Blog – Page 2 – Ash's blog

16 May 202416 May 2024

Solo camping with my EV

I took this week off to unwind. What better way than out in the bush, adjacent a creek, sitting next to a campfire watching satellites spin past?

I’ve wanted to get back into camping for a while now. I figure it’s a good way to get some downtime without spending a fortune on accommodation. The national parks in Queensland are seven bucks a night, which is a cheap weekend away these days, and there’s plenty of them.

The Qld Government has a website listing all their campgrounds, and you can filter by things like toilet availability, whether or not you need a four wheel drive to access.

I was originally planning to drive north but after checking the forecast figured south had less likelihood of wet and I landed on a little campground called Spicers Gap Campground.

It feels like a lot of things went wrong, but I figure the best way to approach them is with a sort of zen mindset. The first omen, I ordered a V2L cable for my EV so I could power my cooktop and assorted bits. It was sent express post last week but Australia Post managed to lose it somewhere in Melbourne. So I picked up a small gas stove instead.

my package did not arrive on time

Then I forgot to bring my water bottle AND the 15l tank of water, both sitting on my kitchen bench. So I had to stop in and get some bottled water.

One cool thing was finding an EV charger on the way at the Queensland Raceway, and it’s completely freeeee. It’s advertised as some ridiculously high speed charger, but I only got about 80 kilowatts, enough to charge the EV up while I ate a sandwich (ham cheese & tomato, stale, from the same fuel station I got the water).

Once I’d topped up to 80% I drove the hour or so south to the campground, only to hit a dirt road up a steep hill with a sign saying “4×4 ONLY”.

Rocked up to the camping area that the website said is most definitely available to 2 wheel drive vehicles.

I checked the website and yeah, it says it’s only accessible by four wheel drive. But it’s also listed as a regular 2WD accessible camp. So I checked to see if there were any other access roads (there weren’t), then had a look to see if there were any other campgrounds nearby (kinda), before practising my calm and driving off.

Manna Gum, the nearby camp was only 13 km away, but the drive up through the Great Diving Range and looping back on a long and windy road was 85 km.

Manna Gum and Spicers Gap campgrounds are pretty close together, but 85 km by road

I arrived about an hour later and un-thworped my pop-up tent in a little spot the furthest away from the only other people at the camp.

Some observations:

There’s no mobile signal (Spicer’s Gap would have been on the cusp of service, so I bought a Telstra SIM specially for the occasion)
There are cows! Lots of them, just chilling around the place.
It’s really nice, it’s a eucalypt rainforesty looking place, and I can hear the creek flowing nearby. Can’t wait to check it out.
It was also much further away than I thought. I went from 80% to 43% battery after the little detour. I know that the cooktop doesn’t use THAT much power, but I’d still feel a bit of that range anxiety getting back.
Especially because there’s no signal I can’t look up nearby chargers hahahahaaaaa oh no.

It was at this time I realised I forgot to bring the ropes for my tarp, and the eggs for breakfast. Almost like I should have a checklist for this stuff.

a car and a tent and a little table covered in things in a campground, with lots of trees and a little dirt path

It was a nice afternoon though. I didn’t really do anything other than set up the campsite and sit around watching cows while trying to get the fire going. It took a little bit of coaxing, because I didn’t really have any kindling. But I got one of the thinner logs to catch fire eventually and it kept itself mostly going all night.

When the sun started to go down, a big swarm of cockatoos tore open the sky with their screeching. A couple of wallabies came out of the trees to snack on the grass, and a big fat possum jumped on the ground right behind me which gave me a fright. Can’t get away from them it seems.

So it was only myself and the campers up the hill at the campgrounds. At the other campsite it was only going to be ME all by myself. Shawn asked if I’d get scaredy out in the wilderness on my own, but there’s not really any wildlife to cause troubles here. Maybe overinquisitive cows?

Though when I went to book the original booking the site told me there were a certain number of campsites at the camp, and also that the same number of campsites were available to book, and I realised that anyone could just scrape that data and find campsites with 1 person staying by themselves. And go steal their nickels or whatever tech savvy criminals might do. So probably not great opsec there, so I booked for two people instead of one because I figured it’s not that much more expensive and it might give said crimbinals pause. I’m thinking about mailing the department behind it to suggest they don’t do that any more.

But overall it was fine, and I’m happy to say that my first night was tranquil AF watching the animals, the stars, the fire. Brain off, relaxation.

Dinner was sausage gnocci.

The moon behind some clouds behind some trees. It's not spooky unless you want it to be.

Around 8 o’clock the fire sort of gave up firing and I decided to go to bed to write some blog.

It was that point I realised the tent I bought is too small. It looked alright by the specs. It’s longer than I am, therefore all good? Turns out nah, I can’t lay down and type without both the laptop and my feet brushing the canvas. I think it’ll be alright to sleep in. A bit squishy, but alright. But I think I’m gonna have to upgrade at some point in the future.

So I’m laying here, finishing up, listening to the creek running down the hill and I’m pretty happy.

Also I forgot to bring a pillow.

The next day I woke up to the sound of a strange bird calling and warbling outside my tent. There were a few of them, and I heard them crashing around outside. Or maybe that was the wallabies.

I didn’t look because it was 6 o’clock and I desperately wanted to sleep. Also it was raining and I desperately didn’t want to get wet.

My choice in tent didn’t help there. It’s the Pavillo Cool Mount 2, another cheapy after my last one leaked. This one also leaked, with droplets beading in where the drizzle was pooling, and also where the front zip just wasn’t sealed at all. Also because it’s smaller, I couldn’t get dressed properly without rubbing all over the wet canvas and getting even wetter. I don’t rate this tent highly, I’m just waiting for it to dry out before I take it back and complain. If you have a favourite small tent for big people that can withstand a light drizzle, let me know!

But ultimately the rain was more than I expected and I wasn’t going to do any hiking or exploring in that weather so I packed up and headed back, considering it a very wet dry run for a proper camping trip another time.

The EV made it back to the free charger with 20% battery to spare. I think it ate up a lot of power defrosting the windows, but it also regenerated 3 kilowatts driving down the Great Dividing Range, so I was pretty stoked.

All up, I had a great trip even though it was a bit chaotic. I’m looking forward to doing the next one properly. Let me know your favourite camping spots!

5 May 20245 May 2024

Brisbane comedy festival, queer spaces, and EV races

This weekend has been a blast. It’s the Brisbane Comedy Festival so on Friday I went to see Josh Thomas’ Lets Tidy Up.

Comedian, gay, neurodiverse, and ex Brisbane kid. I loved his TV stuff and I just find him endearing, so I booked two tickets and couldn’t find anyone other than Ben who would go with me.

This is a show where Josh tidies up. Tidying up is not normally the stuff of gripping drama, it wouldn’t be a propulsive narrative for most people, but for Josh it’s Everest, a fundamentally impossible task, like trying to defy the moon and control the tides.
Brisbane Comedy Festival Program

We had Korean for dinner, then decided to drive because the Powerhouse is not well connected to public transit (the CityCat takes AGES) and it was threatening to rain.

We couldn’t get parking so we ended up driving around and taking scooters the rest of the way anyway. But it was a fun night.

The Powerhouse from riiiiight up the back, the stage is lit green and has the words Josh repeated over and over. People are still taking their seats.

The next day I was going to have breakfast with another friend and I’m actually kind of glad it was cancelled because I was not prepared to wake up that morning. Thankfully neither was she, so I had a bit of a sleep in and sat around doing not much until the afternoon.

Then I caught up with Dan who was in the area for the grand opening of a new local queer bar Come To Daddy. Hilarious name, puns abound.

It’s a 5 minute walk from my place but I hadn’t heard anything about it! It’s not really in Google and it seems like they’re only on Instagram. And even so, only barely ¯_(ツ)_/¯

But we wandered down shortly after opening, grabbed a drink and a seat, and people filtered in until it was standing room only. Then there was an amusing welcome to country to christen the bar (yarma!), and I saw my first ever drag queen pianist (playing “Daddies Everywhere” to the tune of “Love is in the Air”).

The queue for the bar was super long so we only had a couple of drinks before calling it a night. But I’m keen to head back soon.

Dan and I, two guys taking a selfie on the street in front of a crowded but not very in-focus bar.

The next morning I went to the little “health food store” and bought some “health food” (chocolate coated freeze dried strawberries and ginger), then headed down to Amanda and Colin’s place in my new EV.

I got the MG4 EV because I’ve been doing a lot of travel back and forth to my parents place in Maryborough, which emits about 70 kilos of CO2 round trip. Apparently when you burn fuel in an engine it doesn’t just disappear, who knew! Also it’s a lot more comfortable than the Hyundai Getz I was borrowing from my folks, with all the mod cons like cruise control and headlamps that actually illuminate the road.

I arrived a bit early so when I took a wrong turn I was happy to just meander around the streets admiring how much the suburbs of the Gold Coast look kinda just like the suburbs where I grew up north of Brisbane. I also went up a hill and cruised right back down, excitedly watching the regenerative braking put a bunch of power back into the batteries.

I said I would bring “some sausage rolls or something”, but Amanda really wanted to put on a Scottish lunch. So we had scotch pies with mash and beans, and Irn Bru as a palate cleanser. It was amazing and I felt very special.

I don’t have any pics, other than this one where I found the cap for the charger had been flapping around where I forgot to replace it for the past week.

By the time I got home it was already kinda late so I made dinner (I got the tastiest turkish bread from Coles yesterday after visiting Daddy), then started faffing around with my web site.

I wanted a place to share links to stories I’ve enjoyed reading, or would like to refer back to. So a few weeks back I set up a bookmarks page, as well as an RSS feed that you can subscribe to wherever you get your feeds.

But as I was testing the RSS feed I had to go digging around in my subscriptions, and it was kind of nice to go back and see all the feeds from various people I’ve subscribed to over the years. If I stumble on an interesting looking personal site I try to subscribe, and keep that small web spirit alive.

Some people post once every few years. Some people never post again. And long story short that’s why I took a moment to write about my weekend. Also it’s #WeblogPoMo2024 (HT rachsmith.com).

So how about you, what have you been up to?

17 April 202417 April 2024

I have a fish tank now

I set up a fish tank.

A fish tank with duck weed and airline tube rings so you can see the plants below

It’s a low tech planted tank, using the Walstad method. Kinda like the one described here.

The TLDR is that it’s chock full of plants and critters that maintain the water quality without needing to do lots of cleaning, water changes, or filtering. And it’s cute!

A bucket full of plants with a lamp over the top — First the plants went in the bucket

An aquarium full of the same plants with the aforementioned lamp over the top. — First the plants went in the bucket

Sometime last year I was admiring the betta fish at Mappins and Ben encouraged me to get one. But I wanted to read up on them first, and it turns out bettas prefer larger tanks, lots of space, things to do. Don’t we all?

So instead of getting a betta I decided to set up a planted aquarium because it seemed like a cool hobby.

Given it’s full of soil and some people haven’t had luck setting up this style of tank, I was cautious about the potential for the water quality go weird and gross. But it was perfect from the moment I set it up. There was a tiny nitrite spike at the start, but it settled down and I haven’t even registered any nitrates. It’s been a pretty steady PH around 7.6 which is about what the tap water is. So all the numbers have been super stable, presumably because of the plant load!

I did a 50% water change maybe a month in. Not because I needed to, but because I wanted to give it a try. It did improve the colour of the water, but it’s been fine since.

A bladder snail floats on top of the water

One of the coolest things were the critters that hitched a ride along with the plants.

I had a population of bladder snails (they can float!!!) and seed shrimp (so cute!!!) explode in the tank. This was a great way to start off the ecosystem, because the snails and shrimp were a great cleanup crew. I can’t stress enough how much detritus used to be on the bottom of the tank, but now it’s perfectly clean.

After I was sure the water quality was stable, I picked up some shrimp. They’re yellow cherry shrimp (neocaridinas), and I also accidentally picked up a transparent one which I didn’t realise until it was in the bag.

A shrimp upside down playing in the duckweed

A yellow shrimp enjoying some broccolini

The shrimp are great. They scrounge around the looking for tasty treats, and clean up lots of dead stuff. They swim and crawl around the tank, and sometimes make me think they’re dead when they stop moving in weird positions. They’ve got a lot of personality.

Maybe a month after the shrimp were settled in I went back to Mappins because I saw they had ember tetras – a teeny tiny fish that I was hoping wouldn’t eat my seed shrimp.

I was wrong, they ate the seed shrimp. But they’re the perfect size for such a small tank at up to 2cm long. And once they’re comfortable they’re quite an outgoing and social fish.

They also never sit still so they’re impossible to get a photo with my phone camera.

little golden tetras schooling under a cryptocoryne plant.

An ember tetra swims past. It's orange like a goldfish but you can almost see through its body.

Anyway, it’s been three months and the tank has gotten overgrown. So I gave the tank a bit of a trim. I didn’t do all of the plants but took a lot of them down and replanted them to make a thicker forest.

I think I freaked the fish out, because they’re all schooling again, rather than out exploring by themselves.

I also found a bunch of the shrimp that were in hiding. I’ve definitely got at least five in there. A bunch of them were chilling under the pump, I guess they like cleaning out the gunk in there and it’s a good hiding spot 😌

There's barely any space in the aquarium between the roots of the duckweed and the plants grown all the way to the top — Before

There's a lot less duckweed on top, and the aquarium looks a lot clearer. — Before

I also threw together a quick Walstad style jar. Partly because I thought it was cute, and partly because I know Ben wants to start a tank and it’s a good way to keep some cuttings alive. I’m very curious if the jar will work out or not, but from everything I’ve read it should be fine.

So that’s my three month tank.

A jar with soil, sand, and aquatic plants

24 March 202424 March 2024

Why I no longer recommend GoPro (cw swears)

Cos they sucked me into a free trial and charged my card a year later without my realising. I didn’t even know I was subscribed.

Further, as an Australian there’s no way to contact them because they work on US business hours. So I was up at 2AM the other night hanging off a chat box where Vincent was apologetic, but kept pasting prefabricated blocks of text telling me to get fucked.

It’s enshittification at its best. They’re beholden to investors, and have to invent junk services to get that sweet recurring revenue. And their policy is no refunds, ever. So it’s obviously deliberate.

So basically, fuck em.

Insta360 and DJI both have excellent products in this space that may have their own ideological foibles, but at least won’t brazenly steal money from your card.

18 February 202418 February 2024

Human made web button

I’ve been thinking a lot about the problem of garbage AI generated content on the web. It’s a problem that erodes trust and makes everyone look bad. So how do you combat that?

Web buttons, of course!

These were popular in the early 2000s as a way of adding pieces of flair to your website, to link to friends, and to show off your W3 validated XHTML and CSS.

There’s a few archives around showing these off, including The 88×31 GIF Collection and this collection of old buttons. (edit: also Pixel Sea by Daniel aka Melon is a delightful way to explore buttons)

And given my web site is of a certain vintage I thought I’d do something up in the style.

I think it worked out really well. The little robot is very cute, and the colours were kind of inspired by the old Amiga button. And as was common at the time I exported it and closed before remembering to save my sources, so this is it now.

If you want to download and use the button on your own website, go for it. It’s all yours. Use it as you wish:

I’ve decided to upscale it here for effect, but the original version is indeed 88×31 pixels.

If you want to upscale it, you can add the css image-rendering:pixelated; to make it render pixel perfect, rather than using a more blurry modern scaling designed for photos.

26 December 202327 December 2023

Changelog 2023-26 – a summer christmas

It's a trifle, heavy on the jelly, full of sponge and custard and christmas colours. It's messy but it's 100% delicious.

I have two weeks off so I’m spending the giftmas period with my parents. It’s hot, and I’m sitting on the veranda while Charlie pesters me to throw the ball. There’s a decent breeze, but it looks like we’ve missed the storms.

Dark mode fix: I fixed a bug on the site where it was always defaulting to dark mode. It’s been that way since I first implemented it because I was checking the truthiness of window.matchMedia("(prefers-color-scheme:dark)") instead of the boolean window.matchMedia("(prefers-color-scheme:dark)").matches. It should now respect your system preferences, and you can use the little icon in the bottom right to toggle between them.
Missing images: The backend of this site is running on WordPress, and there was a period of time where I was using it to photoblog. Anyway, some of those posts only contain a featured image and nothing else, and the featured image wasn’t showing up on this frontend site. So now feature images will show unless they’re already elsewhere in the post.
Dessert upgrade: I have acquired my mum’s family trifle recipe. It’s not beautiful, but it is my favourite. We made it together on xmas eve, and I’m so happy with it.
Hardware acquisition: I placed a late night ebay bid on an old Thinkpad and put Arch Linux on it, inspired by Josh‘s recent blogging. It’s a lot of fun and even though it’s a few years old, it’s way faster for day to day tasks than my M1 mac. Obvs not for video work, but I want to use it to get back into vector art. Though I see the Arch community has AURs for DaVinci Resolve which is shockingly difficult to get running on Linux, so I might dust off my desktop and put it on that as well.

Beyond that I made rum balls in my parents Thermomix and they came out alright. I blitzed up some almonds for a bit of health, and I think I’m gonna start making protein balls at home as a healthy snack. Do you have any good recipes?

I’ve also booked accommodation for my second week of holiday so I’m gonna take my new bike for a spin out to Bribie Island for a few days. No vlog cos it’s gonna be public holiday and kids everywhere. But I’ll post some bits on Mastodon.

Test run across the bridge, it’s _so_ nice to ride. I missed having gears 😆

17 December 202327 December 2023

#breadposting: the story so far

A loaf of delicious golden milk bread, with a freshly made ham cheese and tomato sandwich in the foreground. It looks succulent.

Lately I’ve been making bread.

I know people have been on this bandwagon since the start of the panini, but by bread making adventures are more out of necessity.

I like bread. But I’m not a big sourdough man. I want something light and fluffy to put cheese and cold cuts and salad on. Maybe a little peanut butter. But living in a gentrified neighbourhood, the options are stark.

The Aldi down the road is abominable. Bread from Aldi is made off-site before being shipped in, and in my experience it’s stale before it’s even put on the shelves.

The cheap Woolies bread is decent, but the store has staffing issues. Recently the sole baker went on leave. I don’t begrudge them that, but it meant there was no fresh bread on the shelves, and it had a flow-on effect to other supermarkets nearby. Fresh bread became impossible to get!

Empty shelves at Woolies: Our only baker will be absent until the 23rd of October. There will be limited range. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Another store: Dear customer, due to unforeseen circumstances the bakehouse will not have a full range of bakery items available. We apologies for any inconvenience. Thank you for understanding. Woolworths West Village Bakery Team.

Then there’s the French patisserie around the corner. I’ve tried their baguette a few times and it’s alright, but it’s crusty enough to cut your teeth on. I don’t like bread that leaves sore bits in your mouth for the rest of the day so it’s really only an occasional thing.

So at my wit’s end I’m making fresh bread.

Japanese Milk Bread

It started with a message from Ben (as it often does):

Milk bread is not the easiest bread, especially to start with, so I’m told. But I was sitting around at my parents’ place with an idle Thermomix and little else to do so I figured I’d give it a shot.

The tricky part of milk bread is the tangzhong, which is a paste of cooked flour and milk. Wikipedia says it improves the texture of the bread, and also “stabilizes the wheat starches in the bread, to prevent recrystallization” which stops it going stale.

The recipe had Thermomix instructions for the first steps. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the Thermie because the recipe paywall stuff is a nuisance when trying to find a recipe, and it’s kinda hard to deviate from a set plan. But this one was a custom, non-wizard affair so it was fairly easy to follow. The trickiest part was finding the “dough” setting — apparently it just spins the blades backwards rather than having a specialised dough hook.

As it was my first time making bread, and it seemed to take forever, because I was hanging on every step of the recipe. Peering at the Thermie waiting for the temperature to get just so. Waiting around for the bread to prove. I didn’t want to leave it, in case it grew legs and ran off.

But the results were great. The bread was true to its tangzhong: soft and fluffy and kind of set my bar high for the rest of my bread making career.

A loaf of perfect bread. It's got three domes, and is perfectly golden brown.

Making bread with a Ninja

At home I don’t have a Thermomix, but I do have a Ninja Foodi Power Blender and Processor System which comes with a dough hook. So I got myself a loaf tin, and tried to recreate the magic.

The Ninja was a bit fiddly on the dough setting. The program runs for exactly one minute and it rattled all over the bench so I needed to hold it down. It seemed super quick for a bread loaf so I ran it again and it went into some kind of shutdown protection mode, presumably because the motor was working too hard.

I later found out you’re supposed to manually break the dough up before running it again, which helps the food processor process it. But even with one and a half runs, the bread came out super impressive for a second attempt.

A very thick cut sandwich, with chicken, tomato, cheese and greens. — I don’t know about you, but a thick-cut milk bread grilled chicken burger is exactly the thing I want.

Soft white bread is too hard

Having mastered the milk bread, and truth be told gotten a little sick of it, I turned my attention toward white bread.

And so I set out confidently on my next bake. Little did I know it would be my undoing.

I don’t know exactly what went wrong, but it was probably a combo of:

I got scared of the Ninja dough setting burning the motor out, so I only did one run of the kneading. That’s 60 seconds, which is probably much too short.
It’s summer, and we’ve been in a heatwave so the temperature has been pretty high and they may have proved too fast.
I think I probably let them prove too long, because:

They immediately deflated in the oven. The first attempt came out like a long flat bread brick. It was edible, but highly questionable.

The bread is maybe 5cm high, if that. It looks dense, and unappealing. Looks a bit like it could knock you out.

The second time I tried to prove in the fridge to try to account for the heat variable. It didn’t seem to do much.

It didn’t really rise much in the fridge overnight, I thought it was supposed to? But it’s currently warming up again on the bench. I’m determined to make this work.

And to make matters worse, I took it out of the oven too soon so it was still raw in some parts. I’m not even going to show that one because it was a disaster.

Thankfully Shawn was here to help eat the edible bits. And it was tasty! But a fair bit of it went in the bin.

So even though that was only yesterday I thought I’d give it one more try. This time I:

Ran the dough through the food processor several times. It came out a much better, springy consistency.
Didn’t fuck around while proofing. I let it go for 30 minutes the first time, and another 40 minutes the second time.
Gave it a bit of a bash to make sure it wasn’t going to collapse before putting it in the oven. It stayed solid.
Got overly excited and underbaked the damn thing again lol.

Peering into the oven, we can see the bread rising and forming a crust. — When the bread *didn’t* sink, and started to crust up on top I was ecstatic.

It's a very light loaf, but it's a loaf! — When the bread *didn’t* sink, and started to crust up on top I was ecstatic.

So I sit here staring at my still slightly-flat loaf cooling on the rack. Apparently allowing the bread to come to room temperature rather than tucking right in “optimizes texture and flavour, and there are several theories as to why“. So I’m gonna leave it go.

Several hours later

I cut the bread and to my surprise it actually looks like bread.

It’s still a touch heavy, but the texture is about right. One jam and peanut butter sandwich later I’m content.

Two slices of bread are cut off. It's a fairly good crumb, with an even texture. It's about 70 cm high, and there's peanut butter and jam in the background.

I still don’t entirely know what went wrong with the others, but the extra kneading and possibly the quicker proving time made a difference. Next time I’ll just have to keep it in long enough for a bit more colour. And I think if I want it to be any taller I might need to multiply the recipe.

I’m not sure how to get it fluffier but apparently there are various types of tangzhong that can help get more moisture in, so I might try that next.

Anyway if you have any ideas, hit me up. I’m keen to hear your tips and tricks. You can reply to this thread on Mastodon or just shoot me an email.

24 November 2023

Gonna try Vodafone this year & I got a ticket

I now have the trifecta of wifi at home, work, and my parents place. So I just ordered the cheapest $100/year Kogan/Vodafone SIM and I’ll activate it when my Telstra prepaid runs out next month. You can’t beat those kinds of dollars.

I’ve been at my parents all week for assorted reasons. Just finished the drive home.

I got pulled over by a police man on a motorcycle on the way back and given a fine because my bike was obscuring the number plate. He didn’t want me to fix it or anything, just a fine. So that’s cool. That’s $125 bucks going towards… I don’t know, what does that even contribute to?

I’m exhausted. It feels like perpetual Sundays afternoon.

Some of my plants are dead, some of them are double the size.

I’ve collapsed on the couch, I fear I may never get up again.

Things are alright.

4 September 2023

First weekend of spring

On Saturday I woke up with a vague sense of unease and decided to fix it by cleaning the house. Kitchen, laundry, bedroom, floors. I didn’t have anywhere to be so as I noticed tasks I did them, and it left my place feeling like a great space to be.

It’s been feeling like spring for most of winter, it’s been a very mild one. But nevertheless the sun has swung around and I’m getting more light in my place now. I can leave my doors open (screens closed) to let air circulate, and the plants are having a great time.

It is a time of optimism and, well, occasionally having to put that climate anxiety back on the shelf. But largely optimism.

Riverfire 2023

I didn’t get up to much during the day but in the evening I decided to head out to watch the Riverfire fireworks.

It’s usually packed in South Bank and everywhere really, so I though I’d roll around on my bike and find a spot. Turns out the Kurilpa Bridge was open and you could just hang out and watch from there. I didn’t have an amazing view, but it was a nice $0 activity that took almost no effort on my part.

The crows on the Kurilpa Bridge. Someone brought a picnic mat, but quickly abandoned it to stand by the railing.

There was a small contingent of folks on the balcony at GOMA.

On the way home I stopped at the William Jolly Bridge because there’s a light installation underneath now. That night it was lit in rainbow colours and looked fetching in the eerie firework smoke.

Sunday funday with these idiots

Ben came over and we went to Banette, the little French bakery.

They revamped their menu and they’re providing table service now so it’s a proper place to dine out. I was really happy to see their sad and crusty Croque Monsieur from the hot box is now freshly made, along with a number of other breakfasty options.

So we had brunch for lunch. It was pretty great. I don’t imagine I’ll get this too often, but it was a decadent but not too heavy option and the greenery really rounded it out. I’m very pleased.

Mrs Crunchy with a fried egg and salad on a plate

After that we went on a nursery crawl and looked at all the plants.

I’m trying to be a bit frugal since I changed jobs and accidentally went 6 weeks between proper pay cheques, so I only picked up a couple of little friends and a colourful pot because I need to re-pot one of my plants.

But Mappins also has fish and they were very cute and I really wanted to take one home with me. That might be a separate project needing a bit more research, but I reckon it could be a good hobby.

A brightly coloured pot with a couple of grean leafies inside.

27 May 202328 May 2023

We spent the long weekend in Coffs Harbour

Shawn stayed at my place the night before, so we could wake up and leave first thing. The sun came up as we drove across the border to NSW, spreading sunbeams across the farmland and leaving misty gulleys where the light didn’t reach. The mountains were beautiful, but truth be told there wasn’t much to see from the highway.

We arrived in Coffs at about 9AM and made a beeline to what turned out to be the greasiest, fingerprint-covered Maccas I’ve ever been in. We got McMuffins and headed down the road to the closest beach we could find.

Overcast with patches of blue sky over Park Beach. Muttonbird Island in the distance.

I didn’t bring swimwear or a towel because the forecast was for overcast and rain all weekend. To be fair, there was a little bit of cloud when we arrived, but it cleared out soon enough to reveal blue skies and a high UV index that continued for the entire trip.

After McMuffins, sunscreen, going back to the car to fetch hats, and sitting on the beach watching the crabs for 53 minutes (according to my Google location history), we set off on a walk.

Coffs surprised me with the amount of walkways and free things to do. I’d only ever passed it from the train. It looked like a nice beach and a handful of banana plantations and that’s it. But the coastline is full of parkland and beaches, and all linked together with a nice wide path that extended further than we were willing to walk.

A concrete and steel bridge spans a tea stained creek, the beach in the distance. — This is the rail bridge where you see the coast for the first time, on the Brisbane to Sydney train. It’s ugly but I like it a lot.

We managed a couple of kilometres to the marina, and poked around the artificial breakwater before reaching Muttonbird Island

The island is attached to the mainland by the marina these days, but is still an important nesting ground for the little birds to dig holes in the ground and raise their chicks. There’s a designated walkway from one end of the island to the other, and signs warning you not to stray, lest you step on a sleepy bird. Or break an ankle.

Panoramic view from Muttonbird Island, over the harbour and mountains beyond

We didn’t see any birds, I think we were a bit late in the season. But I appreciated the cliffs, and sat mesmerised by the overwhelming power of the ocean smashing against the rocks. And there was a pretty cool ocean bird hovering in the air for most of the time we were climbing the island again to get back to dry land. (Black wingtips, not sure what it was.)

Our inappropriate choice of clothes made for an uncomfortable walk, so we started back to the car to check into the hotel. But we stopped at the surf lifesaving club for lunch first. I had a parmi and Shawn had a chowder.

I saw they had Schweppes behind the bar so I asked if they had Pepsi Max, and the man said no, but the other girl said she prefers Pepsi Max, and the man asked if there’s a difference and we both said YES! and he said maybe they should switch from Coke No Sugar.

This conversation continued every time I went to the bar, and also when he came around at closing time (2:30) to pack up the tables. We had a rapport.

Check-in was easy enough. The place was 90s vintage, but pretty clean and had an amazing view of the ocean, islands, heritage lighthouse etc. The lighthouse came to be my main wayfinding point throughout the trip.

The window between the bedroom and the toilet was an unusual choice, but we devised a roster system to prevent surprises.

That afternoon we sat on the balcony and ate far too much, watching the myriad of bird life screech and warble and do its thing. There were two tourist planes as best I could tell; one dropping off paragliders, and the other one just hanging around in the sky soaking up the sights.

The view from the hotel balcony, there are some other holiday units, but we're up high and can see the ocean over the top of them. There are two islands jutting out of the water.

The main gotcha was the lack of wi-fi. Despite the blinking modem on the counter, the lady at the front counter said it stopped working and they removed it from the listing. And lo, turns out I’d booked a place without internet.

That night we tethered to my one bar of Telstra and watched Miriam Margolyes reluctantly trudge around Australia and be grumpy in standard definition.

We decided we didn’t need to spend a whole bunch of money on holiday, so we stocked up on supplies and made sausage & egg muffins again for brekky.

We took them to Moonee Beach and grabbed hot chocolates from the cute coffee shack by the beach called I Bean There, and sat watching the surfers, dogs, and hilariously the kids trying to ride their bikes through the sandy creek.

I spilled chocolate all down my nice white shirt, but it mostly came out with wet wipes.

A disposable coffee cup printed with "Bean There" and a love heart. A pink marshmallow on top, and the beach in the distance.

Derpy man with derpy expression with brown drops all down his white tee.

After brekky we drove up to Korora Lookout. It’s a public access lookout with indigenous significance. There’s a little pedestal to read aloud the story of the area, and a cunty next door neighbour who’s planted bamboo along the edge of their property to stop people enjoying the view.

This was where I saw my first leech: a little inchworm-looking thing attached to the sole of my shoe. I knocked it off, and we both hiked our socks.

We walked to the second lookout, with a purpose built suspension deck that some dude thought would be funny to make swing while we were all standing on it. The views were amazing and I tried (but failed) to spot the train line into town.

A viewing suspension viewing platform juts out over the raingforest, with views of the town and the ocean beyond.

We stayed for a moment before setting off on a bushwalk into what I refer to as leech gully (side note, that’s what Indooroopilly means. It’s a corruption of the Yuggera language.)

We started trekking down the hill in a nice moist rainforest setting. We were planning to take the trail a couple of kilometres out, but as we descended and the path got thicker with foliage. The sunlight disappeared. Fern fronds brushed past our legs.

That’s when we saw them.

Mother and two kids making their way out of the forest, looking stricken.

“Turn back!” she said, with fear in her voice.

“The leeches have leeches!”

One of the kids had blood streaming down his leg.

We tried to make it to the next clearing, but I freaked out. Shawn wanted to go ahead, but I couldn’t enjoy a hike when there’s blood sucking parasites waiting to hitch a ride.

We turned back and took the shorter, better maintained path in a little loop back to the lookout.

From there we drove to Sawtell, stopping at a roadside stall to buy bananas, and enjoyed ate them at the lookout.

A friendly family of magpies came to us to beg for food so I threw them bits of banana peel and they seemed to enjoy it. The seagulls that showed up shortly after didn’t care for it at all and were FURIOUS we didn’t have chips.

There was a little path down to the beaches, but we only went about halfway and sat at a cute bench, watching the ocean and avoiding the walk back up the hill to the car.

A man sits by himself at a bench overlooking the ocean, on the side of a steep hill, with a paved path trailing into the distance.

The next day was a public holiday in Queensland, and I was scheduled to leave on the train to Sydney.

Shawn made up the last of our muffins while I showered and went to the jetty for coffee and a bit of sunlight. There were plenty of cute dogs and little regional planes to spot. But eventually it was time to head to the station.

An english muffin with sausage, egg, and greens.

The Coffs Harbour harbour. Is this what it was named after? The jetty stretches out past the beach and into the water.

I’d booked a first class ticket from Coffs to Sydney. Usually I book two, because I’m large, but I figured for the short journey I’d be fine. But a few hours into the trip one of the rail staff started hovering around, awkwardly looking at me.

I popped out an earbud.

“I don’t think I have to tell you you’re a big guy,” she says sheepishly.

“There’s another passenger getting on who’s seated next to you. So I’ve moved you a few seats back to your own seat.”

“Lol,” I laughed.

I swapped seats and the rest of the journey was pleasant, but uneventful.

The XPT train pulls into Coffs Harbour station, painted in yellow white and blue.