Troopy Travels

LOCKSTUCK!!!!!!!

Well, we went around applying for jobs and handing in resumes yesterday. Had one response within hours…but we wont comment on that until we know what we are going to do.

Heading back to the car to go home, I put the key in the door to unlock it and ’snap’ the key broke in half. With half the key sticking just on the edge of the lock (no problem about the broken key, we have 2 spares handy) I decided…instead of trying to pull it out and using another key…that I would push it in with the other half of the key and see if it opens the lock still. LOL what a stupid git!!!!

Of course, all I managed to do was push the other half of the key right into the lock and it still wouldnt open the door, hehe. We managed by just using a spare key and Anneliese opening the door from the inside. But we had to fix it. So this morning we called up the NRMA and they recommended a locksmith.

D and B Locksmiths in Canonvale took on the job. The guy had the half of the key out in seconds and because we got another two spare keys cut he didnt even charge us for doing it. On top of all that, the two cut keys cost us a mere $5 each and they were cut onto proper Toyota sized keys (the other spares we have are on cheap aluminium keys).

So we were pretty happy about that.

Oh and in case you were wondering, the reason the key snapped in half in the lock is because I have been using the key to pick stones out of the tyres and eventually its just bent slightly and got a tear in the key….the stupid things we do eh? hehe.

Anyway, we are going to hand out a few more resumes and then go and relax by the pool. Have fun everyone and speak to you all again soon.

Oh PS. We have updated the front page of our website. put a new picture there. Plus we have, with the help of Rodney Fiddaman (thanks so much mate) put a map of our journey…look under the map button on the main page. In fact Rod did it all, he is such a useful fellow.

Now, lastly…LEAVE COMMENTS!!! we want to hear from you guys, what you have been up to and stuff. To leave a comment just click to the right of the title of the post you want to comment on. You will see a little white “no comments” written there, click on that and it will take you to a place where you can leave a comment for us.

Bye

Airlie Beach and The Great Great Great Barrier Reef

We packed up our meagre belongings and headed out (much to the chagrin of Roman who really didnt want us to leave the lawn mowing up to him). It was a late start…I think we are getting used to the relaxed lifestyle as it was after 2pm that we actually left Mackay.

We got into Airlie Beach at around 4:30, Roman had recommended “the place with the green thing on it…I think its a frog” - It was a frog and the place is called Adventure Whitsunday Caravan Park. We took a drive around the park and was pretty impressed with the facilities and camp sites..so we decided they had earned our custom for a couple of days. Which has now stretched out to a week, because we cant be bothered packing up the tent.

When paying for a single night, we found out that its part of a BIG4 caravan park chain around Australia and by joining this chain for a mere $40 we get 10% discount everytime we go to a BIG4 park. Sounds pretty fair to me, so we did that and got a whole $2.70 off our camping fees…YAY (thats sucking it to big buisness eh?).

We were told that a movie was playing at 6:30 (they have a big screen at the park, like a deckchair cinema) so we quickly put up the tent then raced into town to get some dinner (Yiros). We got back in time to go see the movie. A couple that were setting up thier tent a few tent sites down from us when we first pulled up, had almost finished putting up thier tent by the time we went to the movie (yay quick setup oztent) - they did comment that they wanted to buy our tent, but we told them thier honda civic wouldnt carry it…too bad :)

The next day we slept in, washed clothes, walked down the street - you know, all that hard stuff. it was a pretty exhausting day and we thought we would need to sleep in the next day to recover. But we decided instead that we really should visit the Great Barrier Reef. We probably wont get another chance (unless we get work here, which is looking likely) so damn the money and lets do it….rar!

Up at sparrows fart (6:15am - oh my god) the next day to catch the bus. We were all ushered around pretty well by the people in the fancy uniforms and eventually made it onto the huge catamaran boat. I must say, the Cruise Whitsunday people are bloody good at thier jobs. They were all very happy and helpful, talkative, informative and very useful all day. They really did make the cruise and day out a pleasure.

While we were ingesting our sea sickness pills (the seas were REALLY rough. I reckon the swells must have got to at least a couple of feet at one point) ooohhhhhh…where’s the head? Anyway, they gave us a good talk about what to expect on the reef (huge seas) and gave us some great advice on how to part with more of our money.

I was really impressed with the guy that spoke about scuba diving and its one of those things Ive always wanted to do before I died…so even though I felt like death on those rough waves, we decided that we really should do a scuba dive…first time for everything eh?

Anneliese actually volunteered to go snorkelling with me….and didnt take much beating to convince her to come scuba diving either (its ok, the bruises will fade). Eventually (about 3 hours) later, we got to the pontoon and quickly departed the catamaran to start our days adventuring. First cab off the rank (and a way to find out just what we have in store) was a submarine ride. its more of a very deep bottom boat with windows under the water, but gave us a great view of the reef and associated marine life.

We then went snorkelling and Anneliese was so brave that it brought tears to my eyes (no, its saltwater, honest). She suited up and looked particularly stunning in a full body wetsuit. I thought I was aquaman, those suits are bloody wonderful and feel ohhhh so nice. Anneliese grabbed her flippers, snorkel and goggles and a floaty noodle and was ready to jump in before I had barely got into my suit. She was keen as mustard.

We snorkelled around checking out the underwater sites for quite some time. There was a huge Wrasse fish that was about 3/4 the size of me that hung around a lot. Anneliese got to pat him as he was very friendly. Anneliese gained confidence on the surface and I helped her out a bit, but I also spent a bit of time diving down and getting up close and personal with the reef. When you get down low the colours and fish are amazing to see.

They had lines that Anneliese could hang onto and that made life much easier for her. I think she actually began to enjoy it after a while..once she had digested that first gulp of seawater that is

Eventually we decided that the pruning of our skin was at critical point and perhaps we should hop out and grab some lunch for a while. We jumped out of the water, only to realise that our booking for scuba diving was ready and we had to get moving before they keelhauled us both.

This next picture is of Anneliese snorkelling, but imagine she has a big arsed tank on her back and a huge rubber dong in her mouth and you get the idea

The lady said that this was her best picture of the day…so we HAD to buy it from her.

Soooo, scuba diving. Neither of us had ever done this before. The guy that helped us was very very good and really paid a lot of attention to Anneliese…hmmmmm….hang on…..

Anyway. He took her step by step through the process and held her hand the whole way. meanwhile he told me “just put your head under the water and enjoy yourself” which I did. Anneliese and another lady were taken on a ‘personal’ journey through the reef with the instructor while I played with myself..hmmm. It was fun nonetheless as I had freedom to pretty much go where I wanted once the instructor realised I could handle it all easily enough. I felt GREAT. Scuba diving was everything I had thought it would be and I had such a wonderful time that I didnt want to get out of the water after it ended. I got up close and personal with the Wrasse fish and gave him a good patting. I saw some incredible fish and coral and generally had a ball under there, getting down to about 8 meters at one point.

When we got out of the water two of the instructors were surprised when I told them I had never done that before…they reckon Im a natural and for a mere $590 I could do a course with them….hmmm.

Poor Anneliese didnt enjoy it that much, she was cold and nervous and so was eager to get out when we had finished. But at the same time she has said she would like to go again one day and I think thats pretty bloody good…one step at a time. Maybe I can convince her to do the certification with me? Ill work on it….oh, she said yes! hehehehehehe…

Anyway. We spoke to many people on the boat on the way to the reef and back and we learned a lot about different companies to work for in the area and what expectations there are. We came away convinced that we could make a go of things here for a short while and perhaps get some work on one of the islands or one of the cruise ships. So today we renewed our caravan park stay for another 3 days and have come into town to begin looking for work.

Wish us luck, never know we may be able to scam some cheap holidays for you all soon. We shall report more soon.

Oh, also we took MANY MANY photos on the trip out and back, so take a look at the Airlie Beach slideshow as we didnt want to put too many on the blog. There are some very nice pictures there to look at (I really do love the new camera….really really do….a lot…..).

Ciao for now.

Mackay

Well we have now been in Mackay for over 1 week, even celebrated my birthday here. Ohh btw this blogg entry is being written by Anneliese. I have been comissioned to make this entry. hehe ..Now let me think what can i say about Mackay. Its darn wet and mozzie infested, not to metion ticks, sandflies and Tarantula spiders, or should they be called bird eating spiders, maybe even human eating spiders, who knows. This place is a haven for all the creepy crawlies. Poor stuart has been eaten alive by mozzies and sandflies, hence the need for me to be writing this blogg :-)  Saying all that it certainly has its up points. No doubt its a beatiful part of the world, very lush (due to incessant rain) and daily lawn mowing is a fa orite pastime of the locals. Have even participated in this fun activity myself. :-) Roman is such a slave driver, nah only kidding, we stupidly volunteered for the job.

We stayed with Roman and his family for 6 days, was a very enjoyable stay, great food and great company. Ohh and did i mention a great pool. Certainly a must have here in Makay. It has been great to see everyone again, even got to see Roman race his pusshie around the back streets of mackay. He got 3rd place in one of the races, was a nail bitting finish. YAY!! for Roman.

Last 5 days we have been staying with Phil and Tracey (my Ex and his partner). They live in an old queenslander, all timber house on stilts with veranders and are often very open and airy. They have a wonderful feel about them. Thank you to Phil and Tracey for allowing us to stay with them, was most enjoyable.

I have found Mackay to be quite expensive, rental is very high, hard to find rental property under $300, average house prices over $400K. Groceries are also quite expensive specially meat. They tell us it is due to a higher than average disposable income because of the mines.

This visit we havent really done much site seeing, we spent a fair bit of time doing that on our last visit in October 06. Just to give you a bit of an idea, the area is littered with sugar cane, the land is faily flat around the immediate country site but the areas futher out have wonderful hills which have a mystic all of their own. Lots of clear fresh running water and dence with tropical rainforrests. It is not unusual to see platypus in the local rivers. Certainly a tropical paradise.

We have been thinking of staying here for a while maybe even working here, but i got cold feet. I felt like we have stopped travelling already and getting back into the usual working routine, so we are now going to move further north to Airlie Beach. Mind you we may need to look for work earlier than expected as we made a rather expensive puchase. We bought ourself a digital SLR as we felt the camera we have been using is crap( Stuarts words) hehe … we also decided to trade in our self inflating matteress and purchased a 120mm thick foam mattress. This is proving to be more comfortable (less sweating as it breaths better) but unfortunately takes up more space. We are not sure how long we will be able to keep travelling this way, might end up with a camper trailer. Dont really want to go down this road, but to keep our sanity we may end up with one. So i guess that might mean working somewhere for a while to save some extra money.

I am finding it harder than i thought to have all this freedom and having full control of our life and designing it as we go. Its easy in someway to have a regimented life where you know what you will be doing most days. I guess its like all things, change is hard and this certainly is a bit change in our life. I know there is going to be a time of adjustment and it will get easier with time. We are both very new at all this and still finding our feet and working out what works and doesnt.

Anyway i think i have been rabbiting on enough for now. We are hoping to travel to Airlie Beach today.. LOL the word is hopefully, but then who knows :-)

Camerons Pocket

The Wintermoon Festival finished on Monday. We had to take Scott back to the airport monday afternoon and by the time we got back to the campsite most of the campers and revellers had packed up and gone home.

We watched the last few acts and then began cleaning up the camp area a little bit. The rain had started at around lunchtime and didnt look like letting up anytime soon, so we decided just to get things neat before the weather got worse.

We helped out with various jobs all week…in between bouts of rain. Things are done at a fairly relaxed pace at Camerons Pocket and noone is in too much of a rush. Pretty understandable considering the beautiful countryside (and wet weather). But we filled in the days with emptying rubbish bins, picking up chairs and tables and other cleaning up type stuff that needs to be done after a festival.

One night I was mentioning to Jenny that I make a nice stir fry. So she suggested I make dinner for everyone, of course I agreed immediately! About 5 minutes later I realised that Ive only ever made a stir fry for two people and wouldnt have a clue where to begin making one for 20. So I scuttled off to find the chef and beg him for some help and advice…he was good - his sagely advice to me was “just make heaps more of everything” - hmmmm ok, this could be fun.

But I did it and didnt do a bad job either…besides the fact that I used plum jam to sweeten the dish instead of honey, but that didnt taste too bad either. I even made a vegetarian dish (stir fry without meat in it, hehe).

We took a little drive around the area at one point, there are some nice spots and lovely little towns hidden around the place. We stopped so that I could try some sugar cane, apparently its meant to be nice and sweet to suck on, but I must have tried it too early as it tasted waxy and bitter. Anneliese got a nice laugh out of that.

The rain…wow…We left Camerons Pocket on the friday and all week it had been torrential rain. A small break now and again didnt really give anything time to dry out, so the ground was soggy everywhere. I dont believe I have ever seen so much rain in my life…where does it all go? Someone in Canberra throw me a hose and Ill send you plenty of water down.

BUT the wonderful, superlicious, fantastamismo OzTent stayed dry throughout the whole thing. Not one tiny leak, not one problem with that beautiful tent at all. It is such a wonderful invention and we love it.

Going into the draws on one day, I noticed a smudge in the corner of the door seal…wierd. When I bent down to take a closer look I noticed it was a little frog, about 5cm long and coloured the exact same colour as the car he was sitting on (strange in that the car was all dusty, so the white was a dusty white…so was the frog).

Anneliese got pee’d on while removing the frog to relocate him to a friendlier spot, apparently thats very good luck (getting pee’d on by a frog). As she was moving him I noticed the inside of his legs was coloured very bright yellow with black patches…curiouser and curiouser. She put the frog on the base of a tree and he immediately began to change. Very very slowly he started to change colour. We went away and came back about 5 to 10 minutes later and he had changed to this

Very clever huh? We thought so.

I also decided to eat an ants bum while we were there. Now Ive got you worried right? Well dont worry its actually an acceptable thing to do (well kinda sorta anyway). You see there are these special little yellow ants with big green bums. We had a whole heap of them decide they liked our tent…but they werent invasive, they just stayed on the outside of the tent and hung out there.

When I asked around about these ants I found out that they are pretty harmless. But are great tasting. Apparently the Aborigines ate them as a kind of treat. They would put thier hands into a nest of these (a strange wasp looking nest up in the trees) and scrunch them all up into thier hands, then put thier hands into water. This then made a drink that is apparently similar to lemonade. You can also just pick up an ant and bite its bum off to get a taste of it.

So of course, thats what I did. I picked one up (its not easy picking them up by the head…you try it, lol) and ate its bum! mmmmm yum! Its got a fizzy sort of sherbety taste. Very strange. I did think it would be nice to try the drink, but couldnt bring myself to kill a few hundred of the buggers.

Thursday night I got pretty sick. I had a fever of 39.5 and felt very sick and sorry for myself. Lucky Anneliese is a good nurse, she said all sorts of things that made me feel better. I spent friday morning just sitting by the fire (sitting by the fire in a tropical environment? I must be nuts) taking pills and going “ooohhhhhh…eeerrrrrrrrgghhhh” while everyone took pity on me as they did thier work.

Eventually the drugs started to kick in and Anneliese and I decided that we had had enough of roughing it and needed a dry place to stay for a few days while I recovered. Even though the tent was dry, it was the wandering around to showers, toilets, food, etc that was getting us wet. We could have set ourselves up better, but things were provided, so we didnt. Anyway, it was time to leave and pay a friendly visit to Anneliese’s brother, Roman, his wife May and kids Isaac and Jonas.

I arrived on thier doorstep, wet, dirty and shivering with fever and immediately jumped into a steaming hot bath…where I relaxed and slept for a good long time.

Ohh…while packing up the tent at Camerons Pocket. I had another near wildlife experience. This little bugger was hiding under the cooker

When I picked this one up, he decided he liked me and wouldnt let go when I tried to relocate him. He (called he because I can, I have no idea this frogs sex) crawled up my arm, played in my hair and generally had a great time…I even got pee’d on as well, Im so lucky!

Anyway, I relocated him (eventually) onto a very nice looking rock at the base of another tree

He seemed pretty happy there.

So, we are now in Mackay, relaxing in comfort with Roman, May and the kids and having a great time…more on that in the next entry.

Have fun everyone, take care and keep smiling. :)

Wintermoon Folk Festival

We had heard about this festival for a while now. Anneliese had been to it before a few years ago. Plus we have friends and family that go each year. So we decided we would go and take a look (my first time to it). We offered to volunteer work at the festival and that saved us the entry cost, plus for the work we did we got showered and fed as well…a pretty good deal in my book.

This festival is fantastic. Not too big, there were about 1000 campsites and another 1000 or so people walk in each day. They had plenty of stalls around selling anything from beads to massages. The cafe there did great business…and so they should since Anneliese and I were helping out there, hehe, I make great hamburgers and milkshakes.

There were many great acts during the festival and my good friend Scott came up for the festival also, so we spent a bit of time catching up with him and checking the place out. Such a beautiful place nestled amongst some very nice forest areas.

The site of the Wintermoon Festival is a place called Camerons Pocket. The land is owned by a lovely lady called Jenny, but there are a couple of people that live there also and help organise the festival and other goings on around the place. Its been built up nicely, but still keeps a very rustic feel about it.

The festival is well worth checking out. Its not as big as some festivals, which is a good thing in my book, but its certainly big enough to pull in some very good performers.

The two main stages - there were 4 stages in all, two at the front and two in other locations.

Our Campsite

Another stage

A look over a small part of the campgrounds. We really liked the countryside

We took Scott for a drive when he was due to head home and took a look at a few nice beaches. These two pictures were taken at Cape Hillsborough, which is not far out from Mackay.

And another view of the same beach

Deepwater National Park

Paradise!

Well, I dont know if I can describe this place any better than that. We didnt get there until quite late, we had a big but lazy day of driving and stopped to set up camp at around 8pm.

Coming from the Gold Coast we travelled directly up the highway. We stopped for a Devonshire Tea at the information center at a place called Yandina. Lovely place, but they make the worst coffee in the world.

We are only travelling at about 90 - 100kms/hr. I try to keep it below 95km/h we have found that we get the best economy that way. Although Im pretty happy with the price of Diesel in Queensland. We managed to get fuel for as low as 1.14p/ltr at one point.

So travelling slowly along I decided to use that noisey thing that sits above my head all day (the UHF radio) and told some truckies that they could head past me. As we were heading into Bundaberg - just on dark - I called out on the radio looking for some good food and cheap fuel. As it was the advice took us to a roadhouse that made fairly decent burgers, had some fruit for us to stock up, plus we got fuel for the cheapest price yet (see above). Handy thing that radio, Ill have to play with it more.

Anyway, we spoke to the lady at the petrol station about Deepwater National Park and she said that it was nice, but gets very very busy there…in fact she compared it to a carpark. After a bit of deliberation, we decided that it was too late to stuff around and we will head there anyway.

So, about 30kms on dirt I reckon, we came into this dense, tropical, sandy place. In the dark of night it appeared very well organised and we did notice one or two folk camped around the area. But each campsite was separated from the others very well and it looked really nice…we wondered if the light of day will agree with our initial observations.

So we paid our $9 - paid for out of all the silver we had accumulated so far, hehehe - the envelope would barely fit into the money slot, but a bit of perserverance paid off. We quickly got the tent up, brushed our teeth and headed to bed (have I mentioned yet how much we LOVE our OzTent? it is such a magnificent tent).

oh and yes, we have been getting to bed much earlier lately (and sleeping later), but in this case we were very tired.

In the morning we woke and looked around. The other campers we far enough behind the scrub that we couldnt see them, nor hear them. The area around us looked very nice, a lovely tropical beach setting. We quickly packed up camp and then went for a wander along the beach. A short walk through the nice scrub took us onto a postcard view. Beautiful stretches of beach, with only one lonely fisherwoman in sight. Lovely blue water. It was beautiful. We wondered if we should spend a few weeks here…but the festival called us on.

Leaving Deepwater we went North over the dunes on a more of a 4wd track…not too bad but a bit sandy at times. I did actually put the beast into 4wd for this part of the journey and reckon I would have had to if I didnt. But we didnt find the need to let the tyres down at any stage.

That road took us to the town of Seventeen Seventy. Another beautiful township, just on the verge of a booming tourist industry. Land prices have risen quite high there recently and there is a large hotel planned…which the townsfolk hope will bring tourists and money…great for the townsfolk, but not so great in my mind, such is life eh?

We had a beautful coffee here, posted some letters and headed off to Mackay again.

Deepwater campsite looking East

Campsite looking West

Beautiful Beach

Beatiful Lady

Coffee at The Town of Seventeen Seventy

Dreamworld

After a relaxing weekend with mum and her sisters, the kids came and my sisters rocked up. Thats when the real fun began.

We went to Dreamworld on the monday and spent pretty much the whole day there. The park was still a little busy, but certainly not packed and the longest wait for a ride was on the Tower of Terror, which had us standing in line for about 15 minutes…not too bad (and that ride is bloody great!).

We did all the rides and had loads of fun, got extremely tired by the end of the day but had such a great time. Time to get home and rest ready for Movieworld the next day (and Karaoke that night).

Movie world ROCKED!! My only beef there is that they didnt have the Lethal Weapon ride going…bastards! But the new Superman ride made up for it…whoa, now that is an adrenalin pumping ride. The kids got a little upset as they couldnt ride it, but much taller and I wouldnt have been able to either, they have very tight height restrictions on those rides.

We all agreed that Movieworld was waaaay better than Dreamworld. So much more time is spent on getting the atmosphere just right, each ride not only has the ride, but has a great setting built up around it which really works well in getting people into the mood for the ride to come. The only trouble is, you really do need 2 days for Movieworld. You need one day for all the rides and to see a show or two (I highly recommend the stunt act and the shrek 4d movie, hehe) PLUS you need another day to do the tours and see the other shows that they have around the park.

Everyone had such a wonderful time, but unfortunately on wednesday we had to pack up and get going, we were hoping to make Mackay by Thursday, but that didnt happen (more on that soon).

Anneliese and my son (Liam) on the first ride of the day

Me and the kids waiting for the bus at the end of the day

The kids and a few superheroes (of course) at Movieworld

Wild west bandits and a wounded lady

What are they doing to that poor car? (three looney tunes?)

Coolangatta

After visiting Steve and Alison in Brisbane we headed straight for Coolangatta. My mum wanted to get the family together for a reunion and the plan was to spend 5 days in Coolangatta with the family and my kids. While we were there we also visited a couple of theme parks, but Ill comment on them seperately.

Coolangatta is nice, not as busy as Surfers Paradise, but has ample things to do and plenty of touristy things around to keep people amused. The beaches are very nice also and we had a nice time there.

We actually found out that one of the beaches had been extended. Apparently beach sand was trucked in from somewhere and dumped on the beach to create a bigger beach for people to enjoy. We were quite surprised at the extent that they had extended the beach…all in the name of tourism I suppose :)

The weather so far has been very nice, a small amount of rain, but nothing too drastic.

Thanks mum for organising that get together. We found it wonderful to catch up with everyone and had a great time while we were there.

Oh…I even managed to get up and sing karaoke a couple of times - not so good for those poor folk that had to listen to me sing though, hehe.

Pictures….

Here is a picture of the lookout at Coolangatta, the object to the left is an iron eagle and its looking out towards Surfers Paradise

This is one of the main beaches in Coolangatta