Nice Birthday Weekend

We had a nice time on the Gold Coast o my birthday. We stayed at the Radisson Resort and it was really lovely. The very tropical and lush gardens had quite a few large water dragons. For dinner we went to a Japanese restaurant, East (see below - very funky atmosphere).

New Kitten Settles In

The new kitten is settling in nicely. Other cats curious and friendly. Kitten continues to be cute.

New Kitten Arrives on Australia Day!

Today we brought our new kitten Raven home. She is settling in very nicely. We have set her up in the TV room, so she has a space where she feels safe. She watched the cricket with us this evening. Denali said hello, but the rest of the gang has not had the pleasure... She has the loudest purr...

Macro Gardening

This weekend we did some heavy duty gardening, with Tim making another one of his famous brush piles. This coming weekend we will plant a lot of cool stuff - watch this space!

Cool Scarf for Kenneth

I knitted a cool scarf for my cousin Kenneth for Christmas. He likes it too (thank goodness!). This was my first real attempt to knit something in a cable knit pattern. It is great to knit for the opposite hemisphere... esp. when it is 90 degrees here!

New Kitten!

Today we went and got a new kitten, a gorgeous 4 month old female Maine Coon kitten. We have named her Raven after the Native American god of their creation myth (read more here). The Raven in Native American Indian lore is a creature of metamorphosis, and symbolizes change/transformation. The Raven is also called upon in Native ritual for healing purposes.
Raven's name thus matches Denali's name, which is the Native American name for Mount McKinley in Alaska. Denali translates as "The Great One" in the Athabascan language.
Australia has its own native Raven, which we often see in our backyard.
We will pick Raven up in a couple of weeks, after she is desexed (look for MANY more photos then!).

Snake Excitement!

Today we had some excitement when we went to move a rug that had been drying of the porch - a snake. We were unsure what kind it was and so we called the local snake removal guy. He recommended we take a photo and email it to him, so he could see if it was poisonous. While initially we thought this was not the easiest thing to do, it was simeple to get the photo, after which we figured out it was a green tree snake (non-poisonous). It was an olive-brownish one, which is why we did not identify it immediately. The snake guy concurred and so we left it alone (it was gone by the next day...)

New Year Holiday Trip

We went for a short three day holiday at the weekend to Mount Warning National Park, in Northern New South Wales (about a three hour drive). Mount Warning is the central volcanic remnant of an ancient volcano which last erupted 22 million years ago. We stayed at a great B&B with a view of mount warning, went for a nice dinner nearby and also went on a brief hike (cut short due to VAST numbers of leeches - yuck). We instead decided to tour the many cool galleries in the area and got these awesome wine goblets.

Quiet New Years with the Animals

We had a quiet News Years Eve and New Years Day, staying home and hanging out with the cats and birds.