Rainy Weather

Time tick tocks on: Eloise goes to school, I help out with reading most mornings, and swimming spotting.

The weather has alternated between showers and rain and from warm to pretty hot. The Queenslanders moan about the heat and humidity before quietly admitting that they kind of enjoy it really.

This is probably the first real Queensland summer we've experienced. Always the drought previously but this year, I suppose it goes without saying, the rains have been around with a vengeance.

Even now in North Queensland they're getting massive rain on a pretty regular basis, of the order of 20cm a day, with all the flooding that goes along with that.

Uncharacteristically for us, when the weather has become unpleasant we haven't made a beeline for the beach; which is a bit of a break with tradition.

Mostly we've been sticking to the forests and watching as they dry out, then the rain comes and the paths turn to streams as the water runs off land which I guess is pretty damp underneath the surface.

But it hasn't really rained here for ages now in any really meaningful way.

Though even as I speak I think I can hear the white noise of drizzle outside.

Processionary Caterpillars

We were toddling around in the woods the other day when Eloise spotted this line of caterpillars trundling across the track we were following.

We spent a few minutes picking up some stragglers using leaves (we didn't want to touch those hairy things, they looked as though they wouldn't be good for you) and putting them down next to their voyaging compadres so they could rejoin the procession.

The Irrepressible Matilda

While I was climbing a mountain the other day - about which some more, maybe, some other time - Nicole walked Matilda down at Kedron Brook.

Whilst Matilda was wandering around, by all accounts she sidled up to a big dog who thought it was looking after a baby, and in full protection mode it set upon her, covering her in doggy slaver and basically pounding her into a quivering mass of submission.

We didn't think much more of it at the time.

This was during a warm (read bloody hot) spell but in the evening when things cooled down over the next couple of days she was panting and appeared quite uncomfortable.

After a couple of days some investigation was carried out, and as things transpired, beneath the fur on the nape of her neck was a suppurating puncture wound.

And so, off to the vet, and after injections of antibiotics and a course of oral amoxy-stuff, she was on the mend again.