Advertisement
Published: December 2nd 2008
Kookaburra
This little fella cannot fly as it was hit by a car, but still manages to look beautiful and is very well looked after.Another good nights sleep and early wake up, today was going to be an exciting day for us so waking early was not a problem. Andy was up at about 6.00 this morning; he had a better night sleep than last night when I woke him up to deal with our "intruder". I genuinely thought someone was trying to break in, hearing a thud on the window and then the frames started to rattle, then a scuffle outside so you could forgive me for thinking that.
Anyway I slept the night with a gel icepack on my leg to help reduce the heat emitting swelling from my sandfly bites. These pesky things give one of the nastiest bites! In fact you don’t particularly notice that you have been bitten you then notice a small red blob and could be forgiven for thinking that it is a simple mosquito bite; ha! You wait until the following day when it starts burning and the itch gets worse, the area infected starts to swell and you have a huge red mark on you that constantly itches. Ok, so I may as well have a sign on me saying ‘I am English - Bite
Kookaburra
Karen "Matron" another Kookaburra just for you. me!’
More commonly know as biting midges, these are small robust insects with piercing and sucking mouth parts that belong to a family of flies ‘Ceratopogonidae’. I could think of something else to call them but I am too polite.
I am not going to harp on about the weather as you will get fed up with us commenting on the heat and the pristine blue skies, so I will try only to tell you if it is raining. Just to say that it did not rain today again!
While having breakfast this morning, I noticed a couple of people on Skype so tried to call. Loraine had in fact answered but I could not see or hear her, so just waved and smiled into the web cam in the hope that at least she saw me. A few moments later a message came back saying that she could see me but not speak as she as yet has no means to do so on her pc, but assures us that will be remedied within 48 hours. So Loraine we look forward to catching up with you and Jon on Skype!
Leaving the apartment at 9.30
You can run but you cannot hide
Was this crocodile hiding from its adoring crowd or was it just taking some shade on this hot day? in order to get to Beerwah in good time for our interview at 11.00. We had a good drive down fairly heavy traffic but it kept moving, a concept which I am getting used to instead of the continual stop start on the way to work in the mornings particularly down the Avenue.
Arriving early we drove into Beerwah to get a coffee and read to while some time away. However I noticed a problem with Chelsea, the revs were too high and you could feel the pull on the accelerator while your foot was on the brake (for those of you who have skipped some days reading, Chelsea is our Nissan Patrol).
Instead, we drove onto the Zoo and waited there giving Chelsea time to cool down and see if it made a difference.
Signing in at Australia Zoo, it was exceptionally hot and a relief to be under cover, taking advantage of the huge rotating fans to cool us while we waited the fans also spray fine mists of water into the atmosphere every now and then. Moments later Nick Bell arrived to interview us both. We were interviewed outside but under cover in the
Kookaburra
Ok, just another one I could not resist. shade, the day was hot (sorry I said I wouldn't mention that) and over Nicks shoulder I could see Kookaburras. I was keen to take a photo but that would have to wait. We chatted to Nick for probably an hour or so as he explained the in's, out's, do’s and don’ts of being volunteers. Being a volunteer does not mean that you necessarily get the opportunity to work closely with the animals, they do have to think of safety (especially when it comes to crocodiles and snakes so I am really ok with that).
We could have chatted to Nick for hours I am sure, Nick himself spent some time in North Yorkshire doing some teaching, ah North Yorkhsire we love that area so much.
Nick had to leave, no doubt plenty of work to do, offering us to spend some time walking around the zoo whilst we were there, unfortunately we did not have a lot of time as we wanted to get Chelsea back to Gary Crick's to sort out this revving problem. However we did watch the Kookaburra's, saw a few crocodiles and the wombats before heading off. Seriously I could have stayed all
Wombat
Oh Dear it is just a little bit too much for some today! day again, but things needed doing.
No sooner had we driven away from Australia Zoo we had a telephone message from Nick confirming that they have accepted us as volunteers. This is great news and fits well with our plans. They require us for induction on Wednesday 10th December, they will then keep us for 5 days, after that providing we are suitable still and we want to there maybe some more work. Once our 5 day stint is up we will need to head south for our christmas house sit committment, but as we are coming back up to Caloundra for New Year we may be able to do another week early January before we continue on our journey South and around Australia.
Once again we find ourselves at Gary Crick, so familiar now it feels like home, no offence chaps but hope we don't have to pay any more visits. Walking into the Service Departmet we are immediately met by Lizzie, who said "I think I know what it is" explaine it to us then got one of the mechanics to take a look. In the meantime we briefly caught up with Ruth, grabbed a coffee
Wombat
They were all resting in their burrows. and before long Lizzie was back with excitement and said "you know I told you that remembered this car?", "yes" we said, "well now I remember why". Lizzie explained that it was a problem with after sales cruise controls. For some reason the cruise control upsets something in the accelerator settings which explained the over revving. "So what do we do to get round the problem?" Lizzie then told us that the air conditioning should be switched off for 6 minutes then the accelerator would reset itself. Now I am no mechanic so it is far beyond me to work out the real logistics of the problem, but if it works then who am I to argue?
Getting back into Chelsea and turning the engine over we immediately hear that all is well. Both of us happy that we have a problem solved, we found out about it now and not when we were isolate in the outback and worrying about it. More to the point we know what to do about it if it occurs again.
In the meantime we had a call from Camping Country to say that they had good news and our Trailer Tent would be ready for us on Thursday. Andy and I are both thrilled at this prospect and really excited about picking it up so that we can continue on our journey. We leave for Fraser Island on Friday morning.
Our plans are really coming together today, so all of our organisation, research and plotting is working.
Another spell sitting by the pool and having a swim.
Tonight we set off to our favourite local BBQ spot to cook our dinner, and met some other people down there. They commented that we were well prepared as Andy set about cleaning the barbecue. It turns out that the 5 of them are Kiwi's they are on holiday for 5 weeks and have driven up from Melbourne, they will soon be on their way to the Whitsundays for the remainder of their trip. They have a 6 berth camper very similar to the one that we had last year when we came out to Australia with Gary and Karen.
We all chatted briefly whilst cooking, then we all sit down to eat and then we go our seperate ways, wishing each other luck.
Well back at the apartment it is 9.30 Andy has gone to bed ( he missed his afternoon nap!) and I am sat here drinking g&t writing the blog.
Until tomorrow bloggers.
Caroline & Andy
xx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.841s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 28; qc: 196; dbt: 0.3763s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.7mb
Jane
non-member comment
Skype is fab
Hi both - It was great to talk to you today and I am so impressed because the timer said over 10 minutes and it cost 24p - marvellous. Have been to Asda and forgotton the bloody marmite - AGAIN- will hopefully get to post before Friday as it's the deadline. As I said all is well here and no significant news to report - we are just eagerly awaiting Mary's arrival on the 15th and I for one will not miss that M1/M6/M42 drive - 5 minutes to Hatfield will suit me just fine. Kids keep sending lots of love, they were so impressed with the moon/venus/jupiter that I showed them and even more impressed that you saw it smiling and we saw it frowning - I think that's definitely something to do with our respective weather conditions quite honestly. Be very thankful you're not here cuz it's freezing - however, on an up note that means no smelly rugby kit to wash tonight - hurrah Anyway take care and I will try and skype over the weekend. Big kiss to both of you xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx