The 2014 Xmas Letter of Brett and Karen
Merry Xmas from Brett and Karen!
2014 was a lot like 2013, with all the usual activities, as well as one big trip away and one big kayaking expedition.
Our Big Trip to Western Australia
In late August we travelled to the Mudgee / Capertee area for a week of birdwatching with Shoalhaven Birders, and Karen and I then continued on through central NSW and Broken Hill into South Australia and across the Nullarbor to Western Australia.
We spent our time looking for birds and climbing mountains in the south-west, and visiting family in Albany. In addition, I played golf on the longest golf course in the world - the Nullarbor Links - which is a series of 18 holes at towns and roadhouses that occur along a 1365km stretch of Highway One from Ceduna in SA to Kalgoorlie in WA. Many of the holes are really rough, and the golf that I played was even rougher!
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Our Kayaking Trip
In 2013 we paddled on the Murray from Yarrawonga to Echuca, and this year we were back on the Murray again in March, this time spending four days doing about 80km of river leading to Mildura in Victoria, and a similar distance from Morgan south in South Australia. We then travelled down to Nelson in Victoria to paddle for four more days on the Glenelg River.
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Vanuatu
In July Karen joined a dozen other ladies for a girls-only snorkelling week in Vanuatu. Karen says that the snorkelling was the best she has ever done, and the week away from Brett was great (ditto for Brett), despite a few of the girls picking up some sort of bug late in the week.
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Bushwalking and Rogaining
Karen is now in her third year as President of the Shoalhaven Bushwalkers, and I am still the webmaster. We both lead quite a few walks every year - this year my total of walks led since we joined the club in 1999 topped 100, but Karen is now the leading leader in the club, with 188 walks led. Apart from the usual weekend and mid-week bushwalks, the highlight of the bushwalking year was the one day event at the Navigation Shield Rogaine run by the Bushwalkers Wilderness Rescue Service in July. Karen and I managed to come second in the event, on the same score as the winners but finishing a few minutes later than them after almost eleven hours and thirty odd kilometres of scrub bashing nearing Yalwal. The last half hour of the event was very exciting - with time rapidly running out we had to descend a steep, rocky firetrail, find a way across the Shoalhaven River that did not involve swimming, and bush-bash up an untracked, scrubby ridge to get to the finish before our time ran out. We actually had to run part of the way (when we were able) and we arrived at the finish line with less than a minute to spare!
Earlier in the year - in April - I had competed in a 24 hour rogaine with Cliff Harris - a legendary bushwalker and navigator. Cliff had recently turned 55, which meant he was eligible for the "super veteran" category in rogaines, which I had qualified for many years earlier. Despite me running out of energy in the wee small hours of the morning due to not eating properly, I came good around sunrise after eating half a block of chocolate, and we powered home to finish second in our age group, just behind two Australian champions.
We had plans to compete in future events including the Australian and World Championships in the next couple of years, but sadly Cliff died suddenly in late July only a few weeks after his team finished second in the 2 day event at the Navigation Shield that Karen and I also competed in. Karen and I still think about Cliff every day. It is a real shock - and a real wake-up call - when someone younger, stronger and fitter than you are passes away unexpectedly. It is yet another reminder that we all should make the most of our lives while we can ...
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Golf
Around about the time of my 60th birthday last year my golf handicap again reached single figures. Perhaps it was my new golf clubs, or perhaps it was due to a new-found maturity, but I have remained a single-figure golfer ever since. At one stage my handicap was 7.6, but recent bad games have seen this blow out to 9.4. My goal now is to have a handicap of 18!
Cycling
While I was playing golf on Thursday mornings, Karen was riding with the Shoalhaven BUG (Bicycle Users Group) on their weekly mountain-bike rides at various locations throughout the Shoalhaven. She also tried to do a ride at least once a week on the weekend as well, and I occasionally joined her for the weekend rides. As a result, I was not very bike fit when we travelled to Canberra with some of the BUG group to cycle the Centenary Trail - a 145km mountain-bike circuit around the outskirts of the city. We divided the circuit into 4 loops - one per day - which lengthened the ride to 200km. Two weeks of intense training (4 rides) prior to the event made the experience quite manageable and enjoyable for me!
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Photography
I am still the Vice-President and Webmaster of the Bay and Basin Camera Club, and although tending to take "snaps" on the various activities that I do - rather than "art" - I managed to take a few photos this year that I consider worth sharing during the year - see below.
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Shorebirds
2014 was yet another bad year for endangered Pied Oystercatchers and Hooded Plovers along Bherwerre Beach in Booderee National Park and on the islands in St Georges Basin. We have been volunteers in the South Coast Shorebird Recovery project run by National Parks for quite a few years, but the birds did it tough this year, with storms and high seas creating havoc on their nesting beaches, along with the usual destruction caused by predators like foxes and ravens, and the mindless behaviour of dog owners and their dogs.
Birds
After increasing the size of our lifetime bird list significantly last year, we did not expect to see many (if any) new birds this year, but we greatly exceeded our limited expectations. Our nine new birds for the year included the Mallee Emu-wren at Hattah-Kulkyne NP in Victoria, the totally unexpected Citrine Wagtail at Mudgee (a very rare vagrant), and the three birds we had hoped to find on our travels in WA - the Western Whipbird, the Noisy Scrub-bird and the Western Bristlebird (all seen at Cheyne Beach - a fantastic birding location). We also ticked off our "bogey bird", the Purple-gaped Honeyeater at Ongerup in WA, and managed to pick up the Western Thornbill at the eastern edge of its range just north of Albany as well.
Late in the year we visited Lake Wollumboola in the Shoalhaven with some visitors from the BirdLife Australia head office, one of whom was an expert on shorebirds (and who also had a telescope with him). He pointed out a couple of birds that Karen and I had never seen before - the White-winged Black Tern and the Broad-billed Sandpiper.
We are now getting close to our target of seeing 600 species of Australian birds (without having to resort to traveling to remote islands like Christmas, Macquarie and Heard Island, or doing all-day "pelagic" trips out to the edge of the continental shelf on boats that seem to be designed to make you sea-sick the minute you set foot on them). Unfortunately, the more new birds we see, the less new birds there are to be seen, and they are now almost always very rare and/or very remote.
Birdlife Shoalhaven
Last year Karen and I began the process of establishing a branch of BirdLife Australia in our local area, and this year we did a lot of work getting it up and running. Karen is now the Treasurer of BirdLife Shoalhaven and I am the Secretary, and we spent a lot of our time getting all the "nuts and bolts" work done - like setting up our constitution, getting bank accounts organised, designing the website, setting up Facebook and Twitter accounts, and publicizing the branch and its activities as much as possible in the hope that more people would join BirdLife Australia and add their voice to helping bird conservation both locally and nationally.
Other Stuff
In last year's Xmas Letter I mentioned my intention to get a smartphone and jump into the world of apps and stuff like that. Karen and I both embraced the technology this year, getting rid of our home phone and ADSL internet, and going fully mobile for all of our telephony and internet. Who would have thought? It has worked out to be a lot more convenient, and only costs us about half as much as we used to pay!
Karen also volunteers with Parkcare - working at Booderee National Park - for one morning every week or two, and I am still maintaining websites for some of my old clients, as well as the "freebies" for the Bushwalkers, Camera Club, BirdLife Shoalhaven and Interchange Shoalhaven (a volunteer respite care organisation). I am still trying to work out how I got roped into that last one!
Plans for 2015
More of the same - but with two major trips planned. The first is a kayaking trip to Tasmania with the Shoalhaven Bushwalkers in February, paddling the rivers, estuaries and lakes of the west coast plus a couple of paddles south of Hobart. The second is an overseas trip - to Namibia and South Africa - in May. A friend has organised a group of 8 who will hire 2 x 4WDs with tents on the roof and travel independently in Namibia for three weeks. Karen and I and one other guy will break our return journey and stop off in South Africa for a week as well. I hope that Karen and I are around this time next year to let you all know how it all went!
We wish everyone a merry Xmas and a great 2015 ...
Cheers,
Brett and Karen Davis
P.S. As usual, our previous Xmas letters can be viewed by clicking the following links - 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.