Wicked Wasps

I have over the last ten days spent a fair bit of time photographing some very impressive wasps in Allans garden.
At the start they were looking for suitable sites

Then excavating their burrows

these burrows consist of a long central tunnel with several side tunnels in which the larvae are laid into the chosen prey item before being sealed up.
Today I was able to finish the story and watch food being taken in

The wasp had to be careful though as others were eyeing up its prey....

First Day back to school!!

Today was the start of the school year and Camerons first day in Year One! Having spent quite a proportion of yesterday labelling all their stationary and exercise books - yes we have to provide everything! - the bags were a tad heavy so we drove them into school

Of course as it was first day back the weather decided to take a turn for the worst and we are now in the early stages of what could develop into a Tropical Cyclone so the walk home from school was a dash to avoid the rain.
The storm is currently just a monsoonal low sitting approx 760km east of Cairns in the Coral Sea but it could deepen and develop into Cyclone Dylan. There is of course a silver lining to everything and in this case for the birders among us it is the fact that pelagic sea birds often get caught up in the storm and get blown inland and sure enough today I had a group of 9 Lesser Frigatebirds drift over the house

Not the best picture I know but as the storm is not due to reach its peak until Friday at the earliest there is still plenty of time for me to improve!

Birthday Bash

After yesterdays warm up Monday came round and it was the start of the main event some grump b###ers birthday...

Getting a more appropriate cake proved to be quite difficult but I was magnanimous and accepted that as they had made the day  public holiday in my honour  I would accept an Australian themed cake

The children had made this great card

In between preparations for school we also nipped round to Allans to borrow a couple of things and got side tracked as is normal

Australia Day catch up

We are slowly getting back into a routine as the school year has started (but more of that in another blog) and I realised that I have not updated for a while. we have in reality not done a huge amount, the weather has been rather warm and Tish has been working so we have taken it easy.
This Sunday (26th Jan) was Australia Day - really nice of them to lay on a public holiday as a warm up to the main event on the 27th!
The weather last year was horrible and we did not venture out but this year it was a nice day and so we went along to the free breakfast that was being put on at the esplanade in Yorkeys. We were expecting it to be the traditional aussie fair of sausage in a slice of bread - perfectly acceptable and the kids luv em - and so we were very pleasantly surprised when we got there and found that in fact it was far more elaborate with bacon, eggs, sausages and onion on offer, and very tasty it was too. A range of additional things had been laid on such as
Face painting

Bouncy Castle

The boys were not that keen on the face painting but were fascinated by the bikes that came along (the vintage cars got nothing other than a passing glance)

bikies in this part of the world get a very bad press but these guys were great and were more than happy to sit the boys on the bikes etc.

There were also the normal selection of goodies such as flags etc but our three were far more taken with the orange boomerang x frisbees from the SES (State Emergency Service) although the design seems to be wrong and they never really worked

Sea Kayaks

On Friday afternoon the sea was as flat as a pancake and so Allan invited the children to go out in his Kayak for a trial to see how things went.
To say they were excited would be an understatement but duly dressed in long trousers for protection against stingers off we headed - this highlighted a wardrobe malfunction, none of the children have worn log trousers since we have been here and we were scrabbling for any that actually fitted!
Allans Kayak has a peddles a bit like a pedalo so that his hands are free to fish, he took them out one at a time to start with.
Hamish

Cameron

Xanthe

They were all very patient waiting for their turns

Having all had a go we decided that we would try them solo in the marina itself - Cameron was unfortunately too small to be able to either reach the pedals or use the paddle, luckily we had a distraction with us..

in then shape of Parker, so they went off and investigated the local crabs etc.
Both Hamish and Xanthe did very well - they were more adept using the paddle than the pedals, I think because they were not quite big enough to sit and get leverage with their backs
Hamish...

Xanthe..

The tide was out so the water here was very shallow, which was good as it meant they could just sit down to cool off

A very enjoyable afternoon!