Seventh Email

Greetings all.

I got smart this time and attached my phone to my laptop so this time I can type on my computer and still send it through my phone. Technology these days....

Well, we had a pretty uneventful night last night, cooked some sausages for dinner, the auzzie sausages and beef are pretty darn good actually. Was going to watch Gone in 60 seconds but the tennis was on and delayed due to rain, so about 10:00 PM I gave up and went to bed. Tennis is huge in Auz. Sleeping in is starting to become easier, up until this weekend I was awake about 5 usually. It gets real light, and I guess kinda half being on NZ time didn’t help. You get tired sooner here too, again could be the NZ time thing, but I reckon the heat does it too. Normally by about 8:30 I’m sleepy enough to go to bed, its well dark by 7 so no dramas there.

Decided to go to a place called Agnes Bay today, it’s about 1.5 hours southish of Gladstone. It’s a pretty good swimming beach. A few topless female sunbathers too so that was worthwhile.

There was a big sign saying beware of stingers, swim at your own risk, but everyone else seemed to be having a good time so we jumped in regardless. Was pretty warm in the water, more like having a bath than swimming, but still cooler than the air temp. You can’t walk on the high sand in bare feet, it just burns you like fire. We spent about an hour and a bit in the water just bobbing around. Heaps of surfers here, and surf clubs everywhere you go. They were doing a surf training while we were there, about 20 kids on surfboards.

One thing we did find here was a takeaway shop called “Hook in”, run by some Greeks, and they do the closest thing to fair dinkum Kiwi fush n chups that I’ve seen yet. That’s a bit of auzzie lingo for you. So was pretty impressed with that effort, although it probably won’t be able to be a regular thing, imagine driving to rakia or burnham for your dinner and you would be about right. Except replace everything that you can see on the way with gum trees.

My god, there are so many gum trees here. You can’t get away from them. Everywhere you go or look they are there. All the hills are covered in them. None of the lovely grass or tussock or pine covered hills we get in NZ, it’s all bloody gum trees here. Good if you were a gum-tree-loving Koala I suppose.

We saw our first real life wild dingo today too, on the way back. We called into a place called 1770, so named because it was where Captain Cook landed in, you guessed it, the year 1770. Another beach town, but not as nice swimming as Agnes. More boats etc here.

They do a boat trip/day trip to the great barrier reef, you pay about $165 and they take you over in a boat and give you snorkels and you spend 5 hours swimming with the turtles and the finding nemo fish. In a isolated safe lagoon, so no stingers or sharks. So once we get some money coming in I will be doing that trip me thinks. Unfortunatly they pay once a fortnight over here and it just so happened we started right on a pay week, so in effect we basically work 2.5 weeks before we see any money. However when the money does show it should be good.

Anyhow, drove back to Gladstone, went past turkey bay. We were going to have a look but it’s about 25km off the main Bruce Highway, so we shall endeavour to do that another day. That and Ryan appears to have a delayed hangover from the night out we had in Rocky on Friday... he was sweet as on sat but not too flash today.... that will teach him.

Only mistake I made was when I was putting on my sunscreen I forgot to do my shoulders cos I was wearing a Tshirt at the time, so the hour n a half swimming has left me with bright pink shoulders and flaming sore wearing any clothing that hangs on them, IE tshirts. Ah well, we live and we learn. Hopefully.

Righto I think that’s about it for now, I’ll touch base again if I remember anything interesting.

TTFN.