Long Island Ice what?

Another big night out in TSV. We are going crazy, staying out till all hours [9:10pm - Cripes!!]

We have our good friend Drew visiting so we went out for dinner. We ended up at a place called Cactus Jacks and when Drew ordered a Long Island Ice Tea I couldn't help myself. I have a new favourite drink....Nyron - remember this for when we visit ok?? :)

Stacks McBooth

One of my favourite events to watch in Brisbane is the South Bank Grand Prix / Criterium Championships - its great being able to cheer on Adrian and he did pretty well even after a crash! . Obviously we were not able to go this year :(

Things to do on a hot day #20

Go and check out display homes! They have the air con blasting and on the weekends the sales people don't want to work, they sit at their desk and don't move - its great!

Movember

Justin took part in Movember and was in a QLD Health team called Hairy-Carditis (ICTAI). They were a pretty slack team and didn't even register on the website, however they raised about $500 and scored a feature in the QLD Health News Letter. Justin had the lead role in the photo (and didn't we get a big head!).

On the last day we went to a Movember party in the City which was fun, they had lots of prizes for 'Slow Mo', 'Man of Movember' (J should have got this but they gave it to the event organiser - talk about rigged) and 'Mo Sister' (this went to the event organisers wife - ICTAI!!!!).

The start


Hairy-Carditis


Scrubs McMartin

I am so glad Movember is over!!

Saturday night in TSV

So Saturday night we decided to hit the town....umm what Town?

The Drag Races - the hip and happening thing to do in Townsville.

We decided it was probably not a good idea to take my car as it might not come home with my number plates. After a few wardrobe changes (we wanted to blend in and my pink shirt was too pink and Justin's shirt just wasn't right - note to everyone - NRL, Car or alcohol shirts are OK). I had read on the website that the spectator price was $10. When we get there we learn it was actually $25 at it was a street meet and they had over 90 racers.....woah, we are going to be in for a great night! We talked ourselves in for $15 each as we had no other money.

Justin enjoyed watching the motorbikes and well I just enjoyed the people watching.....a different breed they are hey?

Merge People!

I do not think I suffer from road rage, however TSV drivers do not know how to merge and its frustrating me like there is no tomorrow. When 2 lanes go into one, you leave room so people can get over....but they don't, they will wait till the very last minute and then if there is no room (if they don't take up my offer to get over then too bad, they miss out) they will stop...umm MERGE!!!

There is one particular entry onto the highway and for some reason every single driver will not enter onto the highway until both lanes a free? I don't get it!

We don't live in Townsville

I just wanted to clear something up, we don't really live in Townsville. We live in Thuringowa. Prior to moving to FNQ (far north Queensland) I always thought Thuringowa was about a three hour drive from Townsville. Not so. And it not part of Townsville either. We have different rates, local laws, history and identity to Townsvile, who would have thought? However we re known as the 'Twin Cities'. For some reason that annoys me!


This is our Council logo:

My new best friend!

Animals

I will never stop being amazed by the amount of animals around this place. I went for a walk on Saturday morning and this is what I stumble across. I have to admit, it made me a little nervous, I kept my cool and just walked faster...

Happy Birthday Georgie!

Cairns

I went to Cairns for work on Wednesday and stayed till Saturday. I was quite excited to be going away for work, all of the administration staff in my department [from Mackay to Torres Straight) were going to Carins for training and a development day. I went a few days earlier to spend time in the Carins office.

For BCC, this would be the equivilant of regional staff going to the City office - could you imagine Council flying admin staff in?

Wednesday morning I got to the airport on time for check in and when I got my boarding pass I was happy with my seat, 7D. If you remember back to my car trip you can probably guess I am not a lover of flying so I was glad to be at the front of the plane.

We board the plane. I can't talk about it!

We walk onto the tarmac, there is no big flight of stairs on the back of a truck, only 3 stairs that double as the door when closed - Are you kidding me? And 7D is not at the front, its the second last row!!!

Not sure if you can see the plane in the photo amongst the cars!!





This is where I stayed:



I didn't get much time to really explore, Saturday morning I went for a walk along the Esplanade, which would sort of be the equivilant to South Bank. This isn't a great photo but the grass was so green and lush!



With my new interest in signs I found some good ones...now keep in mind I am in the City!




The work do was good and DART now has a new meaning for me - Dengue Action Response Team.

Only in TSV?

A drive through subway - who would have thought.

Wedding

In case your wondering (and you know you are!!) we are not married yet!

Castle Hill

Saturday morning we walked up Castle Hill which is about 300m above sea level. There is a road to the top and then there is a few goat tracks which are a lot tougher. We walked up the road but I am sure Justin will have us doing all of the goat tracks pretty soon!

We started the walk at about 7am and it wasn't that hot but just being outside here is different. I was so tired (Justin would say cranky tho!) for the rest of the day but it was a good walk and the view was great. It put things into perspective about how spread out Townsville really is.

Our Local Park

The sand isn't so great but its still nice to have the beach so close! It was high tide so there was only about 3m of beach to walk on. When its low tide there is about 300m!

We don't even do NRL

Its very Cowboys (sorry lions) but I needed a new hat and its pretty hard to find non branded items up here when it comes to sports.

First Council Contact

UPDATE - Yes the water is safe. Apparently the dam where we get our water from is empty so we are now obtaining it from other supply which has a high level of iron - which results in the brown tinge - great for when washing whites!!

Is the water safe? I called the Council today but apparently the person with the technical answer and hopefully a solution to the brown tinge problem is away today and will call on Monday.

Our precious cargo arrived safely...

Home

Our container arrived first thing Monday morning. Fortunately every house in this area has side gates so the driver was able to drop the container by the side of the house. This made unpacking that much easier. The deal is they pack it and we unpack it. We were assured that the trolley would be with the container when it arrived so we would be able to unpack the heavy items. Said trolley was not present - I can't talk about it.








Dungurra Place, Bushland Beach.

We are about a 15 minute walk to the Beach so we get a good breeze. Notice the water running down the driveway? Thats our 'irrigation system'. I can't talk about it. We will be turning it off.

Things I have learnt so far:

My local butcher moved here from Bald Hills in April
The flies are big
Sunday trading just commenced this past Sunday (11am - 4pm, how cute)
The water is a bit umm - well, we're not sure if its safe to drink yet!
The intersections are really big
Green arrows stay on a lot longer
They REALLY REALLY like the Cowboys
No one else has Lions number plates

The drive

We left Brisbane just before 7am on Saturday morning and arrived at Mackay just on 5:30pm with 1 petrol stop and 2 food stops. We wanted out of Mackay pretty much straight away so we left early the next morning.

The drive from Brisbane to Townsville is so boring!! There is nothing to look at, aside from dead trees, road kill and road signs. We actually looked forward to the cane farms because it was nice to see something different and green! Justin did most of the driving so I had to put my co-pilot skills to use and come up with the conversation. Thats a lot of talking with not much material, which is why I mention road signs, did you know that there are different types of pictures of trains on road signs? Passanger trains and cane trains (some of the cane ones have different numbers of wheels also) and they sometimes face different directions. I also put it to Justin if he thought that maybe some artist has the train pictures as a career achievement. He thinks not and that its just clip art.

The other road signs I am contstantly looking out for are the winding roads and steep decents. I am not a good passanger when I see these, fortunately for Justin the short 10km strip where these signs appeared, I was driving, phew!




I took this photo for a reminder for Justin, he really dislikes Rocky as its the only Town where there is no bypass Road. He really needs to let it go.



What can be said about a big mango?



Thats a whole lot of Beast for one small truck! At least they seemed to be friends or they were just having a face off!



Yay - we made it!!

We stayed in a hotel on the Sunday night as our 'life' wasn't arriving till the next day. We decided to hit the hot spot, the only spot I suppose - THE STRAND! I saw my first celebrity - Wal from The Biggest Loser in his fireman uniform pushing the calendars.

Bye Bye Brisbane

Our life was packed into the container within 1.5 hours and off it went to the train station.....

It begins...