Our back yard! Mareeba Rodeo!

Every July for the past 65 years Kerribee Park in Mareeba has been home of the Mareeba Rodeo and people come from all over the Far North to join in the festivities. The rodeo has all the usual highlights including bull riding, saddle bronc, steer wrestling, agricultural show exhibits, ute muster, cattle show and our favourite, the wood chop. To complete the line up, you cannot forget side show alley and dagwood dogs. Locals make a weekend of the festival starting off with a parade down the main street and a cabaret on the Saturday night. The show grounds provide free camping for those who wish to indulge.

It is a wonderful opportunity to soak up the cowboy culture. So get your boot scooting ready for July 2015.

Word of the week!

Dérive (n.)

Origin: Latin/French

Lit. “drift”; a spontaneous journey where the traveller leaves their life behind for a time to let the spirit of the landscape and architecture attract and move them.

On this day! August 24

In AD 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted in one of the most catastrophic and infamous eruptions in history. Mount Vesuvius spewed a deadly cloud of volcanic gas, stones, ash and fumes; ejecting molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bombing. The ancient, Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum were obliterated. Pompeii was buried so quickly beneath the volcanic ash making it a well preserved snapshot into life in a Roman city.

Blogger books! Happy book week!

A good book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.
- William Styron.

As it is book week around Australia, we thought it was a good time to give you some new recommendations.

The Cartographer by Peter Twong.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.

The Universe verses Alex Woods by Gavin Extence.

The Light between Oceans by M.L.Stedman.

Statue fun around the world!

Our back yard! Shadows of the past!

Last Friday night we had the pleasure of a theatrical walk through McLeod Street Pioneer Cemetery. Actors dressed as early Pioneers bought the tragic history of this bygone era back to life. The tour started at dusk when we met up with our guide for the evening; William Parsons (original sexton). Cairns Brass Band serenaded us as we followed William around the candle lit burial ground and met with the characters and their haunting tales. We listened to accounts of loved ones lost; a grieving mother sang a beautiful lullaby in tribute to her lost son Eddie Laurens. Children, parents, business men and founders were all represented as this dramatic experience brought Cairns early residents back to life. We found ourselves transported in time as the lives and deaths of well known local names unfolded.

It is interesting to note, that each actor selected which story they wanted to share and wrote their own script in keeping with historical facts.

To the volunteers,cast,band and Cairns & District Family History Society; we thank you for a unique evening.

Guest Blogger. Xenites Unite! by Elly Greene.

Every year, pilgrims from all round the world travel thousands of kilometres to converge on one city for the annual celebrations. There, they sing and feast, make merry and worship that which brought them all together.

They are a family from all walks of life. Young and old, rich and poor, intermingle, brought together by the power, the passion and the danger of a hero. A hero the world cried out for, to save them from the mediocrity and dullness of white male straight characters. And save us all, she did,
heralding in, albeit briefly, a new age of well written diverse female, some times not straight,
characters.

I sing of Xena, the Warrior Princess and her partner in crime (and bed) Gabrielle, the Battling Bard, and the annual conventions held in their honour. I have been lucky enough to have had the funds to attend two of these amazing gatherings in Los Angeles, USA, first in 2012 and most recently in 2014.

It's a life changing experience. I know how cliche that sounds, but every single person I've spoken to that has been will tell you the same thing. It is about belonging, acceptance, challenge and growth. And not just the challenges that come from consuming too much alcohol and not having enough sleep (though that was probably the hardest part).

Xena Con is something that is really difficult to explain to people that haven't been there, especially if they're not a fan of the show. You're probably thinking we all just nerd out about Xena whilst dressed in cosplay. That happens, yes, but that is a small part of the entire thing. The Xena talk is mainly just an icebreaker. Which is the greatest icebreaker in existence. You don't even have to think about what to say you just start talking about one of your passions it is great. Instant friendship.

I'll try to explain, blow by blow, the average Xena Con (side note: no Xena Cons are average; they are all awesome by default).


Thursday:

12 pm: Arrive at hotel. Check in and mingle with all the Xenites there. Excitedly crash tackle people you know from the internet/other conventions.

3 pm: Go on a magical adventure to find alcohol.

5 pm: Start drinking

7 pm: Go to group dinner at the Denny's across the road

9 pm: Either go watch Xena in somebody's room or hang out in the lobby and drink. Talk with Steven Sears.

4 am: go to bed

Friday:

7 am: Get up ridiculously early if you are insane and go and grab breakfast and play softball with the Xenites.

1 pm: Come back cheering if you were on Team Potidaea. Come back sulking if you were on Team Amphipolis. Maybe start drinking. Or maybe you're already drunk. Who knows?

Some time later: Go to the panels. Laugh a lot. Maybe learn a thing about Xena you didn't already
know. Groan when somebody asks a dumb questi
on. Sneak alcohol into the panels. Turn one of the panels into a drinking game.

After panels: Maybe get some signatures or photo-ops. Bonus points if you are drunk by this point.
Eat dinner. Go to the Cabaret put on by celebrities. Then go to the karaoke party. Hang out in the
lobby afterwards.

4 am: go to bed


Saturday:

Morning: Get up, go across the road for breakfast, go to panels. Play trivia if you feel like it. If not, go socialise.

Afternoon: More panels, more socialising, sneak alcohol in again. Realise that nobody actually cares that you're drinking in there. Maybe get your butt smacked by a celebrity on-stage when you tell
them how corrupt Xena Con has made you. Then again maybe don't. Watch the Costume
Competition. Marvel at how awesome people are at costume design. Cheer for your friends. A+
costumes.

Night: Get food, go to cocktail party, get your pass confiscated because your friend used it to try to
sneak people into it, leave party go to lobby, go to glow stick party in somebody's room. They have a giant jar of cheetos. Eat some. Realise it is like 5 am. Go to bed.


Sunday:

7 am: Wake up, still drunk, go to celebrity breakfast. Get told by celebrities to go to bed. Ignore
them. Win money. Donate it to charity. Become a hero over like $200. Get pass back from
volunteers. Tell them that you were drunk and somebody asked for your pass so you gave it to them. Somehow start rumour that you passed out and your friend stole your pass.

Some time that was probably too early: start drinking again. Realise that alcohol makes things
better. Wonder if you're becoming an alcoholic. Shrug and drink more anyway.
Afternoon: Watch Lucy and Renee's panel. Laugh and enjoy their awesomeness. Get signatures with friend whilst intoxicated and still drinking a beer. Make the celebrities laugh. Be awesome and stuff.

Night: Go to after party and have much fun

2 am: Realise you're really really really exhausted and somehow make it to bed before dying.

Monday:

Morning: Say goodbye to people.
The rest of the day: sit in the lobby with whoever is left feeling sad that the thing is over.
Night: Walk around the hotel and see how empty it is and start to miss it already.

Tuesday:

Leave the hotel and head off to a different part of LA for non-Xenite related adventures. With a
Xenite.
So, that's basically what happens at Xena Con. Make life long friends. Drink a lot of alcohol. Have the time of your life.

People travel for a lot of different reasons: adventure, nature, history, etc.
But sometimes? The best thing to travel for is people.
And alcohol.

Japanese cuisine!

As always, food featured highly on our Japanese Sojourn. We make it a habit to taste the local area's specialty and sample the local brew. Our fabulous Ryokan in  Hakone offered traditional evening meals served in your room by our Nakai. So we donned our kimonos and sat at our low table to be served. There was a variety of dishes to tantalise the taste buds. Delicately sliced pork sizzled on a ceramic pot over a tea light candle, sushi, tofu, pickled vegetables, kaki-age tempura, udon noodles and a couple of dishes that we couldn't quiet recognise but were delicious none the less.

In a little cafe across the road from our Ryokan, two lovely ladies served us their specialty dish of Smelt fly fish. Agreed the name is by no means appetising but these little locally caught and fried fish were very tasty indeed.

We visited the Edo era inspired Amazake-chay tea house on the Tokkaido Highway. Here we sat on cushions at a low table and enjoyed hot tea to warm us up. We ordered their signature dishes of hot gooey mochi (pounded rice) cakes which are grilled over the hot coals and then dusted with soy powder or coated with sesame seeds and translucent, jelly like balls;  warabi mochi which is cooked in the same manner but made from bracken fern starch. While the gooey was sweet and quite tasty, the warabi was really horrid. We physically could not finish them and had to do a Mr Bean act and stuff them in our bags.

Back in the big city of Tokyo we enjoyed gyoza. These little Japanese dumplings filled with mince, cabbage, ginger and garlic were a firm favourite. We also visited a traditional Okonomiyaki restaurant. Okonomiyaki means " as you like it" Hence you choose your ingredients from a variety of combinations; pork, beef, seafood add your choice of vegetable, egg & cheese then cook your own savoury pancakes on a hot griddle. We have tried to recreate this dish in Australia but like a lot of creations from around the world they are only worth eating in the country of origin.

Pepper steak; the new  fast steak franchise in Japan is extremely popular in Tokyo. We just had to check it out and so glad we did. This idea was created in 1994 by Kunio Ichinose, who wanted to serve quality fast food without hiring a chef. He invented a method using hot metal plates that are heated by an electromagnetic cooker. The raw meat of choice with vegetables and rice are then served to the customer to cook to their preference. A special, secret recipe sauce is used to coat your meat. This sauce certainly gives Colonial Sanders a run for his money.

Kampai!