No changes here

We've been in lockdown almost three weeks now, and just heard today it's being extended for another two, until the 17 September! I'm sure no one around here was surprised to hear that, with cases still cropping up out of nowhere here in Canberra and the virus still spreading around regional NSW.

We're both sitting pretty here in Campbell with nowhere to go and plenty of time to do it in. We love our one hour walk every day (and we've heard that we can do two hours of outdoor recreation from now on!!) and the fact that early signs of Spring are bursting forth everywhere gives us plenty of joy.

I took pictures of my favourite wattles in bloom on our Mt Pleasant walk last week.......

And luckily, we never tire of our favourite lake walk; there's sometimes even a (COVID safe) celebrity sighting as a bonus...

We had a few days of rain and all of a sudden the Prunus blossoms were out .....

And another day or two and it was looking like this ............

One magical morning the coffee cart was open near the carillon so we were able to enjoy our morning coffee on Aspen Island. Small changes in our routine like this seem very exciting and special at the moment!!

For the rest of the day we find things to do ....... Facetime with the girls is always a highlight (especially when Abi does her reading with us). And I have embarked on digitising our travel photos and journals from all the trips we've done over the years. This was always going to be a "one day" job. So far I have managed to convert this .......

into these 5 bound books ....... over the past 12 months or so of COVID (with one more book on our first 6 visits to Bali and Lombok in for printing atm). It's a big job but I am enjoying immersing myself in our travels again - and realising how lucky we were to see and experience as much as we have. Who knows how overseas travel will look in the future?

I'm doing some sewing projects too - lots of masks and anything else I can think of to use up fabric in the stash.

We've having a break from the sourdough breadmaking for a while and trying to keep the extra kilos it caused at bay. Rob is spending lots of time with his new keyboard instead and enjoys his lessons which are now conducted via Zoom. How would we be handling this without the benefit of the Internet and all our devices?
 

Canberra's in lockdown

It seemed like it was inevitable, with the Sydney COVID outbreak leaching out into regional NSW, Canberra has cases now too: 6 as of this afternoon... and we're in lockdown, as of 5.00pm yesterday afternoon.

Rumours of an impending lockdown started late morning yesterday. It was a regular shopping day for us and by the time we got to our local shops at midday the car parks were full and we ended up queueing at Aldi for an HOUR AND A HALF just to get our weekly staples. It was so stupid really because we can shop for groceries anyway during lockdown - and the shops will be deserted today (with empty shelves being restocked no doubt) - but we really did need those few things for our regular Thursday afternoon tea date with the girls!!

Day one of lockdown has been eerily quiet around here: very few cars on the road, hardly anyone in the park and no apparent movement around the building. We did our allowed one hour of exercise, walking around the lake, and hardly saw anyone else. It's so different to the first lockdown in March-April last year when there were so many people doing the lake walk they had to  set up the "walk clockwise rule".

It was a beautiful day here too. The lake was mirror smooth and not a cloud in the sky - like the whole city is in suspended animation.... and no one (but us) around to admire it.

Even the swans have gone into lockdown - not making a move and 1.5 metres apart!

Jody sent me this pic of Abi today. She'd busied herself creating a "Zen Garden" using collected objects from the garden as her day's project. The girls had gone a whole day without the TV on and all was calm. To celebrate the first day of lockdown all day PJ wearing was allowed as was a break from school work.

I don't know what to say in summing up ... it's a worrying time and we all feel in a state of flux. Rob and I both had our second jabs this week (good timing). Jody's had her first jab this week too and Joshy's is next week. But it's way too worrying until we've all been done (including the girls!). It feels like there is an awfully long way to go with COVID.

Winter days

We've been taking Abi to her horse riding lesson most Wednesday afternoons, after school. This has been a cold, wet, muddy winter here in Canberra so most of her lessons have had be in the indoor arena at Forest Park. It's still freezing cold in the arena because it's open on all sides, but at least its dry. Two weeks ago we had a fine sunny Wednesday afternoon for a change so Abi's instructor took the class on a trail ride - great excitement! I took these pics of Abi and Wally the Shetland cross getting ready for the ride. Its fair to say that Abi enjoys the saddling up process (and the unsaddling process) just as much as the riding!

Wally is an older pony, smaller than some but a real trooper - and a more cooperative pony than most of the others at Forest Park (IMHO). Wally grows a very bushy winter coat at this time of the year.

They make a very cute couple ......

We had another sunny Wednesday this week too so in the morning braved another walk with our two-legged friends Judy and Jurgen and theire four legged pups Charlie and Poppy.

We stayed close to home and found our way to the historic old Duntroon Dairy just off Kelliher Drive in nearby Russell. The building dates from 1832 (although rebuilt a number of times) and is believed to be Canberra's oldest building. This dairy was one of a number of buildings that became home to several generations of families that worked on the original Campbell Estate. There were still signs of these other buildings in the grounds around the dairy. It was hard to believe that in all the years we've lived in Canberra we've never visited this site before.

I took this pic from the site of the old family "tennis court". It shows how close the farm buildings were to the Molonglo River.

From the old diary we followed a track up to the lookout of Mt Pleasant, to the rear of the property. It was a gentle climb compared to the killer Mt Ainslie, but still gave us beautiful views over Canberra.

The cannon guns at the lookout are part of the Royal Australian Artillery National Memorial.  

With more beautiful views of the Molonglo River to the East.

Meanwhile .......

There's nothing much going on here, while we wait and watch the latest COVID outbreak numbers and signs of things improving (or not). There aren't many places we can go or plan to go at the moment. It hasn't helped that Canberra has had a very wet, very cold and very cloudy winter this year - not very mood lifting some days.

However, upon reflection there have indeed been some bright spots over the past two weeks here in (currently unaffected) Canberra ....

We took Jody and Ella on our weekly Mt Ainslie climb in the last week of the school holidays (while Abi was at horse riding camp). Ella didn't find the climb too challenging but she found it hard to understand why we walk it when there is a perfectly good road up to the summit - to drive up!

The same day, approaching home, after picking Abi up from horse riding we had this most amazing sunset experience. Abi remarked that the sky looked like scrambled eggs (on fire)!

and then reflected back on to the Carillon and Aspen Island ......

We get to see a lot of our lake - our bridge to bridge walk is our main outing most days. Rob captured the shifting fog this morning a week or so ago while we enjoyed our coffee ......

And I tried to capture our view of the dusting of snow on the distant Brindabella Mountains on this morning's walk, but I think I was too far away!

It felt a bit daring to travel towards Bowral during the week and stop for lunch at Bendooley Estate. We did it - it was lovely - but maybe we shouldn't have??

Surprisingly, there were plenty of other people there having lunch too. It wasn't against the health directions for us  - but probably not advisable with all the uncertainty around. The Bowral area is getting pretty close to the Greater Sydney defined border!

A lovely (safe?) thing we were able to do was attend a members only (guided) viewing of the new Know My Name (Part 2) exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia last Friday night. Ewa Pachucka's fibre art "Landscape with Bodies" was probably one of the most distinctive works in the space ........

but this "Fear Eats the Soul" neon installation by Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley is probably what is most relevant to the current times!

Winter depths

Any spare time we had in June was spent doing final preparations for our long awaited trip to the Top End of Australia (Darwin, Kununurra, Broome and Karratha (Murujuga NP). Our departure date was Sunday the 27th June - the day that everything went pear shaped all around Australia in terms of border closures and lockdowns. This was the drastic response to a small number of Delta variant COVID cases escaping from hotel quarantine in Brisbane and overseas traveller transmission in Sydney. Our trip was off - indefinitely - and at such short notice!!!!

This picture taken from our front windows on the 24th June - it sums up our mood pretty accurately - we've had lots of these foggy, rainy mornings lately.......they're drab and a bit dispiriting.

Luckily Ella and the fam got in a quick day trip to Sydney JUST before all hell broke loose there (COVID wise) so she was able to complete some birthday wardrobe purchases. It was great fun to see what her choices were (mostly from her fave Culture Kings just off Sydney's Pitt Street Mall).

Those very desirable Air Jordans are so clean and new - and perfect!

And we loved the story behind this T-shirt - a satirical take on Elon Musk and the dogecoin phenomena - typical Ella sense of humour!

As well as the letdown of our cancelled trip (at very short notice) we're even in a heightened state here in Canberra with mandatory mask wearing as of this week (although not outdoors or at home) and a range of other restrictions. We have no cases here but there is concern that we're so close to the Sydney region and all the breakouts there!

But one nice outcome of missing out on our trip is that we're around for the Winter school holidays. We were lucky to have the young ones over for lunch during the week and caught up on all their news..

This pair are probably the tallest kids to ever use our Hassett Park swings ...

the North Melbourne supporter!

All the kids are loving that our small creek is flowing better now - thanks to all the rain and the efforts of our Park weeding group.

Some very special pics of these funny, gorgeous kids and their Mums  .......

Abi's had some quiet one on one time with us too. She loves getting the paints out and doing a bit of creative construction when she's here. This visit she made a wonderful horse float from a box I'd saved for her. It was very involved and took her a few hours of concentrated work ......

But it was perfect when she finished!