Busy busy busy bus......

.... you get the picture.
The main event this weekend other than Tish getting over yet more nightshifts (we are looking at ways to reduce Tish's plunge into vampirysm but more in a later blog) was my hair and beard trim

prior to a fun family outing to "Plastic Cup World"

This amazing family orientated theme park is very elusive and only appears for periods of a few hours once a year. It is also compulsory to wear rather fetching and extremely discrete shirts...

you get over the course of a few hours to hand out / pour / collect up over 7000 cups containing in total nearly 600 litres of water to a group of people of questionable sanity who were completing a brief Sunday outing comprising of a 2.4mile swim followed by a short 112 miles bike ride before a gentle jog of 26.2 miles to finish off with - the winner completed this light exercise regime in 8 hours 7 mins. Absolutely amazing bunch of people who put the rest of us to shame (NOT that it will embarrass me into do anything more physical than type the blog!!).
Today Monday is a public holiday to mark the Queens Birthday  and the children lounged around recovering from their exertions of yesterday

Tish having had an extremely stressful day with among other things the washing machine breaking down has gone out with one of her friends to have a child and Dominic free meal - and very much deserved it is too.
Tomorrow she is back on nights.....

And another week passes..

Its Friday and another week has gone with no postings from us - my apologies for that.
So what has happened since last I posted...well for various reasons last weekend ended up being a bit of a non event and we ended up doing neither of our planned activities.
This weekend we are volunteering for the Cairns Ironman Event between 11 - 2 on Sunday when we will be manning the drinks station for the athletes / questionably sane individuals taking part in this extreme endurance event. We will post pictures Sunday evening..
At the moment (midnight on Friday Aussie time) it is just Cameron and I in the house as Tish is on nights and Xanthe and Hamish are at a sleep over - it is strangely quiet!
As I can't stand doing a bog without a picture a couple of shots from this week.

Australian White Ibis

food for Australian White Ibis

outside front door

Welcome Swallow at Cattana

Wot a bunch of wallies..

Yesterday I took the camera along when I took Hamish to Scouts. The current Scout Hall is actually the Polocross Hall as the proper site is in the process of being repaired after vandals and termites and asbestos got in  - more on that over the weekend as there is a Working Bee on Sunday to help finish the clean up.
The fields around the hut are exceedingly popular with an iconic Australian animal -the Agile Wallaby

There were one or two using the field - although the light was very poor as it was dusk and my camera does not have a high enough ISO setting to do them justice.
A couple came closer offering slightly better photo opportunities

The adult was slightly less impressed than the Joey who would I think have hung around for longer but had to push it to catch up with Mum again

There were also big numbers of Ibis flying over to a roost that is about 1 mile away

Its NOT the weekend anymore...

Its amazing how quickly time goes at the moment!
I picked up  Hamish from Scout Camp on Sunday and its safe to say he had a great time - run around all day, swam in the river (absolutely freezing), cooked tea, stayed up late etc all the normal things. To say he was tired would be an understatement so a relaxing afternoon was called for whilst I got on with the washing and Tish slept having had to drug herself up to the eyeballs as she has a tooth abcess - OUCH!!!!
The rest of the week so far has been quite quiet, school for the children and night shifts for Tish, although she was not able to go in on Sunday due to severe tooth ache - I am pleased to report the abcess has burst and all is settling down again.
Few opportunities to get out and about this week as have been busy so here are a few shots from the garden and the street outside

Black Knight Dragonfly

unknown Spider - kids though it was really cute

Bordered Rustic

and finally trying to hide behind a twig.....

stupid bird!!

This weekend Tish is off and on Saturday is the Festival of the Knob which very conveniently is held at the end of our street!!
Sunday is repair the old Scout Hut day so we shall see how it goes....

Its the weekend...

...and Tish is back on nights again; another four in a row having already done four last week.
This morning having dropped Tish off to help at a sausage sizzle to raise funds for Hamish's Scout Group I dropped him off for his first weekend camp. Having been packed off to camp myself numerous times as both cub / scout and scout leader it was with very different emotions that we got Hamish ready

Sorry for picture quality taken with my phone not the camera.
I am sure he will have a great time but have to say am exceedingly nervous for him.
With Tish asleep this afternoon I took Xanthe and Cameron on to the beach to fly his kite.
Whilst as the phrase goes size isn't everything there was definately a case of feeling slightly inadequate..

as Xanthe said, ours was a bit puny!
Nevermind we had a ball

Cameron found it a bit hard to hold on as the wind picked up so a bit of tandem flying was called for

Sitting down was an option that was tried as well

When he wasn't flying he was attempting to jump on its shadow

I am not sure about Camerons sanity!

After a couple of hours the cord came loose so we had to call a halt and come home to repair it but we will be back!

Sunbird Special

In between all the routine chores today - housework (hoovering and washing floors in 29 degree heat is not fun); hanging out four loads of washing (sheets and towels) and printing various bits and bobs out I have been watching one of our local pairs of Olive backed Sunbirds.
We have seen the pair hanging around for several days now, constantly checking out our wind chimes

but not taking it any further.
This morning though the female was far more intent than normal

and spent a fair bit of time hovering.
On closer inspection when she was not around I could see some spiders web woven into the spring

As the afternoon progressed the male would re-appear and keep checking the area and me out

Later n the afternoon the pair returned with a couple of pieces of grass

This grass was woven into the spring as well

With luck we will get a beautifully formed nest like this created as we watch

The only problem being the light conditions which make taking decent pictures quite tricky!