Black Saturday

Thank you to all those who have helped my parents after the fires of Black Saturday. And a huge, special thank you to Jenny and Steve for helping mum and dad save their house and garage during the fire. They couldn't have done it without you.

Our thoughts today are with all those who have been affected by the Black Saturday bushfires.

Our Holiday

We recently spent 5 days in Callignee at Mum and Dad’s and we all had a great holiday. (This is going to be another one of those long photographic blog entries!)

We had a few very hot days watching beautiful fluffy clouds..

And we spent most of our time out in the cool shade of the paulownia tree which has flourished since the bushfire… There was lots of water play (Mum and Dad have a spring fed dam so no water restrictions were breached)…
There was some pegging fun…
Lots of laughing at “silly grandad”!
Moments spent watching Maya learn to roll (and at only 16 weeks!)… Note the quilt she is lying on – one of Mum’s many beautiful handmade quilts.

There was some climbing up charcoal trees…
And falling down charcoal trees… ouch!
Followed by some sprinkler fun to wash off charcoal…
Sean helped Dad put the roof on the woodshed…
And Dad spent some time staring at his new shed (a bit like the in colourbond ad) … Although the woodshed is not quite complete, it’s a big milestone for Dad to have that done. But there is still plenty of other work to be done.

Khye enjoyed our picnics for afternoon tea every day – particularly when they involved biscuits…
Kiera had stacks of fun running around finding sticks…
We saw some great light shows. First was the neighbours garden filled with Christmas lights… Apparently they won the best Christmas lights in Callignee – not too much competition this year with most residents still rebuilding after the bushfire.

And on New Years Eve we were treated to this fantastic “nature’s light show”…

I managed to catch a lightning bolt!

And yes this is lightning!

New Years Day we went for a drive up the road to Tarra Bulga National Park – one of the last remaining temperate rainforests in Australia. The bushfire just missed the Park, so it is a lush green oasis after being surrounded by the devastation of the fires.
There are many pine plantations on the road up to Tarra Bulga which were not so lucky and burnt in the fires, and unlike native vegetation, pines do not regenerate. But the native trees around Callignee have now well and truly sprouted and are looking really fluffy dominating the bush once again with green…

So how were your holidays? What did you do?

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year and hope that you had lots of fun too!

Callignee update

We went back to Callignee for a couple of days recently. It doesn’t look quite so black and stark now. The trees are looking fluffy, the spring flowers have popped up, the grass has grown and the weeds have come back with a vengeance. Mum and Dad still have a lot of work to do cleaning up, building the woodshed and keeping the weeds under control, along with plenty of other things too. Here are some photos from our recent visit in November and an earlier visit in July.

Mum’s garden is looking beautiful once again:

A fantastic piece of molten metal found under one of the burnt out cars (it's about 5cm wide):

One of Mum’s sculptures made from the rusty bits of scrap metal found inside the cars:

I love her boobs!

The new front gate is in:

The current woodpile:

And the beginnings of Dad's new woodshed:

Around Callignee:

It’s sad to see so much clearing going on – these poor tree ferns are the only things left in this gully:

Untouched natural regeneration in the Flora Reserve:

Callignee 4 months on

We visited Mum and Dad in Callignee on the Queens Birthday long weekend. It was a nice relaxing time as always. I took my sewing machine and got a bit of sewing done. Sean helped Dad get the new fence posts in for the front gate. And Khye had a great time exploring Grandma’s garden which is starting to look beautiful once again.


Dad’s cars change colour every time we visit. They are now this rusty orange colour which looks brilliant against the bright new green growth. There are some beautiful things happening amongst all this devastation.




The bush is starting to recover well now. Seedlings are popping up all over the place, trees are sprouting lots of new growth and the bracken is carpeting the ground.


Trees are shredding old burnt bark and revealing beautiful orange trunks.

And the roadsides are looking really fluffy now too.