Waiting........

21.5.20

Dr Seuss makes a good point......everyone is just waiting. Waiting to be let out of lockdown, waiting to be allowed to visit friends and family, waiting to travel again.

Australia and New Zealand have gradually been relaxing restrictions as we have all behaved, in the main, and the new case figures are reflecting that. Within Australia we have to now wait for all the different States to deliver their criteria.
Queensland, Victoria, South Australia,Northern Territory & Tasmania are still not opening their borders although allowing some travel within those areas. This morning New South Wales (where we are) announced that from the 1st June we will be allowed to travel within the State and that some campsites should be opening in a bid to try to improve the huge losses suffered within the Tourism industry. That said we have two weeks to run before then, and it will be interesting to see whether there is a second wave of cases from the relaxation of rules last week.

However arguing the positives, this is awesome news and means we can do some tentative planning whilst continuing as per Von's blog the other week. It will be a bitter sweet moment as we have loved our time in Kangaroo Valley, but, at the same time, much excitement at finally travelling again.
So be warned plans are afoot.....

Meanwhile our excitement peaked this week when we received a letter from Fiat (our van make) asking for an urgent recall. Something to do with a clip on the brake pipes? Well something like that, but more importantly gave us a reasonable excuse for an essential journey! The rulings regards journeys had started to relax at this stage and so under the heading 'visiting family/friends for good mental health and morale', we decided to do a small diversion via Duckmaloi (yes a real place) and Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains.
Excitement further increased, when, having passed the Fiat inspection with flying colours, we stopped once again at the Robertson Pie Shop for the ubiquitous Meat Pie to sustain us on our journey.

Duckmaloi houses a gorgeous little spot 'Little Rapids' which we've visited a couple of times previously when we lived in Sydney. Our friends Jan and Sam were there for the weekend for Sam's birthday so we decided to gatecrash the celebrations with a Birthday cake; surely 'essential'. They had been keeping to isolation rules, as had we, and they'd even had Covid19 tests (negative) so we all felt pretty safe. It also gave us the perfect opportunity to test and trial Cilla in a cold climate.
0C and frost overnight was a perfect test, and with our diesel heating and thick bedding proved 'cosy as' (kiwi speak not forgotten).

It provided Dennis with a perfect re-union with his very good mate Ted the Beagledor and he hasn't stopped sleeping since we got home! Dennis was able to tell of his new found acting career and this resulted in some filming on location with a co-star for the first time.

Three days of much laughter, walking, eating, dancing, drinking and repeat.....and that was just the dogs.

Whilst we were in the vicinity....kind of, we called in to Mount Wilson. 'Withycombe' more specifically, which is the country residence of the family Howes who were all 'working from home' up there (minus Yazi who is in the UK). We'd not seen Barbara for a while and, for those that may remember, they played such an important part of our lives when we were living Sydney. At that time I used to walk with Barbara and her Rhodesian Ridgeback Kota who sadly departed around 3 years ago. They now have a 3 year old ridgy 'Obi' and the family had never met Dennis so was hilarious to compare sizing. Obi was not sure what to make of this very small busy dog.

So after a quick catch up with all the family and lunch we headed back to Kangaroo Valley.

In addition to our very satisfying burning, chopping and splitting of wood we do get opportunity to revisit some of our favourite spots with Irene. One of our most loved walks, prior to the fires, was the 'wild flower walk' (official title 'Three Views') which takes you out to the escarpments and amazing views. In springtime this walk always has a splendid variety of native flowers. Sadly, with the bushfires, this area was decimated and has been out of bounds until recently. Despite the devastation we felt we should do it once again. 'Amazing' in so many ways. Whilst some of the trees are well and truly charred there are others that are coming back to life and plants that are incredibly sprouting flowers. What is bizarre is how much more we can see in terms of rock formations as they are no longer masked by vegetation. The view from the escarpments really illustrates just how much native bush was destroyed and how close it got to Derek and Irene too! It's going to take a while to recover and sadly has almost been forgotten in the wake of Covid19.

Now here's a thing.... I have become fascinated by the poo of the Wombat. Stick with me, during our time here in the Valley we have been lucky enough to see a number of wombats on the property and their subsequent droppings. They have this peculiar quirk, which I haven't yet got to the bottom of, in that they like to poo on things. It's not what they're pooping on but more the 'precision pooping'. The accuracy is astounding whether its on a narrow wooden plinth or the smallest rock; incredible.
I did a small amount of research via google only to discover that they poop at least 100 square shaped poops a night ! Due to the elasticity of their intestines they can make the poop cubed instead of round ! This ensures it doesn't roll off their targets, and not as per urban myth, that they pat them into cubes with their paws after release !!!