Organ Pipes

Would you believe I only live 5km from Organ Pipes National Park and have never visited?  Well, I remedied that earlier this month.

It's a smallish park, and the organ pipes themselves are actually quite impressive to look at.  The only thing that spoiled the experience was the generous amount of bird poo covering one of the pipes!

Tried my hand at wildlife photography.  Even though I hate magpies with every fibre of my being.

Oh, you couldn't see the wildlife in that picture?  Here you go:

There he is!  I don't know what he is, maybe a type of fairy-wren?

Another park visited, another postcard created.  Original photography by me, bird poo and all!

~Tan

Hanging rock

So I visited Hanging Rock last month.  It's only half an hour away from me, so it's a bit shameful that I'd never actually visited just for the sake of visiting.  It's a flippin' Australian icon is what it is, though I haven't read/seen the book/film that made it famous either. 

It was a fairly miserable rainy day.  Made for some nice atmos though.  Still getting used to my camera.  'Scuse the rudimentary photography skills.  But look!  Mysterious rocks!

And topically, y'all may know that I'm right into sending postcards.  I'm expanding my interest by making my own!  My appetite for variety is just not satisfied by a lot of the tacky cards you get at those tourtisty places.  Here's my very first card, made using the very sophisticated Zazzle.  Here's my new Zazzle store.

And finally, in other Hanging Rock news, my next fun run is Run the Rock!  Awesome or what? 

~Tan

You *haven't* been to Sassafras?!?

... is what a colleague recently said to me, in a tone that suggested I had committed some kind of mortal sin.
The BF and I were due for a holiday anyway, and I had a little spare cash, so I booked a night in Sassafras.

It was lovely!  So green, so lush.  We got rained on all day the first day, but a bit of sun poked through the clouds on the second day.

A lovely view of farms and trees through the mist.

Lots of pretty flowers in bloom.

Not a flower, but  Chinese Cedars are so hot right now.

The BEST place was Tea Leaves, a store which sells about 300 varieties of tea and boasts of the most extensive range of teapots!

No bulls please :)

They had this one, which I thought was the coolest:

A nice surprise was finding a wool store!  I bought myself some goodies!

Yes, calm down, I am now the owner of a Zauberball!!!

But it was quite touristy.  Lots of gift shops full of rubbish.  Like this:

Giant cherries anyone?  (I apologise for offending you if you have one of these in your house)

I'm fairly certain Sassafras has the highest density of tea rooms per square kilometre in the world.  And we didn't have scones anywhere!  So I promptly made myself some when we got home, using my favourite easy recipe.

Mine looked just as tasty! (via)

A bit sad I didn't go to Miss Marples or the Tesselaar Tulip Festival, but my least favourite thing about holidays are tourists, even when I am one, so it was probably for the best!!