Jeez, it has been a long time since I updated, and a lot has happened since then. It's one of those cruel ironies that when you are busy doing stuff that is makes for good blogging, you are too busy actually doing it to write about it.

Now however, I am comfortable in Brisbane airport waiting out a 3 hour stop over with a coffee and a muffin, so I suggest you get similarly comfortable because this will very likely be quite long.

Right then, on the entry below you can see some photos from our second ultrasound, showing Wigglebum in all her glory. You will notice that I say her, and that is because I am confident that Wigglebum is a girl. I have no scientific foundation for this confidence, I am just sure I am right, and you can sue me if I'm not. But I am right, so you'd better make sure your lawyers have some other work to do.

Keen readers will remember that I didn't want the ultrasound technician (or sonographer) to actually tell me Wigglebum's sex, but I was determined that I was going to work it out for myself. The first factor that confounded that plan was that the hospital wouldn't get me a tape of the ultrasound, due to fear of litigation. This ruled out the frame by frame analysis. The second problem was that Darren the friendly neighborhood ultrasound technician claimed he couldn't work it out either.

Which could of course mean one of two things, that a) he could work it out but was being polite for Karen's sake, or b) that Wigglebum was a bit modest and wasn't out to show us her bits.

Anyway, after watching the screen and analyzing the prints, the result is firmly inconclusive. However, against all my engineering training and instincts I have formed an opinion anyway, even though I know it is baseless. We have a child, and for now her name is Wigglebum.

Getting away from babies for the time being, we have made two trips to the Rancho in as many weekends. The first trip was to return Steve's fridge that had been on long term loan to us for use in the Aldinga house. The second was a drop in on the way home from our Easter camping trip with Lea, Jon and Lucy to Wilmington.

The camping trip contained an experience that could only be referred to as "blogging gold". Here is an account of that experience.

On Saturday, we decided it would be nice if we went for a bit of a look at Alligator Gorge. On arrival at the carpark, Jon and I had a cursory look at the trail signs, and they showed a 2.2km loop walk and a 9 km loop walk. Since we had a 10 month old girl and a 5 month pregnant women in our party, we decided that it would be prudent to only attempt the short walk.



Off we toddled, Lucy happily riding in Jon's backpack, on a mild day in the mid 20's with only a 600ml bottle of water each. This would be plenty, we were only off for a lazy sight seeing stroll after all. We got a little way into the walk and realized we left the map in the car, but who needs a map? There would be signs. Wouldn't there?



Anyway to cut a very bloody long story short, in our cockiness at being competent "outdoors" types, we ended up on the long loop rather than the short loop. We didn't of course realize this till it was far too late. I mean after all, we had 30 something years of scouting between us, we couldn't be wrong.



It turned out the first sign we did see was on that said "loop track - 30 mins", which was a bit of a relief after 2 hours of walking and almost no water left. It did seem a bit strange that the sign at the start said allow two hours, and we had done 2 and weren't finished. Usually, in South Australian national parks at least, allow 2 hours means "allow 45 minutes unless you have one leg". We did have a baby and Karen was pregnant, so it was probably right we told ourselves.

However after we walked the 30 minutes, we were presented with a sickening reality. We were tired, out of water and still another 4.2kms away from the car. Fortunately we met with a group of 11 others at the top of the hill, who helped us out with some water and some food for Karen.



All of us couldn't have been more embarrassed. He we were, a group of people who are well traveled, responsible outdoorsy scouting gear freak types, having to ask for extra water from casual tourists. We had turned into the sort of people we pride ourselves in not being, reckless and stupid rubbernecks.

As it turned out, the group of people we met was loveliest group you would want to meet, very helpful and far less judgmental than I would have been if I was them. Also the walk back was a lazy downhill stroll down a fire track and only took another hour, but it wouldn't have wanted to be much further let me tell you.

Needless to say, we ended up with a pretty big tab at the Wilmington hotel, after buying drinks for everyone. I am still ashamed of myself that I needed others to help us out, but all's well that ends well I guess.

On the way home from Wilmington, we again dropped in to the Rancho for a quick BBQ with Steve, Louise, our friends from Canberra Tara and Nick, and Humpy who is in Oz for a visit. OK, so Humpy didn't actually get there until we left, but we managed to catch him on Tuesday so it was all good.