Road trip, from Coffs

I've worked my way down the coast a bit more so

What's special about Yamba
I think it's mostly this pub. The town is a really good size like small enough all the locals can hang out and the tourists add to the place but don't ruin it. Yamba is structured so the beach is a cliff, less good for running out for a quick swim, bc you have to march all the way down and all the way back up. But this is great for the Yamba Hotel (Note: in Oz pubs are called hotels mostly cause back when all these places were villages the pub public house you know was like the real public building and also had a few rooms for rent and they are still my first port of call if there is no hostel, like the second cheapest room in that way ) Anyway the Yamba Hotel has floor to ceiling glass windows and is on this cliff just above the main beach so an incredible view out over the water and my first day in Yamba I took a break day there to play on my book and read and I was actually talked into it by the pub itself, I go in and the restaurant isn't open yet, I ask about a coffee but the pub kind of is hello alcoholism but they don't serve coffee but they're like feel free to have a drink or get this go get a take away coffee somewhere else and hang out for our views so I grabbed a series of lemon lime and bitters and made a day of their view.
I also saw fantastic beasts and how to find them 2 which was super thematic because I was reading the Harry Potter series on my way down the coast plus there's the world's most local movie theater in Yamba. And there I ran into a guy I knew from teaching, Graham who retired with his now husband (he was actually part of the marriage campaign in Yamba and said everyone was super supportive yay) of like 20 years in what used to be their vacation home and is now their life. And he is in like 12 local community campaigns and seems really joyful in retirement, where he used to be a bit cynical at work so I'm really glad it worked out for him so well tho I didn't get quite as much chatting with him as I would have liked, despite his best efforts.  Anyway the town is special in that I was there for 2 or 3 days but I managed to drop into my new local bookstore twice and was treated so nice, this pub every day, visit the local cinema use my local bakery as a great takeaway to the beach breakfast option more than once you know I just felt like a simalcrum of living there comfortably almost immediately. Also I slow walked this ace lighthouse walk along more rocky cliffs.

About Angourie
There were blue pools and green pools and it managed to be both super quiet and also like a real hot spot for families and teens swimming etc. The cool part tho was that I had a picnic breakfast of pie and coffee, so I walked at an angle to the second nearest beach I hadn't seen, and then I noticed that you could totally walk along the beach to the next town, and so I just started out figuring if it was all too much I could always turn back and drive but I walked all the way out there and all the way back along the beach so it was like two hours of beach walking and then a couple hours of hanging around the the pools and then lunch out there and then a drink at the local pub in the evening and then home for dinner.

Red Cliff
Ok I'm on the road now so I had a model this trip where I basically picked the most small sometimes dirt coastal road and ducked into inlets like every 20-40 minutes down the road which is not far on these kinds of roads. Some places I just had a look, sometimes I went for a swim or a short walk or read my book on the beach for a bit, but like Byron, Yamba, Coffs Harbor, Port Macquarie, Newcastle, is the tourist trail, those are the major stops and have hostels and most people like bus between those, Yamba is barely even on that but these other places are like villages with maybe a campsite down a national park dirt road or a caravan park at the edge of town. And I'm only hanging out some of these places like 30 minutes rather than a couple of days. Still I think all my true favorite places were of this variety, tiny village, big national park, deserted beach, you know the other places are like towns which means they have grocery stores and places to eat and stay and lifeguarded beaches and maybe sights but also just a bit less atmospheric.

Ok Red Cliff itself, so named for its cliffs is on this hike which I would totally be into doing someday which is like a rudementary coastal trail that strings for four days from about Yamba down to broom's Head through the Yurangir national park. This national park rules, I drove through it for ages, littoral rainforest regular forest one gorgeous white sand cove after another just awesome. This campsite was super basic, a drinking water tap at the entrance to refill your tanks, basic campsites, a bank of chemical toilets. I thought my in-laws with their camping truck would be perfect here, pull up, set up your little kitchen and shower, use the facilities, you can stumble over a dune to a gorgeous private beach and there's a coastal day track if you want it. I did the lookout, cliffs and red rocks and walked a little down the trail but not far.

Broom's Head
If it had been later this was a great place to pull up my car and park for the night, nice little picnic area, particularly gorgeous beach. As it was I took the little very well maintained loop track to the lookout and back around through the forest. But it totally went to the next gorgeous cove and on and on. It's one of the places I marked in my head for the way back/ next trip. Freaking awesome.

Sandon River
The campsite here is all the way down an endless dirt road on a spit. I checked it out with intent thinking about staying here but wound up backtracking down the dirt road to a random beach access and taking a late afternoon swim on a completely deserted beach. I got out my towel and everything, swam walked up the beach swam again walked back swam again layed out on my towel reading and dozing while sunset started to happen and the breeze and sun wafted over me. I considered just sleeping right there on the beach, but I decided when it got cold from night it would stop being fun fast so I headed down the road as night fell.

Wooli
Wooli is an incredible and almost certainly totally underrated town, where the river meets the ocean over a long long spit. The town is further up and then as you go out the spit it gets more and more residential and scraggly. There's a long river walk, a sidewalk and then the beach goes on.  I got in here late, as darkness fell and drove down this long long spit in the dark. Ate a cold supper in the back of my car and slept out here. In the morning I woke at dawn, of course, took a sunrise walk along the spit of beach. It was a good sunrise too, right over the point, and then when the sun crested I took a dawn swim. Showered in the public toilets and combed my hair at the river.

Mullaway
This was one of my places I marked for the way back, cause it was awesome, but a bit much for before breakfast, one of those coves between two hills Oz is great at, I took the little overlook walk and then jetted, but here would have been good to stay as well.

Woolgoolga
Had breakfast of champions and poked in a little used bookstore. Maybe my first espresso of the trip, very satisfying. The rest of the day I think was a lot of driving down dirt roads hopping out at various points, it was front loaded though and I wound up in coffs by the afternoon.

Coffs Harbor
I did a lot of walking at Coffs. The beaches are very picturesque but a bit cold and no surf but it's got a big foreshore and a lot of little paths. So the first day I walked out to Corambirra point where there's an old bunker and a hill lookout and a break wall that goes out a long way. Second day I wandered around on the piers and beach coves. On the morning of my last day I climbed up muttenbird island which is sort of the highlight of this place. It did command a lovely view.

Road trip, from Byron

I got to my secret cove a little before low tide this morning. It's Riki tiki tavi's cove, one of the places he hides out, out of reach of the British frigates, impassible at certain times. The ocean has changed, so it's harder to get to, I didn't trust it at all at high tide and when I came back the outer beach was all gone, underwater now, and you could only get to the cove with significant wading and clambering. Inside, it was still quiet, shaded, excellent. Two hawks landed, each on a tree on each side, and one called and screed, a high pitched keening, to the other one, who cleaned her tail and paid him no mind. Eventually he came over to her branch, still singing. They were close enough to me I could see his mouth move.  I got out of there, took a swim before the sun got too high, and got back to my hostel in time to shower before breakfast.

I've managed to get a sunburn on my first day, which is inspiring me to move on today, as an alternative to spending five hours on the beach again, but I've been slow to move out. I read in the hostel and tried to download things, and then I've been doing the big loop trail up to the lighthouse, so I suspect it will feel a bit like evening before I really leave.

But the trail can be done with clothes on which lets my burn heal. It is hot though. Off the Eastern most point in Australia lookout, there was a pod of dolphins. They were basically resting, slowly swimming parallel to the coast, then turning out a bit to see. It's not every day you see a pod of wild dolphins off the furthest point in the country, though from where I live, it basically could be.

It was either here or Noosa I first really saw the Pacific, high points you know so you can see the turquoise of the shallow water, and the deep blue of the deep, and the purpling of the rocks underneath, the ice milk color I associate now with Alpine lakes where it churnes up close to shore. When I saw it like that, at the time I didn't know it could be like that, so clear the color changes when there's clouds.

When I went swimming this morning it was early and empty enough there were fish.

My signature scent

White flowers (frangipani, mock orange gardenias etc, there's this specific thing they all smell like)

When the air turns warm (there's a thing that happens when the air heats up a little and it's decay and ripening fruit and new growth leaves and warmth itself. It smells like life to me)

New cut grass- just always has been

Neck hollow (there's this scent in the hollow of the neck of certain boys that's like the morning dew, it's like fresh water but it's integrally connected to who I've been attracted to etc over my life)

The sea cause of course and the cool thing about the sea is you can catch the scent from way way off.

Fresh air- maybe this is the same as the other air one? But indoor air has the smell of like dust and suffocation most notable in industrially enclosed places like hospitals and shopping malls and outdoor air like blows that funk away.

I don't have a strong sense of smell, allergies etc, but I can catch a lot of scents pretty faint and they're jacked into my consciousness in that way, a weak nose but extra attention I suppose.

Stuff I can make

I was thinking about grocery shopping and this is the by no means comprehensive list of like stuff I cook on a regular (or not so regular) basis. I thought it would help us figure out what to buy and eat if we could like pick it off a list so I sent it to Jem.

Indian
Daal
Palak paneer
Vegetable korma

Chinese/korean
Sirachi soy stir fry
Dumplings +/-
Garlic stir fry
Honey soy chicken and veggies
Satay vegetables
Duck and bak choy

Italian/greek
Mushroom pasta (spaghetti Bolognese)
Mushroom pasta (cream sauce)
Mushroom pizzas (of mushrooms)
Pesto broccoli pasta
Pizza and salad
Lasagna
Ravioli
Eggplant parmesan
Eggplant and goats cheese pasta

Other Euro
Falafel platter
Spanikopita
Pasta salad
Baked brie and baguette
Quiche

American
Mac and cheese
Chicken cutlet +veg and carb maybe
Burgers
Chicken and chips
Oven roasted veggies
Lentil meatloaf
Mushroom burgers
Green bean casserole
Egg salad

Thai
Tom yum soup
Curry (need paste)

Mexican/Texmex
Enchiladas
Soft or hard tacos
Nachos
Black beans and sweet potatoes
Chili and cornbread

Black lives matter?

So I just wrote this thing to my dad. Those familiar with me will recognise it as the most of my thoughts/ feelings I have expressed to my dad in a decade or so. I have an accelerated heart rate as a result. I dunno.

Hey Dad,

So while we were out to dinner you brought up black lives matter and said that every case of a black person shot by police officers had been armed. 

And I didn't respond to that at the time, I was kind of shocked for a start, I've never heard any one say anything close to that and also I don't have a quick encyclopedic kind of memory. But I've been thinking about it a lot recently, maybe because I'm listening to the new season of serial or maybe because I'm thinking about you cause I'm thinking about grandfather more recently. 

But it's just not true is the thing

Like

Stephon Clark St Louis had a cell phone not a gun

Alton Sterling Louisiana CDs no gun

Terence crutcher Tulsa hands up no gun 

Walter Scott shot five times in the back unarmed ran from a broken taillight stop SC

Rumain Brisbon hand in pocket unarmed shot to death over a drug thing

Micheal brown the guy from Ferguson was unarmed and sitting in his car

Eric Gardiner the I can't breathe guy was unarmed and selling single cigarettes

Charles Kinsey who wasn't actually killed but was one of the cases that most affected me want unarmed of course he was caring for an autistic adult and was begging the police not to shoot his charge at the time. They were both sitting down on the road. 

Micheal brown the hands up don't shoot guy, there's different reports as to if his hands were up and if he really said that Ferguson mi but he was unarmed and was shot and I'm pretty sure that was the same town where they charged a guy for bleeding on the officers shoes after a beating, you know destroying police property which affected me almost more than the killing.  

Tamir Rice 12 years old had a toy gun do you count that?  I played cops and robbers as a kid and had a BB gun 

This is not exhaustive by any means, I just lifted a few. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/03/29/police-killings-black-men-us-and-what-happened-officers/469467002/

http://amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article144190724.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_up,_don't_shoot

And of course some people were armed but then there's the other thing that it's not actually illegal to be armed in the US and it sure as hell doesn't carry the death penalty.

Look I know you like to stir people up a bit so I don't know if you even mean this stuff you say or if you're just trying to get a rise out of me, which I get, I like to poke a controversy stick sometimes and see what falls out sometimes. 

And I know you're super right wing and I'm super left wing so we're never really going to see eye to eye on a lot of what's going on in the world kind of stuff. We just have really different value systems and opinions on how things should be. And that's ok too I guess. But like surely we can agree that facts exist? That would make it easier to talk anyway. 

Anyway, let me know what you think. That's what I've been thinking.

Hugs,

Maile

Aaaanyway Jes said that it wasn't necessarily doing my dad any favors to be pleasant to him at the cost of not telling him literally anything about myself and she accepts some degree of conflict to be her authentic self in her family relationships and that is fraught but leads to the relationships like really existing and having meaning and stuff. So maybe I'm trying that?

I've learned on my refugee podcast

The US is the largest funder of refugees worldwide by like an order of magnitude. I don't think I knew that before. Both I don't think that I really credit or understand properly how much money the US has vs other countries, in much the same way as we can't really understand how much money the 1% has or whatever.  Your instinct is to be like yes there's rich people and they're richer than us but you don't really get how there's like 50 people who control the GDP of the world and then the rest of us kind of live off the rounding error like it's that different and as a part of that you also can't really understand how much the world could be different if we could use that 90% of the world's wealth by the principles at which we currently use 10% of the world's wealth like what are we paying for the luxury of having a super rich elite exist. For deciding inequality is like kind of ok if we're not desperate. Which we aren't largely that's the devil's bargain of the post WWII first world right we get to eat and have shelter and not have kids chewed up in mines and even get our cancer cured and stuff it's a lot better than the last peasant serf deal. Still. That's a tangent.

The US is like the whole pie of refugee funding worldwide. That's something I kind of didn't notice and part of the reason is because of the above and the other part is because on the left you're more focused on the deficit rhetoric of how small a piece of the US discretionary spending/national budget/ GDP pie that is ( BTW did you know Britain just committed to .7 % of their one of those it's a big deal imagine if that were the world standard what we could do?) But that can blind you to how much it means that we do what we do.

This is less out of texts than my own head but I find it interesting that both my birth country and even more so my adoptive countries are all immigrant nations. I mean we killed off the overwhelming majority of our native born populations (Aboriginal Australians and native Americans both represent like a percent of the country's population today). And something like two thirds of Australia has a parent born overseas. Like it's extreme. So what's interesting is the total lack of self reflection in the national debate of both places when talking about"immigrants." I mean racism is strong I guess but the ability of a country where literally every person has immigrants in their family tree to have a problem with immigrants as a monolithic other is confusing to me. Like I really don't understand how it's possible.

On Deck with the House

New stove
Bedroom door
Fixed fence

Nearest pathway to be able to rent the room to strangers.

Michael and Hannah aren't moving out but their dream is a townhouse, and I want to be ready not hopelessly confused when the time comes and they are ready. Plus it's a downside of being in the apartment that it becomes possible to just ignore stuff about the house and our lifestyle there that makes us unhappy, cause we'll always be gone in a few hours. But in Europe I was far enough away to see what I wanted.  Plus the stove was making them crazy too. And just makes us more pro.

Spring means growth

Put the garden to bed
New mulch?
Pruning before the grow season
Possoms in the roof again

This is just making me happier stuff. Michael takes care of the mowing atm but there's a bunch of stuff beyond that which requires our knowledge of what is good and bad and what we want where and what trees need to be dug up.  I gotta be in it but there's a lot of it and it's in such a below my standards state that working feels like being not good enough not like accomplishing things.

Micheal and Hannah's house project

So they have moved a couple of times and when they moved with us there were a bunch of cardboard boxes below. When we were mostly in the apartment they started going through it all, and that's been kind of ongoing but Hannah just left for the states and that was there completion plan so now I could help Michael finish bc it's mostly done.

Our lifestyle stuff
Stop crouching over a laptop with your food in bed like a gollum
Be able to find a towel without having to sort through stuff
Dresser combined
Move out big dresser
Move in couch
Get 3d monitor screen and docking station to house
Blackout curtain behind?
Clear linen closet

When we moved into the back of the house we put both our dressers in the library where the click clack bed used to be so they fit nice but there's no place in our area to sit. Which we've still got the living room but a bunch of things happened. Mostly we moved the computer out of there and the TV is useless to us without it but also there was sorting in there and j is a total introvert who retreats into his hidey hole (he and Michael living together alone would like never see each other boys are weird). But I can't cope with the rat in a nest thing and I miss having a quiet place to sit that's not my bed and you don't always want to take over the public area. So anyhow we combined our dressers into the smaller dresser and moved the big dresser to the front room and etc. Now we have both a couch and a guest bed in there.

Stuff we always want both places, should I rebuy
Espresso machine
Sonicare toothbrushes
Js razor we kinda accidentally rebought

Cleaning out our filthnests
Ok there's two, one of balls just needs to go to Goodwill, plus empty tubs but maybe they're a part of papers

Papers is the hard one but I need a staging area for that so it's at least after the M&H sorting project finishes and also I need to commit to doing it like a job once it gets started and I have no idea files, notebooks what's the form of this but it needs to happen bc Lord knows what's under there and it's the last of my coming home projects.

Rent out front room

Empty front room
Clear linen closet
Lockable door
Improve back door maybe combination
Occupied thing on bathroom
Maybe a locking hardware on Michael and Hannahs room, same as ours
Rejig living room
TV in one of the bedrooms instead?
Table in living room with two couches as social space can it happen?
Get rid of linen closet or dresser for new person
New bed
Is it worthwhile to try to create second real carpark?
Clearing projects
Bathroom, we need to go from two drawers to one or install a medicine cabinet gordion knot question what is the length of screw that won't pierce my single skin walls
Kitchen reduce and combine appliances so we can have 3rd shelf free.
Go through pots, sell copper etc to create zones for people if they cook
Dishes and glassware do they need to change?
Is a bigger fridge a necessity, how big will fit in that hole

Bear in mind at the start that everyone's against this plan to begin with so it may not even happen, and of course it's a negotiation with Michael and Hannah too (which room do they want bedroom is bigger but front room could have the closer entrance, good parking space, exclusive use of the porch) but of course they might not even be there when that is happening so we'll see and don't want to change their world til it's actually necessary. But I consider most all the stuff on that list good ideas just because, there's a lot of things I still have full time stuff there for and I'm living there part time, you gotta change with your life. So I'm gonna proceed down the list and see where we are.

So I've done a bunch of this stuff already, the stove, I've found the doors, we've mostly moved into our space and I've swapped the couch in. And a bunch is unstarted. I'm kind of planning on this project taking me to the end of the year. So we'll check in on what's left then. Me going domestic out of town a bunch is also a thing tho.