Home, Blackheath and Bondi

Home's been interesting lately, with a possum and a Huntsman spider showing up, both in / near the outside bathroom. The possum was stuck in a gutter, head first, and we had to use a hacksaw to cut him out. His belly was snagged on a self-tapping screw and when we finally pulled the pipe out of the ground he was sticking out but still stuck, and totally pissed. I've never seen a cuter animal more mad (except maybe my wife) and we couldn't do much for it because we would be bitten. It was actually dragging the drain pipe along the ground, so I grabbed the pipe to give it something to pull against. With a few more grunts and pulls he was out and free, no blood. We caught him in a box and put him by a big tree in the park outside the house.






This is the view of our house from the park just outside our doorstep. It's really nice here, but also pretty noisy.

Rainbows can help spruce a place up a bit.














Mr. Hunstsman, lives on the toilet now known as "unused." Just for scale, he's about 3" long, not stretched out.









I clambered across some rocks, to see if I could make it from one cove to another. It was a lot harder than it looked, mainly because some of the sandstone boulders are the size of a small house. Some back-tracking and caving happened and it was really fun. Having only one hand was a bit dodgy.

A sunset from one of the southern beaches in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs.












Same place, some fraggle-rock city action.













A gun emplacement, probably from WWII. It was getting dark and the sea definitely made it feel lonely out there.











This is basically the most interesting thing in the Maritime Museum. It is a Koala snow globe. I dunno, maybe it's an ash globe.

I have to justify my claim with "I was too cheap to pay $18 to go on the submarine."








Blue Mountains around Blackheath. An amazing valley below had sporadic frog chirps. We camped near the ridge and met a nice Japanese guy named Toshi.










The sun set and lit the canyon.













The moon rose and lit the canyon.

It was really much brighter than the photo.

It was hard to sleep. I didn't sleep until 2am, until 5am.








The sun rose ...













And we watched it, and hiked back to town.

On the way I was trying to get rides, and Karin was embarrassed. She said she didn't want to know that people were bad. I disagreed and stated proudly that "one must communicate ones needs!" I gave up and we got a ride.







This is a really steep part of the trail leading down into the canyon. It was really fun and every turn led to more excitement... alas we had a long way to go to get back into Sydney and turned back after a few exciting minutes. Which is pretty good because it was really beyond us with our 4 hours of sleep. We decided we would come back with a car so that we didn't have to walk the 5 miles from town to the trailhead again.



[camping trip ends, long train + bus ride home]
We went to Bondi Beach to the northern edge by bus. Guess what? It cost us $22.40 in bus fare to get there and back (10.6km). This city is madly expensive.











The sunset was worth it. We got home tired and ready to sleep, but someone else decided to upgrade the crosswalk, which, mind you, is a series of white lines on the road... jackhammers from 9pm to 5am last night. I think the whole job creation by infrastructure is a highly unimaginative (read: stupid) way to spend money. But hey, maybe I'm biased - maybe infrastructure upgrades won't disrupt the flow of daily life for 99% of everyone.

Today we had a car hunting adventure. We want something we can car camp in, maybe a Honda HR-V, or a Subaru wagon.