I am too so a Quilter

Recently I met Kellie after seeing the most beautiful quilt on her blog. After exchanging a few emails Kellie had to search through my blog to find any reference of quilting. I actually did start my blog thinking it would exist solely as a vehicle to show my quilting and connect with interesting quilters all around the world. It has sort of taken on its own life and evolved into something else. Basically I like to talk about myself and that is what this blog allows me to do.

The start of this year has been a traumatic one for the members of the Petersen family- that includes all of our extended members. I have not done as much quilting in the past eight weeks as I usually do. I have, however, been busying myself with various quilting things. I am quite eclectic in what I like and what I make. (not fickle, eclectic) Here is the actual evidence…

a pillow waiting for hand stitching…

some blocks waiting to be stitched together into a quilt top…

a recently quilted whole cloth hand-dyed piece…

a secret project waiting for quilting and eventual publication in an Australian quilting magazine…

I really enjoyed doing the whole cloth piece. I am beginning to think that perhaps I should enter quilts like this one into some quilting competitions. Perhaps that should be my quilting aim this year. I would gladly take suggestions on this…

Eungella

The reason that we went to Airlie Beach for a night is that it took us half way to Eungella – our actual destination. (You say Young-guell-a with a hard g sound).

Eungella sits on an escarpment at the top of a hill, overlooking an amazing valley. You can see the township to the left of this photo.

The road to get up there is four and a half kilometres of winding and twisting, hairpin turns and cliff face drops. One of the many things which makes me anxious in this life is driving on hills. I’m always exhausted when we reach the top. I wonder what on earth made the first person decide it would be a good place to live. Why is it necessary to live there when there are much less stressful places at the bottom of the hill.

There is a building at the top that is called the Eugella Chalet. It was built in 1934. People have been getting up and down that winding road for a very long time. Logging and dairy farms would have been industries that employed people in those early years. Now a lot of the area is national park. People come here to walk through the rainforest and to see views like this.

This is the reason that we came here:

To sit very quietly beside a normally calm creek which is rushing with water following recent flooding rains.

If you sit there long enough

and you are very quiet

and very patient

you will see this

A platypus. In the wild. Feeding in the early evening.

These creatures are notoriously shy and difficult to see in the wild. Every time I have been to Eungella I have seen one, without fail. We sat and watched it for almost two hours. Coming to the surface to breathe, then ducking under the water to feed in the mud at the bottom of the creek. All the while thinking how very lucky we were.

Amazing…

Don’t think for a single moment that I was CAMPING! HA! There is quite a nice mountain lodge within walking distance of the creek. I was sleeping in a queen sized bed, not a tent.

Airlie Beach

One of the places we went on our 1000km round trip this weekend was Airlie Beach. It is about a three hour drive south of Townsville.

When I was a teenager Airlie Beach was a hole. Just a hippy town. The place you went to drop out of society. The place you went if you wanted to live in the back of your van. The place you went if you didn’t really want to be an adult.

Then along came the developers. The hills surrounding the beach are now terraced with hundreds of holiday units. Every shop on the main strip is a touristy shop. The vans have gone and the porches have arrived.

This is why:

There isn’t a lot to see or do at Airlie Beach itself, but it is the access point to the Whitsunday Islands on the Great Barrier Reef. Many of the islands have resorts. Lots of people come here to hire a yacht and tour around the islands. It is a beautiful part of the world.

There are huge backpacker hostels at Airlie Beach. You can’t walk down the main street without tripping over other people. Almost every nation is represented in the accents that you hear in the streets. Every night at the pub is happy hour – hour after hour. Once we went to sit on the beach at about five o’clock in the afternoon and found two young people (possible backpackers leaving happy hour) getting very friendly with each other. There are always people just laying about in the sun working on their tans. If people wear shoes at all it is only thongs. If people wear more than swimmers that is surprising. It is a very casual place.

This is the view to the other direction:

See all of that dirt. It used to be the ocean. They are filling in the ocean so that more people can have a water-side living address. That is hundreds and thousands of tonnes of dirt coming from somewhere on the back of trucks to fill in the ocean.

Astounding…I kind of liked it when the hippies were there…

Zoom Zoom

I have been away for the weekend again.

We bought some new cup holders…

and have been enjoying taking them out on the road. We also have a french exchange student staying with us and are showing her the region.

Showing someone around this region involves a lot of driving. Townsville is a city of 160 000 people. However you can drive to the north, south or west for one hour and literally see nothing but sugar cane, cows and scrub. You need to drive for four hours to reach another town of over 10 000 people, and it takes fifteen hours of driving to reach another city of over 100 000 people. We are very isolated.

This weekend we drove 1000km, mostly on the Bruce Highway. This is our national highway. The most important road in our country. It makes its way right around the coast of Australia, linking all of our state capitals.

This is what the Bruce Highway looks like, North Queensland style…

Blue sky and green sugar cane. Sugar cane needs a lot of water and grows in areas of high rainfall. It grows right up to the edge of the highway for many, many kilometres.

There are lots of kangaroo warning signs. They mostly cross the highway at dawn or dusk. We hit one once, many years ago. They are big and heavy and make an absolute mess of the front end of your car. It is very common to see their bodies bloated at the edge of the highway. Do NOT wind your window down as you go past!!

The highway is narrow and looks like a patchwork of pot hole repairs. Huge trucks hurtle towards you through the heat haze. Many supplies are trucked into the remote towns of North Queensland.

Rail lines cross the highway in hundreds of places. They are usually for the sugar cane trams. This one is a freight train heading north. Generally they have only the red flashing lights and no boom gate to warn you of the approach of a train. You go from doing 100km per hour to a complete stop, right there in the middle of the highway.

Hundreds of little creeks cross under narrow bridges along the highway. They are often just dry creek beds, but we have had so much rain in the past month that all of them had water in them. 

When we arrived home yesterday our beautiful new car had thousands of bugs squashed on the grill. My Pete immediately set about cleaning it. It was sparkling (and vacuumed) again within the hour!

Alice took me on a drive through London recently – how does this compare, Alice?

My Girl

Please go and visit Ashleigh today.

Six weeks away and she is beginning to feel a little lonely. Leave her something Australian if you can – a song, a slang word, even a swear word that is uniquely ours. She’ll apreciate that.

Thanks.

I miss her too…

Beachcombing

We spent the weekend at the beach house. Generally being out in the wilds of nature doesn’t impress me, but I love to walk along the beach and find interesting stuff.

The day was very windy. Pip decided to try some parasailing with a towel. No matter how high he jumped his skinny little body did not lift off the ground.

The beach was littered with jellyfish blown in with the waves and the tide.

There were lots of beautiful shells to find and photograph.

 

My Pete even found a piece of driftwood shaped like the Starship Enterprise.

If only it had been shaped like a religious icon…I could have listed it on ebay!

European Bus Trip

The combined Rotary clubs of France organise an amazing bus trip around Europe for the exchange students in their country. Today Ashleigh sent us the paper work to sign so that she can go in June.

In amongst all the rules about staying in your own room at night, complying with the requests of the bus driver, carrying your own passport and being responsible for your own luggage, I found these two gems:

13. Piercing is strictly forbidden during the bus trip.

14. Dying one’s hair blue, red, yellow or other colour will not be accepted.

I’m desperate to know the story behind those. THAT trip must have been quite memorable…

One Hundred Sleeps

Today Chelsea came to visit.

She is feeling the void left by Ashleigh’s departure more than anyone else. She can’t walk into our house without a sadness coming over her. Each night she asks if it is less than one hundred sleeps until Ashleigh returns. One hundred is the biggest number when you are just six.

She wanted to show Ashleigh her new dancing shoes and her new Irish dancing moves.

“Don’t worry”, she said. “She can just see me dance at my concert.”

It almost broke her heart when we said that she wouldn’t be home in December for her concert.

I hated having to tell her that…

Recluttering

In the decluttering frenzy of the past few weeks I have managed to lose my joggers. (please note that I use ‘joggers’ as a generic term to describe a type of shoe, NOT to describe how I use the shoes)

I have looked everywhere, but they are no longer in this house. They’re not under any tables or beds, they’re not in any cupboards or drawers, they’re not even in the shoe basket. They are just lost.

I think my Pete threw them out, but it makes him quite cross when I mention that.

SO off I went to buy some new ones.

I’ll put these ones in a safe place. In case I decide to declutter again…in about four years.

Man of Steel

So, people have asked for an update on Pip. It has been almost five weeks since his surgery.

In that time he has:

read enormous books

improved his guitar techniques

made and received countless phone calls to invite lots of friends over to visit him

reach a level 66 with his world of warcraft character (about to level at 67)

He has healed and he is strong (don’t let his skinny, weedy appearance fool you)

So strong that he has taken no pain medication for a week, except for the day when he sneezed six times in a row. Next week I am taking him to meet his teachers on Tuesday. On Wednesday he will return to school. It is up to him how long he stays each day. I imagine he will find it quite tiring in the first few weeks. We are happy for him to come home when he needs to rest. He is excited to see his friends again, but not so thrilled with having to get out of bed early. It has been almost twelve weeks since he last went to school, it is time to get back to real life.

He is amazing!