What's going on

Things have been hectic lately. I found out a couple of weeks ago that I have to move at the end of July, so I've been spending the past few Saturdays attending open houses all afternoon so that I won't be homeless. The rental market here is really competitive, and when I submitted a few applications on Monday morning I had an agent calling me at work within 10 minutes asking for all of my personal information, asking to speak to my boss for references, asking about my immigration status, etc. If was "full on" as they say here, but I would personally describe it as exhausting. I got rejected from the first two I applied to, and was feeling pretty much like a loser, but the good news is I found a place! It's really cute, has a huge balcony, is about 15 minutes closer to work, and only has a six month lease just in case I end up hating it. Hayden is going to live there too, and we had a pizza/packing party at my place last night. He wandered off for about 10 minutes while I was diligently folding clothes and stuffing them into boxes, and when I found him he was looking at ads for used foosball tables so... wish me luck!

Jenolan Caves

Last weekend I made the three hour journey into the mountains to pay a visit to Jenolan Caves. My poor little car didn't like the hills all that much, and the last two kilometers were a one lane road winding down a sheer cliff face, but I rolled up to the historic Guest House safely on Saturday afternoon. After all the driving I wasn't much in the mood to dive right into a cave tour, so we checked into the hotel and just had a walk around the grounds. It was grey and drizzly out, but the water in Blue Lake was still a very vivid shade of blue from all of the limestone deposits in the water.

Small dam built about 100 years ago at the edge of Blue Lake

I saw my first wild platypus!

Chilly but really happy to be out of the city.

After that it was into the Guest House for a couple of drinks by the fire. There was a group of elderly people up there on some kind of retreat and they realllllly wanted to chat us up. They were really nice, but I gently excused myself after a while to take one of their bored-looking grandsons outside to look at the possums that had been sneaking around the windows. They were really tame so we ended up feeding them potato chips out of our hands while they dangled by their tails from the roof! (Rabies doesn't exist in Australia, by the way.) Unfortunately I didn't have my camera on me at that point.

The guest house. It was nice but... a little too Shining-esque if you know what I mean?

The caves themselves were fascinating. There are numerous tours you can do, but I picked Temple of Baal, named by early explorers after a figure from the Old Testament. You can see Baal (the rock formation) looking down on you from different angles wherever you move inside the cave. There is only one main chamber, but the tour takes you around to different platforms and vantage points so that there is always something different to look at. I would love to go back and see some of the other chambers!

The Angel's Wing, a shawl formation that is one of the largest in the world.

View from one of the upper platforms.