Pacific Ocean

I had a busy week at work fighting to stay awake (changes in time zones) before spending the weekend at my own favourite ocean - the Pacific. It wasn't very tropical though; a bit rainy and a bit cool. But I still swam, went for walks, admired the scenery.

Here are some very boring photos of our new blinds - can you take a decent photo of blinds? I don't think so, but I'm still showing them because we are very pleased. They let just the right amount of light through, and then pull up into a small header inside the frame so make the whole place look much lighter. And proper hardware not those shitty roman cords that were always getting tangled and breaking. 

Obviously a project there to fill the old screw holes and do some re-painting. It will be done, in the fullness of time. You can't rush these things. 

We decided not to go with the horizontal blinds you can put over sliding doors - they looked a bit like those daggy 1970s plastic concertina doors - and they were $2000 each. So instead we replaced our manky old cream curtains with new $49 ones from Ikea. They are quite thin and fairly crappy material but they look lovely, and we like that they let the light in! And a matching rug. How stylish .... makes the whole place just a bit more yellow. That is, makes the whole place better, because yellow is always better, as we know.

And I made some boring black work pants which means I used my christmas present for the first time - a pair of proper scissors!!!!! Like a grown up, I now have an actual pair of dressmaking scissors that cuts BEAUTIFULLY. It made me happy to cut the pants out.

Indian Ocean

So I spent last week on two of Australia's external territories - Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. They're about halfway between Australia and Sri Lanka and have a combined population of less than three thousand people - about 600 on Cocos and the rest on Christmas. It was work, so didn't get any touristing in, but we were there to look at outside things, so I couldn't help but take some very pretty photos.

Cocos is about 27 islands on a coral atoll on top of a volcano with nothing for a very long way in any direction. It's ten feet tall at the highest point and covered in coconut palms. The ocean side has maybe 50 metres of reef before the drop off - we saw turtles and reef sharks. I took some terrible photos of them from the shore, that really did not turn out.

Christmas Island is completely different - tall and vertical and covered in jungle. Most of it is a national park and it's known for the amazing migrating crabs. They are forest dwelling crabs that migrate over a couple of months to the sea and then back. We weren't there for the migration but there are still millions of them everywhere (very cute, but I wouldn't mess with them).

It was wonderful to go somewhere I've never been and see some things I've never seen! And never would off my own bat, to be honest. It has a small tourist industry but it's a four hour flight from Perth, which is at least four hours from Canberra, and it's remote Australia so everything is expensive. But stunning. 

Away for work

I am travelling this week in Australia's western-most places (extra points if you guess right) with limited connectivity so not blogging. But I am being useful and also managing to get some swims in :)

Minor heatwave

After three years of cool damp summers we had a blast from the past over the weekend - most of our part of the country over 35 degrees, fire danger, the whole bit. Honestly I had forgotten what it was like ... so we went to the beach. With the cat. It was beautiful - the water temp is up to 24 degrees, which is delightful. And a stomping storm on Saturday afternoon to keep things interesting.

How pretty is this creek. Lots of happy toddlers. We got the new blinds installed too, I forgot to take any photos but we are very pleased. The old roman blinds were getting a bit shabby, and the struts were broken, and the cords weren't working super well. The new ones are honeycomb blinds and sit in the frame so a much more streamlined look. 

Hard to struggle back to the office this week....

Another blue and white dress

Nostalgia post today - inspired by the blue and white cotton frock - here I am in another blue and white cotton frock that I made for myself, 36 years ago, in 1987. That's me in the middle in the back, rocking a spiral perm. This is a family photo that was taken for reasons unknown - it was the summer before I went away to uni, and my sister had already left home, so perhaps it was a rare occasion we were all together? And somebody had come to visit us and could take the photo. We didn't have a tripod, so there was absolutely another human involved in this shot.

I could be completely wrong in this, but my memory is that there was some effort involved in setting up a bit of a photo shoot. We had to put nice clothes on, and one of the lounge chairs was put out on the lawn to arrange ourselves artistically around. Repositioning occurred. Multiple photos were taken, back in the days of film. 

And my other memory is when the photos came back, and my mother realised my father had made it into a dress shirt, pants and shoes but hadn't thought about SOCKS and all she could see in every photo was his BARE ANKLES. Given my brother wasn't wearing shoes at all you'd think it would be OK but I don't think these ones ever made it into a frame.

Summer knockabout dress

Another weekend of 30+ degree days has seen me back at the beach and back in the surf ... doing absolutely nothing and it's great. We are in the throes of lawyers and banks and councils - the building file for the house we are buying has nothing on it prior to 1998 so we have excellent approved plans for the garage. But just the garage. 

I wouldn't expect to see much for the original house but there have been various extensions over the years so surely something had building approval? Surely? After discussions and inspections we are going to go ahead anyway - it's all been standing for at least forty years and the council is notoriously bad at recordkeeping - but it is time-consuming and stressful. Which is why I was at the ocean again.

And this is the ramshackle cotton dress I've been wearing on the weekends - I wash it, leave it over the drying rack with two pairs of togs, two rashies, a beach towel and some undies - then come down next weekend and wear it all over again. I made this dress a couple of years ago because I liked the fabric but thought it was a bit much to actually wear. Until now, when I no longer give a shit about what I look like, and would rather be comfortable.

It has awesome great big pockets to carry around keys, phone, bobbins, snacks and other things I pick up at one point and forget to put down. I feel like the great-aunties. They would bustle in "where do you keep your pinnies Betty" (on a hook on the back of the door to the hot water cupboard) then put one on, do all the dishes, and put all sorts of random things in the enormous apron pockets in case they needed it during the day. Hanky? Pen? Clothespeg? Bottle of Silvo? Aspirin? Teatowel? All in the pockets.

Odd little paintings

The first parliamentary sitting week of the year is done, with the usual shock to the system of long days and having to focus. Dreaming of retirement and how to plant up our five acres is NOT helping. I have done some random pictures.

This looked much more stylish in the original, from the random tiktoker I copied it off. Not sure if the gold pen adds anything, perhaps I should just have left the watercolouryness of the foliage.

This is a copy of a picture by Brandon Campbell who does very cool illustrations and things with pen and markers and bits of watercolour. 

This is just some more droopy foliage. I put this as my Facebook photo because it was the right size (long and skinny) and I was sick of the one that was there and got lots of compliments! Which is lovely, but I think it's a bit blotchy and ordinary ... most people in real life don't know that I paint so I think they were surprised more than anything.