Living and working in Lockhart

I thought I would finally put up some pictures of our house and the school, as many people have been asking what these are like. I seem to work even longer hours in Lockhart than ever before, probably because it is so close to home, only a 5 min walk. I walk to school about 7.15 and don't usually walk home until 4.30 and after a walk with the dogs and dinner it is back to about another 2 hours preparation. In a yr 3/4/5 with children operating at a range of abilities, Year 1  to year 5 and a couple of 'special needs' though not officially diagnosed our days are very busy!

My classroom is the closet end upstairs.

I have attached a couple of photos of our street and our house. The duplex is very comfortable and we have no neighbours at the moment. Also it is great having bush on 3 sides of the house. We don't have any problems with noise or anything from the community. Across the road is other teachers accommodation and other non indigenous government workers.

This shot is looking directly at our side of the duplex.

The view from the other side.

Last night we went to the fortnightly Bingo session in the church hall. It is very serious as they have really good prizes. For $10 you get 10 games and the chance to win 20 prizes. (things like eskies, camping goods, kitchen ware etc). Kids are not allowed to play and are discouraged from being in the hall, but they still come in and often get growled at to stay quiet. However meanwhile there is probably 50 kids and dogs outside the windows running around and making lots of noise, so the adults get cranky and yell at them.... not exactly a relaxing night out, but now we can say we have been and experienced the local entertainment!

Portland Roads

Red and white bottlebrush were flowering everywhere and looked beautiful on the way out to Portland Road.

This is on the road to Portland Roads, you can see the sea in the distance.

We went out for a drive last Sunday to Portland Road and took some photos and did some birdwatching, so that was really nice and a great way to wind down!

Lockhart cont.

After 5 days in Canberra I flew back to Cairns, where I had to attend a 3 day inservice on Classroom profiling (this relates to behaviour management). Then on Thursday it was back to Lockhart and a few changes. I am now working in a 3/4/5 class with Julia, a first year and we both have days were we do other jobs so we have 1 day both in class and then parts of other days. We have 17 very lively kids and some with very big ATTITUDE! so it is going to be an interesting class! My first week back was broken up with a celebration here called Foundation Day which is a public holiday, teachers had a professional development day. Foundation Day is celebration and rememberance of moving the Lockhart community to its present site from the old Lockhart site in 1969. They remember the old people  and lives left behind at the old site. This was also the time some families resettled up at Umagico, near Bamaga. The day was celebrated with games and activities and a barbeque at the beach.

While games were played on the beach, the local children swam with the crocs (one has been sighted regularly on this beach) and the jelly fish!

Some of the local teachers and partners, check out the 'oldfellow' up in the covered area!

Local dancing- 'shake leg'

That evening we attend a traditional feast as part of the day's celebration. Yes, there was turtle, dugong, fish and local  wild pig served up with rice and salad. The evening finished with more dancing. This was much closer to the islander style dancing and really brought back some memories of up north for Ron and I. It was a late night, but worth it!

 It continues to rain most days in Lockhart, mostly falls of 20 - 30mls, usually about lunch time each day. So at the moment we aren't going out much further than the beach as the rivers and creeks go up and down and you can get caught out.  The dogs enjoy their visit to the beach once a week and its nice to get down there and go for a walk.

The church hall decorated for the feast.

Back in Lockhart

Well, it has been over a month since the last post, so I have some catching up to do! On the 8th Feb Charlotte and I flew to Canberra to get her settled in ANU.  It is a really nice campus and easy to get around, everything is either in walking distance, Canberra City centre is only 20 min walk and it is a very attractive uni and I really liked Canberra. Charlotte and I did a couple of the tourist things as well. We went to Parliment house, did a guided tour, it was very interesting. We also went to Australia's National Museum, I was a bit disappointed with it, and then the War Memorial, that was extremely good, interesting and very moving.

Inside the War Memorial, looking towards the Shrine of Rememberance

Parliment House

Indigenious mosiac at front of Parliment House

Old Parliment Hous

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Charlotte out the front of the War Memorial, Canberra

A tense few days- cyclone Yasi

Well here in Lockhart we would not have known there was a cyclone around. It has been hot and the odd short downfall of rain, about 10ml in total. However it was a tense time worrying about Kahleana who had returned to Townsville and sat out the cyclone in their new unit, fortunately she was safe and only experienced the discomfort of being hot and being kept awake by the winds. Our house in Julatten also survived unscathed, just losing power and telephone, we haven't spoken to our housesitters Carol and Andrew for a couple of days, but have spoken with Grace and Bill our friends in Julatten who have kept us up to date.
Work this week was good with somedays only having 6-8 children. Charlotte is packing now as on Tuesday we fly out to take her to Canberra to start at ANU. Perhaps Ron will continue the blog while I'm out for 9 days. For the birdwatchers out there I thought you might enjoy this photo from out the front of our house!

A pair of Palm Cockatoos displaying to each other.

Day out and about

Yesterday we went for another cruise around the area to check out some spots and to find out where Ron can go fishing. A short 5km drive out of town took us to Taylor's Landing, on the Claudie River. This is one of the spots people go to launch their boats and Ron figured it looked like a pretty good spot for some future fishing trip, even without a boat.

You have heard of playing air guitar, this is air fishing!

 We then headed out to Chilli Beach for afternoon tea, stopping in some of the camp areas and walks through Iron Range National Park. It is very pleasant in there, we saw some Buff Breasted Paradise Kingfishers and heard the Red Bellied Pitta, but unfortunately didn't see any.
At Chilli Beach we did some beach combing , walked the dogs and had afternoon tea. It was just lovely sitting in the shade and taking in the breathtaking scenery.

Chilli Beach

Charlotte and Cora

Ron, Kahleana and Pepper relaxing on the beach.

Aspiring rock climbers!

 Today Sunday has been an overcast day and we had a good downpour of rain after lunch with some thunder and lightning. Maybe and inch or so. Well I have just about finished preparing for school this week so I am all set for my 12 students! Will post more about school and the house etc when I get some photos to go with it.
Have a great week everyone
Susanne
PS I plan to train Ron up to use the blog too in his spare time!

Some of the Locals

Thought I would include a photo of what Ron now calls a 'trash' bird. They are here in great abundance, we see a couple at least each day on our dog walks and they often land in the tree directly across the road from the house.

The magnificent Palm Cockatoo!

Road Crusing in Lockhart (25-01-11)

Last night after lots of excellent advice from the chief ranger we went out on another quest for the Green Python (Morelia viridis). During the day there had been a lot of rain over most of the national park area and especially around the ranger station. Which my sources had told me was an excellent time to look for pythons as the wet weather draws them out. We started off with a dry night and many frogs, thousands of Common greens (Litoria caerulea) on the roads along with just as many White lips (Litoria infrafrenata). With Ron at the helm we traversed the road through the rainforest crusing slowly and spotlighting the bushes along the way. This yielded only the occasional frog on a vine or a passing bat, but alas no green pythons. We took a short detour at Cook's Hut campground to do some foot work but this only resulted in a few very large cane toads and a Graceful Tree Frog (Litoria gracilenta).

 

After Cook's Hut we pushed onward to the Gordon Creek campgrounds, which I was told was as far as we would need to search for Green Pythons. Again more footwork was involved with the a surprising find occuring here. As I was searching the trees I stumbled across a very curious little fellow that not many people get to experience. I had found a very lively blind snake (Ramphotyphlops polygrammicus). I captured the little fellow swiftly and was rewarded with some very smelly secretions on my hands. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the individual due to a daring escape it made from a container that I was keeping it in until I could get a better look. It is now somewhere in our house or yard. This was the first time I had encountered a blind snake (or Typhlopidae for you herpers out there). Also while searching around I came across a whipsnake, not to sure whether it was greater or lesser as I was not too keen to wrestle with it.

At this point it had began to rain, much to the disappointment of everyone, mostly myself. I had resigned myself to a fate worse than death, that of not being able to have a one up on my herping friend. By now the rain had worsened and even Ron had decided that no self respecting snake would ever come out in this weather. It was at this time that we made a most wonderful discovery. Moving across the road was a Green Python. 

My first photo was not the best to say the least as it was raining and very poor light. But it shows the size of the individual and how it was slowly making its way across the road. I then caught the python and it is an experience that will stay with me forever. To hold this magnificent animal brought me so much joy. As is evident in the photo below I was stunned and over the moon =)

Mum (Susanne) very kindly did all the photography for this event as it was beginning to rain quite heavily and I was pretty much incapable of doing it myself.

After the photoshoot and a bit of a cuddle we took it off the road and into tree.

As it was now raining heavily we returned back to Lockhart River with the discovery of two more snakes on the way home. One was a large Water Python (Liasis mackloti) which was stretched across the road.

There was also a large and very angry Brown Tree Snake (Boiga irregularis) crossing the road near the ranger station but he didn't want to stick around for a photo.

So after a exciting and long night out we returned home happy.
Hope you enjoyed my post =)
Kahleana