Off on our trip

We left home on the 18th and drove to Brisbane to catch up with the boys, TBS and Nana. We arrrived in time to watch B and S decorate the tree. Completely forgot to take photos during those two days, many apologies.

On Monday the 20th, we headed to Dalby, where we bought the car, as it was due for its 10000 service and we were passing nearby, so elected to have it done there instead of at home. It had been raining a lot out this way and the fields were flooded.

Because it is so flat it doesn't drain so quickly, the ground was already sodden as it has been so wet lately.

The road into Dalby was already over on our way in. Once we got to the car dealer, we discovered that there was a warning that Myall Creek, which cuts the town in half, was predicted to go over the bridge that afternoon, due to heavy rain in the upper catchment area. We were planning to spend the day in Dalby with a courtesy car and maybe stay the night. They had a lot of cancellations of car services so they finished our car quickly while we waited and were were refuelled and heading out of town by 10.30am. The creek rose and the bridge went under two hours later, as did the caravan park we were planning to stay in. That was the first of many floods for Dalby over the Christmas/New Year period.

We got as far as Narrabri that night. The Newell Highway had only just opened up after flooding. You can see how flat it is out here. The drive was good, the roads were a bit patchy after all the water and we sustained some windscreen damage, but there was not much traffic and the weather was good. Everywhere we went you could see where the water had been.

We stayed the night in a caravan park at Narrabri, next to the river which had only just gone down. We set off early the next day and stopped for lunch at a park in Dubbo at the information centre, again where floods had just receded. The centre was closed as they were hosing it out. The mosquitos were fierce and starving and we inadvertantly took one or two with us. This is what they did to KISA. As a tough old bird, they don't react with me any more.

We spent the next night in Yass. Much cooler down there, and the caravan park was very reasonable at only $64 for the cabin. We met Jdubya at Canberra the next morning at the DFO shops, and we set off after lunch to Narooma.We arrived late afternoon on the 22rd.

Next day was braving woolworths for the christmas supplies, then we relaxed for our long anticipated Christmas destress holiday.

Jdubya, scrooge extradordinaire, lashed out on the biggest tree he could find. We were so proud of him.


Bring it on! We are ready!

Record Breaking Weather

For everyone.
We have just had the wettest November ever recorded. And, just quietly, it pretty much rained all October and September as well. So. No dry season this year. The wet season hasn't started yet and they are predicting at least 6 cyclones this year off the coast.
The new garden copes pretty well with deluges of rain. The soil is sandy so it drains away reasonably quickly. This is the other corner, I don't think I have posted photos of the new plants we added in August yet. They are growing VERY well! No shock there with all the rain and warm weather.

This is the fountain and the herbs, lemon and chillis. This area will be expanded after the worst of the summer.

The side bit, a lot of water settles here, plus we get some run off from the neigbours concrete area and water tank overflow.

This is the view out the back door. These plants are growing like mad, even the maidenhair fern. In the seed starter, there are 9 baby desert roses, grown from seed.

On the other side of the world, they are having some extreme weather too, the heaviest November snow in 30 years or so. We have received a few photos from the small island, far, far away. They are keeping warm snuggled up to roaring fires. This makes KISA extremely jealous.

It is only a few posts ago that I had a picture of us sitting out on this deck in short sleeves.
It was -17 degrees in LLandrindod less than two weeks ago.

Phil's grave under all the snow. It is still a beautiful peaceful place. It will be very quiet there now as the snow mufles all the noise.

Don't you love the way the snowflakes look in a photo? It looks like fairyland.

LMS sent me some pictures from snowy Nottinghamshire. This is her car buried under the snow. No one went to work that day.

LMS went into the yard in her jim jams to....make a cup of tea????

Lord Mallory was not that impressed with the snow. He returned to the fireside where all self respecting English cats have spent the last fortnight.

Sunday Drive

To Bowen.
It has been raining for weeks. Like since we left for the UK. So in order to get out, we decided to drive to Bowen. It was cloudy again when we left but fined up as we drove north. Bowen is part of the dry tropics. We have driven past the turn heaps of times in the last year, but we have never driven in and I was keen for a look.
Just north of Proserpine, we got a text from KISA's sister in Wales, who was settling herself in front of the fire with a stiff drink after spending the afternoon shovelling snow off the drive and cleaning leaves out of her gutters. That it was -10 degrees outside. KISA just clenched his teeth and kept driving towards this. He misses snow and winter the most I think!
One we arrived in Bowen we went to the top of Flagstaff Hill. It was a bit hazy. This would be an awesome view on a clear day, looking over the island.

There is one hill in Bowen really. There are a couple of water tanks up the top where they have written BOWENWOOD. That is because they filmed the "Australia" movie here.

There is a cafe on Flagstaff Hill, so we had a coffee.

We went to look around. Bowen has a few beaches, but this is the best one. It is Horseshoe Bay, quite a small cove, but with a deep draught, and shade and rocky headlands. A caravan park sits on the shore.

Usual crowd taking in the sun.

KISA is still sporting his muttonchops from the Christmas party. He quite likes them! I do to, they are very 19th Century don't you think??

We have just had over 140ml of rain in the last 24 hours, the gooseponds are flooded and we have water in the garage. It is only the first day of summer today. Sigh.

Lumps Begone!

It has been a quiet week this week. On Monday I spent the afternoon in hospital having a couple of lipomas removed under a general aneasthetic. I have been quietly growing these for a couple of years and the big one was getting to be a real pain in the arm. (sorry)
I also was needing to be a size bigger in tops to accomadate the larger arm width, which is wide enough already, thank you very much.
It had also created pressure on a vein in my arm which was turning into a varicose vein and I didn't want to go there either.
So out they came. This is the big lump, it looks like a well developed bicep. This is the smaller one in my shoulder, just knobbly but will just keep growing.

A forty five minute nap later and they are gone!

The scars look nice there as this shot was taken Wednesday once the pressure bandage came off. Three days on and the bruises have come out, so they look more brutal now. The surgeon said the big one was 6cm across and the smaller one about 3cm.

No more bicep. I celebrated yesterday by buying a new top - in size 16!

Stiches out Tuesday, they are starting to itch!

Big Bold Christmas Do

Last night was the annual Christmas Party for KISA's work. Last years' was bloody magnificent and they were doing the same this year, only with a dress up theme, so we were really looking forwatd to it.
The dress up theme was gangsters, dolls and g-men, and absolutely everyone of the 400 who attended, bar just a handful, dressed to the theme. Which got everyone off to a good start as they were in a party mood by the time they got there! The evening was a huge success and we had a wonderful time.
We got out our best clobber, visited the hairdresser for a bit of beard trimming and finger waving (thanks Lianne!), strapped on the gun and off we went! They served drinks and posh nibblies in the foyer and after an hour or so threw open the doors to this magnificent sight. It really is an amazing venue when you consider where we live. World class.

They had a backdrop to the stage with the gangster pictures. Absolutely fabulous.

The gangsters started filing in. We had a seating plan, as we had requested who to sit with etc. With so many attending it was a necessity really.

Here is my gangster. Actually he was under cover, as he had a badge inside that coat.

There was a James Bond Tribute group, with dancers. Not sure how "I Dream of Jeannie" ended up in this but I guess most of the audience would be too young to notice. Guess they needed a belly dancing costume for this song!

Bit of gangster action happening here...those are 1000 dollar bills in that case!

Our table shot, missing the white haired doll, she must have run off with that gangster with the big bills..

After dinner and the speeches, etc there was dancing..lots of dancing. The band was called Bust A Groove, and came from Brisbane for the gig. They were great.

These dancing girls came from the floor! Was a really great night. Sore throbbing feet on me! KISA does love to dance!

There were buses home so no excuse to drive. We left my car there and went back the next day for it. Our bus left at 12.30am, seemed to be an early night but we were there for 6 hours! The time really flew. All over, hope they do it again next year!

How the Mighty are fallen....

At the end of August, we returned the Land Rover to the lease company, and bought ourselves a Toyota Landcruiser 76, sedan type car, henceforth to be known as The Beast. We had only had it a week or so, when we flew suddenly to the UK for Phil's funeral.

Since he got back, KISA has been adding little touches here and there to it, to make it into the vehicle we will be able to take anywhere this country throws at us. And we intend to do so. Hopefully next year. If work allows.

Anyway, on Friday the latest thing, a cruise control, was fitted. A necessary device that pays for itself within two avoided speeding tickets, and Mr Plod lurks everywhere with his trusty speed cameras.

Less than 24 hours after installation, we were driving out to Christmas Dinner at Seaforth, when the dials on the dash started doing wierd and wonderful things. First the airbag light came on. Then the wipers went kind of wonky, like they were drunk (it was raining). Then all the dials went off, even the speedo, so we had no idea what speed we were going, but that didn't matter as the car wasn't going very fast when KISA hit the pedal anyway. He turned off the lights and the aircon and the dials came back on again. We arrived at dad's and unpacked the car. Dad suggested we put it under the car port as we were staying over, and when KISA tried to start it again, it was just click, click.

We figured we would worry about it in the morning and went inside for our meal and a well needed drink. It was quite scary and memories of the recent cruise control issues Toyota had came to mind.

The next day The Beast jump started with Dad's car, and we headed home. About half way there, it all started happening again. The mighty Beast couldn't even climb a hill without slowing right down, and just before the outskirts of town, it just died and rolled slowly to a stop.

We rang our roadside assist and the place that installed the cruise control, because it was a logical assumption that something had gone horribly wrong during the installation.

The roadside assist couldn't start it and said we were entitled to a tow, so we opted to have it towed to Autobarn's workshop. The manager of the workshop had offered to come in and look at it (even though it was sunday and he was not at work). My sister came to pick me and the food we had in the car up to take me home to get my car. The Beast about to get hauled up on the tow truck. How undignified!!

It was in Autobarn for 3 hours and the guy said that he found a clutch wire had been disconnected and not reconnected and that the battery was now drained, though still ok, so we needed to take it home and charge the battery. Which we did. The next morning, it started and we drove it to the harbour just to see if everything really was ok. On the way back, the power started to go again. Though the dials were ok. We took it back to Autobarn and they ran some tests on it.

It turned out that the chip that ran the alternator had blown. So this TINY thing, brought down our mighty beast.

All credit to Autobarn. We couldn't prove that they caused the chip to go and they couldn't prove they didn't. They didn't charge us for a second of the 6 hours they took to find the fault and everything is working honky dory now. I was also impressed that the workshop guy gave up half his Sunday as well for us.

Christmas Dinner

I know it is 42 days early, but we had our Christmas get together with my family today. We are unavailable over Christmas, and my sister and her family are tied up most weekends till the day and D&M are away from next weekend till the day as well. So we all got together at Dad's. We cooked a course each and did a Secret Santa draw. Though santa had a senior moment and got it a little muddled, it all worked out in the end.

The table was laid and the best crystal glasses brought out. We had a few drinks, then attacked the presents.

We were very happy with what we got..I got a copy of this. KISA got some superb wine.

Some of us took a lot of trouble with our hair and we all wore our finest clothes.

The wine was good and the company great.

After a few drinks and nibblies, we had a seafood marina soup as a starter with some garlic bread, followed by lamb shank casserole and mashed sweet and regular potato, and a lovely tiramsu for desert with a fruit and cheese platter to finish. It was very yummy. In fact, some of us were quite moved by it..

By the end of the night, the wine was talking, but I don't think Dad really believed it was THAT big!

KISA and I slept over, and after a light breakfast decided to head off early, as we had been having some car issues and wanted to get them sorted. We had a wonderful time.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!