On the road again...

It would seem that being on the road has been a tireless pursuit for Mez and I over the last couple of years. To be fair, looking back through some of the blogs over the last couple of years, we've covered a fair few miles. So what's another thousand to add on eh? This week i've been on holiday (hallelujah!) a holiday which marked the end of a three month stint in Gladstone, and the beginning of hopefully a much brighter future for this Monastra family in Cairns. But there's a lot of road in between those two, and with it, a fair bit to see.

Mez and I elected to leave Gladstone after work on friday afternoon and drove about three hours north to a little town called Clairview to stay in their Caravan park the night. Wouldn't go back again, i'll say no more 'cos it doesn't warrant a mention. What does warrant a mention is the fact that a small bus and trailer pulled to left ahead of us to let the car immediately behind it (and immediately in front of us) get past safely, however in so doing, the trailer of the bus got caught in the gravel and pulled the whole bus off the road in a cloud of dust and debris - the driver was exceedingly fortunate that the thing didn't roll as it was a fairly steep bank for even a fairly stable car, let alone a much taller bus, but the thing kept to it's feet, so we carried on. Definate excitement for day one though. And needless to say I'm sure the driver won't be pulling to left in a great hurry to let impatient tail-gaters past in the future... We also managed to spot one of the infamous drop bears skirting off the side of the road somewhere between Rockhampton and Clairview. Great to see one in the wild just doing it's thing. Crossing the road that is. Which is i'm sure a normal thing for Koala's to do. Abbey was surprisingly quiet considering her position, wedged between all our stuff, with a jail-like set of bars (her cot) pressed exactly up to the front of her feet, a wall of stuff to her right and her mattress forming a canopy above her head. Mind you, that could have been due to her sleeping most of the way. It was dark after all. It could also have been that the stuff all around her muffled the sound. At any rate we didn't hear a lot. But the next day she showed us the full extent of her lung capacity. Needless to say I don't think she's picked up my gammy childhood asthma gene - there was plenty of hot air getting out of those lungs!

Next day we drove a couple of hours through to Mackay and stopped for a brief lunch in the botanical gardens - abbey enjoying her first ever kiddy subway and wolfing it down in no time at all. She definately got that gene from me - the gutsing food down gene!. Next stop was Airlie Beach - gateway to the Whitsunday islands which is where we honeymooned a little over three years ago - heaps of development has gone on there in the last three years - now there is loads more shops and loads more residential housing and apartments. Still a pretty cool laid back kinda place. we spent the afternoon re-aquainting ourselves with the place dipping Abbey's hands in the lagoon in true kiwi style (buuuuuunnnggggeeeeeeeeyyyyy!!!), before a somewhat disappointing Chinese dinner in a restaurant next door to our accomodation. Nottingham still holds out as our best chinese in the world!!

Sunday we spent out on Daydream island which was really nice and relaxing - wandered about on the island - played in a kids playground with Abbey (complete with Cannibal cafe! Crazy - and they complain about violent games for kids - what is that teaching kids!!!) Took Abbey for a paddle in the Ocean in the am and a swim in the pool in the pm, She was in fine form, doing a rendition of the can-can on her way over a bridge across the pool, with a nice late lunch shortly after while she snoozed away the afternoon - a great day out! We might have gone to church on the isalnd (it being sunday) but despite having a beautiful chapel (see pic) it was clearly only used for weddings and was locked! D'oh! Church in Airlie beach we discovered, was just next door to our accomodation, and started about half an hour after we arrived back which was exceedingly opportune. Nice service too.

Monday we headed through to Townsville and the Rowes Bay holiday park which was easily the pick of our accomodation (and not the most expensive either!) Took Abbey to the brilliant wee (free!) water park on the waterfront, which came complete with loads of exciteable kids running in every direction. Bit of a disaster for the fully clothed dad taking Ab's through the fountains when some wee lad stepped on one of the jets and sent a shower of water all over me. I remember dad saying when I was learning to drive how it was not that I needed to be capable of keeping myself under control, but that I needed to be able to avoid the other crazies out there. Sound advice for sure, but the same should be taught to Father's entering water parks. Don't expect to come out dry. No harm done though - the kid looked at me with utter fear and clearly thought he was going to get my foulest side, he was relieved when i smiled at him, water dripping down my face and said 'no harm done - it's only water!' It was awesome to catch up with my great uncle Jeff and his wife Freda who are great company for a lazy monday afternoon. Tuesday we took a trip to Magnetic Island - so named because Leut. James Cook (before they made him a captain) reckoned that the island affected his compass and caused it to swing all over the show. Perhaps he'd had more than his fair share of the ship's rum though 'cos the island has no magnetic properties, other than the metaphorical ones of people being attracted to such a beautiful, world heritage listed place. We did a three hour tour with a hippy guy that lives on the island (one of the 2000 such island dwelling hippies - hmm that's probably not entirely fair - they're probably not all hippies, maybe just 1900 of them!). The tour was done in his stretch Jeep which was vaguely informative - learned a bit about the special vegetation on the island and a bit more about island politics and who is trying to build what and where. Apparrently the Townsville council has plans for 27,000 residents on Magnetic island, which whether you're a hippy or not, would be a damn shame and sure to spoil at least some of the natural beauty and with it the 'magnetism' of the island. (In my humble opinion - which is after all the only opinion that counts given that i'm writing this!!!) Had morning tea in one of the many beautiful bays on the island (many of which are accessible only by boat, bush bash or the red baron biplane that flies about the island and lands on the sea. Mental note - must go on that some day!) After morning tea we went for more cruising and fed a few of the local wallabies which Abbey thought was pretty cool this time round, we don't quite get the excitement that Dog's bring, but then dog's don't

back off when Abbey approaches them, where the wallabies scatter like marbles dropped from a bag. I'm not sure if that makes the dog's smarter or the wallabies, as after approaching Abbey tends to pull at whiskers and give overly affectionate pats on the nose, one could be forgiven for thinking they were more of slaps! will have to get the 'gentle' patting taught by the time junior Monastra makes an appearance! (as a side note - you have no idea how much time I spent trying to think of an example of things that scatter that would give a good mental image... my other favoured option was like theives from a burglar alarm... connotes the fear aspect well I think, but not necessarily the randomness of the directions...)

In fact I'd have to say that I rated Magnetic Island as probably the coolest place we went to on this holiday. Managed in the afternoon after the tour, to go for a walk to some WWII gun placements which afforded some more wild Koala sightings which was cool for us (all three) to see, as well as a kookaburra who refused to laugh on demand so i could video it - maybe next time!

Then it was onwards to Cairns, with a brief stopover along the way at the stunning Josephine falls which is probably less than an hours drive south of the city and will most definately be visited many more times in the not too distant future! We've spent the rest of the week staying with Mikaela and John, who have been super good to us in allowing us to invade their home when heavily pregnant and storing us and all our crap with us while we've been hunting for a place to call home. May have succeeded in finding that elusive place too, subject to a phone call on Wednesday. Great to have some time off to ponder life again and spend some refreshing time with the family. John and I went to go and get some Beer the other day for a BBQ and Abbey actually cried when she saw me leaving which was really sweet. Nice to know she misses me when i'm gone!