Frequent Fliers

We’re home!

It was a long journey, but not too bad. The flight to Australia wasn’t overfull so we had two seats each. Well, for Littletree two seats was enough to stretch out and lie down, so she slept most of the flight. For me it was just less-uncomfortable, but still pretty nasty.

I hate flying. Being stuck in the air-conditioning, it’s loud and uncomfortable and rough on the immune system.

Here’s Littletree, the mega frequent-traveller, boarding the plane on leaving her 24th country.

So, things I have learned on this trip: Phuket International Airport sucks. Most airports these days don’t allow you to bring any liquids through security into the departure lounge – including drinking water. Normally I bring my usual crocheted drinking water bottle with the water tipped out and the lid off. After we’ve passed security I find a drinking fountain to refill the bottle for drinking on the plane. But Phuket airport, there were *no* drinking water taps at all anywhere, and every single shop in the entire place sold *only* Nestlé water. :(

HERE is what I think about Nestlé, especially their water. So I was wandering around the departure lounge for ages, desperately wanting a drink of water, not wanting to buy Nestlé water. Not wanting to get on a flight without water, not wanting to buy Nestlé. Argh!

On the other hand, Kuala Lumpur LCCT Airport has filtered drinking water fountains, free WiFi, and not just WiFi, but electric sockets you can plug computers into (rare and hard to get in many places), nice bathrooms – even with free showers(!), and a reasonable selection of cheap food. Yay KL!

I will admit the shuttle bus to KL airport made me very nervous. The driver not only had his day bag sitting loose on the floor,

he also had a sticker of a motorbike racing driver covering the speedometer! yikes!

We did at least arrive safely :) Ah, it’s great to be home!

The Mother of All Rallies

I got back from my trip to Canberra for the homebirth rally yesterday morning. It was quite a hectic adventure! Incredibly, I managed to drive 2200km, (1400mi) spend 24 hours in Canberra, breakdown and get stuck in nowhereseville overnight and still make it home again in less than 4 days!

Phew!

I had thought I was going to do the drive on my own, but at the last minute one of my clients called up and asked to come with, so I had an 8 months pregnant woman and her 2 year old son with me in the car.

The drive was pretty easy and we took lots of breaks – it’s so nice to have a van with a bed in the back so we could take comfy naps at rest stops.

Canberra was freezing cold – 14C when I’m used to 30! and on the day of the rally it rained (of course). That didn’t stop around 2500 people coming to show support for homebirth.

 

People gathered in front of the Old Parliament House, by the Aboriginal Tent Embassy where there was a ceremonial fire and some speeches made. Then the crowd marched, banners and placards waving, to the front of the New Parliament House for the demonstration.

The crowd was pretty thick – mostly pregnant mamas, and mamas with babies in slings, or toting children. There were heaps of children and babies toting signs (or with signs pinned to their slings or clothing) saying which room of the house they were born in. This one was particularly cool :)

It was almost impossible to get in near enough to see the stage!

I walked around to the front to snap a photo, but it was still hard to see.

 

Mostly I was meeting and catching up with friends. It was awesome to meet so many friends from Liberated Learning that I’d never met in real life before! And it was great to catch up with old friends, and see other independent midwives.

I even got to meet Lisa Barrett which was quite an honour

And best of all; Currawong was up on the stage playing her awesome homebirth song.

After the rally, we went for lunch with Artemis of the Eucalypts and her family, and my friend J to the Asian Noodle House in Dickson for the best Laksa ever (yeah, they have weird place names in Canberra – funnier than Dickson, they have a suburb called Downer)!

Then it was back on the road, trying to get home by Tuesday night. However, about an hour out of Canberra, the car broke down. We stopped for petrol and the car wouldn’t start again – totally flat battery.

Thankfully I’m in the NRMA (AAA equivalent), so I called them, and was informed there would be a 90 minute wait for a patrol to come out. I mentioned that I had a pregnant woman and a baby in the car with me, and we were put on priority – someone came within half an hour.

The NRMA guy was very nice, and managed to jump start the car, but he said the battery wasn’t charging at all because the alternator was dead and we’d have to be towed to a mechanic. He called the NRMA tow-truck, and told us there’d be a 2 hour wait.

I called them back and mentioned again the pregnant woman and baby, we were again put on a priority list, and the tow truck came within half an hour. All the time we were waiting, the 2 women working in the petrol station were so nice – gave us hot soup to eat (artificial instant soup, but in the words of the woman who gave it “more nutritious than McDonalds” LOL), old magazines, coffee, and even offered to drive us to town.

Anyway, the tow truck came and took us with the car to a mechanic, and then to a hotel for the night (being that it was after 5pm). Thank goodness I remembered to mention to the NRMA rep who booked us into the hotel that I am travelling with a pregnant woman and baby, so they paid for us to get a bigger room, and to check us in for 2 nights so we wouldn’t have to check out at 10am before the car was ready!

At noon the next day the mechanic said there was nothing at all wrong with the car and we were good to go! Grrrr! Turned out it was a really simple thing – the battery terminals weren’t screwed down tight enough; something the NRMA patrol man should have seen and fixed in 30 seconds.

Oh well – the universe wanted us to stay a night in Mittagong, coincidentally, just up the road from where my friend’s son’s great-grandfather lived, so while we were waiting for the car to be “fixed” she went up to visit him.

Finally, we got on the road again, and made good time; we stopped to sleep at midnight, just 2 hours from home, and got up early in the morning for the last bit of the journey, arriving at 8am. 

It was a fun adventure, but it’s good to be home and see Littletree!

Strangers in the Night

This evening I saw a car drive up our street and stop just past our driveway. I saw the brake lights flash on the car, and then it reversed as if it was backing into our driveway. I figured it was someone who had taken a wrong turn and was trying to turn around.

Only the car had missed our driveway and fallen into the drainage ditch! We could hear the car's tyres spinning out as the driver tried to get out. We grabbed a torch and went out to see if we could help.

The car was clearly stuck; no way he could drive out - the ditch is deeper than the clearance on the car. The other interesting point was that the right side of the car was smashed - both doors ripped apart and windows smashed!

The driver got out and had a look. He was an elderly man, who seemed to be very confused. We pointed out that it would be impossible to drive his car out of there, and he said that he'd left his wallet back at the pub, and asked me if I could give him a lift down to get it!

He didn't seem entirely sure where he was, and he couldn't quite remember the name of the town he lives in (which is about 12km away from here). He said he'd been in our village to have dinner at the pub.

It was all very strange, in a comical way, and he kept fretting about his wallet. Then I noticed a wallet half out of his pocket, and asked him if that was it. It was.

I offered to call the man a tow-truck, and went into the house to make the call. Purple invited the man inside for a cup of tea while he waited for the tow; about ten minutes.

The tow truck operator said to call the police, as it sounded like the man might have been drinking, not to mention his car most definitely should not have been on the road, and in any case, the man's car was totally blocking our road.

When the tow truck came we all went out side. The tow truck operator was having a hard time getting a straight story from the man, since he was quite befuddled, but it turned out that the damage had been done by a semi-trailer smashing into him a couple of days before, and apparently it was covered by insurance and would be repaired on Monday by Max in town.

The tow truck guy, who is also a smash repairer said that there was no smash repairer called Max, and he personally took all the work from the man's insurance company. His name was Matt. So they arranged that Matt would drop the man at his home, and take the car straight to the smash repair lot to be fixed on Monday. Small world!

A couple of minutes later, Littletree came running out to tell me the police had called. Twice. Assuming they were waiting on the phone, I went running inside, only to see that the phone had been hung up. After questioning Littletree a bit, it turned out that the phone had rung, she'd answered it. The police officer had said "can you please get your mummy" and Littletree said "sure" and hung up to get me. Then he called right back, and the same thing happened! I explained to her about putting the phone down, but not hanging it up in such instances.

Anyway, the neighbours also came home just after the police arrived (congratulating Littletree on her phone skills), and since they couldn't get past, we all milled around watching as the tow truck pulled the car out of the ditch.

In the end, the show was over and we all went home. And who ever said living in small towns is boring!

Rosita

We finally found a nice car to replace Little Blue Sky who crashed 2 months ago (has it really been that long!?)

I was really fixated on the idea of finding a Toyota Corolla hatch, early 90s model, and not too keen on getting a Ford, or anything else... but it seemed like everyone had the same idea, because all the Corollas we found were double or triple the price of any equivalent car, and snapped up too fast to buy anyway.

In the end, we saw a notice up in the local general store for an '89 Ford Laser hatchback... not really what I wanted, but it was a manual, and selling for only $1000 with six months registration and a roadworthy certificate.

For the price it was worthy to at least check it out. Our friendly mechanic said the car is in great condition, doesn't even leak oil and could be sold for twice the money. But the couple selling it were backpackers keen to sell in time to get on their flight out of the country, and we jumped on the bargain :)

So we have a new little car!

Littletree has dubbed her Rosa; Rosita for short. It's breaking with our tradition of naming cars after the sky (we had Little Blue Sky and our yellow van, Sunshine). We briefly considered naming Rosita, "Sunset", but Littletree wanted something in Spanish (she's been speaking in Spanish a lot lately), so Rosita it is! (Though to be honest, she's red, not pink)

Arrrrrrrr

Here's pirate Littletree. She made this pirate get-up for craft at the library storytime this week :)

It's been a pretty busy week for us, dealing with the wreck of Little Blue Sky, and searching for a new car.

(Anyone know of an early 90's model Toyota Corolla Hatch for sale. Preferably a 5-speed manual 1.8L in metallic green, with rego, let me know! Well, anything in that variety of cars will do, but that's what I really want.)

And... we put an offer on a house to buy, which was accepted. So we wait for the building inspection and for the lawyers to sort out the sale. details to come!

Crash!

It's a miracle.

Yesterday, Littletree, Purple and I went to look at some properties, and on the way home, we had an accident.

It all happened very fast. I lost control of the car around a bend; we slammed into an embankment at about 80kph. The car bounced back, span around 360 degrees and went off the road into a gully.

The car stopped, barely an inch from rolling down a 20M drop. 

Amazingly, the car didn't roll off the cliff, and all three of us were able to clamber out of the car and walk away unscathed.

Some passersby stopped and helped us out; we were pretty shaky and in shock.

We had to wait a while for the roadside assistance service to come out, then wait a while longer for a tow truck to come, and then even longer for a different tow truck to come and the police to come.

It was quite an event for the truck to winch the car out of the gully and tow it away; the police needed to close the road while that was happening.

After the car was out, one police officer went over to see what had saved us from going over the cliff. He stood there shaking his head, and then looked at me and said "someone was really watching out for you; I can't see anything here that stopped you from tumbling down the cliff"

It was really scary looking down over that drop. There wasn't anything I could see that would have stopped us from rolling over. I guess we were being watched over, that's for sure.

It sucks that our beloved Little Blue Sky is now dead, and I had to pay a fortune for the tow truck, and now we need to buy a new car, but thankfully, we weren't hurt. (well, I banged my knee, which is giving me some trouble, but nothing serious).

Even more lucky, our friend, who is borrowing our van, Sunshine from us, came to our rescue and picked us up, and arranged for us to rent a car from a friend of hers, so we already have a new, temporary car. I've dubbed her "Murky".

We don't really like Murky all that much, but at least she's sort of green, and at least we have a car to drive until we can buy a new one!

What a Drive!

We're home again! I was so sad to say goodbye to Lush, but she's gonna be back down here in about three weeks or so, when her contract with work is over, so it wont be too long.

After two fun weeks in Cairns, we packed up and did the long drive home, we actually went pretty fast, and made it all the way home in two days. Way faster than the three days it took getting up there, though we stopped to visit people on the way up.

The drive was around 1900km (almost 1200mi), 12 hours on the road on Friday and 14 hours on Saturday, including stops for fuel, food, and playgrounds. We got home totally exhausted at about 11:20pm last night.

It's funny, we totally would have stopped to sleep around 10pm, we'd gone far enough and were tired enough, but by then we were so close to home, it seemed silly to stop. Not to mention driving through Brisbane and the Gold Coast, there isn't much in the way of rest areas till you get to our neighbourhood.

Anyway, it's good to be home!

And today I have the nice surprise of seeing another of my articles published; one about an inspiring young musician called Amalia Rubin. Check it out!

On The Road Again

We made it out of the house! After so many weeks of procrastination it was great to just do it. To pack the car with no fanfare or goodbyes and start driving.

We got out of the house and on the road before 10am on Thursday morning, and made good time driving north to visit Valleysprite and her wonderful family just out of Gympie in southern Queensland.

They live on a beautiful property, with an enormous tree swing

Valleysprite's kids are entering a competition to be voted wildlife warriors, they made a fantastic video, so check it out and vote for them! Give them a five star rating as well :) Click here to see it.

The next morning, after a lazy pancake breakfast, we jumped in the van and drove. and drove. and drove. We tried to stop a lot and take breaks, especially for Littletree, who got antsey in the car. After about 1000km she took to her hair with a pair of scissors, so she has an interesting punk effect at the front!

We slept the night in a rest area just south of Mackay, and drove on.

In the morning, we crossed paths with some friends who were driving south, and we stopped to chat with them. 

While we were sitting in the playground next to a gas station, a huge gang of bikers came up. The line of them seemed endless, coming around the bend; the noise horrific! It was really cool. They all pulled into the gas station to fill up. Sadly I was slow getting my camera out to snap the huge procession of them driving, but I got a snap of the queue at the pumps. You can't really see, but there were hundreds of them.

Ever northward, we kept on, not quite expecting to arrive to Cairns that night, but we did! At about 9pm we pulled into town, and got to Rapunzel's place. She lives in a big share house full of hippies, in full swing of a huge party. 

Rapunzel was dressed up as a gypsy, as was the theme of the party. We were so stoked to see her, though still exhausted from driving 2000km (1200mi) in three days.

And lo! Rapunzel had shorn off her long locks, and is now sporting a spunky new haircut. I suppose I shall have to think of a new nickname for her.

Anyway, it's great to arrive, and fantastic to see her again. Littletree is so excited to have her big sister back, and I'm about ready to sleep for 100 years! I guess we'll stay here a week or 2, and then start the long drive southward.

But who knows... we might end up living here :)

After we finished fixing the bath tub, we had to run off and pick up Littletree from her friend's place. We'd been to the markets in Byron on Sunday, and Littletree ran into a friend, who invited her for a sleep over - her first ever!

So we started off, feeling fine; a beautiful sunny day, a nice drive on a pretty, winding country road through the rainforest. We got just 5km from our friend's house when the car conked out. Poor LittleBlueSky. We were going up a hill and she just lost power.


At first it seemed like it might be a fuel problem. We stood around, flapping our hands helplessly for a bit, checking different things. While we were there, three different people stopped to see if we need help, but no one could really do anything more than offer us a ride into town.

Eventually someone thought to take off the distributor cap and see if it spins. It didn't. So that solved that: the timing belt had broken, and there was nothing to do but call a tow truck.


Here's the irony: I'm a member of the automobile association, but my membership had lapsed while we were overseas. Renewing the membership was high on my list of priorities, and I'd even had the papers next to the phone that morning... but, as Murphy would have it, hadn't made the call.

So, we had to call a private tow truck and pay for it - $120! Well, that turned out to be a good thing in the end, since the tow truck guy was really nice, and took us to the only mechanic in town who was open, since there was a Motor Traders' Holiday. This mechanic turned out to be fantastic - a little independent shop. he even managed to fix our timing belt right away, and charged us WAY less than I would have expected.

If we'd called the automobile club, they would have towed us to our usual mechanic back near home (this was 45 mins away), who charges an arm and a leg, and I never really trust anyway.

This new mechanic was so great, we asked him to give us a quote for a job we need to get done on our van, and he said 1/3 of the cost our local mechanic is charging! It's worth the drive, and we get to visit our friends more :)

So even paying out of pocket for the tow truck worked out cheaper than having our membership renewed (which I've done now, by the way).

When we finally got to pick up Littletree, she had been at her friend's for about 30 hours, and her mum, Chrissy was totally snowed under with an extra 2 children, on top of her own 2 and mine! She'd managed to take all 5 kids to ballet classes, i'm so impressed!


Chrissy has also written two fantastic children's books, check them out at www.chrissybutler.com I highly recommend them :)

Desert Odyssey

This weekend we went for a big trip into the desert with Purple's family, in honour of his mother's 75th birthday.

Personally, I'm not really into the desert; it's very hot, and very dry, and dusty. We walk around for ages to look at interesting rocks, that mostly look just like the rocks we have here, except that Moses once stubbed his toes on the desert rocks.

So, it was eighteen people, driving in a convoy of four cars - for some reason they refuse to tell us exactly where we are going; we have to drive in a convoy, and about a hundred cell phone calls flash back and forth between the various cars during the course of a 3 hour drive.

We stopped a few places on the way; at one Moshav where we looked at the locked doors of the Cochin Jewish Museum, and had a picnic, while the kids climbed trees.

And not just the kids:

We stayed the night at a Bedouin guest house, which was very cool - we all slept on the floor in a huge Bedouin tent. Oh how I would have traded my first born for a mosquito net that night!

Anyway it was a nice place, and we had a big Bedouin-style feast for Shabat dinner. Though sadly, they were keeping Kosher for us, so it was served with Matzoh, rather than wonderful Bedouin pita.

So, here's the tent:

And our feast:The next day we drove into the desert 4 hours, the group divided into 3 4WDs, to get to Mount Karkum to see the rock paintings. On the drive we saw lots of wildlife; some Zvi (a kind of deer) and a cool lizard.

For me and Littletree, driving hours out into the desert, only to climb up a rocky mountain in the middle of the noonday heat just to look at rocks isn't really such a great time, but on the way, we drove through a firing range (a common-place occurrence in Israel), which was pretty interesting for us.

Littletree was fascinated to see all the missile cases and blown-up wreckage littering the desert, and it led to lots of discussions about war and Israel and such. Long-time readers might remember previous discussions about that, which is the real reason we don't live in Israel.

In the end, it was too hot, and Littletree didn't want to climb up the mountain. So after we walked around a bit, looking at interesting rocks, I sat with Littletree and some of the younger children in the shade while everyone else climbed up to look at the rock paintings. Purple took some photos:

Then I managed to sprain my ankle, tripping on a rock, en route to the aid of my nephew, who banged his head really badly by standing up under the open car door. It was quite a slapstick moment.

Finally, we climbed back into our cars and drove home. In a few days we leave Israel for Bangkok, and on to China for the World Rainbow Gathering

Cyclone Power!

I know, it's been a good long while since I last posted. But we've been living through a cyclone, so I have a good excuse.

The day before it started really raining, we went for a hike up Minyon Falls, which is beautiful


For those of you who didn't already read about it on the news, a cyclone has been hitting the north east of Australia pretty hard, our local area has been getting winds up to 110km/ hour and 5-6M swells.

Its been raining more than I ever thought possible. I don't have an accurate gauge, but I put a bucket outside and it fills up in half a day. the neighbours a bit down the mountain (who are getting less rain than us) measured 680mm in 4 days on their gauge! Most of the rivers around here are flooded, our road is washed away in many parts, and people who live just a bit further up have been flooded in for over a week; they've already been getting SES helicopter drops of food. Towns all around us are being evacuated and the whole area is on flood warning. Most of the beaches have been closed.

Here's the view from our back door. Notice that my Veggie garden is now a Veggie Jungle


and, fun fun fun! We live in a very small one-room cottage (about 550 sq feet) and have an outdoor toilet. So much rain has fallen on us water is starting to come in the walls; we actually have internal waterfalls, and mushrooms are growing on the rockwork!!
Here's the wall behind the love seat. Note that the water is flowing pretty fast down that wall! It comes out into the floor under the love seat and then trickles its way through the rock floor into the bathroom area. Of course, this is making the floor cave in.

Our little blue car got stupidly bogged in an impossible way in our own yard as well.

So, if being three people in a small space in heavy weather for an extended period isn't enough, the power cut out!!! and it took Four Days to get power back on.

We all just sat at home, going slightly stir crazy, getting wet, everything being damp, all our food in the fridge going bad, Purple being unable to work, Littletree going insane. We read a lot, and did some art, and read some more, and I started teaching Littletree to play guitar.

Sunday was a little less rain :) and we went down for the markets.
Here's how our little creek looked on the way down

And here's the driveway of one of our neighbours. Thank goodness where we live is on high ground :)


In town was so humid I felt like dying, but at least it wasn't raining for a bit. Littletree took some nice photos, and we managed to get a few people to come up the hill with us and help get the car out of the mud.

We tried pushing, that didn't work. We'd already jacked the car up and put boards under the tyres, that didn't work. In the end, with the rain starting again, the five of us put our backs to it and lifted the front of the car just a tad, then lifted the back of the car and managed to shift it half a metre. Then we managed to push it out to freedom :D Phew!

Thankfully then the power came back on too, and we could get back to our internet-addicted lives. Only Purple's computer isn't working and it's becoming a nightmare. But more about that later.

New Zealand - part 1; the way there

Our fantabulous trip to New Zealand started with the beautiful Rapunzel, who was staying with us for a while, deciding to go there herself. I saw how cheap the tickets were, I realised that there's very little chance of me getting to the Australian rainbow gathering in April, I hinted to Purple that maybe I could go with Littletree for just a short time...
and BANG! I got online and booked a ticket.

I started searching for bus timetables and prices, maps, hitchhiking options. Purple mentioned that when he had been in NZ, it was really cheap to hire a car, and since we would only be there for 10 days... well, it turned out to be only a little more expensive than taking buses, and much less hassle. Not to mention that it would save us hitchhiking. A search with my good buddy Google found me a car with Jucy, and a hostel booking in Christchurch. I just now realise that I never took a photo of the car. Oh well. It was a gold Daihatsu Sirion. Note to car buyers; this car was fine to rent, but don't buy one. It's got no guts whatsoever. Like driving a fridge on wheels.

We packed, I managed to stuff the backpack with way too much, but it all fit in anyway, weighing in at 22kg getting on the plane. Arriving into Chch at midnight, we hung around the airport a bit hoping to see J, who was flying in the same night, but in the end, tired and bored, we got a taxi to the hostel. It was freakishly expensive for a taxi ($46NZ!). The hostel was nice, and had hot showers and internet and comfy beds.

In the morning, the rental company came and picked us up and brought us to their office (back at the airport) to get the car. Then we hit the road.

First stop was a supermarket to get sandwich stuff, granola bars, juice... kid snacks. Littletree saw a pair of plastic princess shoes. awful things, but just her style. I ummed and ahhed for a bit, bit they were only $4.50NZ, and she knew the whole bit about how high-heels are bad for the body and dangerous to walk on. She promised that they'd be just for dress-ups. I figured; hey! she wants them, she'll soon see that she can't walk in them.

On the way we picked up a couple of Dutch Hitchhikers, who entertained Littletree and even played hide-and-seek with her when we stopped for a break.

My main impression of New Zealand was that its freakin beautiful. Lots of fantastic scenery.



Here's a shot of some of the very friendly locals

These guys were pretty much everywhere.

The first night we got to Nelson, found a hostel, that was painted in funky shades of purple and blue, and took a room. We hung out in the roof patio chatting with the drunken backpackers. Littletree wowed them all, and not just because she'd travelled more than the rest of them :)

We hit the road again, stopped for lunch in Takaka, which seems like the Mullumbimby of NZ. Then we drove the last hour out to the rainbow.

Little Blue Sky

We bought a new car!
Purple has been wanting to trade our wonderful yellow van , Sunshine, for something smaller, more economical, and with more seats for a while. Actually, he never wanted to get a van; he's a small-car guy.

Anyway, I saw a notice in the laundromat advertising an '85 Corolla Hatch for $600. Sounded like there must be something wrong with it, but there isn't. Its almost out of registration (in 5 weeks), but it has a roadworthy certificate. and most importantly, it handles amazingly :) Maybe I'm just too used to clunking around in our big heavy van, but jumping into this little car is so sweet.

She's a 5 speed, 1.6L, light blue. For a 22 year old car, she's pretty good. Only the paint is a bit crappy; somehow it looks like the colour of the sky in a big city. Still blue but a bit hazy and patchy LOL. Anyway, she uses a lot les petrol than Sunshine, which we are keeping, for now.

Littletree dubbed her: LittleBlueSky. I've no idea how she came up with that name ;)