Scuba for the planet

While Littletree has been having an awesome time snorkelling on the reef almost every day, the kids have also been drawn to go scuba diving. At first, I thought Littletree was too… well… little. But it turns out the PADI dive centre offers “fun dive” courses for children starting at ten years old, so I said she could do the training session in the pool, and see how she goes.

Several of the kids here for the home school adventure did the course together

Watched the training video and listened to all the instructions from the dive master

Got kitted up with wetsuits and masks – they even had a small sized tank and scuba equipment to fit Littletree

Then they went through the training, learning how to use the apparatus, respirators, equalise ear pressure, underwater sign language, and so on.

And finally, practiced diving!

By the end, Littletree was quite proficient, and given the go-ahead from the dive master to join the group out on the reef… but finally, she decided instead to go to a lecture about the delicate ecology of the reef. She then joined in with a clean-up effort organised by the dive school to collect rubbish from the beach and reef, and protect the dune areas where turtles are laying their eggs.

Littletree came home very excited, happy to have done her bit for the day as a “wildlife warrior”.

Early Bilbies

Littletree has gone away for the holidays to stay with her grandparents in Israel, so she’s over there now celebrating Passover.

We haven’t ever really celebrated Easter before, and she’s well-informed about the Pagan origins of the holiday, and knows that technically, it’s a Spring rite, and therefore should be observed around the full moon after the Vernal Equinox, which isn’t for another six months for us up here in the Southern Hemisphere. We’ve talked at length about Ishtar and Oestre and the significance of rabbits and eggs.

This year, Littletree declared that she doesn’t mind about all of that stuff, she just wants to have the “wake up in the morning and have a surprise easter egg hunt with hidden chocolates”. She explained to me that she knows that the “Easter Bunny” would just be me pretending, but she asked me to do it for her anyway. And to do it early, since she would be away on the “proper” Easter – as she wisely pointed out; it’s irrelevant when we do it, since it’s not really Easter anyway, and the whole holiday is just a made-up thing.

Fair enough.

So off I went to a purveyor of processed egg-shaped chocolate confections to purchase a small hoarde of goodies for Littletree to find. A dozen “egg-sized” chocolate eggs, a small bag of “mini” eggs, and an Easter Bilby.

The Easter Bilby is an important and noteworthy part – here in Australia, rabbits are a massive plague of a pest, and meanwhile, the Bilby is a cute little Australian native animal that sort of vaguely looks like a bunny, and they’re highly endangered since the introduction of European settlers to the country (said settlers were also the foolish imports who brought the rabbits with them). Anyway, Australia tries to cull feral rabbits, and promote saving bilbies, and somehow, eating chocolate bilbies at Easter instead of bunnies is a part of that. Or something. At least it’s educational.

Anyway, Littletree awoke on the morning before she left to find a little trail of chocolate eggs outside her door

She started collecting them up in her shirt

Until she found that the trail led out into the garden to a basket

There were eggs hidden all around the house

and around the garden

Littletree got quite the stash!

She did plan to save the Bilby, but after about an hour she came to me, all distressed, and said, “mama, the worst thing ever happened – I was playing with my Easter Bilby and the wrapping just fell off of it, and then it broke, so I had to eat the broken bits, and then it was uneven, so I had to eat more to make it neat… and now it’s all wrecked.”

The poor child – she had to eat the whole thing!

She did save all the eggs to take to her cousins in Israel though – apparently they don’t get chocolate there, only matzah.

Currumbin Virtual Photowalk

Continuing on from our Authentic Aussie Experience with Tif and Andy, we all met up with Michael who was hosting a Google+ Virtual Photowalk™.

The Virtual Photowalk is actually a very cool concept. Essentially, some people on Google+ decided to help show the world to people who can’t see it, by bringing them virtually, in Hangouts (HERE is a neat little CBS news clip about it).

Michael’s setup is pretty darn cool – he has a big, fancy video camera, with a smartphone mounted in, and mobile internet connection, so the feed from the video was streaming in the Hangout, where several people from around the world could watch, and the whole thing was recorded so it can be watched later. Check it out HERE

Being a photowalk, we did, of course, take a lot of photos (You can see the full album of our adventures (HERE)

As did Littletree

(and yes, this is a photo of me taking a photo of her taking a photo of me…)

We arrived in time for the morning feeding of the Rainbow Lorikeets

And then it was right off to the Koalas,

Because both Littletree and Tif were super excited to cuddle koalas – this is Abby

We tried to feed Tif and Littletree to a croc

But failing that, we fed kangaroos

We saw cassowaries (because Angry Birds in Australia are really angry – do not mess with Aussies)

 

We saw the cutest little ginger tree kangaroos

We rode the train

And did I mention we took lots of photos…

We spent a lot of time on our phones checking out Google+,

posting, sharing, chatting, and in general engaging with thousands of people, and joining in the hangouts, so it felt like we had the whole world of all our friends with us

So much awesome!

Especially the awesome friends right here

And we took lots of photos.

Then, all tuckered out from walking around… and taking so many pictures, we retired to the beach for an awesome brunch

Fun times! And of course, entirely educational, especially the part where Littletree challenged Tif to a Big Bang Theory quote-off.

Authentic Aussie Experience

Last week Littletree and I had some visitors from the USA come to stay – the most awesome Andy and the most gorgeous Tif made it all the way to our rainforest hideaway!

So awesome to get to meet good friends from Google in real life!

Of course, it was still flooding, though the rain had mostly stopped and the waters gone down a fair ways, getting in to our place was quite the adventure for city folk (at least Tif is a tough Jamaican)

And crossing the creek with luggage

Actually, they arrived after dark, so that made it even more fun, these are the photos of when they left.

Of course, I had to make them a traditional roast dinner – Kangaroo Roast

And cake, which goes without saying - Tif’s favourite; a tres leches cake.

We explored the rainforest around the back of my property

And climbed up to the spring

And climbed up the mango trees

Google+ Hangouts from the tops of a tree was pretty epic!

And Littletree and Tif bonded over their mutual love of Chupa Chups

We went out to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, and got to see all manner of awesome critters and even cuddle koalas, but I’ll save that for its own post tomorrow :)

Most of all, we had a fantastic time, and were sad to see them go, even over Thai food.

Miracles Every Day

As we lit the eighth candle last night, I talked with Littletree about the miracle of Channukah - about 2000 years ago, the temple was destroyed and the people needed specially prepared sacred oil to keep the sacred lamp burning. But in the ruins of the temple, all that remained was one little jar of oil; barely enough to last for one day, and it would take eight days to make more.
By a miracle, that small jar of oil lasted for eight days - long enough to make more, and to keep the flame burning.

For me, this is a true story; one that I've experienced in my real life. So many times I've been in the communal kitchens at Rainbow Gatherings, where communal vegetarian meals are prepared for sometimes up to 5,000 people twice daily.

The whole shebang is run by volunteers, without any structured leaders, workers or organisation. Everything from the collecting of donations, the writing of shopping lists, the shopping, the storage, the kitchen hygiene and the food preparation is done by self-appointed volunteers.

And sometimes we get into the kitchen to prepare food for hundreds or thousands of people, only to find that there's no oil left to cook with.
So I get an empty oil bottle, and I go around the whole festival to people's individual camp sites, and ask: can anyone donate a little oil from their personal food stash.

Even just a splash of oil, every little bit helps. Some people don't have oil, some people can just spare a little, some people give up half a bottle... but I always return to the kitchen with enough oil (or salt, or potatoes, or whatever) to make the meal for everyone to share.

It's a true miracle. When people work together and share as a community, everything is possible.

Chag Sameach.