Mid year holidays 2012

Hello all,

Yes I am aware that I am a very inconsistent blogger but I think that's just the way it is going to be.
Life gets busy, and  I am also lazy sometimes too.

Good news, I passed Semester 1 of the hopefully last year of my professional writing course. (I was originally supposed to finish last year but TAFE felt the need to add more subjects. Grr.) Anyway so I have made it through the first half of 2012! Yay.

What have I been up to lately? Well, I have been enjoying my holidays for the past 2 weeks, in between work and submitting poetry for potential publication. This is the first time I have sent poetry off to a competition and to a publication so I find that very exciting, even if it all comes to nothing. It is just nice to have some writing out in the public arena.  I have submitted 2 poems to the Salisbury Writer's Festival and 2 poems to The School Magazine in New South Wales.

I also travelled back to my hometown Waikerie for a week-end and took in the sights and sounds of the Murray River. It is nice to know that it will always be there whenever I come back from the city.

As I walked along the jetty I spotted this feathered friend, who didn't seem at all intimidated by my presence!


I have also caught up with a couple of friends in Adelaide so that has been nice. I recently attended a friend's 21st. She had a themed party, which made it more interesting, but also more stressful in order to decide what to wear. Her theme was Vintage 50's and 60's, so we all had to dress up in vintage clothing. It made for some fun shopping trips and some funny photos. Here are a few examples... 

I found this dress at a vintage clothes shop called Red Ruby just off of Hindley Street in the city. I can't remember if it was a 1950's or 1960's dress but it was a summer dress, so I thought it was quite funny that I would be wearing it to a birthday party in winter! I was sort of going for a Marilyn Monroe style with my hair. 

The one in the middle is Leah. It was her party. :)

When I was in Waikerie I also had the chance to hang out with our family's resident fur-ball Bella. Mum and I are biased cat lovers so Dad didn't really have a choice when we decided last year that the household needed another feline's presence. 

 

Bella enjoys playing hide 'n' seek with me. She also likes to scare me by pouncing out from underneath the dining room table! Bella is now about a year and a half old.

Back in Adelaide I did a bit more exploring around my area for more walking tracks. Horsnell Gully Conservation Park proved to be a challenging but rewarding climb, which gave me some awesome views of the city below. However, due to the overcast weather and then the blinding sunlight at sunset it was actually a better view in person, compared to the average photos I took. 

 
I saw three koalas that afternoon. I had only hiked up the hill for half an hour so I kept seeing one every 10 mins or so! One of them was a bit scared of me walking underneath its gumtree and made a horrible grunting noise.

This was the fire track I followed up the hills. I think this is the back way to get there. Next time I should probably enter via Horsnell Gully Road. It was still a good adventure, and good exercise! 

The Black Stump

HAHA! Finally a photo has uploaded for me! Hmm... maybe Blogger only likes me uploading one at a time! :S That could take a while.

"Hi" again everyone. Here I am at Paringa, a little Riverland town not far from Renmark where the Black Stump lives! (It is the large, round wooden thing behind me. It looks a bit like a wooden cobweb in my opinion.) We have a saying in Australia, "Beyond the black stump" which means: beyond the middle of nowhere, or something like that! For example the phrase can be used like this, "Oh you are travelling to Alice Springs are you? That's a bit beyond the Black Stump isn't it?!"

This "Black Stump" occurred because of one man's quirky sense of humour one day when he was out on the River Murray! However, I'm pretty sure it would've taken more than one man to haul this wooden stump out of the river and transport it to the front of his house. This is where the stump is now located.

I visited this stump not last week but the week before when I was on holidays. I came back to the Riverland for a few days to see my family and our current exchange student Jenny. I say current as she is our 10th exchange student so far. Jenny comes from Germany and is staying with our family for 10 months. She arrived in Australia in February this year.

Below are 2 photos of Jenny and me on the River Murray Queen, a paddle steamer permanently moored in my hometown Waikerie.

The photo above features an interesting koala sign we saw on the way to Paringa. There is a Koala sanctuary not far from that sign on the other side of the bridge. We visited the sanctuary for 10 minutes or so but didn't spot any koalas which wasn't very surprising... we were right next to the highway! The poor koalas probably hid in fright when they heard us roaring down the drive in our big mechanical beast (my parent's Ford)!

Since seeing this first koala sign I have spotted a couple of others around the Burnside area in Adelaide yesterday. However, the signs only featured an outline of a koala, they weren't quite as fancy as the koala sign in the photo above.

Anyway Toodlepip for now, I heard an old Englishman say that on TV last night so I thought I'd try it out... I don't think it suits me really. Oh well how about see-ya later? XD

*Katz*

Holidays

Okay. So. Finally it is the holidays and I can actually relax again! Starting from last Friday I officially have no more TAFE assignments to do until... 2 weeks time. Yuck. But still, 2 weeks of hols are better than nothing! Movies time XD

But now I have to work... so I don't have quite as much time to relax but that doesn't matter.

So many things have happened to me since the last time I've been on here. I had my 21st, yay! I got a job... yay. I have been using my new camera that I got for my b-day... okay I'm going to stop saying yay now! It would be nice if I could upload some pics onto here of my b-day but blogger just takes way too long. Hopefully one day I'll add some more.

I'm not a big talker atm. I need to really collect my thoughts and just focus on one topic but I have to go get ready for work so I'll talk to ya again some time!

Ciao.

Katz