Graduation Day

It has been a huge week for Hamish with his transition day at Mossman High on Tuesday and his Graduation last night. He is completely unconcerned about this change and is really looking forward to it - unbelievable to think that at the start of the next academic year we will have two children in High School!
Here are a few photos from the evening....

Out fit chosen by Hamish himself

Very proud of his dickie

Natural pose with Mum

Un-natural pose with Mum

Tish cut the top of my head off

Fooling around at the photo booth - Hamish not too sure

Hamish settling into the spirit...

Nice hair cut son

Recieving his graduation award

His full class

Despitte only having been at the school for two full terms Hamish was awarded one of the year Citizenship Awards

His Citizenship Award

Very proud of you Hamish!

Is it a Moth or is it a Butterfly....

In fact it is something called the Moth Butterfly Liphyra brassolis major. It appeared at the moth trap last night, it is a rarely encountered local species found in South-east Asia and Tropical Australia. It has a fascinating life cycle as its larva live inside Green Tree Ant nests. They are protected by a hard orange carapace making them impervious to the ants bites. The larva can devour a whole nest before pupating and emerging as this butterfly. This is the third individual that I have caught this year.

 When it is off the boards I will post a picture of the upper side of its wings

Pool time....

Messing around with the waterproof camera over the weekend...a work in progress for certain!

Wot no rain...

The Bureau of Meteorology has changed its forecast for this season - in the spring they were predicting an above average year for Cyclones and at least an average year for rainfall with a reasonably high percentage chance of it being an above average year. Well that has all gone out the window and the forecast now is for no significant rain events in December or January ....given that we are already on Level 1 water restrictions I suspect we are in for a hard time.
The lack of rain is severely impacting on the moth trap with very few species coming to light at the moment.
This though was a new one for the garden and is a species that I have been wanting to see in the wild for some time.
Spiny Leaf Insect (Extatosoma tiaratum) - this one is a male

Cameron's class at school is keeping these as pets!

A not so small gap...

With Jo having been here for the last four weeks and blogging regularly I feel that I have to get back in the swing of things so here are a couple of photos from todays visit to Mossman Gorge...I will try and get into the routine and blog a couple of times a week if at all possible

oops bit of a gap again

We are still struggling with modern technology here - internet connection dodgy and no home phoe at the moment but thought I would post a couple of pictures of the family....

Will try and update with a few from my recent work trip to the NT as well but am currently working on updating the company webpage which due to the dodgy connection is taking waaaaay longer than I would have liked

Redden Island

Took Odin and the children to Redden Island this morning for a run on the beach. The tide was a long way out so there was plenty of space even though there were a fair few people around.

View back towards Yorkeys the hill on the right is The Knob in Yorkeys

In places the sand was more mud than anything else but we did manage to avoid the worst places not that it would have mattered with Odin as even the shallow pools were too deep for him and he ended up swimming...

 He does not seem to be bothered by the water at all

 It is a great beach with plenty for the children to find and dig up so they enjoy messing around on the sand

 Odin of course needs to try and keep us all together so he ends up running a lot

My poor attempt at something arty....