Local Beach – Page 6 – Head in the Clouds

Afternoon Walk

Hello!
Today was fluffy clouds & blue skies! Chalk and cheese from yesterday!
I did finish my relish, (eventually this evening) but we took advantage of the weather today and went for our loop hike around Anniversary Bay.
We took about two and a half hours, saw a snake and nearly got run over by a speeding wallaby! (Naturally had put my camera in my backpack for both fauna incidents!!)

We didn’t pack and carry big packs. Really thinking we should as we are less than a month out from our start date

Had a good chat with our friend Rachel tonight who is coming along with us on the Cradle Adventure. I highly recommended she get hold of a fly veil! The flies were so sticky today… much nicer if they can’t sit on your face!

Rachel is booked to arrive in Tassie a few days before we head off. Time enough to get all the gear packed and make sure we haven’t forgotten any little essentials.

Jeff has been avidly watching hiking videos, collecting gear, sorting clothes and generally being rather switched on about the whole thing. Apart from cooking and dehydrating a couple of meals, I have actually thought about making a list! 😀

I am thinking I might duck into town tomorrow to see if I can find some suitable pants/shorts and a decent rain jacket. (Yes yes, I live in Tasmania, so I should own several proper rain jackets… but I don’t)

I hate clothes shopping. I think its been a couple of years since I bought any new clothes. I will be brave and try. (Often I give up after two shops and dive into a book shop and treat myself to a new book to get over the clothes-shopping-trauma)(I’ll let you know how I go)

I love the last part of this little hike. Mostly flat across the top with great views all around.

Hope your week has started fabulously!

Cheers!

The Start of the “Boardwalk”

Hello!
Lovely day here today. We took advantage and made a start on the garden boardwalk (clearly I convinced Jeff it was a great idea!)

Eventually we need it to continue up over the stupid concrete filled barrels, but for today, it was a small start at the bottom end, to see if the
Dodgy-Brothers-Millar-Team could actually make up something that would work.

Starting point – rocks to be removed, weeds to pull and look – my ~~container of collected crap~~ treasures!

Gathered materials (all the free wood we have collected)

Lets take a moment to pause and admire these excellent sawhorses that my mother made!! She is an amazing dressmaker and all around crafty person – but she did a stint in woodworking while I was in high school. The sawhorses were one of her projects. We were lucky enough to be given them and they have come in very very handy many times!

(And my husband is also awesome at sawing 🙂 )

Spacing out the slats. (Flies were really bad today! Hence the fly veils!)

Aaaaand it pretty much looks like a table

Tomorrow after the cement has set, I will go about building up the rocks around it so hopefully the first part will fit into its place a bit more naturally.
Now that we have done one small section, we are a bit more confident on moving on to the next bit!

There was still plenty of daylight left by the time we had packed up the tools, so we decided a hike around Anniversary Bay would be good for us and the upcoming trek

The views along the coast never disappoint

Game time – spot the echidna:

Spot the wallaby:

Tide is a lot higher today than when we were last here

The tide being high, we had to walk over more rocks in this section than usual

Hope your weekend is going along fabulously!

Cheers!

You’ve Seen It All Before

Jeff is heading back to work tomorrow so we decided to go for another hike in our attempt to get fitter (and leaner???) for our upcoming Overland adventure. So we tootled back over to Sisters Beach to walk over to Anniversary Bay

Perfect perfect perfect weather today!

Inviting waters and acres of beach. Still trying to work out why we hiked over hill & dale and rocky shores for 4 hours instead of swimming today!!

Instead of our usual circuit we continued walking up the coast – headed for our favourite shell collecting beach

As soon as you leave the sandy beach, rocky shores greet walkers. Its actually a tricky walk on unstable surfaces – in many parts jagged rocks to scramble over that pretty much say ‘don’t fall down’

The Overland Track will be a lot more straight forward than this!! At least they have formed paths!!

The colour and form of the rocks change several times as you walk up the coast.

We reached the stream that flows down from Doone Falls and soaked our bandannas to wear around our necks. The water was lovely and icy cold

We found an easier path! Was a brief respite from the rock-hopping

Once we got to our spot we enjoyed searching for shells (we will find out tomorrow who collected the most cowries!)

Time to reluctantly turn back – and see it all from a different angle!

I don’t suppose it’s called Rocky Cape National Park for nothing…

Oh it was good to see those sandy beaches again!

Time to take off the boots and cool the feet down!

The paddle was quite invigorating, which was handy as we still had one hell of a hill to climb before we were done for the day!!

Hope your weekend was also fabulous!

Cheers!

Foraging – Advance Scouting Party

Hello! Here we are at the end of the week (again)! We woke up to rain. Not just normal pitter patter rain. We woke to bucketing rain. (of course)
Blah – and two teenagers in the house to amuse! haha
We managed to sloth our way through breakfast, then sorted out getting all the berries bagged up and into the freezer.
Had to put out a couple of containers and towels for the leak that reappeared upstairs before driving into Burnie for a little shopping.
Bad Aunty (that’s me) had completely neglected to sort out a Christmas present for her niece!! Not that Emma was at all devastated, but she thought one of my crocheted shawls would be cool!! (See?? In my 40’s and I do cool stuff according to a 16 year old!! I’m good with that!!) So we went to Spotlight so she could choose what wool took her fancy.

On to Ruby’s for afternoon tea, then we drove up to the nearby abandoned school to see how the blackberries were getting on this season.

Last season there were none. The total lack of rain made for very poor blackberry foraging.
But this season with all the rain?? The tangle of blackberries are incredible with lots and lots of fruit coming along.

We are hoping to keep an eye on their progress and return at the right time with buckets to help ourselves.
I am thinking blackberry jam and of course, trying out making blackberry ice cream!

The land & school are for sale – but it has been empty for years. Of course its par for the course to see smashed windows and graffiti.
Blackberries are a major pest plant and these ones will be no fun to remove. The canes are formidable!

If we see the start of a blackberry on our place, it gets pulled out straight away. They are really hard to manage.

We often thought it a shame the building has gone to waste. Would have made a fantastic indoor market. While the foreshore market is great fun, being at the mercy of the weather in Tasmania is tiresome. An indoor venue that lacks the wind and sideways rain is a most attractive proposition!

It was great to see the blackberries going so well this season… (From a purely selfish viewpoint) – with luck we will time our return correctly and get a bit of free food.

By this time it had stopped raining so we swung by Fossil Bluff to go for a walk, check out the fossils on the cliff face and look for agate.

Checking out beach treasures – and getting a piggyback! lol

An excellent afternoon – fingers crossed for less water from the sky tomorrow!

Cheers

Beach Walk & a Lot of Weeding!

I had to be up early this morning to get to an appointment before 9am. This was good for me because my sleeping habits lately have become ridiculous!
My appointment woke me right up – bikini wax!! haha – more effective than coffee I can assure you, but perhaps not as economical??
Anyway… moving right along…

So, since I was bright eyed and bushy tailed (well maybe not bushy tailed anymore)(yeah I said I was moving right along 🙂 ) I thought a good long walk along Sisters beach would be a grand thing to do. The tides were right this morning and the sun was beating down, so off I went.

I did a lot of paddling about

I thought they were all mildly love heart shaped… or maybe my brain was addled from the early morning trauma.

I love the tea tree stained water that runs into the ocean from the stream

Its a popular area for families with little kids to come and swim/paddle

Well… there was work at home to be done, so I left the sparkling shores, came back and changed into my gardening clothes.
The main vegie patch hasn’t been properly weeded for ages (seriously… WHAT do I do with my time??) So that was my aim… to really get a good portion of that knocked over!

And boy oh boy did I need a good scrubbing tonight!!
Feels good to get rid of so many of those weeds… still a lot there but I am pleased with how its looking already!
Hope your weeks ends fantastically!

Cheers!

Afternoon Hike

After spending some quality time in the garden today tussling with weeds, Jeff and I decided that we would take ourselves on a bit of a walk up and over to Anniversary Bay

The weather wasn’t bad. Not what I would class as summery, but at least it was reasonably warm and didn’t rain on us!

I found my seaweed grass!! Sigh. Not the most accessible spot!

The flies were dead annoying today! Small and sticky. I had my trusty bit of bracken to wave about though 🙂

We followed a few sets of wallaby prints up the beach today!

I like low tide with the big expanses of white sand

Tea tree stained waters running down the beach make cool patterns

We went up the bush track and through the scrub to get back to the car

We were lucky enough to spot an echinda on the path today!

It immediately tried to dig a hole and pretend it wasn’t there

I lay patiently in front of him/her until I got to see its little snout and eyes for a photo!

I was also lucky enough (although most of you won’t agree) to see the tail end of quite a large tiger snake! The tail end was really thick, so I can only imagine how big the rest of it was!! I just saw the beautiful yellow markings on the black body slithering into the scrub away from us. Very disappointed not to see the whole animal or get a photo for you! I wanted to impress you with our deadly creature! 😀 (I think they are ranked about 6th most poisonous snake in the world…)
Oh well… next time!

Off to bed for me… my legs need a rest!

Cheers!

Beautiful colours and textures in the sand and rocks