Corin Forest - Snowman's land

Give Canberra the cold shoulder one day and head to the beautiful winter wonderland, Corin Forest, just 45 minutes out of the capital. Every winter, the snow castle's gates open to the public at Corin Forest, and you get to witness amazing snowmaking in action. If you go on the right day, you'll definitely get the Banff treatment, with lightly falling snow, dreamy white snow-covered mountains and fun questions from chill-dren like "where does snow go when it melts?" It's puddles. It goes into puddles, and dies forever.

Corin Forest possesses magical superpowers that allows it to create snow, absolutely created with aesthetics in mind specifically for an afternoon's entertainment for the chill-dren. Oh sorry, no, that's the plot of Frozen the movie. But it's really a very similar narrative.

The road out there is a comprehensively and reliably lovely dose of Australiana, and also very winding, and you'll know you're getting close to your destination when you are abruptly and irrevocably plunged into snowman's land, and you start to see the omnipresent snowmen/women/people perched precariously on car bonnets and roofs that are returning to Canberra as they swing around the mountainous bends. Thank the chill-dren for that.

Rules of engagement for having an extremely acceptable snow experience:

• Make your trip spontaneous. Watch the mountains and go on the day where you can actually see snow falling, because y’all are guaranteed some falling snow. Often it can melt quite quickly, or not settle at all, and then you'll just get mud. And maybe mad. At yourself. For not taking snow business more seriously.
  

• Plan ahead if you want to do any of the planned things, like booking ahead to get onto the SNOWPLAY or SKI AND RIDE if you don't want to disappoint your chill-dren. If you don't like your chill-dren, see previous dot point.
  

• What happens in the snow stays in the snow. Leave the snow at the snow. Don't put a snowman on your bonnet for the return trip to Canberra. Don't be that person. It's not some magical character from Frozen; it's just water. Unless you have a child in your car. And then you have snow choice in the matter.

• Don’t drive like a drunken psychopath. There can be black ice. Don't be the person who skids off the edge. Your bonnet snowman will be very cranky, lose his cool and may have a meltdown. And then sue you.
  

• Dress like a smart snowperson. Warm weather proof pants, layers, a warm jacket, gloves and weather proof shoes. You'll thank me.

• Order a coffee or hot chocolate and hot chips or pizza at the cafe. 

All of this might might melt your cold, cold heart. Here's some pics.

 

DAY 3 The Writing Inquisition - Man-made snowy snowcaps

I've long held the view that weather is a natural phenomenon created to give boring people something to talk about. Obviously I am excluding myself from that socio group.

My very own Canberra, home of Australia's cold hearted alpine fairies, is regularly hitting -10 celsius at night. The bowl of H2O I leave out for the magpies freezes by a few centimetres every night. Science says water freezes at zero. Science says Canberra is cold. I'm not feeling like this is the way I want to spend my life.

I whinge about the cold fairly regularly. I think it's an unofficial hobby now. And like any self-respecting hobby or thing you love to do, it doesn't pay crap.

One of my top 50 complaints about the weather here relates to the fact there is no snow to show for all the suffering endured. I walk to work through a glacial cloud, through air that has literally frozen in time, and there is no snow. The urban myth is that it's too cold to snow here. There might be some so-called science in that too, but I reserve my judgement until Kim Kardashian tweets about it.

But I have a solution to this.  Hard research shows that tourists flock like seagulls on a chippy to places that have snow-capped mountains. I get it. There are pretty. It's like living in the Disney movie Frozen, or Lord of the Rings, or when the cast of Home and Away go on a school trip to Thredbo.

So why don't we create our own snow-capped mountains? All of the alpine regions make their own snow when mother nature isn't playing ball. Little itsy bitsy Corin Forest have three snowmaking machines.

According to the interweb machine, there are two important components to snowmaking and Canberra has them in abundance; water and cold air. And we're talking below 0 type of cold air. And it gets better. The colder the air, the better the quality and higher the quantity of snow. Which means it'll hang around for months and pay for itself through the tourist dollars.

It's easy to get carried away when
you start with the snowmaking.

It's not that far fetched an idea. Governments regularly control and influence natural resources. Water management of dams, rivers and lakes, windmills, biodiversity conservation, agriculture, fisheries. The while point of managing natural resources is to manage the way in which we interact with natural landscapes. And I want my eyes to interact with some snowcaps on my walk to work. It's really just repurposing water. Sort of.

My local Government loves to commission public art that is dangerously ugly and endlessly disappointing. And I'm fairly sure there isn't a tourist in the universe who would come here to see our bright orange bogong moth behemoth in Tuggeranong. And what do we pay for these public art pieces?

$421,000 - Moth ascending the Capital
$400,000 - Owl
$125,000 - Dinomis Maximus (the orange rotating sculpture in Woden that is moved by the wind)

Since 2006, the Perisher ski resort in the New South Wales alpine region has spent about $22 million improving and expanding their snowmaking system.

It figures that recreating a natural phenomenon don't come cheap. Maybe I'll just have to do it myself. Act locally and all that. Online companies advertise their wares, boasting machines that produce a blizzard of snow just like the snowmakers at ski resorts. I think I've found a new winter hobby.

What is with the cheer squad?

I got the rugby league football finals fever. Night fever, night fever… don’t sue me Bee Gees.

Symptoms of the strain of finals fever that I have contracted include feeling hot and sweaty, shivering, and shamelessly jumping on the bandwagon and riding it all the way to the stadium, presumably stealing a real fan’s ticket along the way.

Well it pays to hold onto some of your dole payment and give it to Ticketek rather than to Dan Murphy, doesn't it. Yep, first stereotype - there will be more. The thing with stereotypes is it’s not allowed to be funny unless it is being acted out by someone who is a member of the group being stereotyped, so now I'm just a monster.

 
I went to the Canberra Raiders versus Penrith Panthers final at GIO Stadium last night. It was a great night’s entertainment, and the league fans were nowhere near as bad as union supporters (or just about anyone else) make them out to be. Maybe I just Steve Bradbury’d my way through it all. I don’t know.

I’m not technically a Raider’s enthusiast. I have heard of them, I’m from the same city as them and I recognise the worth of all the shades of green - accept not really at all the Raider’s preferred shade of green - so we have a lot in common right off the boot.

Every team in the NRL has a cheer squad. They are the Shiny Things. They are designed to distract you from all the fist fights, drive-by shootings, traffic violations and other misdemeanours in your seating location. The Shiny Things are most excellent at stereotyping themselves, which saves everyone else from doing it. 

I’m quite sure the Penrith Panther cheer squad would heartily agree that the respectability of the females on the squad would improve immeasurably if they didn’t wear black latex dominatrix outfits. I mean, REALLY? Is that a good choice??

Unexpectedly, I didn’t take issue with Canberra’s Shiny Things, presumably because they weren’t prancing around in front of children while radiating sadomasochism. Also they seemed to have modelled themselves on Sandy’s cheerleader outfit in Grease, and who would be opposed to the fresh-faced innuendo of that icon.

When the players ran out onto the field at the start of the game there were flames thrown into the air. Everyone loves flames being chucked around everywhere. It’s so captivating and dangerous. Except it’s not. It’s a really precarious situation. Especially when the Shiny Things could have gone up flames with their synthetic hair extensions flapping in the wind. I suppose it would have kept us supporters at a fairly moderate temperature for a while during a typically fickle spring/winter (sprinter) evening.

The Shiny Things could distract you from a plane nose diving into the middle of the field. They stand and stare at the crowd, for ages, waving their pom poms and exposing elaborate fake smiles with nary an awkward twitch. It’s classic sociopathy, and leads me to wonder whether somewhere inside them lurks the capacity to suck someone’s brains out with a straw. 

The P.A. system regularly bosses everyone to report anti-social behaviour to a special anti-social hotline. Um, I'm gonna go with the cheerleaders behaviour? 

It’s often kind of hard to tell the difference between anti-social behaviour and what is just normal to some people. A guy near me was screaming and caterwauling for his team. Most people in and around this sport seem to be anti-social, and also ideally equipped with a tattoo advertising either their toughness or their promiscuity. 

I'm not sure the Terms of Reference for anti-social behaviour in this context but it seems to be a pretty loose sliding scale.

So, anyway, 'my' team won. Go Raiders!

Sprinter from winter

I know that the weather was created by God to give boring people something to talk about, but I got more to say about that crazy little natural pheomenon. I didn’t get no break from wretched Canberra this winter, which I’m still dirty about.

All my work associates (I think ‘associates’ makes my line of work sound more interesting and meaningful) took the prime leave slots – which is anywhere from June to late July when Canberra is at its most frosty – so I had to hang around in the doom and gloom that is the national capital at that time of year.

So this week I’m booking some leave, which is of no interest to anyone but of enormous significance to me. For one month next June/July. Yes. I know I'll feel better when I have a get out of jail card. June 2014 is absolutely eons away, but I will be blimey happy that I gave myself an escape from the frostiness before all the other clowns at work book in.

I have a vague idea of where I want to go - back to the Mother Country, maybe - and an array of people to join in the fun - how hard is it to convince people to leave Canberra in winter? - but that is all inconsequential detail at this stage. What I do know is that if I have to spend another winter here I will need to be consigned to a mental health facility.

Need a Shrink, much?

Apart from being super cathartic, a good thing about having a blog is that you can chart your progress on a certain project.  This is my current project.  I know some people have real problems, but this is one of mine.

As the title of this post very wittily suggests, I have a psychological problem.  And I want to try and fix it.  I'm not happy with various elements of my life at the moment; it's all things I can change, I think, but stuff takes time.  One of the key shit things in my life is that I can't escape winter this year, because everyone else at work got their leave in before me. 

I imagine that sounds loopy and just a bit sooky to people who just don't prefer the cooler climes, but winter casts a really dark shadow over me that scares me a bit to be honest.  I start to dread the onset of winter from about February, a good two months before we get the cooler temperatures.  I don't think it's actually about winter at all, it's just the time my brain decides to be more depressed and anxious than it usually is. 

Having said that, I seem to connect the cold weather to how I think and feel.  I think perhaps somewhere, somehow my brain has managed to stuff up my synapses and reset everything to darkness; there is no light.  It's fucking horrible. 

I'm aware it's probably referred pain from something else going on in my little noggin, but I mostly like to live in denial of these things because it makes my life easier.  Probably time to change that, given that it comes between me and happiness.  Fortunately there are strategies you can learn to control this, and it's probably time I learnt them.

At this stage, the thought of even another two more winters in Canberra is something I can't mentally grasp.  Leaving is something that is always in the back of my mind, but how is running away a solution?  My brain is currently set to winter - gloomy, cloudy, depressing.  Someone needs to talk to a shrink.  I'm really going to try and manage the shit out of this in 2013.  Yes. 

Soarin' Over Canberra

This time last year I was gearing up to head over to 'sunny side up with extra cheese and a sprinkling of hurricane activity' Florida, so that's a bit depressing.  This time this year I'm gearing up to spend a long cold winter in icy Canberra, the most northern point of Antarctica. 

Soarin' is like crack.

Oh look, I'm writing about weather again.  Did you know that weather is a natural phenomenom created by God to give boring people something to talk about it?  Well this post is fun.  

One of the most entertaining parts of my trip to Orlando last year was the Soarin' Over California ride at DisneyWorld.  I have no idea why I am attracted to Disney, what with its relentlessly upbeat world and endless kilometres of sticky children.  It's a big mystery, for sure.

I went on Soarin' about 14 times, because 13 times is just not enough times.  Soarin' is a simulated attraction that raises you fairly high above the ground via a mechical lift system and takes you on a hang gliding tour around California.  It is spectacular.



It's also 4D, so you smell the orange blossoms of Napa Valley, the evergreens over the mountains, the redwoods, and the sea breeze at Malibu and Monterey, and you feel the jolting vibrations of the fireworks as you end up on Main Street, Disneyland at Christmas time.

And each time you land, your thongs are waiting for you in the exact place you left them, bizarrely enough, which I found endlessly hilarious for some inexplicable reason.  

Which all makes me think - surely we could look into a Canberra version of this thrilling ride.  For example, we could start at Tuggeranong, where an icy ill wind blows off the snowy mountains and gives you a mild case of severe frostbite, then soar on up the backstreets to Chisholm, the Malibu of my hometown, where simulated beer cans are thrown at your head and you whiff the faintest aroma of crown lager and sick. 

Then we head over to Mugga Lane, where you catch the gentle aroma of roadkill and garbage, and then soar over toward Lake Burley Griffin, and suffer mildly severish allergies as pollen dust is blown in your face before the pungent stench of blue-green algae fills your nostrils.  Just like Disney. 



More crack. I just don't need to go into
Disney's candy stores, said me never.



 

Why I need to move to Queensland.

I'm not even joking anymore. I want to move somewhere warm.  I need it.  Warm weather makes me happy. Cold weather does the opposite.  I don't need the beach; I just need the warmth.


Canberra in winter: Nope.

Queensland in winter: Yep.



Just Do It

In a bluey mauve mood today apparently.  Just go with it; I always do. 

I don't know about you kids, but I have had a  comprehensively exhaustive week.  I'm well aware that those two adjectives mean the same thing.  Geez, which part of comprehensively exhaustive week do you people not understand? *don't know how to insert winky smiley face on Blogger so this will do*

My 9-to-5 has fatigued the hell out of me this week through its sheer bloody-minded uninterestingness.  I'm just so gosh darn it bored with it all.  But there are more than likely changes in the wind, so I think I'll jump aboard the opportunity train while there are still positions available that don't involve cleaning the toilets.  Or jumping off moving trains. 

The Defence Department has been calling my name for years, so maybe I'll jump off the train onto a tank.  Just like Jack Bauer.  I would do it exactly like Jack Bauer.  And Defence have a real-life helicopter in their lobby, so there's that.

The only area of my current department that attracts my attention is mental health, but I'm not sure I want to work there.  Maybe a change of departments will be as good as a Hawaiian holiday with an ocean view with breakfast thrown in and a stones throw from a Starbucks. Although, with that attitude, I suspect I may need to lower my expectations somewhat.

Like most of us, my goal in life is to do something I really want to do in order to pay the bills.  It's a simple little friggin' goal, but it's pretty hard to achieve.  I don't know about you, but I'm not even in the same ballpark in terms of doing something-I-want-to-do-with-my-life.  In reality, I am in another ballpark playing a sport I don't really like.  Like croquet.  I hate croquet.  It's stupid.

I spend my days hitting wooden balls with a mallet through little arches until my eyes explode through their sockets.  And then I go back the next day, when all I really want to do is play archery.  Or something.  I very much doubt the public sector is my answer to the age old 'dream job' predicament, but I will persist until my dream job sweeps me off my feet.

What's that you say?  I have to go find my dream job?  Surely that's just your crazy talking!?  I'm sure a travel writing gig that involves endless loops around the sun-drenched Greek islands, bikinis and ouzo will fall into my lap. 

I imagine my new fave saying, 'Just Do It', is apt in this situation.  It's also Nike's primary motto.  Who knew?  But there are always disclaimers that come into play with Just Doing It, like fear of failure, anxiety, mortgage and bills, and that cosy, warm security blanket of a public sector position.

I am, however, Just Doing It in the fitness arena of my life.  I have been to the gym five consecutive days this week.  Weights, cardio, weights, cardio; it went a bit like that.  I am a feeling a little comprehensively exhausted (maybe Nike will like this slogan too, seeing as they stole my first one*).

I am usually very much in favour of al fresco cardio training.  The air is clear and cleansing, there are less people and there's more space to do your thing, but training at the gym ain't so bad; it's just something I have to get used to for the next five months, as Canberra sinks into its Antarctic winter.

* Just kidding, Nike. I wear a grey, purple and blue pair of your trainers. I heart them.  But they are falling apart. Maybe you need to hire better machinists? You know what they say - Just Do It.

Whether the Weather be Cold

I've been regularly monitoring the BOM (Australian Bureau of Meteorology) website for weather updates for the past half hour, because apparently I have nothing better to do on this frickin' freezing winter's night.  Evidently Canberra has not received the memo stating that it will be spring in one and a half hours.  But I suppose there is never really a good reason to monitor a weather website.  Oh well, you'll just have to find a way to deal with it all.

In the past half hour Canberra was -2.6, then -3.5, then -2.3, then -1.9, with no discernible abnormal wind gusts.  Does anyone on planet earth understand meteorology? Can anyone say meteorology 10 times really fast? It's probably to do with boring air pressure or isobars or whatever.  I'm going to create my own weather website that's less confusing, where the temperature doesn't go up and down every five damn seconds.

Debby does Orlando

I do believe that this post is just another in a long line of hurricane-related blitherings on my part, or a conga line of suck holes, as Australian politician Mark Latham so eloquently put it. I’m pretty sure Latham was referring to the temperament of major storm cells during hurricane season. I suppose I have been a little preoccupied with the almighty weather surges of late.

I guess it might have something to do with the fact that my travel agent told me months ago that "Orlando doesn't get hurricanes", and I recklessly believed her, and now Hurricane Debby is having her way with Florida, and heading towards Orlando, just weeks before I fly over there.  As long as the tempestuous little minx doesn't start doing Disney.

I was told that this time of the year is called "Hurricane Season". It turns out that "Hurricane Season" means a season of big arse hurricanes. I really wish they would be clearer about these things and not provide me with wishy-washy jargon like "Hurricane Season". I'm sure this climatic mumbo jumbo will catch a lot of other people out too. I guess they are up to D, so only another 822 hurricanes to go.

I am always excited about travelling abroad - 16 SLEEPS! - but equally as thrilled about skipping a month of the hostile, glacial season in Canberra.  I despise the cold, more and more every year.  "The weather's not that bad. It'll get better", someone said to me today.  Okay, great. Well right now it sucks. So unless you can make it better now, keep your irritating optimism to yourself.

I'm heading into a violent hurricane season just so I can avoid the arse-end of Canberra's big freeze, where I might get sucked into a spirally whirly thing made of precipitation and cows and suffer some catastrophic injury to my lumbar area when I’m tossed carelessly into a rural farmhouse and then develop some rare, untreatable type of staph infection, so don't tell me it's not that bad.

Unhappily Ever Colder and Colder

In a mere few weeks I will blow this popsicle stand and go somewhere considerably warmer, and far more humider.  Canberra is a bit popsiclised at the moment, thanks to that dreary meh season that it likes to melodramatically thrust upon its inhabitants.  A+, Canberra, for your winter skills this season.  You've been practicing over summer, haven't you?

I'm soon to travel to Florida's Disney World, where the men are mice, and the mice are human sized men.  Or something.  It's a wonderful world of make believe, where ridonkulous, impractical fairy tale fantasies are shoved into the minds and down the throats of innocent children, who are oblivious to the fact that they will never, ever be a fairy princess when they grow up.  Princess Fiona maybe.

Unless of course their mother stalks a prince throughout their offspring's teen years and then surreptitiously enrols them in the same university class so the young lass can work her magical social climbing powers of persuasion on the young royal. And then she will be given a fancy schmancy title and live happily ever after with her prince at Kensington Palace and wear Princess Diana's ring until the day she dies. The end.

So, back to me. I'm considering applying for climate asylum, putting in a claim to be sent to warmer climes because, you know,  I'm fucking cold and miserable here.  People from 'stan countries definitely don't know what it's like to freeze their grandes balles off.

Don't get all politically correct and rant about my rudeness and insensitivity in comparing my situation to that of a political refugee. Because only the nations that offer cradle to grave welfare are acceptable to them.

There are a bunch of other countries that they could stop at on the way here.  But, yes, Australia is better than them all.  Not different; better.  Just ask the refugees, because they all want to live in Australia.

I too have a lengthy list of nation states where I don't want to go, which also starts and finishes with every muslim country in the entire universe, due to the political heat and also the actual heat.  No-one in their right mind wants to live in Middle Earth, which is why they all flee to the west.  Middle Earth, Middle East, same thing.

So it seems to me that instead of intervening in Middle Earth affairs, like the west has be doing for ever, we should just raze the darn place, build a new Middle Earth, call it something a bit cooler, like the United States of America No. 2, democratise the shit out of it, build a couple of McDonalds, and then the crisis would be resolved. 

The side effects of this plan are a land of spoilt Kardashianesque morons, but at least no-one would blow your hair extensions off when you walked down the street. On a side note, why and how does Kim Kardashian have 15 million twits following her on social media? I cannot even comprehend how this has happened.  I guess she is quite excellent at giving off the allure of being relevant.  Kudos.

As Cold As Ice

I'm having serious issues with Canberra's weather at the moment.  Whenever I throw major spacattacks over the stupidity of our species, my sister always harps on about how seething with anger, rage or just general perturbness hurts only you, which is all very well, but I am not going to let ye old Southern Tablelands or whatever geographic area we fall into get away with this cold shite, cos it's not winter yet. 

This is a gross breach of the weather terms and conditions and must be addressed forthwith.  And if only I had a crowbar for every time someone said to me, "well, isn't this weather just lovely? It's so nice and frosty." Completely fucking loopy, these people are, and we should set them on fire, if for no other reason than to keep the rest of us nice and toasty. 

A big bonfire of stupid people.  Marshmellows are a possibility. Foreigner sung I'm as cold as ice, and I'm willing to sacrifice you to make me warm.  And I'm inclined to agree with them. I imagine this is why they invented reverse cycle airconditioning.

No, Foreigner didn't invent reverse cycle airconditioning; I think it was the Ice Queen from Narnia.  Five years ago global warmist Tim Flannery told us we'd be warm by now.  But he also said that the dams would never be filled again, so... 

Could it be that Flannery is just your typical leftwing environmentally friendly garden variety lunatic with no evidence base for his hysterical, histrionic weather predictions?  I for one am shocked by that.

Well, this post is a little awkward, and has possibly shown my serial killer tendencies that I try to hide from all but a few, concerned that I will be judged harshly and villified by society. 

WHAM! to The Cold

I've long been convinced the weather was invented to give boring people something to talk about.  If my theory is correct, and let's be frank, they usually are except when they're often not, that makes me quite the bore, because I spend a bit of time harping on about tropical depressions and cloud patterns and so forth.

I bought a book about clouds a few years ago after my mum bought the same book and wouldn't give me hers.  It's a little pocket-sized dynamo on cloud formations.  Don't judge me - you're probably not smart enough to understand it anyway.  Which is your own fault. I leaf through the book from time to time when a peculiar cloud catches my eye.

I write of clouds because they go hand in hand with the most horrid season of them all. Winter.  I completely despise the cold, mainly because I'm not a polar bear.  

The only thing more annoying than the cold is people who like the cold.  Every single time someone defends the indefensible - winter - I pout and pretend they are being thumped in the mouth with the Zok! or Kapow! sound effects a la the original Batman television series.     

Winter is also a challenge issued by nature to see how sexy you can look when covered in layers. Challenge accepted, winter. Fortunately I will miss a portion of the winter brouhaha in Canberra this year as I venture to la la land of Hollywood, DISNEYLAND!!!!, and Hawaii, which is completely perfect in every darn way.