraser Island (which, for those that don't know, is a long, long way north of Straddie) before you know it. No, definitely not a good idea to take your feet of the bottom.

By the time the girls got to the beach the boys had disappeared. Then Mindi and I, saw our respective partners right at the top end of the beach heading towards rocks with huge waves bounding towards them. We decided to run down the beach and over the headland to see where they ended up but the sweep was so strong we couldn't keep up. They ended up two beaches away and by the time we got there they'd run back down to jump in off the rocks again.

No one caught any waves that day and later in the paper we read that a wave buoy measured a 17m wave. That's bigger than a telegraph pole! And I can believe it. I saw the surf lifesaver's boat go over a wave the size of a house.

Later that day we walked around the gorge in 60 knot winds (that's what they felt like anyway). The broken off branches and uprooted trees freaked me out a little and I started to wonder if this was one of the least clever things I'd done. The gorge itself was like a wild pot of double cream. Mark and Toby couldn't help themselves and they jumped in, wishing that they were accompanied by babes in bikinis. Every now and then a huge wave would come hurtling up the gorge and completely swamp them both in foam. The waves splashed up the sides of the gorge making it look like it had been whitewashed. The coolest thing was the fluff that was blown off the top and then floated up and away like snow falling backwards. The wind was so intense we found bits of snow-foam in amongst the foliage right around the other side of the headland as we ran back to the car.

We had a fun party that night with lots of food and for those of you that bother to check the photos out I feel I must point out that I started the whole Pumpkin Head thing. Some of you won't find that too hard to believe. There is even a photograph of me actually balancing the Pumpkin on my Head. No, really there is. I just don't have a copy of it. But I'll get one and I'll prove it to you.

The next morning we awoke to a flood in the hallway and no power. Then we remembered the fun we'd had the night before, throwing roti breads at the ceiling fan like frisbees and watching it getting sliced into pieces that ricocheted off in all directions. My, cleaning up was fun!

The photos are in the usual place, but in case you need a reminder go to http://snapper.cvsdude.com/gallery/linsb/v/StradbrokeIsland_MadWeather/

That's the Power of Ten

"Cos I am your ladeeeeeeeee, and you are my ma-a-an, whenever you reach for me, I'm gonna do all that I ca-an. We're heading for somewhere, somewhere I've never been. Sometimes I can't fight it but I'm ready to learn about the Power of Ten".

Ah! The dulcet tones of that 80s one-hit-songstress Jennifer Rush. Probably not very accurate lyrics, and slightly modified in recognition of the ten year birthday of the University of the Sunshine Coast, which, in case you hadn't guessed, is where I work. The uni kicked off its (hopefully) year long celebrations last week with a staff photo and a party. The photo consisted of us all dressing in white shirts and then standing in the middle of a grassy area of campus in the shape of a ten, waving our lovely new free (as a thankyou for participating) Power of Ten* hats for an hour in the heat of the midday sun (thankfully there were a few clouds) whilst various media and the vice chancellor flew over us in a helicopter.

The party was held the following evening on campus, outside the ICT "cheese-grater" building where I work, which was quite risky as it is a bit stormy at the moment and there was an impressive rain storm in the afternoon whilst they were setting up. Thankfully the weather held off, although organisers weren't quite brave enough to place tea lights in the Chinese-style lanterns they'd hung around the place, on account of the wind. There was free food served from Asian-style street carts, lots of free booze and, of course, yummy chocolate birthday mud-cake, each with a little number 10 on it (cute). There were a few little chats and a documentary about the uni and how it all started which was quite interesting. It's a very small university so I knew most of the people on the film. There was also an exhibition in the art gallery of aerial photographs of the uni at various stages of development, including the big 10 pic we'd taken the day before. And we all got a free commemorative book, which was nice. The last few boozers were just leaving at around 9pm when the heavens opened and it bucketed down on the poor techies who risked life and limb to clear away all the electrical equipment.

Meanwhile, I've been keeping busy at work. I'm still dying to sort the study out but have spent little time at home. We popped down to Brisbane a couple of weekends ago for Mindi's birthday. Had a yummy meal and caught up with some friends we haven't seen for a while. Then last weekend it was off to Highfields, near Toowoomba, to see Toby's parents. The house was a bit quiet without his dog, Tango running to greet us. Unfortunately Tang died last year after being poisoned by a tick and this was our first visit since then. Tomorrow we're off to North Stradbroke Island (also part of Mindi's birthday celebrations. This girl beats me with dragging it out. But then she is only 24 so birthdays are still worth celebrating and, to be fair, her boyf surprised her with the meal. Tried to anyway). The boys are very excited as there is some cyclonic swell coming through. Me, not so much, as there is also some unimpressive weather hanging around at the moment bringing rain and wind. The university even keeps threatening to close in case of flooding. Ho hum. I shall take lots of books to read and hope things clear up and that I find a beach which doesn't have waves that will kill me.

So long.

* The Power of Ten is the uni's 10 year birthday logo by the way.