40 Days and Nights

The newspaper tells us that this has been going on for forty days and nights, but I don't know if that's true.

I can't remember how long it has been raining or what it was like before - all I know is that some time ago things changed: the sun disappeared. the air cooled. Hayden stopped going to work every day and I started. He's been writing letters and emailing, applying, working full time at finding a job. Meanwhile I am making coffees all day long, and in my dreams at night I'm still making coffees. Two nights ago Lily jumped up by my side of the bed and asked me for a medium mocha. That was plain ridiculous; she knows she can't have chocolate.

Wherever you are in Australia - the cool part drowning in puddles or the hot part dry and fireswept - I hope you're going OK. We are. We're plodding along through our new muddy puddles. We are going OK.

Luxury Weekend

Our long weekend away was lovely, and not just because we spent it with some of Hayden's oldest friends from undergrad days.   It was so good to finally meet some of the characters from those told and endlessly retold stories.  

In addition, we were upgraded from our modest holiday apartment to a massive modern mansion of a house.  It was really nice.  I have never been on one of those holidays where you book into a resort hotel and then never leave.  This was the closest I've ever got, and I have to say it was not too bad at all!  

It was an excellent opportunity for the guys to reconnect via beers and barbies and the girls to sit by the pool and compare notes on how we converted our scruffy engineer husbands into respectable nicely-dressed citizens of the world.  (I'm sorry.  It is absolutely true that we did that.  Also, compared to the other two wives I have not done very well at all.  I still let Hayden buy his own clothing, sunglasses and shoes.  Even worse, I sometimes let him go out to the supermarket wearing his post-exercise lycra circulation pants.  If the other wives had given me a report card, it would have said "more work needed".)

We ate a lot of good food and drank a lot of tasty beer and wine.  There were so many couches, daybeds and other relaxing spots around the house for an impromptu nap or a good read.  I wasn't feeling like I needed a holiday, but I certainly took one anyway.

Love Friday - Holidays!

We're off to Port Douglas for a long weekend, to help some of our New Zealand friends warm up and dry out after their long wet winter.

Why am I packing coffee beans in tupperware? Well, we're the ground support for this little trip. We'll be arriving with our tiny car packed to the gills with supplies and equipment the others couldn't afford in their baggage allowance - beach towels, board games, DVDs and beverages. Yes, all kinds of beverages.

We'll be back in the middle of next week - hopefully to a new internet connection which, you never know, might encourage me to post here more than once a week.

See ya!

Best Easter.

Under the guise of looking at more potential wedding venues, we travelled north: first inland to Ravenshoe then up to the Daintree coast at Mossman.

Ravenshoe’s regional claim to fame is that it is Queensland’s highest town, and though it isn’t very high above sea level (Australia is not tall - have you been to its highest point, Mt Kosiusko? Grannies with walkers make it to the peak, really) Ravenshoe is a charmingly cool and greenish spot. The main local attraction is the waterfalls, which come with the promise of spotting a platypus. Needless to say, we didn’t spot a platypus. Maybe next time.

The next day, we travelled straight north and arrived at the coast near the Daintree rainforest. This is where the really spectacular rainforesty-mountains-coming-right-down-to-the-sea scenery begins. One day we will take our little Toyota corolla as far north as she can go, up to Cape Tribulation, but this time we turned around at touristy Port Douglas. It was a bit of a shock to stumble into a resort town overrun by pasty Melbournians doing on holidays exactly what they do at home: walking up and down, talking on their mobile phones and eating. It’s been ages since I saw so many bored rich people mooching around one place, and so much blatant mobile phone rudeness: Mums on phones window-shopping for resortwear while their kids literally covered themselves with ice-cream; couples in a restaurant, one talking languidly on the phone to someone else while the other picked at her dinner. Et cetera.


We were a bit intimidated by the yuppies (and I haven't even said that word in over ten years - does this mean we are officially country bumpkins now?) we pitched our tent in the campground next to the backpackers. Later in the night we were both woken by pelting-down rain (ahhh ... wet tropics) and drunken backpackers returning to their tents at dawn.

Still, it was all for the best: at home yesterday we hung the tent out to dry and thereby noticed what a properly howling wind was blowing. Perfect for kite flying! My kite (a birthday present from Hayden last year) looked gorgeous darting out over the water and it only got dunked once or twice.


Perhaps you are still wondering how the wedding venue shopping went?

Well ... nothing to announce yet. Sorry.