T-1

Today is the last day before we head off to New Zealand for a week, so I’m going to cram this post full of pictures for you to look at, if you like, while I’m away.

We’re all packed and ready to go, which has been quite a process because one of the big things in such a long triathlon is that you have to make sure that you have all the right equipment, plus backups. You can’t just have one pair of goggles for swimming in the lake, cos what if they break? You should pack at least three (and I think Hayden is taking four). The same goes for running shoes and special socks, tubes for the bike, puncture kits, different kinds of jackets for different kinds of cold weather, and all divided up into different bags: one for the swim leg, one for the bike leg and one for the run, and a couple for the in-betweens. A race can be won or lost on these preparation details, apparently. It’s all very complicated.

Today is bright and fresh and clear, and it’s reminding me of the best kind of winter day. It's probably the kind of day that gave rise to the notion of spring cleaning, just because it goes so well with the smell of fresh laundry and the cheerful flapping of white sheets in the wind. This morning I drove Hayden out to work just to hang out with him an extra hour, and when I was driving back alone, I noticed how clear and sharp the hills looked, and how dramatic. It is really quite a nice drive, for a drive to a refinery. You follow the road to Ingham, north west, straight up between the coast and the ridge of hills called Harvey’s Range, which is the range that keeps the rain out of Townsville for most of the year. The sky this morning seemed high and blue and the hills looked scrubbed clean. It seemed propitious.

Everything in this year, so far, has been building towards this point. I wonder what it’s going to be like when we get past it?

Further Shame

While I have been sitting, bitching and whining in comfy warmth by the Coral Sea, this lady has been ploughing herself off a snow-blown mountain to get to work on time. V impressive.

This is the last time.

I didn’t want to mention it again. It’s so shameful, having a skin condition. Even after the first time I mentioned it, I felt ashamed and I wished that I had kept it a secret. But then I mentioned it again, yesterday. I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut about what ails me. But this is the last time for a while, I promise. And I should say that it actually looking much better these days. To a stranger’s naked eye, you can’t hardly see it at all.

But when it was at its worst, one thing that really drove me nuts was the way my laptop keyboard gets really hot after it's been on for a while. It drove me to itchy distraction, until Hayden very thoughtfully (and romantically, because it was Valentine’s Day) got me a brand new keyboard and found me a separate mouse to attach as well. From that moment, I thought that things would surely improve.

But they didn’t! I become more and more … miserable? Irritable? What is the name for that dull moroseness which is caused by mild but constant discomfort? I cursed Townsville and its latitude. I cursed the many hapless shop assistants around here (the custom here is that when a shop doesn't have the item that you're after, the shop assistant won't apologise and let you get on with your life, rather they will go into a long and detailed explaination of why they don't have it. It drives me nuts.) I cursed February, and unemployment, and then I got a job and cursed that, and when I lost the job I cursed as well. Last night, when I was trying to make Hayden a special surprise dinner of homemade dumplings and salad, I cursed the heat, the stove, the dumpling pastry, the hot oil and myself. It was not a very nice surprise for Hayden after all. And then he still had to make the salad himself.

But don't worry, I've found out what the source of the problem was: the mouse! It was too heavy for my poor tiny hand, and it was causing tension to flow up my arm to my shoulders and my neck and into my brain. So I got a new mouse today, and it has made all the difference.

I revoke all curses forthwith.

Bunnings I love you and I'm sorry we're apart

So my decks are cleared of paid employment and education – I had to drop out of my massage course because I got an icky rash on my fingers – and although I got myself all revved up for gardening, I can’t do that now either. If I plant new baby plants before we go to New Zealand next week, they will surely be dead by the time we get back. It’s already probable that I’ll be coming back to dead plants, so I can’t really justify a spend-up trip to Bunnings.

Nope, I’m just at home today, alone, alerting all my superannuation funds of my new address. Fun-o.

What are you up to?

Update on the Garden

I’m really pleased with how my balcony garden is coming along. I’ve got chives and mint and three aloe veras; I’ve got three baby lemon trees competing for domination in a pot; I’ve got a couple of ferns and a couple of just plants, but I have to say that though I love the ferns, the just-a-plant plants are my least favourite. I love the plants that have a use, and I’m already planning more and more trays to plant with useful, edible things. I want to try shallots, and baby carrots, and more different kinds of asian greens. I’m thinking about balcony compost – too smelly, do you think? - and while I’m typing this I’m realising how much happier I am entertaining myself with no money than working for someone else and wasting the beautiful days just to have some pocket money to spend.

No, the music festival job didn’t work out. But that’s fine, really, and there are no hard feelings at all. Basically, I did a two-day trial for them, and after that they told me that they were grateful for the work I did, but they couldn’t afford to keep me on in a paid position. It was such a relief. Obviously they were hoping that I would offer to work for free, but that offer is just not in me any more. Not for a classical music festival, anyway. I used to feel much more strongly that classical music concerts were a god-given right, and that it was the government’s duty to fund them. Now … it’s not that I think that classical music should be allowed to die out, and I don't think it will die out in Europe or Brittain, where it does actually represent the musical tradition for most of the people. But for Australia, whose culture is built on so many different traditions from so many different countries, it's not so relevant. Australia's population has grown mainly from immigrants who have come into the country poor and looking for a better kind of life (my own ancestors included, quite a few generations ago). Classical music was never the music of poor people, and these days I am much more in favour of the government funding other, more inclusive kinds of music.

I wonder what I do feel passionate enough about, to work at it for free? Maybe planting in a community garden, if Townsville had such a thing?

Update

“Easy and unexpected”. What an idiot. I can’t believe that I even wrote that.

And I can’t believe the blithe and thoughtlessly optimistic mood that I sat down and wrote it in.

Although I would like to, I’m not going to say any more at this stage.

I’m going to wait and see.


In the meantime, please enjoy the following visual hold-music, courtesy of my fledgling balcony garden:















My newly growing mint, both Vietnamese and Normal varieties.
















And my Experimental Tray, which contains two things that I always wondered how they grew, and so promptly planted the relevent leftover bits of them after I had finished with the eating of them: garlic and rockmelon.

Let's have a ball and a biscuit

I ate a pie for breakfast this morning, and I have regained my urge to tidy. I’m taking these two things (that aren’t necessarily linked in any other way) as evidence that I’m pulling out of my February funk.

I found myself in the tradies' part of town this morning, when I took our little car to have its airconditioning fixed (it recently gave out due to overuse). I first dropped Hayden at work, and when I arrived at the auto electrician's, I stepped out of the car into the most delicious smell of baking pastry … that’s right, I was in that strange land of light industry where numerous snack bars keep a good supply of pies (pronounced 'poys') on hand throughout the day, starting at breakfast time. Needless to say, I succumbed to the call of the poy. It was worth it.

Anyway, I’m glad I’m feeling better on the whole, cos I’ve gotta go to work tomorrow. That’s right, I seem to have found myself a job, though it was slightly strange how it came about, in a ‘be careful what you wish for’ kind of way. When we left Melbourne last November, I was thoroughly sick of recruitment agencies and their slackness, and boring temp jobs, and I was hoping that in Townsville I would be able to somehow find the perfect kind of low-key yet enjoyable job for, say, a maximum of two days a week, and I was also hoping to somehow just be given this perfect job, without too much rigmarole in the way of applications and interviews and rejections and suchlike. Marny (Hayden’s cousin) mentioned to me that the classical music festival they hold here every winter might need some help, and that I should apply for a job. So I got in touch with them, and they must be the last people in the world to be impressed by my ancient and disused Bachelor of Violin Playing, because I got the job! All very easy, and unexpected, and I’m trying not to dare to hope that everything to do with working there could be so easy and unexpected. I have so many things to do before tomorrow, including finishing the haircut that I started last week.

Wish me luck!

Slow like a train, sharp like a razor

When things are going wrong because it is too hot to think and the glass is slipping from my grasp because of the sweat on my hands, then I know that it’s time to go and see a movie. After two hours sitting still in the cool and the dark, I can rely on coming out feeling a whole lot better. I was half thinking of going to see Memoirs of a Geisha just to push the point, but I went to see Walk the Line about Johnny Cash instead.

I didn’t know much about Johnny Cash before I went to this film. One thing I knew was that my favourite house athletics coach in primary school, Mrs Kelso, had a Johnny Cash t-shirt that she always wore on sports days. One year, Mrs Kelso got sick and had to go to hospital and she missed sports day, and our whole house pledged to run our fastest and try our best and win that day, just for Mrs Kelso. While she was in hospital, I overheard two of the older girls paying out on her Johnny Cash shirt, I remember thinking that that Wasn’t Very Nice. Fast forward to my undergrad years in the mid 1990s; I was living in The Gap and my nutsest flatmate ever, Adrian, would make a point of requesting Ring of Fire whenever we went out dancing, which was every Tuesday night at Babble On, downstairs on Elizabeth Street. Can anyone remember the name of that club night? Was it Buggered? I think it was something to do with sodomy, anyway. Ah, Tuesday night dancing. Those were the days. Adrian used to love having the dance floor to himself while Ring of Fire was on.

So I didn’t know if Walk the Line was going to be just another musician bio-pic; especially because at the start it looked quite similar to a movie about Elvis that I’d seen on telly at midday recently: Southern guy with no money and his black hair in a pompadour, makes his way into the music business via a recording studio where anyone can make a record (kind of like blogging, no? anyone can have a turn). As I watched Johnny become successful and rich and move his family into a bigger house, then become addicted to alcohol and drugs, I was worried that what I had been enjoying up til that point was going to follow that familiar second act plotline: the star’s painful descent. And I know that this was Johnny Cash’s real life story, so the writers didn’t make up the plot themselves, but I was so glad that they decided to emphasise the religious context, by which I mean all the bits about singing hymns, and sinning, and actually believing in the god you mention in your songs, and spirituals and gospel. I loved the fact that he and his mother used to actually sing in the fields as they picked the cotton by hand. I also loved how bizarre his mother’s hair became after they got rich. I loved how he lost the battle with the tractor, but finally found a peaceful sort of life in that house near the lake surrounded by trees. And I loved how June turned out to be his saviour, in the end.

I thought that Joaquin and Reese did a lovely job of it. I don’t know what a real Johnny Cash fan would think, and I was struck at the end when the credits were rolling, and they were playing a real recording of theirs, by how different the sound was. But I felt so much better when I walked out of the cinema, that I sang Ring of Fire in the car, all the way home.

The Silver Coconuts

I find much public art to be spectacularly mediocre, but these ones have been growing on me. They're such a pleasing, friendly shape. And so perfectly relaxed.

When I eventually get my own beachside cocktail bar, it's going to be called The Silver Coconuts for sure.



Now, here are some photos of a mini-race Hayden did on Saturday:















He won, of course.

Well, he won the men's race anyway, and that's the main thing.


PS, the Coconuts scupture is by a French fellow called Thierry Auriac

Itching for March

Is anyone else having trouble with February? I’m finding February really tough. I don’t want to whinge, but … it’s all I’ve got. The whingeing is pouring out of me. I’m crotchety, irritable, clumsy, and itchy. Yes. Itchy. You want me to tell you about my rash, don’t you? I think it’s heat rash. It’s red and itchy, and it’s on the bases of my fingers. Initially I thought it was a burn from the hot steering wheel after the car had been left in the sun for an hour, but now I’m wondering if it’s not some gross fungus or bacteria. Thanks, the tropics.

I really meant it when I said that I was longing for the green hills of New Zealand. But we don’t get to see them until we have finished our February. February is filled with hard training for Hayden and hard hot slow unemployment for me. You’d think that because I’m unemployed it would be easier for me to get to the doctor to see about my rash, but none of the doctors around here are taking any new patients. That’s because there is a health crisis in Queensland. The Premier has offered to resign if he can’t fix it by the end of the year, but frankly, that’s not much use to me in February.

There’s a doctor in our street, but he’s a psychiatrist and his name is Dr Likely. I read that this morning and thought it was funny.

What we got

As preparations for Hayden’s Ironman go into overdrive, we are starting a new morning routine that begins at 5:00am. There are only three and a half weeks until we go to NZ, which means two weeks of hard training before he tapers off to a week of rest before the race. I have vowed to get him up at 5:15am on every morning the next two weeks, just so that he can fit one more run into the day.

It’s been pretty challenging for him, since we moved to Townsville. Though his swimming has become stronger than ever, it has been hard for him to find enough hours in each day that are cool enough to do all the riding and running required. Though I’m not up to being a fully-fledged training buddy, I thought that the least I could do was get up in the dark with him, and take the camera down to the sea for a few snaps of the sunrise. Tomorrow I will go for a proper pre-sunrise walk, and you never know, by the end of the two weeks I may well be jogging. We’ll see.

What we are longing for ...

We’re going to be in NZ before we know it. Cool, rainy, green, it’s going to be quite a contrast. One thing I’m really looking forward to is a feast of spinach and rocket – the green leafy vegetables do not thrive in Townsville. Eating limes has helped us stave of scurvy, but it can’t hold us forever …

Meringues

I was sooo bored this hot afternoon, until I put on the Edith Piaf’s greatest hits and whipped up three eggwhites (left over from Hayden’s mayonnaise-making experiment) into a batch of meringues … ooh-la-la, instant Français!

As babel fish taught me to say: J'aime leurs crêtes blanches brillantes!

Sport? I’m a No, really I am

I’m really not that interested in it. Not as a spectator anyway, despite the post I wrote before last, about how excited I was at the tennis finals. It’s not the sport itself that interests me; it’s the drama of it. These days, I have to take my drama where I find it. It’s kind of like the short part of 2002 that I spent working as a farmhand in the dusty and deserted centre of Sicily, where the only entertainment was the weekly football game on satellite TV. We would drive a tiny dented Fiat all the way into town to watch Milan AC play in their Champions League games, not even in a bar, but in a very local set-up, just two rooms filled with chairs and the telly on full volume and twenty to thirty full-blooded Sicilian men (I never saw another girl there) all standing and yelling at the screen whenever Milan AC tried for a goal. That was pretty good drama.

In Townsville it’s pretty much the same story (minus the Sicilian men). Most of the time it’s just a small dull city filled with working class families and their utes and their children. The only thing going on other than sport is Friday and Saturday night drinking, including an absolutely alarming number of very young women we see out on Hen’s nights. Presumably, straight after the Hen’s night comes marriage and children, and then less drinking because they have to get up early on those weekend mornings in order to take their children to play sport.

I’m not trying to make a point, really. I just wanted to give you a bit of background before I mention that I’m all excited about sport again. We’re going to see a basketball game on Friday night: Townsville Crocodiles Vs Cairns Taipans. Hayden won the tickets by narking on his colleagues about some safety issue at work. I’m so proud of him.

The sun's back, everyone look busy!

The rain has gone, and the sun has come back. It is time to get everything back in order.




















My balcony potplants are bursting with new growth, including this one (I know, I know, a fungus is not a plant):
















And finally, even, the Body Corporate sent around a couple of plumbers to have a look at where our house is leaking. It had stopped leaking by the time they came around, of course, so they had to hose the side of the house to try to make it leak again before they could have a look. After an hour they didn't have a clue about the leak, but they did fix our bathroom taps which apparently hadn’t been sealed to the correct standard. Thanks, boys.

N E 1 4 …?

Last night, Sunday night, we got all dressed up but in the end we had nowhere to go.

Saturday we spent in the usual fashion, lazing around the house reading the paper and, after Rage finished, watching a bit of the tennis. I ended up catching a fair bit of this year’s Australian Open, actually. I got a little bit interested last year, when we had actual tennis players staying in the hotel in our street (we never saw anyone famous, all we saw were were the chauffers going to pick them up. Lleyton Hewitt must have been close by though; soon after the tournament his picture appeared in our favourite nearby Mexican restaurant where they already had a burrito named after Aggassi on the menu). This year, being home by myself so much during the day, I fell into the habit of putting the tennis on in the background while I pottered around the house.

On Saturday, we got the local paper as well as the national one that I like to read in order to feel connected with the rest of Australia. The local paper ran a bit of a critique of the bars and clubs of Townsville, and it got me thinking that we really haven’t been giving them a fair chance. The article pointed out that, contrary to our initial impressions, not all of the pubs and bars around here are blokey, redneck pick-up joints. Many of them are. But there are a couple (yes, more than one) that are quite nice bars where a girl can take her boyfriend for a quiet drink. I thought it was high time we got to know some of these places and, as a low-key introduction, I invited Hayden to go and watch the men’s tennis final with me at The Brewery, a bar that reportedly had a massive telly screen and served some tasty Brazilian beers.

The women’s final (on Saturday afternoon) was pretty dramatic, I thought, and by Sunday afternoon I was getting pretty excited about our night on the town. We even got a bit dressed up: my hair was washed and dried, and Hayden put on whole pants, not just three quarters. But it was to no avail. The bar was closed. And so were many of the others. Townsville is not a town that is interested in tennis. Or in quiet Sunday evening drinking. But that’s OK. It was still pretty fun watching at home, drinking coronas and eating take-away pizza straight out of the box.

Calmer now, with Tea

The rain has paused for a moment and though I haven’t broken out the jeans and jumpers like many Townsvillans, I am celebrating the cooler temperature today by enjoying a cup of tea. Lavender tea. I can’t believe it. After searching high and low for it in Melbourne, it turns up in my local shop in North Ward. OK, so it’s not officially tea, it’s dried lavender flowers with which, apparently, Moroccans like to lace their tagines. But I don’t care because I’m drinking it like tea, and it looks just like the lavender tea I had once in the Moroccan crepe bar at the bottom of Collins Street. And it was sold to me just like it was a food or a spice, and so I couldn’t poison myself by drinking it, could I?

Anyway, it tastes delicious and the effect is amazing, just like a lavender bath from the inside.

Inside-out Palm Trees! A Hoot!

Yesterday, on Australia Day, it was funny. Hayden joined me for my morning walk along The Stand, even though it was raining and the wind was whipping the palm trees inside out. Just imagine any footage you have ever seen of when cyclonic conditions hit a holiday town: the streets all grey and empty, the sun umbrellas folded away and the palm trees getting battered to shreds by the wind. Poor palm trees. Originally, Townsville’s waterfront was populated by mangroves and mudflats, which withstood the extremes of the weather here in a much more dignified way. Oh, except for during that big cyclone of 1996 (or was it 97?), which ripped into all the mangroves and tore up the parkland there as well. After that, they town planners decided to rebuild the beachfront in a much more upmarket style. If you want to see the effect they were going for, you should have a look at SBS’s Remote Area Nurse, on Thursday nights. It’s true that the acting in that show is pretty flimsy at times, but the location is real and very beautiful. (And note, on that show, when they refer to the ‘big city down south’ they don’t mean Sydney or Melbourne, they mean Townsville – that’s a clue right there). The beachfront in Townsville is a not-very-good copy of what you will see on RAN. It serves its purpose though, and yesterday, despite the inclement weather, we saw many people walking and jogging along the Strand. We also saw one family stubbornly preparing for their Australia Day barbie: the husband was having a fine time drinking his beer and poking the sausages, but his wife was having a bit of trouble keeping the kids happy while trying to stop the paper plates from flying away.

While we walked home and got on with the business of having a lazy indoor Thursday holiday, the rain continued to fall. It was quite impressive. Through the windows I admired the new green shoots on many of the plants. The rain got heavier, but it was still funny, even as the pool started to overflow, look:
















And a new creek formed down our driveway:















And it was all very funny because we were all snug and dry and safe in the knowledge that this time we hadn’t left any windows open. Not like that other time.

It rained all through the night last night and I slept so well, and this morning it was so pleasant to wake up in 27º rather than 29º. But when I sat down at my desk this morning, my feet were the first to know that the water has started to come inside again. The rain is coming into our house up through the ground. It’s different when it’s not my fault. It’s infuriating because the real estate has offered no help at all. It’s not all that funny any more.

More about the weather, sorry

I am sorry that I’m going to talk about the weather again. But it has such an impact on me. Right now the glass is at 999 and falling, now 998, and that means that there is definitely a Storm Approaching. It is too hot and humid to think or talk, and even Castle Hill is looking gloomy:















I’m sorry now that I tried to change the blog’s header and I am very sorry about how it turned out. I don’t know how to fix it or get it back to normal. I think the internet hates me.

Despite my grumpy tone today, I did have a nice weekend. I planted some mint that I had sprouted from a packet of supermarket herbs, and I bought an aloe vera plant from the Sunday markets in the mall. Most of the rest of Sunday we spent in the pool, right up until it was time to take Nikki to the airport, and say goodbye.

Luscious Frangimapannis

I'm glad I'm not on the dole

... because then I would have to explain how I spent your tax dollars and all of Tuesday putting these little coloured beads onto strings, to make bracelets small enough for only fairies to wear.















Ah, but it was such fun!

The other night, our current houseguest Nikki took Hayden and me out to Townsville's African Restaurant (have I mentioned before about how Townsville seems to have just one of everything you could need? well, it has an African restaurant, just one). Though the food was very good, the service was a bit slow, and we noticed that there was only one waitress doing all of the running around. She explained to us that the other waiters were out that evening, performing African music for the Mayor of Townsville. Impressive, we thought.

While we were eating, the other waiters/musicians arrived back at the restaurant and set up their drums to show us what they had been playing for the Mayor. It was a brilliant performance, and one very cute Namibian drummer (who had taken a shine to Nikki) brought a set of bongos and a shaker to our table, so we were able to join in the performance. Later, when he came to clear away our glasses, he told us that every Thursday night they have a cultural (ie dancing) night at the restaurant. I'm looking forward to a bit more of those African rhythms tonight.

PS, the beads were three packets for $3.20 from Crazy Clarks, and each packet comes with three metre lengths of string - highly recommended!

This rain, it’s making me sad

We left a lounge room window open one night recently. It was the night of a big downpour, through which we both slept like babies. Water gushed. And gushed and gushed. A new lake formed in our lounge room. The floor there is tiled, which made the clean-up operation pretty straightforward (especially for me – Hayden had gotten up at 4am to go for a long run, and found the mini lake in the lounge room and cleared it mostly away even before I had woken up). But unfortunately not all of the water could be got at, and some of it has eked its way into the carpet in the next room. My study. Where I had all my important papers neatly arranged and filed. On the floor.

That was a couple of nights ago, and I have to say that I’m disappointed at the way the dampness hasn’t dissipated. And the smell hasn’t improved. I suppose this now calls for some kind of desperate cleaning and drying action. Ugh.

On a happier note, this is a picture of the rain on my potplants:












and this is a picture of a stone staircase to the sky, which has indeed turned blue again.

It's raining

Ever since I said that about how it's always fine and 33 here, I’ve been wrong. Just look:

















It’s raining right now. The dry riverbeds are filling up. Water is going over the roads. I don’t think it is going to stop. Instead of going for a walk this morning, I just sat out on the balcony with my cup of coffee and listened to it. It’s lovely, gentle, continuous rain in big docile drops – not at all like Melbourne’s nasty fine needles.

Yesterday I ran all over town, shopping, going to the post office, the hairdresser, the library, the employment agency, but today my to-do list is blank. Which is nice.

Crystal Creek

I am exhausted today. Hayden is training hard for the Ironman race in March, and – I thought I was helping – I ran along with him for two hours on Saturday. Oh, I didn’t run as far as he did. I ran about half as far as he did, or even less. We were on adjoining treadmills at the gym.

On Sunday I woke up aching exactly everywhere. Hayden was fine. He was happy to have a fairly quiet day at home, but I was sore and bored, and I wanted to drive somewhere.

He suggested Crystal Creek.


































Yes, extremely beautiful. But a bit of a pity it was overcrowded. And typically, there was quite a macho vibe with all the blokes jumping off the high rocks and their chicks screaming when their cigarettes got splashed.

So we continued up the road to Jarouma Falls, which in the late afternoon were nearly deserted.

Disgracefulness

I am meant to be looking for work this week, but I just haven’t been able to … you know … start on it. Instead I was sorting though my old birthday cards and I found one from Grandma with $50 in it! Thanks again, Grandma!

Also, I just got a cheque in the mail from the Real Estate, reimbursing me for the money I spent on cutting keys. I never realised that when they said they would pay me back, they actually meant it. $30! Ha!

Feel so rich I don’t need to work, after all.

Us n Maggie

Hayden and I NYE’d, camping, on the lovely Magnetic Island. It was great. It was so relaxing. It was amazing how different to Townsville. Magnetic is only 8 km off the coast, but it felt like we were in another country altogether. There is a line you cross when you exit the greyish-greenish waters of Townsville and enter the pure North-Queensland-aqua waters of Magnetic. You pull into the harbour surrounded by massive boulders and native trees. You disembark from the boat quietly and step aboard a bus that takes you to the other side of the island. There is something about it that was like an injection of 50 yoga classes’ worth of calm straight into the base of my spine.

I realised how good it is for my general wellbeing to go camping every once in a while. I don’t know why that is; maybe I just love the discomfort and inconvenience of it.

I also realised that Townsville truly is the ugly navel of an extremely beautiful part of the world. Don’t get me wrong; Townsville is a pretty good place to live. It’s quiet and slow and cheap, and it’s got everything we need – apart from dear old friends and family, of course. But the best part about it is its proximity to all these amazing places to visit, and I’ve heard that there is a line, similar to the line between the grey and aqua waters, which divides the rocky dry ground of Townsville and, say, the lush verdure around Bowen and the coast near the Whitsundays.

Somewhat sneakily, the camera packed up just before we got to the best bits. But here are some snaps of us at Noodies’ restaurant (I know, I thought it was going to be a noodle bar too, but actually the name refers to Balding Bay, the nudist beach nearby. We met the couple who run the restaurant; such relaxed, tanned people, just like a good many of the Maggie Island locals. It was very good to visit a tourist spot where the locals are more relaxed than the visitors).

Update on my hair

A while ago back in Melbourne I wanted to save all that time I was wasting on washing the conditioner out of my hair, so I bought a spray bottle of leave-in conditioner. I sprayed it on but it left my hair feeling like fine dry straw, but sticky. Yucky.

This morning, feeling lazy, I tried the spray on conditioner again and it worked! All I needed to do was spend two months swimming every day in either the sea or the chlorine pool, to make my hair so so distraught that fine dry straw was an improvement. Yay.

Chris Pics

Ahem.

It has been a little while, so might take some time for me to resume this habit of thinking out loud on the internet.

I have some mixed feelings about coming back to Townsville after such a lovely break in Brisbane. Especially yesterday’s sailing by the sea at Humpibong. The temperature is milder here than it has been in Brisbane and the sun today doesn’t seem as harsh as it did before I went away, but the streets are as empty and the pace is as slow. I wandered down to the beach before to see if the ocean would make me feel better, but it was a very dirty brown close in to the shore.

Townsville is a still hot place and dull, and you must have a purpose while you are here. If you have a purpose, it can be a nice quiet place to get things done. But if not ...

After New Year’s Day I will begin to look for a part time job, but before then I will be just drifting, drifting still.

Merry Christmas!

Yesterday we installed our Christmas Fern (yes with lights), but sadly I only get to spend one more day with it because I'm setting sail for Brisbane for Christmas!

I hope you have a happy one, and I'll talk to you after.

love

Naomi

xo

Bad snaps

Here are a couple of snaps of our humble new home.















We’ve now removed the empty boxes from the front porch and we’ve only got a couple of things to do to make the place really feel like home. First of all, we have to put up our hammock. And second of all, we have to lie in our hammock.















Drue, if you’re watching, you can see that your glorious glass-topped table made it here in one piece. Hurrah.

Townsy by Candlelight

Last night we went to Carols by Candlelight and I am sorry to say that it was woeful, maybe the worst one I have ever been to. It just wasn't heartwarming at all.

No-one was singing along, and the kids were hardly even swaying their candles . The only people who were enjoying the music were the performers, and they were all enjoying themselves a little bit too much. It wasn't even compared by a local newsreader. Isn't that the first rule of Carols by Candlelight?

And I spent far too much time being worried about this little girl whose candle, nestled in the grease stains from her chips, kept tipping dangerously close to her synthetic fairy dress.















But the absolute low point was when I went to queue up for the loo and I missed the arrival of Santa.
















"Byyyeeeeeee Saaaaaanntaaaaa"

Smart Casual

Before we moved in I was so looking forward to all of our stuff arriving, I couldn’t wait to unpack all of my clothes and finally have something different to wear! But now it’s here I see that it won’t do at all. More jeans. Long tops. All my jumpers, scarves and woolly hats are useless, and I’m going to have to pack them away for the duration.

Last night we were on our way to the casino to take advantage of their $5 steak and chips dinner, and I said to Hayden “I’m going to get some really nice ¾ pants” and he said “Yeah, I’ve gotta get some dress boardies”.

Esmerelda

Ah sleep! It is amazing what a difference a good nights’ sleep will make to my outlook on the world. From the time that we left the company accommodation (where we were put up for free for our first month here) to the night before last, I have been sleeping poorly. It has been having an adverse effect.

To bore you with the details: the apartment provided by the company was small enough that if we left the aircon on in the lounge room, we would stay cool enough to sleep through the night and wake up fresh and early the next morning. When our month of free rent ran out, we went to stay in the Spanish Horseshoe Holiday Flats; a bunch of bungalows built in a U-shape (sorry, horseshoe shape) and joined by a covered walk way with arches (arches = Spanish; hence, Spanish Horseshoe). The Spanish Horseshoe Flats are not air-conditioned, and worse, because they are built around a courtyard none of the doors or windows face the breeze. I slept so badly the week that we stayed there that I was really quite ill (not to say bad-tempered) by the end of it. Through that whole week I was busting to move into our own place, our place with air-conditioning and a balcony that faces east to catch the morning and afternoon breezes.

However, on our first night in our new place I still couldn’t sleep! I was getting quite distressed by this time, especially as I was so tired after a hard day’s moving house. The nights here are getting quite warm: the temperature only gets down to around 26°, which I remember fondly as a warm spring day in Melbourne. My mother reckons that as soon as it’s 27°, it’s warm enough to go swimming. That night I ended up sleeping on a mattress on the lounge room floor, which is the coolest room in our place. I slept there for the next couple of nights, because the bedroom, down at the western end of the apartment, is quite stuffy and hot. And the air-conditioner in there is an ancient rumbly monster that conspires to keep me awake first with blasts of its freezing air and then by the noise of its rumbly rumbly fan.

But now I have tamed the rumbly monster! I bought a timer switch from Dick Smith and I got Hayden to work out how to use it, and now it’s set to go off and on at various times in the night. It’s timed so that it never gets too noisy or too freezing, and it wakes me with a gentle breeze in the morning when it comes on at around 5am. Much nicer than an alarm clock. I got up this morning feeling fresh and alive; I went for a delightful stroll along the beach and on my way home stopped in at the corner shop to get an iced coffee. Our corner shop is the best; it has every single drink you could ever want on your way home from a stroll, plus it is run by a wonderful lady who I secretly call Esmerelda. When I went up to the counter to pay for my iced coffee, I interrupted her impromptu dance lesson from the local salsa teacher. Smiling and without a hair of her coiffeur out of place, Esmerelda stopped dancing, rang up the price of the salsa teacher’s cigarettes and my iced coffee, and sent us both on our way. I love today already; I can’t wait to find out what else I’m going to do with it.

New Permanent Home

There. We've done it. We've moved house.

Well, there are still remnants of the 108 packing boxes littering our front porch. (I suppose you would call it a porch. It's like a balcony, but because we are on the ground floor it's ... a porch). But I'm going to unpack those boxes later.

It would have been easier, I think, if Hayden and I didn't have such diverse interests. So many boxes of books! so many pieces of sporting aparatus! So many other hobbies delved into, only to be forgotten soon after: sewing, painting, yoga, tennis, gardening, photography, squash, golf ... and I'm on the verge of taking up oil painting and I recognised a certain glint in Hayden's eye when we visited the velodrome the other night. Unfortunately the cycling club wouldn't let him ride on the velodrome with the bike he already owns, so he's going to need a new one. Excellent.

Anyway, I've taken a few snaps and I'll upload them soon.