Bunny Tales

 A few weeks ago, I noticed that when I drove up my driveway at night there was often a little grey rabbit in the carpark area. It wasn't until I saw this same bunny in the daytime that I realised it wasn't just a normal feral rabbit or "bush bunny" as they are referred to, but was obviously an escaped or abandoned pet. Given that it had been hanging around our apartment block for weeks at this point and no one had come looking for it, I guessed it had probably been abandoned.

I started to make friends with Bunny, taking him vegetable offcuts, and gradually getting him more and more comfortable with me until he was happy to eat out of my hand as long as I didn't try to touch him. He really didn't like being touched, probably due to some serious trust and abandonment issues. I would visit him in his home under the lilac bushes every morning when I was home (which is most mornings at the moment) and bring him some treats. I introduced my friends Cath and Christine to him on their visits to me, but he was very stand-offish and skittish around them - I think he thought that by bringing a second person to visit him I was trying trap him.

Yesterday, when I went to visit Bunny I found that he was already nibbling on some brussel sprouts. Unbeknown to me, Bunny apparently had another friend and benefactor. I had no idea any of my neighbours had shown any interest in Bunny at all, but it seems that one of my neighbours has a taste for brussel sprouts and is as soppy about cute furry animals as I am.

This morning when I went to visit Bunny, I couldn't find him. This is not the first time I haven't been able to find him, but every other time he has made an appearance not much later so I assumed he would soon be back and ready to eat the bits of bok choy I had saved for him. Unfortunately, I have since found that is not the case. Bunny who was almost always around our apartment block had for some reason gone much further away than usual and had been run over not far from the bottom of our driveway. So my bunny tale has a very sad end.

I'm going to miss you, Bunny. Thanks for hopping into my life and brightening my boring mornings.

Caving Adventures

After months of working in the caves, I finally managed to go on a short adventure in a "wild" cave this week. There are over 300 caves in the area around Mole Creek, but I had only been in the 2 with the convenient pathways and lighting and handrails so it was definitely about time for a bit of exploration. 

My day started off at Marakoopa, watching some of my workmates start an adventure into the parts of the cave that don't have pathways. I elected not to go on this particular adventure because I'm not confident on the ropes and there were limited places on the permit, but I was still keen to watch their descent off the pathway into the river bed. This meant getting to work at 7am, but I decided to stay at the King Solomon house so I didn't have to get up too early.

Here is a video of my friend Cath going over the edge. Its sideways unfortunately, but for some reason Blogger's video player puts it sideways even though the video itself isn't. It must be an aspect ratio type thing. You'll just have to tilt your head (or your screen) to see it properly.

Then after a full day at work taking tours through Marakoopa,  I still hadn't had my fill of caving for the day so Cath, Teresa, and I went and explored my first "wild" cave. I had an amazing time. I had an even better time than I thought I was going to. The cave we explored was on the property that Cath is renting close to work and she had already explored it 3 times so she knew exactly what she was doing - she's also a very experienced caver- so Teresa and I just blindly trusted her that she knew what she was doing as she set up ropes and led us through the cave. Our trust was well placed, and Cath was an excellent trip leader.

Cath going down the almost vertical descent into Quarry Cave. 

Helictites on the cave ceiling.

Me in the crawl space. Technically we didn't have to go through this part, but it was heaps of fun and we found a pademelon skull down there.

Teresa climbing back up the incline out of the cave.

Sorry about the quality of photos on this post, but there was no way I was going to take my good camera crawling through a cave so these were all taken on my waterproof camera instead.

A Plethora of Pilfering Possums

I have lived in my apartment for close on 2 years, and in that time I have been growing some lovely veggies in my little enclosed courtyard. I have also enjoyed watching the wildlife that lives in the bushland that extends to the back wall of my courtyard, but I have never had any problems with any of that wildlife coming into my garden and eating my plants. Up until a couple of months ago, that is.

I had quite a good veggie patch planted in my boxes and had apple cucumbers, squash, and zucchini all finally fruiting after a very late start to the season. I spent a couple of nights away at the King Sol House, and when I got back it was to find that every single one of my baby cucumbers, zucchinis, and squash had been eaten. I was quite devastated, but I figured that they had eaten everything they were going to eat so I didn't bother doing any animal proofing. A little while later I noticed that since they had eaten all the really yummy things, they had moved on to the less palatable options. The leaves on my strawberry plants started to disappear, followed by my herbs (except the rosemary and chives), and then almost all the pigface that I had been carefully propagating from cuttings I took in Stanley last year. So, I started working on doing some possum-proofing. I spent a couple of hours one day assembling chicken wire and irrigation house into a protective cage to place around the veggie plants. I was pretty proud of my work, and I decided to test it out, so I put enticing food inside the cage, where I was planning to replant some veggies, and set my wildlife camera up to see what happened.

I was very frustrated the next morning to find that a possum had found its way inside without much difficulty. It did have a harder time finding its way back out, but it eventually managed it.

So, I spent another hour modifying my protective cage, placed some more tasty morsels inside and reset the camera (at a better angle this time). This time a mother and juvenile brushtail possum came into the garden and climbed all over the cage trying to find a way in. They were in and out of the garden for over an hour attempting to get into the cage, but they didn't manage it. I did notice, though, that with an adult possum sitting on top of the cage, it bows quite a bit and a possum might be able to eat the top of any veggies that I plant so I'm going to be a little bit more modification to make it a bit less flexible.

I was about to stop going through all the photos when I saw this one

An adult (and quite a large one) ring tail possum! Ring tail numbers have decreased so much that they are quite hard to find usually, and I never expected to see one in my one backyard. I have set my camera up in the bushland behind my place quite a few times before and I have never seen one there so I didn't think we had any. I was so excited that I had to call Mum so that I had someone to tell.

Easter trip to Queensland

For Easter, I was able to take 4 days off work and head up to Queensland to join up with Mum and Dad in a trip to visit some uncles, aunts, and cousins. Growing up, my whole extended family was located in Tassie, but these days everyone is spread around the country (and sometimes overseas) so it takes a bit more planning and traveling to catch up. Which means that catching up with the family can mean a nice little holiday to sunny Queensland - except that it chose to be rainy Queensland to make us feel at home.

I had a really nice time with the extended family, but mostly we were eating way too much, talking, and just spending time together so I didn't take many photos. We did go for a nice drive up the mountains, and went for a tour of Joh and Flo Bjelke-Petersen's family farm, "Bethany", but I didn't take any photos of any of that for some reason either.

In fact, I don't think I used my camera at all while I was away. Dad did, though. On my last morning in Queensland, we were in Tin Can Bay and we went to the dolphin feeding. There is a pod of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins at Tin Can Bay that come into shore every morning to be feed fish by tourists. They have been doing so for over 30 years, and the dolphins seem to enjoy their interaction with the humans. The humans definitely enjoy their interaction with the dolphins. Mum, Bec, and I all feed the dolphins and Dad played cameraman for us.

Tin Can Bay

One of the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins

Each dolphin has one local in the water to direct the feeding and make sure that the tourist are obeying all the rules for the dolphin's safety (and possibly for the tourist as well, but they aren't as important). There is also another local whose job it is to keep the pelicans and cormorants from coming in and stealing the fish out of the tourists hands.

A pelican who would quite like the opportunity to steal some fish. 

 Mum feeding the dolphin.

 Me feeding the dolphin.

A pelican who wasn't allowed to steal even one fish and doesn't look particularly happy about it.

Nearly Jobless (again...)

I've nearly come to the end of yet another contract. At this point I have about another 5 weeks left ahead of me before I am once again an unemployed bum. Although, technically, I won't be unemployed because I'm still casually employed doing stocktaking so I can start accepting shifts doing that again once my fulltime work has dried up. I would rather be working for National Parks than counting bottles of shampoo, but any employment is infinitely superior to homelessness. I even sort of enjoyed turning my brain off and robotically counting things when I was doing it last year.

I definitely won't miss the long drive to and from the caves when my contract finishes. I might miss spending the occasional quiet night in the secluded staff house at King Solomon Cave, though. I don't think I have blogged about staying at the staff house at King Sol yet. One reason for that is that when I am staying there I have no internet access. I also have no phone signal. That is both one of the best and one of the worst things about staying there - having nothing to distract you means you can have a nice early night, but after a couple of nights in seclusion I feel pretty out of the loop. The best thing about staying at the King Sol house is that it is only 2 min to work at King Sol and 10min to work at Marakoopa so I can have a nice relaxed morning and still be on time for work. Sometimes, though, the effort of packing and organising myself to stay there is more than its worth, so I haven't been staying there as often as I could be. The problem with staying there is that you have to take everything with you - food, water, bedding, work stuff, and something to keep you entertained. The kitchen is well stocked with cooking utensils and there is a bed and mattress to sleep on, but anything else you want you need to take with you. When I first started staying there it felt very isolated and creepy, but I'm getting used to it now and I usually quite enjoy my trips there.

The aforementioned King Sol House in its majestic surroundings.

What I am definitely going to miss most of all is the caves themselves. I'm going to miss being allowed to wander through them all the time, and I'm going to miss showing them to other people. I'm not going to miss some types of tourist, but 99.5% are lovely (sometimes 0.5% can really ruin your day) and I'm going to miss the exclamations when they enter King Solomon's Cave, or the spontaneous "Ooooh" you get when the lights go out and they see the glow worms, and the round of applause at the end of a tour that lets you know you've done your job well. I plan to really enjoy the next month or so at work and make the most of the time I have remaining to enjoy the caves in.

And then I intend to enjoy a little bit of unemployment, sleeping in, and slobbing around the house in my pjs ;)

Entally House

As well as my work at the caves, I have now taken on some shifts being the representative Parks employee working at Entally House. The work over at Entally is pretty boring as it is mostly being stationed at a desk, but I must admit that the surroundings are rather beautiful. For those that don't know, Entally House is a historic home built in 1819 (parts of it were anyway) with a lot of furnished rooms that you can wander through...

The Library

And a rather beautiful garden and greenhouse, currently containing a stunning display of begonias.

 There is also a rather lovely, but very naughty cat named Ginge. Ginge is allowed to ignore the "please do not sit on the antique furniture" signs and usually spends his days sleeping on one of the beds, but also sometimes tries to take his license a bit too far and has to be removed from his explorations of some of the furniture.

I think I'll probably quite enjoy spending a few days a week at Entally as long as I find ways to keep entertaining myself while being tethered to the phone and the front door. The best thing about it is that its less than 15min drive from home rather than the usual hour to the caves.

Tasmazia

Sorry its been quite a while since I blogged. I actually have a few different things I've been planning to blog about, but being full-time employed again I've found that I don't have as much free time.

Anyway, I'll be getting around to the rest of the blogging sometime (probably), but for now you can enjoy some photos from a recent excursion to Tasmazia. Mum, Dad, and I spent an enjoyable few hours playing around in the mazes and visiting the township of Lower Crackpot on Australia Day. It was a beautiful sunny day to be wandering around the mazes, and we all enjoyed it more than we expected. All 3 of us would quite happily go back, even with the $25 entry fee, and would all recommend it as a good place to spend an afternoon.

Enjoy some photos of Lower Crackpot and the mazes.