Tales of Mungo Brush

Mungo Brush - that's where we camped on the long weekend. We took Thursday and Friday off work (and Monday was a holiday anyway). It's the most amazing place - a strip of bush between the lake and the ocean within Myall Lakes National Park. Nothing to do but admire the gorgeous views (see gorgeous view above - this one taken from our campsite) and marvel at the abundant birdlife - black swans on the lake, black cockatoos in the trees, kookaburras all over the place, and more fairy wrens than you could poke a stick at Below is a kookaburra we watched hunting for what looked like witchetty grubs - here you can see him lining up for a swoop.


Of course there was the beach fishing. Hubby caught something big enough to keep this time. He nearly threw it back though because I wouldn't stop fussing over whether it was suffering or not. It was pretty comical at the time. Him carrying it up to the sand, me looking all sad-faced, him feeling guilty and running back to the surf with it, me calling that no it was OK he could keep it, that I just wouldn't watch it die and I'd be fine, him coming back with it, me not being able to take my eyes off the poor thing, and him running back to the water again. This went on for 5 minutes, by which time the poor fish had well and truly had it and the decision was made for us. We still felt guilty, but we didn't waste him. He was very nice fried in olive oil with a parmesan coating, and served with honey roasted carrots and parsnip (from the Autumn Donna Hay mag), homemade potato chips, and green beans with caramelised onions (also from Autumn DH).

There were also numerous walks through the rainforest and wetlands that joined the campsite up to the beach.

And naturally one must take the opportunity to knit in such tranquil surrounds. I started off my very first piece of lace. It's the Thorn and Thistle pattern in the latest Interweave Knits and I'm doing it in the red Grignasco Bambi 4 ply I got recently, on 5mm needles. I originally started on 6mm needles but made a couple of errors I didn't know how to fix. So I took the opportunity to rip that up and start again on the smaller needles. The pic below is of the original attempt. I think it'll be too huge once it's blocked. A good friend of mine has told me that lace needs to be blocked "within an inch of its life" so I figure that would entail some pretty full-on stretching.

On the subject of stitching, I'll leave you with this parting glance at some of the fancy stitchwork Hubby does to keep his bait on the line. First he uses the hook to thread the line through a few times, and then he keeps it on by wrapping it tightly with elastic thread. The result is a tasty little fish parcel.