Up Castle Hill

There is not much in the way of sightseeing for visitors to Townsville. That's probably not a very clever opening considering that there's a possibility that we'll have our wedding here and we want to get you all to come. But it's true anyway, and even the backpackers on extremely leisurely trips up the east coast of Australia only stay here for the fact that they are allowed to park their campervans at the beach overnight and make use of the free showers, bbq’s, taps and toilets.

However, one thing that we do make visitors do is go to the top of Castle Hill, the big baldish rock that protrudes from the centre of the town. If it's hot and we're feeling lazy we can drive up it, but when Marny was visiting back in November we walked up quite early one morning, and it was a really good walk. Since that day I have been telling myself I'd like to make more of a habit of it, and I finally managed to go again yesterday.

I'm sore today. I think it's going to be quite a while before I go back.

Febfever

Sweltering in the heat, disappointment on the job front, anxiety about Hayden’s upcoming Ironman … the elements of this February are for me exactly the same as last year’s, and actually pretty similar to many of my previous Februaries. In the absence of a day job, I have been watching Dr Phil and he has told me more than once: if you keep doing what you always did, you'll keep getting what you always got.

Actually, quite a lot of what Dr Phil says is pretty sensible. At least he doesn't advise people to live each day as if it was their last. I'm sick of getting told to do that (and I really enjoyed Stranger than Fiction, the story of a man who thought he was going to die then didn't). Here's my advice for any advice-givers out there: please find a new flip phrase with which to try to jolt us from our lazy procrastination.

I'm thinking that it is high time I stopped living as though I was going to die tomorrow. I need to be less in the moment. I need to start working on the assumption that, quite probably, I'm going to be around, day in day out, for some time to come. There's skill in withstanding the mundane, the slightly uncomfortable or inconvenient. I think I need to work on that.

Recommendation

This stuff from Perfect Potion, which combines citrussy, lavendery, eucalyptusy oils with other more secret and extravagent oils, is perfect for when there is so much tropical deluge outside that some of it, inevitably, comes inside and starts to create a mildewy stink.

At first I was miffed to see that we paid more for our bottle than what they're advertising on the website. But then I realised that if I had bought it online, it would probably be stuck on a truck on the Bruce Highway, waiting for the floodwaters to come down before it could get to us. It is getting a bit dire on that front actually: no milk or sunday papers got through this weekend.

Sopping

The recent wet weather has been big news in Townsville.











The road out to Hayden's work (ie the Bruce Highway) was in danger of flooding, so Hayden got sent home early today (and if it rains over 120ml tonight he gets to stay home tomorrow too. Yay, snow day!). We spent his afternoon off along with a whole lot of other people, watching the floodwaters pouring over Aplin's Wier:

































The floods are pretty much the only entertainment on in Townsville at the moment, the big shopping mall having been closed due to sewerage backwash flooding their toilets. Oh yeah, the local media were actually encouraging people to play in the floodwater until the sewerage treatment plant started overflowing.

* News about the Turf Club here.

* And this about Giru, a poor drowned town down the road from us, that usually only gets into the headlines when its residents are up on drug charges.

Skiting

I just got my ring back from the jewellers. Do you want to see?















It was strange being without it for a little while, while they took it in a notch or two. (these are Hayden's hairy modelling fingers by the way).

If you are wondering how our wedding plans are going, well lets just say that we have completed stage 1: we have cut out a whole lot of pictures of other peoples weddings that we liked the look of, and put them together in a box.

I can't wait to find out what stage 2 consists of.