Heavy Footsteps

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DAY 295


Another weekend stretches ahead of us, the weeks go by so quickly I cannot believe it is Saturday already.

It is a lovely cool morning, though the sun is starting to peep through the lush tropical surrounds. Andy brought me a cup of tea, but I was just lying in bed thinking so I thought I had better get up. What was I thinking about? England, friends, family etc.

After a light breakfast of toast and marmite again, such luxury, Andy is keen to pop out to the local Nissan Dealer this morning we need to pick up a couple of bits in the parts department, we lost a couple of fixings somewhere in the lower part of the engine compartment, they probably rattled themselves off while driving on corrugations and as Andy is keen to keep on top of the maintenance we need to replace them.

However we find the Nissan dealer with ease, they are on the main road heading into Cairns along with all of the other main dealers, but they tell us that parts don’t open on Saturdays, they are Monday to Friday only. The Salesman explained that it is too costly for them to keep parts open on a Saturday morning it has been that way for a year. Andy tells them that they should update their website. We will have to come back on Monday.

Back at base, we decide to do a bit of cleaning, Julie had asked if we wouldn’t mind cleaning the windows while she is away so I get the vacuum cleaner out and vacuum the mosquito screens, they get very dusty in this environment, I have a quick vacuum around the floor, even though we have only been there for a couple of days it is surprising how much blows in during the day not to mention the insects that come in and die.

Quite an uneventful but busy day doing chores, I did some more washing, after leaving another load to soak overnight, Andy started to clean inside the truck and water the garden, so as we have both been busy we treated ourselves to an afternoon on the veranda reading and drinking cups of tea.

As I lay in the hammock reading I could hear something crashing through dried leaves on the ground, I thought at firs that it was one of the neighbours busy in their garden, but the sound became closer and the noise of the crunching leaves heavy under foot, I sat up not sure what I was really expecting, I thought I would come face to face with an intruder, but in a way I did, I called to Andy to come over as something was coming and as he appeared by my side we saw it, a Goanna had appeared on the path after wading through the leaves, it was boldly striding toward the house, not sure of its path I ran to grab my camera in the hope to catch it, and fortunately it stopped for a drink in a nearby drain that had some water in it. It waited a short while, I think it knew we were there watching it and then it wandered off and crashed through the leaves again until the sound disappeared.

Julie had told us about the visitor, she said it comes in every now and again, she does not feed it and does not want to encourage it, besides as we already know human food can be detrimental to wildlife.

We skipped our walk this evening as we have had a busy day, well ok, we did lounge around for a bit, but we have not been lazy all day! Andy spoke to his Mum on Skype, I spoke to a friend of mine who I had not been able to speak to in a while and my Mum and Dad called us on Skype, by then it was time for dinner so as it is Saturday night we popped out to the local KFC.

When we came back we thought we would channel hop on the TV to see what was on, we find a Harry Potter film is on, “The Order of the Phoenix”, it has already started but we watched it anyway as I had not seen it before. While I watched I finished typing up the blog for yesterday.

We promise ourselves that we will walk tomorrow, although we have said we should do this walk at 6.00 in the morning, the early morning one will have to wait for another day, we will have another late night tonight as there is another film on at 10.00. So we watch “Behind Enemy Lines” with Gene Hackman and Owen Wilson, a good film nonetheless slightly cheesy in places, we enjoyed watching it and then finally sometime just after midnight it was finally bedtime!

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Photos

The Goanna in the Garden
This fella was just over a metre long, and came wandering through the graden