Fire appreciation!

I invited friends to enjoy a fire appreciation evening a few weeks back, which sparked (hah!) the purchase of a new fire pit - cos ours had rusted through (after nearly three years of excellent service).  The replacement was a $50.00 Facebook marketplace find, with a welded safety edge and legs.  How good is that?

We still had plenty of firelighters and wood from our Byron Bay weekend, as well as some old furniture pieces from a recent clean-up.  We dined on BBQ-ed sausages, corn on the cob, "space potatoes" (baked in foil) and a lovely salad made by our guests.

Nick and I achieved our 700th geocaching find during the week, so dessert was a celebratory cake (in fire theme) - after some giant marshmallow toasting.  Once all the cooking was done, we added magic flame packs to the fire and admired all the pretty colours.

We had giant sparklers as a finale but Mr Dog was very weird with those - and seemed to think he needed to protect everyone.  (Well, I assume all the barking and dashing about was due to alarm.  He was definitely excited and not in a good way, so we put the pack away again)!  

It was a great night and really enjoyed sharing it with friends.  Now that the weather is cooler, there may be opportunity for another evening under the stars in the not-too-distant future.  We might even drag the camper trailer out for some backyard camping - maybe!

I found lots of cake inspiration by googling "free printable campfire cupcake toppers".  After all the browsing I decided on one larger cake, dusted with icing sugar "ash". I used a mix of lollies and biscuits for the fire. The coals were orange, red and brown smarties as well as raspberry jelly sweets.  The firewood was Arnott's TeeVee Snacks Malt Sticks and some thinner chocolate Pocky sticks.

Exhibition rocks!

Even though the focus of our recent Canberra trip was to visit the Botticelli to Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery (!), we were also approaching 700 geocaching finds and wanted to increase our tally while away.

There were caches quite close to our accommodation but this site seemed more interesting and we set off to find it.  

The information at the site described William Branwhite Clarke as the father of Australian geology.  His research formed the basis of the first geological map of New South Wales, published in 1880.  (We'd visited the National Library the previous day and wondered whether some of his maps may have been held there).  

From the creek we walked along the Majura Cycleway, a lot further than we intended - and we were very pleased an Uber driver responded to our pick-up request, quite near the Australian Federal Police training centre.  It was mid-afternoon by the time we made it back to our room (after stopping at a shopping centre for late lunch) and we needed a nap before our evening attendance at the Van Gogh exhibition!  (By the end of the day we'd walked more than 10km and a radox bath was greatly appreciated).

I've done a bit more research about Woolshed Creek since returning home.  I found this article.  We actually drove past the shale/sandstone uncomformity en route to the National Gallery!