14th March saw us heading down to Yarrangobilly Caves.

First up was a walk down to the thermal pool and then along the river walk.

Went around to the Glory Cave entrances but decided we wouldn't have time to go through it properly before our tour of Jersey Cave started.

So went back and did the Jersey Cave tour.  This cave was amazing.  Lots of really pretty formations, and lots of bacon :)

Photos can't capture the beauty of this pool and all the crystals of rock around it

Another pool that was a bit easier to photograph

Then it was back to South Glory Cave, which was a self-guided tour.  This cave was completely different to Jersey Cave - it was all white!

The hole in the roof is only relatively recent - Tony remembers going there when there was no hole!

My brother could probably explain why streaks of water come out as dots??  Something to do with the camera sensor?  I don't remember there being any fluoro lights around..

Quite a bit of wild life around the buildings, real and, er, stuffed!

And heaps of cunninghams skinks!

All my cave photos were hand held, the majority without flash.  I did take a tripod, but it was too much like hard work to set it up - especially on the guided tour with lots of other people around.  Sorry, I'm just not dedicated enough ;)

So cool!  You hear about this sort of thing on the internet but it was cool to see it actually done in real life.  An enormous waste of resources though...

So a couple of miscellaneous pics from the week..

Some vertical balancing.. I call it Vertical Art

Another foggy cobweb.  I really have trouble getting sharp photos of these things :(

Saturday we went into town for breakfast and to take photos of the Diamant Hotel after the fire.

And in the evening we went out for a (sort of) surprise birthday party for Andrew at Mecca Bah.  I was feeling anxious leading up to going out because I knew I wouldn't know the majority of people there and I'd more than likely have to talk to lots of strangers.  Sure enough, that's what happened.  But the sweetie was able to keep up some conversation, and a little wine certainly didn't go astray!  The food at the restaurant was really good, but almost completely inaccessible - none of the dishes came with any kind of serving implements (we ended up asking for some), and the pide wasn't cut (one of them came with a regular dinner knife, but not all of them even had that!).  It was also crazy expensive for the banquet ($42.90 per person).  Still, we really did enjoy the food, when we could get at it!

Have spent a lot of the past week on the jigsaw.  Made pretty good progress too.  Here's a couple of pics comparing last Sunday night with tonight.  I've basically done the majority of the animals in the middle this week.

Cooked a super awesome roast pork with potato bake tonight.  Massive amount of crackling that turned out really well, unfortunately at the expense of the meat which was a little dry.  

And suddenly the weekend is over and it's back to the grindstone tomorrow...

Friday night was Jesus Christ Superstar at the Q.  I'd never actually seen this musical before, and my only exposure to it was the John Farnham/Kate Ceberano/Jon Stevens version of 1992 where several singles made it to the charts.  I have to say I wasn't too convinced by the interpretation of the story.  OK so it was told by Judas' point of view, but I didn't really like the portrayal of Jesus.  And if you didn't know the story I reckon you'd be struggling to follow a lot of it.  The performance itself was decent enough (for an amateur production - always difficult to decipher lyrics when sung by a chorus unless the singing timing is spot-on) - the girl who played Mary was pretty awesome.  But yeah, not the greatest of musicals.  Give me Joseph any day ;)

Saturday was breakfast, shopping, cleaning the house and cooking (a reasonably decent veal scallopini which I'll blog about separately one day when I've refined the recipe).  DaveO came over after dinner for Buzz, Mario Kart, Singstar and, when his voice gave out, Sports Resort.  

Sunday was just pottering around the house, jigsawing, scanning photos, reading news feeds and sorting out thousands of photos.  Only 2136 steps so far today - a decent chunk of those from bopping while doing the jigsaw.  Also more cooking - a massaman curry, that didn't didn't turn out as well as the last one I did, not sure why.  Maybe too much steak/potato/stock and not enough paste.

And suddenly it's the end of the weekend .. *sigh*.  

Here's some of the photos I scanned today.

Me and Guy's cat Tutu at Lake Macquarie, March 1997

My first ever "CIA Pic" - some of the hardware supporting CIA in early 1997

Marc Betbeder at 10 hours old - the youngest baby I'd ever seen at that stage.  Only surpassed by Violet at 3 hours last year.

The Broadway shopping centre being constructed, as seen from the offices of CIA in 1997.  I actually have this photo printed out and stuck to my desk, all these years later!

My bedroom in 1997, showing my new computer desk, which I'm still using at this very moment!

A "snow" trip we did in 1997.  Pete's family had a time share in Perisher that we got to go stay at with a group of friends.  No lifts were running but we did have some fun tobogganing, and I even found some money under the chairlifts :)

You can't drive very far up Majura Road before the road is blocked

They didn't have enough chains so used lots of padlocks instead

Pretty cool view of the airport, but not many planes, it being a Sunday and all

Looking toward Dickson and Black Mountain

Looking toward Belconnen

Aircraft radar at the top of Mount Majura

Obligatory spider shot for Tony ;)

It was quite crowded around Mount Majura, lots of walkers out and about

We just need to go straight over there - no need to go down first, right?

Spikey flowers

Virgin Blue 737 taking off

Now here's something you don't see every day (anymore)!  There were a whole heap of them near the top of the trail on Mount Ainslie

Made it!!

Aircraft beacon on Mount Ainslie

Canberra airport from Mount Ainslie

Obligatory Black Mountain Tower photo

Canberra

Houses of Parliament, so to speak

The fountain was fountaining

Canberra Centre and part of Civic

Magpie portraits

So this was the whole trip around the mountains, showing where you have to park on the north side of Mount Majura as the red waypoint at the top.

Here's a close up of the walking part itself from the top of Mount Majura (top) and Mount Ainslie (bottom)

The GPS track of the walk itself is here if you want to look at it any closer.

8.4km, ~13000 steps, nearly three hours of walking (with lots of stops for photos).

And the moon behind the clouds tonight was pretty cool

Had more success at home.  Got a quote for lots of tree work around the house ($1600 worth though - ouch!).  Finished a 1000 piece jigsaw.  Filed over a thousand photos.  Still a thousand to go.  Finished Monty Python season one.

Some chrysanthemums in the garden on Mother's Day.  They're doing better this year than previous years.

One of my danios

All the Toy Story Lego out together, before I put the majority of it away

I like the look Buzz is giving Zurg.  Pity you can't really see it at that size..

We decided to go to Courgette in Civic.

I even wore a blouse .. *gasp* !

That didn't make me feel any less like I didn't belong there.  I'm just not a fancy restaurant kind of person (not that I wouldn't like to be - I do like nice food, I just feel out of my depth).  

Please excuse the crappy iphone photos.  It would just have been too weird to pull out my real camera, and it wouldn't have focussed on my meal anyway without standing up from the table.  Maybe I should have stolen Dave's camera heh.

We ordered a pre-dinner cocktail (Kir Royal) each, which was a blackcurrant flavoured champagne.

They also brought out these mini cups of crab and seafood bisque with a prawn foam - really really tasty!

We ordered a bottle of Southern Highlands Wines Pinot Gris which amazed Stu.  Will have to find some more for him :)

For entrées, Stu had the "Hand picked mud crab and rare yellow fin tuna sausage, wasabi mayonnaise, crisp rice wafer".  This was cold which surprised me.

And I had "Prosciutto wrapped pan seared scallops, confit chicken wings, pea purée, lemon olive oil, balsamic reduction" which was delicious and tender, although I don't recall seeing any actual prosciutto.

For mains Stu had the "Roasted corn fed chicken, sautéed livers with apple and sherry vinegar, braised lentils, Jerusalem artichoke crème, truffle brioche, brandy jus".  The chicken was delicious but I didn't try any of the chicken livers (should have saved one for Nat ;) )

And I had "Sticky pork belly with roasted loin, caramelised apple pear gallette, celeriac mash, pomegranate seed, white balsamic and cider vinegar split jus" which was pretty awesome except that the big two pork pieces in the middle were actually a bit tough to cut through - I almost had to hack my way through it with the knife when cutting it up.  That would be the only complaint I had for the whole evening.

There was a group of six people on a nearby table, and I swear one of the girls looked naked.  All I could see out of the corner of my eye was flesh..

While thinking about dessert, they brought out some watermelon sorbet which was *amazing*!

We ordered desserts, as well as a glass of Penfolds Grandfather Fine Old Tawny port.

We both had the "Vanilla crème brulee with seasonal mixed berries and short bread finger".  Yumm yumm yumm. Real vanilla, crunchy top, super awesome.

And the sweetie got a coffee as well

So all in all an expensive but lovely night out.

Our wedding anniversary is the same date as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.  In the past couple of weeks, in the lead up to the 25th anniversary, there's been a heap of articles on English Russia, and other places as well.  For some reason this disaster totally captivates me.  No idea why.  Silly really.  I even wrote a time travel story in high school that mentioned it.  I was in year 12 at the time.  It was about a girl who suddenly woke up in April 1986 - she'd gone back in time five years.  She remembered that April 1986 was when the Chernobyl disaster happened and was trying to warn people.  But of course noone believed her (except her older brother who realised she couldn't suddenly know calculus overnight unless it were true).  The disaster happened and she went into hiding because suddenly everyone wanted to talk to her.  A month later she woke up back in her own time.  I actually scanned that story (and some others) before I threw out all my school work before leaving Sydney.

I took 2522 photos over seven hours.  But the resulting avi generated by PhotoLapse was over 2Gb so nothing would open it.  So culled down the number of photos to 1756 and redid it (you're not missing much).  Also recorded a bit faster - 20fps.  So a minute and a half of video.