Day 44: Snug to Teds Beach

It was a misting, cold day. The landscape was almost
eerie and it certainly felt remote.

This day we aimed for another "end of road" adventure, the second in the week. We slightly misjudged things, though, as it was a public holiday (ANZAC Day), a rare one where grocery stores shut for the morning out of respect to those who have served to protect our nation. We've been mostly buying food as we go, the occasionally bigger shop, but often just a few things as we need them. This day we were driving into territory that didn't have shops, and almost got there before midday. Thankfully we were able to snag some meet and bread rolls at one of the last shops on the road, but they weren't cheap! It has continued to be interesting to find the remote areas of this little state, and realise that actually there's quite a lot of them, and small rural towns. There's very little "city" here at all.

Teds Beach

This road took us into the middle of the large area in central Tasmania that is designated national park. We stopped for the night close to the shores of Lake Pedder, a lake greatly increased in size in the 70s due to the Serpentine Dam. This is a free free camp. We had access to toilets only.

Lake Pedder

It was a fairly small campsite and was almost full with seven units staying overnight. Amusingly six of the seven had Queensland number plates! It was cold and people stayed inside, so we only met one of them, though saw another come back on his mountain bike, only to pull out his kayak and spend some time on the lake. It was cold and wet, I guess he wasn't feeling it so much because he was so active.

It was a slightly eerie landscape, not helped by misting rain. The area looked barren and desolate. This is the one place that we've camped where there was absolutely no internet coverage. Not even one bar "I'm trying and might give you occasional access". Our phones said "SOS only". No problem! We had plenty of other things to occupy our time, but on these very cold nights—the van has no heating—I've often been heading for the warmth of bed soon after 8.30 (and then read for an hour or more). It was under 10C when we got up and got going the next morning.

Ted's Beach is named after a Project Manager of the Gordan River Power Development (1969 till 1975) who fell in love with the area and wanted to encourage people to come and enjoy swimming, fishing, and boating. The beach is artificial in the only sense that they cleared the vegetation away and the water (when it rose after the dam became operational) created the beach from the rocky shore.

Summer holidays 2021

Well, we've been back nearly a week now and it's time to do some reminiscing and show you some "slides" from our time away. I didn't feel the slightest bit like writing while I was gone (though I didn't have a keyboard with me, so that was a significant deterrent for sure!). 

My days were spent in rotating between reading and eating, walking and sleeping, watching movies and doing puzzles, playing games and picking up cross-stitch again. It's truly amazing how much time can be spent on relaxing, non-work activities. 

We came back to Tokyo last weekend feeling very relaxed. I'm the only one properly back at work (David has one toe in the door, checking email and doing the odd task).

It was a great time to decompress. I thought I was doing okay before we left, except that my body was starting to tell me, in various ways, that it was time to take a break. It was hard to walk away, but so needed. We've had a rough year. It was especially great to take time away from making decisions. We'd deliberately set aside some pressing concerns until "after holidays" and we're seeing positive results from that now. Intentionally not talking about some things has given the space to think and process and make decisions that were too hard when we were stressed.

We definitely view ourselves as marathon runners in this work in Japan (and not particularly fast runners at that). If we're going to last the distance, we need to pace ourselves, and regular time away from work is an important part of that.

I'm glad to say that our "summer" isn't over yet. Not that I'm totally enjoying the heat (Tokyo's summer is oppressive and our house has poor insulation), but that the summer vibe in the house prevails, despite me spending office hours at my desk. Last night we went out for dinner and a movie (Black Widow). In a couple of weeks we're going camping for three nights. No school schedule is really nice! But I'm a bit sad that I'm not getting so much time to read . . . I read 11 books while we were away and it was awesome!

Anyway, here are a few tastes of the great outdoors from our holidays:

The front "gate". Yep, after Tokyo, it's very green.

Tiny "false" strawberry in the wild.

This is the mountain whose slopes we were situated on. We rarely saw it, though, it was cloudy 
much of the time. These fields, though, we feasted our eyes on all day long.

We were there in the middle of the rainy season, so there were lots of fun mushroom to find.

Putting my phone close to the ground, with the lens at the bottom,
I was able to see up under the mushrooms.

One day we drove 30 min north to Karuizawa, a popular summer retreat for the rich in Japan.
We almost always visit this outlet mall. It's a sprawling, luxurious place, with it's own lake and 
lawns. We caught it on a foggy day. Our purpose was finding sneakers in a larger size than you
can usually find in a Japanese store (for our tall teenager).

We happened upon this overgrown lookout while walking one day.
It wasn't well cared for, but had this interesting, and functional, water feature.

Venturing up the mountain, we walked this quiet, but well-maintained road.
It was blissfully quiet.

And yes, our usual haunt: the local park, with its park golf course. We spent three sessions here.

Another mushroom!

Green rice fields are beautiful (green being my favourite colour). We don't often get
close to them on foot, so when we walked past this one, I stopped for some photos.

In the cool of the mountains, the hydrangeas were still blooming, even as our Tokyo
ones were wilting in the heat.

Oh, and you can't have too many mushroom photos, can you?

Other photos from our rural Queensland holiday

I lost a couple of hours sleep last night with pain from an ear infection and so I'm not firing on all cylinders today. Here's a post I've been meaning to put up with photos from the rest of our time away (i.e. the not-camping bit) on our recent holidays. There's quite a few photos, but not much text. So sit back and enjoy.

Carnival of Flowers
This is an annual event in my hometown that will celebrate it's 70th year next year. Its two main events are a street parade and a garden competition. In the week following the parade, the private gardens are open for the public to wander through and enjoy. Mum and I did just that when we were there a couple of weeks ago. Here are some photos, starting with the Japanese garden at the university.

My mum enjoying this small garden that was
completely packed with plants. 

This garden included a number of whimsical non-floral items. 

Central Queensland
The next day we travelled up north to visit David's family. It had been a while since we'd travelled these outback Aussie roads, where there are almost no passing lanes and not a few large trucks. I got my adrenaline going a few times passing trucks with two trailers.

My sister-in-law and brother-in-law manage a property between Emerald (13,500 people) and Springsure (1,100 people). It's a vastly different locality to where we usually live in Tokyo.

An outback sunset from my sister-in-law's house.

Their house. The only other house in sight of this is their boss', just to the right of the photo. 

View out the front of the house. 

My sister-in-law also breeds alpacas. Such fun to photograph: they were very curious and friendly. 

My sister-in-law with her passion: alpacas.
 

Our youngest mowing the lawn (that was only green because it was watered with bore water).

On our last morning, the boys climbed one of the silos. Pity we missed the sunrise, but it was still spectacular.

My sister-in-law's verandah is a place I sometimes daydream about in Tokyo. Very
peaceful, just a little dusty at present, with a dirt road only 100m away.

The main street of Springsure, the closest town to where my husband spent his first six years of life (on a property).

Guinea fowl. These are fun birds to watch. Quite hilarious when they run. They move around in groups and function as "guard dogs" alerting people to danger by loud "hooting". At night they roost in trees near the alpacas, so if
something like a dingo shows up, my sister-in-law and her husband know about it. 

Three cousins enjoying the trampoline in the cool of the early evening.

We received great country hospitality and it was a relaxing week. Here, on my last day, I enjoyed a cup of coffee enjoying the view and hoping those clouds would bring rain soon to the parched land. Getting out of the city was wonderful, though. I didn't take my computer and didn't check email for a week. It was a much-needed break.

Camping adventure

It's time that I posted about our camping trip last week. We camped for two nights at a dam I'd never heard of: Teresa Creek Dam. It's about 20 km south of the small town of Clermont and nearly 1,000 km north-west of Brisbane (see map below). No wonder I'd never heard of it, having never lived further than 200 km from Brisbane.

It took about 2 1/2 hrs to drive there from my sister-in-law's house. We didn't get away till late because she was busy on the day we left (actually, she's generally very busy!) and ended up putting up three tents in the dark! Thankfully we'd brought a pre-prepared stew with us, so we didn't need to do that, but it still was quite late before we ate (late for these city-dwellers, anyway).

The four of us camped with David's sister and mum and our nephew. His brother-in-law was busy harvesting, so reluctantly had to forgo the trip. Also, our eldest son had uni that week, so was also unable to join us. We made the best of who we had. 

But we did get an open fire, a rare thing in Japan (and even Australia in these drought conditions).

View from our bed.

We were very grateful to be able to "piggy-back" in our sister-in-law's camping, because it meant that we didn't need to borrow or transport all the necessary gear (we don't own much camping gear in Australia).

Two of my favourite colours! And why I am no longer afraid to wear green and blue together.

Tuesday was our full day at the dam and we did little. Lots of relaxing—reading, snoozing, and some gentle wandering. The two youngest cousins swam for a couple of hours (you can see their heads in the centre of the photo).

It's a beautiful spot. Lots of bird life, a large campsite that wasn't overpopulated (advantage of being further from the main centres of population), and the showers and toilets were clean and well maintained. There wasn't even many insects (probably because it's been so very dry). The one drawback was the wind, which coated us and everything in the camp with a fine layer of dust.

Sunsets always capture my attention. It's fantastic being in outback Australia where you can see horizon for 360 degrees! The first night's sunset was even better than this because there were some clouds in the western sky, but I was busy trying to help set-up camp in the dark.  

This is what the countryside looks like. Typical Australian country: gum trees everywhere.  Pretty dry, though. The only green on the ground out there is close to the dam or has been watered. It's such a contrast to come back to the coast and see green grass in many places that haven't been watered.

This is another view of country we drove through. It's the most barren country we've seen in Queensland.

I'd been hankering after a camping trip and realised while we were there that it was nearly 12 months since we'd been able to get away under canvas. I'm so thankful for these couple of days away.

Last, but not least, the campsite had a cafe where they serve very decent food. We ate lunch there on the last day. The photo is of a steak burger. I chased my lunch down with what I thought was going to be an iced coffee, but turned into more of a coffee milkshake. Frappe, I think they called it. It was huge and a bit too much sugar, maybe I should have gone for their latte instead?