Whoop Ass !! Losing is not an Option.

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DAY 356


After washing up the pots, pans and other kitchen utensils from last night, I said to Caroline I would do her poached eggs on toast if she so fancied them, as she has been off eggs since her Mt Surprise, “Egg Surprise”. She said she would give it a go so I would prefer her to have a good egg experience instead of staying off them for ever.

We had soon rustled up poached eggs for the both of us and on buttered toast they were just excellent, Caroline said she enjoyed them so hopefully that is a good sign.

This morning is about something we have not done for ages, and we absolutely love it, Mini Golf!! Caroline had thrown down the gauntlet by saying that the winner can have an Ice Cream Sundae and that was enough for me, If I had known she was offering a small wager then I would have been up all night with my putter, cup and ball practicing as neither of us lose well.

We drive down to the mini golf place on Kings Road, pay our money and pick up our balls and putters. The score card is written out and being a gentleman, let Caroline have a practice put first, just to get her eye back in as it has been since Darwin that we both picked up our putters in anger, with the exception of the game that we played with the Wallaby Wanderers at Mount Surprise.

The day is starting to bake and we have made sure that there is plenty of shade around the course, we are not allowed to take our own drinks in, which is a shame as we like to carry some water around with us on the course as it is such a hot day.

We start the round, and I turn in a good first couple of shots in the first few holes, little did I know that it would just turn around into a bag of you know what.

Caroline is quite a consistent player and she is a tough cookie to play against, she also turned out some surprising shots especially after such a bad start to the game.

After the first 9 holes the score were Caroline 30 and me 31, I knew I was going to have to pick up my game as Caroline was getting her eye in.

On about the 16th Hole Caroline was in for 3 and I had a 15ft putt, I can’t honestly believe that I hit it and it rolled all the way in just tipping in to the cup nicely, I was amazed and so was my fellow competitor.

When we finished our round we checked the scores and the second nine we went around in was Caroline 28 and me 27 so again we drew, if you were with us in Darwin then you may remember that most of the games we played there we also drew.

We finished up and gave them their clubs back, the balls had already dropped into infinity on the 18th hole and we drove to the Golden Arches (MacDonalds for our prizes as we both drew) Caroline had her coffee and I had as promised an ice cream.

Heading out of town we drive through Kelso up to the Ross River Dam, the reservoir is huge and supplies all of Townsville with their water, its is just a vast waterscape.

We spent a few minutes talking photos and in the distance noticed that a helicopter was hovering over some power lines so we wanted to take a closer look, it was an Energy company who were pulling in new High Tension Power cables to the Pylons using a Helicopter. We were amazed by the skill of the pilot just carefully inching the chopper along pulling a very long cable from structure to structure it looked very dangerous.

We got back to camp and I did us both some lunch, trying again to “bond” the Oats to the chicken using Balsamic Glaze and again it was better but not perfect.

I had an afternoon snooze, which I felt I just needed and Caroline relaxed playing her DS and reading. When I came to it had got somewhat cooler so I asked the site if they minded if I used their hosepipe so I could clean the truck, they said that would be fine.

Soon the truck was looking better, it has a few battle scars but nothing to serious, nothing a good cut and polish won’t cure.

Before going out we had a swim again it was lovely, though cooler than the day before, we had about ½ an hour in the pool then we walked back and both got showered, and dressed ready to go out.

We had some problems with the blog, uploading pictures, and we posted yesterdays blog “Day 355 28th October 2009” My Boy Lollipop and messed around trying to upload some images, Caroline thought it was possibly due to some Windows updates that we have downloaded, but we persevered and seemed to get a positive result.

Just before we went out I looked at the stats and for this month the blog had been read 5433 Times, we commented that it may make 5500 by end of play today. This has been an astonishing month for the blog, as it seems to have sky rocketed, last month, which was the biggest “month” we have had to date reached the total hits of 3401.

Considering we work our rough guide on 100 hits a day that would be just about right, or a little bit better than that which we were pleased by, readers have constantly seemed to increase which has always motivated us.

But the month of October has just puzzled us, it has seemed to just explode with readers, when we were back at Julies in Bayview, Cairns, I posted on the blog the request for readers to guess where the blog would end up at the end of our first year, I had estimated that the hits would have been 31184 and the words were just under ½ million, as it stands as I type this the word count had exceeded 500,000 by 13,000 and the total site hits are at 34,500 so my estimate was way off.

This evening we were due out and had been invited to Ian and Heathers house in Kirwan, Caroline had worked with Heather for Norwich Union in the UK and Ian works for BAE systems on Military Helicopters.

Using our sketchy tourist map, we arrived at their house, and it was great to meet Heather, Ian, George 5 and Emily 8, the children were busily watch Matilda on TV. I had heard a lot about Heather and Ian who had applied for Australia about the same time as we did, this very evening a year ago they were in the air on their way to their new life in Australia, so we all felt it was a poignant evening.

Heather had made a great lasagne with garlic bread and sald, we all seemed to have so much to say to each other it was excellent, Heather and Ian seemed very interested in our travels and we were obviously interested in their new lives in Australia and how they were adapting.

It was ridiculous where the time went, one minute it was 9.25 then when I looked at my watch again it was twenty-five to two in the morning.

We asked Ian and Heather if we could take their picture for the blog, as our rule is if you are mentioned on the blog we have to have a picture of you albeit a few people have slipped through our net for one reason and another.

We finally left the house just before 2.00am in the morning, we had had a lovely evening, talking just about everything possible, plenty of wine had been drunk except for me, vile stuff and we thanked them and said our goodbyes.

We had arranged to meet Heather in the morning for a walk up Castle Hill at 9.30 provided we were up, she said that she would phone us to see if we were going to meet her at the strand where we would have some coffee then go walk.

Despite having a good few glasses of wine, Caroline dutifully guided me out of Kirwan and straight back to Walkabout Palms where we are camping, we both fell into bed exhausted.

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Photos

Heather & Ian Coleman
This shot was taken at about 1.35 in the morning, after a great meal at their house.

Townsville Mini Golf
The concentration for this put for Par 2

Townsville Mini Golf
And its in, no pressure

Townsville Mini Golf
Caroline eyeing a difficult shot

Townsville Mini Golf
Caroline contemplating the "Cat" Shot