FIRST BOAT TRIP

Look what happened to us on our maiden voyage in our new boat. Crikey....

GOLD PLATED BANANAS AND HUMBACK WHALES

Well it has certainly been a while since I updated this blog, we have done a lot since being bogged in Mullumbimby. Our next stop from there was the Gold Coast, an area of the coast that contains Surfers Paradise, which is a mass of high rise apartments that casts shadows over the beach, maybe keeping the sun out of the surfer’s eyes, this being why it is their paradise…?? According to Bill Bryson, Surfers Paradise used to be deserted in the 1970’s when it had a different, common name, until some smart fella renamed it Surfers Paradise and the real estate started to sell like hot cakes, smart eh? Bananas are very expensive at the moment due to Cyclone Larry having destroyed a lot of the crops, the price of these bent yellow fruit has risen to silly heights. Talking about silly heights and cyclones, I heard from a couple of people that roof plumbers are earning stupid money up in Innisfail as Larry tore so many roofs off and they cannot get enough tradesmen up there, so we are thinking that we may head up there so I can work for a couple of weeks. We went out on Phil’s yacht (Phil owns the house in Bowraville that we stayed at) and saw some humpback whales from close range which was fabulous, although Helen and Rennie lost their breakfast due to the rolling of the boat, ( no the breakfast did not roll off the deck, we ate it before hand). The whales were playing about 100 metres from us, breaching and rolling around while blowing clouds of water from their blowhole on their way north from Antarctica. We had a very social time on the GC, catching up with lots of our friends who we saw on our way down south a few months ago. A lovely home made vege lasagna with Brian; Pizza with Geoff & Kristy & Samuel; A cuppa with Rick and Jane in Brisbane; and various meals and sleepovers with Nicky, Pete, Steph and Dean. Our day at Dreamworld went very well, Tal is an adrenalin junkie, he loves all the fast and scary rides. His favourites were the Wipeout, The Claw and the Tower of Terror. He did not join me on The Giant Drop as he had just had lunch, probably just as well. You can see The Giant Drop from miles away, a 120 metre high steel column about 8 metres in diameter which has a row of 8 seats on either side which work independantly, one lot faces the freeway, the other looks out over the park and bushland. When all seats are occupied and everyone strapped in securely the row of seats starts to move upwards slowly, you cant see the top due to a cover above you and you feel as though you are quite high enough now, thanks very much, but up she goes, your breath quickens, heart rate increases, thoughts like, “What the hell am I doing up here?”, start to infiltrate your mind. How much higher till we are there? Come on, I can see Tasmania from here……still ascending……higher and higher……and we finally stop….phew. So we are sitting there, perched at the top of the tower, waiting, waiting to drop. Mind racing, empty feeling in stomach….come on…. Lets get this over with. Nervous laughter from the row of victims beside you, some bravado from the tough guys. Suddenly your bum is in your throat as you plummet faster than Newton would think possible, cant remember if my eyes were open or clamped shut (like my bottom) as we race towards the ground and within the last 10 metres the brakes are applied and you come to a sudden stop, whew, a big smile on your dial. On the way up to Mooloolaba where we are now we bought a little flat bottomed tinny, purchased a motor for it yesterday, we are looking forward to taking it for a spin soon and maybe catching us a fish. The fish we have caught so far are currently costing us about $4500/ kilo if you equate money spent on gear to fish caught…..will try and improve that ratio. . Went to the Eumundi market last weekend where there is an amazing array of very inventive stuff, including some inspirational art of all sorts, lovely food and interesting wares. We are staying at a lovely caravan park at Forest Glen, on the edge of a rainforest, it rained lots for the first couple of days here but has been lovely weather since then. We are not too keen on the signs on the big gum trees all around the park that read: CAUTION: limbs may fall without warning….. righto, sleep well….. A few developments on the art front. I dropped off three pieces at a cool décor shop on the Gold Coast called Senja, they stock very different and unique wares and my work fits in well there, they reckon they can sell it to their clientele so will see how that goes. Have been here a week now and were going to head off tomorrow but are staying another week now as I have picked up a bit of work. I went to a sheet metal factory around the corner from here the other day to get something for the trailer and they had a piece of artwork made from metal on their wall, so I gave the owner my card. The fantastically named Kingsley St. Clair had a look at my website and has asked me to do a couple of pictures for him, a portrait of himself and a picture of the beach at Mooloolaba. Kingsley is a lovely guy who is originally from Victoria and loves to talk footy. Jarra has been getting up very early lately, 6-6.30am although the last couple of days he has slept in till about 7am. He has been banging himself about, trying to get us investigated by social welfare I reckon. He has no fear unfortunately, he has almost drowned twice in the last week by jumping into the pool when our backs are turned after we have finished our swim and taken his back float off. At the playground the other day he would climb up to the 5-foot high platform and just jump off; it is the equivalent of me jumping off a house roof. Crazy child. And by crikey we went to Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo a couple of days ago. She was a little beauty mate, although overpriced in my opinion. Many tourists from an assortment of countries were there, it was pretty packed. Overheard an English guy talking on his mobile describing it as, “Well smart “ The group of shops around the corner from here have organic everything. An organic butcher, green grocer etc. Helen had her hair cut at the organic hairdresser…..what the…??

BOGGER BLOGGER BUGGER

We dropped into see Ros at Mullumbimby on our way back up towards the Gold Coast where we are now. The caravan park we are staying at here has wireless broadband internet throughout the whole place so we are online in the comfort of our bus, cool eh? And we get 2 hours free each day!! We arrived at Mullum in the dark on Monday night and I attempted to do a U-turn and be ready to drive straight out in the morning, not realising how much rain they had had since we were here a month ago, ooops…..soft ground……stuck fast……didn’t need to put our wooden steps out at the front door as we had sunk down enough to not need them…… I drove the car up the road in the morning to get some help to get out of there and found Dave the organic farmer who came and gave us a pull with his tractor but unfortunately it was a bit on the small side and we did not move. He gave me a couple of names and numbers of bigger tractor owners who I called. Wayne and Peter brought their decent sized tractors over and managed to get us out with a bit of pulling to and fro, delayed our departure quite a bit but another lesson learned and more experienced gained. They were happy with a box of Crown Lager for their efforts. Some of the buses and fifth wheelers at this caravan park are quite amazing, with all their slide out sections and razamataz, makes our old girl seem like the old boiler, but we love her all the same, she has soul! It was nice to have people so willing to help us out of our situation and who were happy to drop what they were doing to assist us, we appreciate their efforts immensely.

GRRrrrrrrrrr.

Latest Pics

Tal at Auskick Rennie's class Andre's new friend Tal's class On the rocks

BIG SURF, PESTO PASTA AND ANOTHER HITCHER

There is something about hitch-hikers that we identify with, it might be their nomadic, gypsy like nature. I find their stories, backgrounds, outlooks and circumstances very interesting, often sad, sometimes uplifting. I am sorry but I find it hard to resist writing about them. We picked up Michael in the bus yesterday just outside Woolgoolga, he had 80 cents to his name (but a new pack of fags in his denim jacket pocket), his loud booming voice kept Jarra awake just as he was about to fall asleep. He is 43 years old, from NZ, a grandfather who hasn’t met his grand daughter yet and is heading north to Mackay to find some work. We dropped him off when we turned off the Pacific Highway 45 km north, on our way to Minnie Water, which turns out to be quite the opposite. The surf here is big and loud, rolling in off the ocean and pounding the shore, it comes right up to the campsite leaving very little beach for us to play on, what beach is left is scattered with smooth stones. We built a little fire last night and had our pasta with creamy pesto and mushroom sauce on the wooden table next to the beach, when the fire died down enough we had some toasted marshmallows which we do enjoy. It is school holidays here so there are a few people about. Not only am I the world’s second worst gambler, I am proving to be just as successful at fishing. I caught a tiny little fish today in the surf and when I got it in I discovered that I had hooked it through its side, how unlucky was it to be swimming past my hook and impaling itself on it….?? We left Yuraygir National Park this morning and headed north through the Scottish town of Maclean where all the bottoms of the street posts are painted in tartan colours and we hade a nice lunch. Arrived in Yamba at the Blue Dolphin Resort which is a massive place with two pools, two kids playgrounds, a centre for under 5 yr olds, an internet café and all sorts of entertainment for the kids, treasure hunts, boat/ canoe hire and movies etc.. As we were leaving Maclean a car in front was making a right hand turn, leaving a bit of space to pass on its left. “Come on”, I said, “You could drive a bus through there”………. And I did! The weather here is sub tropical, quite warm and sunny at this time of year. Rennie has been making some great things lately, she is very artistic and creative. She just goes to the trailer and gets what she needs from the Usefull Box and goes and cuts, sticks and creates wonderful crafty things, which we are decorating the bus with.

EGGSELENT LIFT

He had on a back pack and was carrying a large chainsaw along the dusty dirt road towards us; where he was heading with it in the middle of nowhere was a mystery, but what a good place to start if writing a bad horror movie script. Tal came with me on our daily afternoon drive to get Jarra asleep, we saw the bearded fellow and covered him in our dust, exchanging a nod of the head as we passed eachother. We reached the driveway down the road with the cow skull on the old timber gatepost and as Jarra’s eyelids were drooping and almost closed we turned around and headed back towards home. It wasn’t far from there that the chainsaw wielder used his spare hand to stick out his finger……decisions, decisions, Jarra not quite asleep yet …. but I don’t like to drive past hitchers, so we pulled over and offered him a lift, explaining that we were not going too far. He was happy to go any distance at all as he had stacked his ute the week before and had borrowed the chainsaw from 10 km up the road to cut some firewood and was on his way to return it. Jarra woke right up as the hairy fellow squeezed into the back seat next to him, chainsaw in his lap, and so still was not asleep when passing our driveway. “I will take you to where you need to go”, I explained after Jarra fell asleep. “Cool, have you got any chooks?” he replied. When I answered to the negative he offered me a dozen fresh eggs as a way of thanks, we needed eggs at the time and they tasted even better when I poached them this morning knowing how we acquired them. On the way back to the house I saw a brown snake crossing the road, it reared up and had a strike at the car as we went past. Tal missed it as his head was stuck in his book (as usual) and it had disappeared into the long grass by the time we reversed up to have a look. We moved back into the bus yesterday, had a spring clean (in winter) at the same time and left Bowraville this morning, is nice to be back on the road again. I left my mark at Phil’s place, converting his plain green milk bottle letterbox into a crazy sort of spiky animal. It is definitely a male…(mail)!! We went to the horse races on Sunday, the Bowraville Cup, it was a funny old day at the country racecourse, there was a good jazz band and some face painting for the kids, although the wrong horses kept on winning…… I am the world’s second worse gambler and had a shocker. So we made it to Coffs Harbour this afternoon, home of the not so big banana, a big fibreglass tourist attraction that we expected to be much bigger than what is actually there. I made a piece of artwork for Bluescope Steel in Coffs in exchange for the material they gave me to work with while at Bowraville, and dropped it in on the way. The manager I was dealing with was very happy with it. I created nine pieces while up on the hill, they are not framed yet but are wrapped up in bubble wrap and stored in the boot for a later time. We are staying at the showgrounds here, next to a footy oval where Tal and I had a kick when we arrived, we had to do a few things here this arvo and will head off tomorrow on our next adventure. Had our first pizza for a month this evening, must be some kind of record for our family!! My work on the dust proofing seems to have worked a treat.

VISITORS

We have had quite a few visitors in the past week. I was cleaning out the toilet the other day and decided to check out the cistern because there were lots of bits of grit in the pan. Well imagine my surprise when I found two large and one small green tree frogs living in there!! The largest one of the lot was clinging on deftly to the cistern lid and wasn’t nearly as surprised to see me as I was to see him. After showing Andre, and then the kids when they got home from school, we decided to leave the lid off to see what they would do, which in fact was nothing. How did they get in there? What do they eat? Isn’t it a little cramped and unpredictable when your home surroundings suddenly empty and fill with water without warning? Well they obviously liked it very much as they were still there days later, so we put the lid back on again and have left them to it. Our next visitors were on Saturday. When Tal and I returned from a morning out, we were greeted by the others and two very friendly dogs – a little staffy and a kelpie cross. They were so comfortable that I knew they had been here before, but I was surprised when it started to turn dark and they were still here. They tried in vain to sneak into the cottage, but finally got the message and left late in the evening. We have since found out that they live about two kms down the road and must have decided to have a day out. We enjoyed their company while they were here. Our third lot of visitors are of the rodent variety! We always knew that there were mice around, but hadn’t had much evidence of them, then the other night when Andre was up watching the football (soccer for all you Aussies out there!) he caught not one, but two in the trap in the cupboard. Then yesterday we had no less than four sightings of mice and this morning there was evidence that something a bit bigger had been snacking on an apple in the kitchen. The mice are very small and cute, but I still don’t like them nibbling on everything and when one ran across Rennie’s bed last night it took quite a lot of cajoling to get her to sleep there! Our other animal encounter which I forgot to mention in my earlier entry, was finding a large ( about 2m long) python warming in the sun on the dirt road. At first Penny and I thought it was a stick because its head was raised and so still, but we reversed the car and went back to have a better look and take some photos for Tal. Yet again he missed out on seeing a snake! A and I are working on the theory that because Tal wants to see a live snake in the wild so bad, he will never see any. I have my fingers crossed for him though.