After two years in Australia I am getting to know what to expect from the seasons. We are in late spring now and the temperature each day tends to hover around the 24 - 25C mark although we are beginning to get  30C days more regularly as November comes to a close.
The magnificent jacaranda trees are just getting past their best, although they still have a reasonable showing of mauve flowers and, in Australia's usual upside down fashion, many varieties of gum tree have shed their bark and are now displaying glorious dappled trunks. 

The baby birds are fledging now too and this family of kookaburras who live in our garden have a very cute chick who looks a bit like a toilet brush and is currently learning the kookaburra laugh with differing degrees of success.

 The camera Ian bought me before we set off across the globe has become my constant companion and I managed to get the perfect pose out of the tawny frogmouth family we have been watching on their nest at the habitat. Unfortunately, the quality of the picture is not that great but I was lucky to get it because, the very next day, drama struck!
A friend was walking his dog and found one of the chicks on the ground beneath the nest! He was ok but his parents had obviously decided it was fledging day before he was quite ready, his sibling had made his maiden flight without mishap but not so this little chap. 

So he was brought into the visitors centre where the volunteers on duty phoned the wildlife rescue people who told them to put him in an ice cream tub and attach it to the tree where the rest of the family were still perched. They did this and left him over night but, alas, he was back on the path again in the morning and the family had moved on and left him! Nature can be very cruel.

 So he was brought back into the building and the wildlife rescue people came out to see him. They checked him over and pronounced him fit but still needing a few more days of syringe feeding. So they took him off to raise him with a couple of other orphans of the same age, he will be released with them in a few weeks time.

 The excitement has been building here because November brings the annual Tilligerry Festival to our little town. I find it quite amusing that we moved from Rickmansworth which hosted the famous Ricky Week every spring and we now have settled in a town 11000 miles away which a pretty much identical week of events each year albeit on a smaller scale. I was looking forward to this as I was back visiting England for the whole of November last year so this was to be my first festival here. 

The week kicked off with the Literary Awards Dinner, prizes are given for the best short stories in various categories and the competition attracts a surprising number of entrants when you consider that only 5600 people live on the Peninsula in total. We did not go to this but we were ready and waiting for the next event... the trivia night.
This was really the usual quiz night we attend regularly but with a specialist round on the local area. We did a bit of revision but did not hold out much hope of success as we are still very much the newcomers to the area out of all the quiz teams but we came second, beaten only by a team of six which relies rather heavily on their two English immigrant members, I don't know what this says about the teams who were born and brought up around these parts!

 Next up was the Art Exhibition with categories for Paintings, Photography, Quilting and Sculpture. I could not believe the number of entries and the standard of the winners was incredibly high for a local show. It was only afterwards we found out that the prize money for these shows is pretty high so they attract artists from all over, not just locals.
The week ended with the Foreshore Fun Day on Saturday. Santa arrived on the Marine Rescue boat then there was a sail past of any boats who wanted to dress up and join in (we were too nervous we might cause chaos with ours but might take part next year when we are a bit more experienced). It reminded me a bit of the Pagham Pram Race, the annual Boxing Day event in the village my parents retired to that kept us amused for many a year. There were prizes for the best dressed boats and crew and it was won by a group of Scots on a catamaran. 

This was followed by the usual mix of stalls, funfair rides, dog displays, sausage sizzles, dancing and music until 8.30 when it was dark enough for the fireworks. This was pretty exciting because we don't have bonfire night in Australia and it is illegal to buy fireworks anywhere other than Canberra so, unless we travel to an organised display at New Year, we don't get to see them. A barge was towed out into the bay where they were let off and looked fabulous reflecting on the water. It was nice to be warm too, I don't think I have ever watched fireworks when I have not been cold and, more often than not, wet.

 Last Friday we began to hear reports on the news about a fire which was burning out of control by the Pacific Highway near Karuah. Although this is not terribly close to us, about 5km across the bay but about an hour by road, Australians take news of any bushfire in the vicinity seriously especially as were have had a lengthy hot, dry spell and strong winds were forecast - perfect bushfire conditions. 

So we kept a keen ear on the news and discovered the fire was getting much bigger and heading in our general direction. The Rural Fire Service from all the surrounding towns were in attendance but were struggling to contain the fire because of the weather conditions. The most effective way to prevent a bushfire from travelling is to back burn ahead of it so there is nothing left to burn when it gets there, but the wind meant back burning was not an option.

 What they did manage to call on was this huge plane (Ian tells me it is a DC10) which dropped massive amounts of fire retardant on the flames and looks far more effective than the usual helicopters with water bags dangling underneath. 

However, the fire was still progressing and the Pacific Highway had to be closed (this is like closing the M1) as it reached the outskirts of Medowie. Now this is much closer to us, about 25km and most of it bushland, that news focused our minds and we reviewed our bushfire plan. Every household is supposed to have a plan and our plan A involves loading everything important into the caravan and heading off away from danger.  There is a flaw in this plan though because we are at the end of a narrow peninsula and, if the fire is heading towards us we would have no way of driving around it, so plan B is to put our important paperwork into a waterproof pouch, run to the end of the road and jump in the water!

Smoky sunrise from
our balcony

 The fire service give out advice on how to stay and defend your home but, as we live in a wooden house, we probably would not be taking that option. 

The fire had been raging for three days now and in the early hours of Monday morning we were woken by the smell of smoke. We peered out of the windows and it was really thick outside but coming from across the water, not down the road thank goodness! I took a photo of the sunrise from our balcony and you can see how smoky everywhere is. 

View from our front gate

The smoke cleared during the day but was visible from our front gate by the evening so we drove up to sunset point and took some pictures across the water to Karuah where it looked like a furnace was burning in the distance.
Eventually, after nearly a week of battling to save people and properties, the fire fighters were helped by rain and lots of it. At its height, the fire was 80km across, it burned 9500 hectares and, apart from a few sheds and caravans, the firefighters managed to keep it from destroying any properties. It was an astonishing effort from this brave group of volunteers.

  There was great excitement in the Rabbitt household this week when we received phone call from a contact at Port Stephens koalas telling us about a planned koala release. One of my jobs at the Tilligerry Habitat is to report all koala sightings to Port Stephens koalas who, in turn, add them to the national database and they were ringing to ask where the best spot was to release a female back into the habitat. So we managed to get ourselves invited along to watch Elsie being released. 

Elsie is a young female who had been found nearby with, what the rescuers initially though was a broken arm. It turned out to be tendon damage and, after a course of acupuncture she appears to be recovered enough to go back into the wild. Koalas are released as close as possible to where they were found and, if the area is completely unsuitable, then they are placed within 10km of the rescue site.  Elsie was released into the Habitat because it was quite near where she was discovered but safer and with a lot more food trees. It is more difficult to find a release site for males if they cannot go back to where they were found because they are territorial and will not tolerate another male on their patch. 

Kookaburra

Yellow Robin

So, Elsie turned up in her travel basket on a trolley (they use two laundry baskets strapped together and lined with blankets to transport koalas) and she was wheeled down to an appropriate Swamp Mahogany tree. This is the koalas' favourite food around these parts and is really a variety of eucalyptus, it is called a Swamp Mahogany because, when the white folks arrived they started trying to think of names for everything based on what they were familiar with in the Northern Hemisphere and this tree grows in coastal areas and is the colour of mahogany - hence the name. 
 So the basket was opened and, after a quick spray of pink paint onto her bum to help us identify her at least until it rains, she was off up the tree where she turned and posed for a few pictures. We have been looking for her since but have not seen her which is a good sign that she is moving around and finding food as she should be. 

White Headed Pigeon

Elsie is a lucky girl, the Habitat is a beautiful place to live at the moment with plenty of birds arriving after their winter breaks where ever they go. We have been keeping a close

Tawny Frogmouth

 eye on a Tawny Frogmouth on its nest and saw a chick's head pop out from under it today when we did not have our cameras with us, I will try and get a picture tomorrow.