Weekend Adventures

When I look out my back window at night, there is usually a scattering of brightly-lit windows spread out around me. Other birds in their nests busy with their evening activities. Last night, there were only the silhouettes of palm trees and gum trees against the oddly bright night sky. It was the first power outage I’ve experienced since I’ve been living on my own.

It lasted a couple hours – not long enough for my computer to run out of battery, thank God, because my cinnamon-apple-scented candle is too dim to read by and I don’t know how to change the batteries on my Lego man torch, so I have to ration it. It was this weekend’s adventure, I suppose!

Last weekend’s adventure involved sunlight. Heaps of sunlight. Also pigs, horses, cows, and bright orange pinecones.

I took the ferry up the Parramatta River for a bit of exploration. My goal was to walk from the Abbotsford wharf to the Cabarita wharf. The walking trail map I’d found online said it was about 10km, and suggested allowing 4 hours. I took their word for it because I’m American by birth and 10km doesn’t mean anything to me.

I arrived at Cabarita 2.5 hours after starting out, having stopped for a long picnic lunch and several photo breaks, and concluded that the map authors were clearly either hobbly one-legged pirates or geriatric patients.

One of the most interesting finds I made on the walk was the remnants of an old animal quarantine station.
















At one time, there were facilities for horses, cattle, pigs, dogs, and cats. Now the place is a park. The piggery was converted into public toilets at some point and the cat house was demolished. People picnic on the grass and kids run through the horses’ stalls. The incinerator made me feel a little bit like I was walking around a concentration camp, but really, the place wasn’t that bad. I don’t know what they do with imported animals today – I’d like to think they’re allowed to run around under a leafy canopy of gum trees, though I guess that’s unlikely.
















I spent much of the walk gazing adoringly at all the beautiful homes along the river. I mentally purchased a couple and took photos of them, which I’m not going to post online because that would be weird. My favourite ones had balconies and flowery gardens. Probably shower curtains and more than one room too - luxuries by my standards.

The orange pinecones I discovered by the Cabarita wharf, and they puzzled me. They still puzzle me. Like, decide whether you’re a lily or a pine tree already. Neither? A tree grown from the buried body of an evil witch who murdered small children by scratching them with her poisonous orange fingernails? I could see that.