Andy & Tinas new Blog site

Hi All,

As we are not travelling we are no longer posting to here, please go to our new site to follow all the action of our new adventure.

fnqch.blogspot.com

Christmas @ Dundee

We have finally made it through the week before Christmas, works slow and boring and this makes time drag out. We are all packed up and I picked up the prawns and we are off to Dundee. There is quite a bit of water around but the road is OK out there. There is a bit of rain around and it looks we there might not be a sunset to savour tonight. I have mowed the outdoor setting area down at the cliff so I don’t get bitten by something this time. Luckily the clouds clear and we enjoy a typical Dundee sunset.
Christmas day arrives for another year. We speak to the family and kids and everyone is fine. Breakfast is a little delayed after we get a downpour and the loudest crack of Thunder ever heard.

Lunch is Prawns & Oysters and then we have Pizza’s for tea. It is to rough to fish or view sunset so we continue on with our Jigsaw puzzle I picked up at Vinnies. It is the Sydney 2000 Olympics which has all the Olympics up to 2000. The Pizzas are cooked on a stone in the BBQ. So a quiet evening drinking eating and watching DVD’s. There is a fair bit of lightning around and we lose power a couple of times before the TV dies.

Birthdays

Well it is a quite birthday week with not much to report, I changed the slave cylinder in the Tojo and that was the last option left I the sticky clutch pedal and seems to have done the trick. A little heater hose leak was also repaired. Now just the seat belt to go, can’t find one at the wreckers so it’s Ebay at $150 this might wait until after Christmas. We will not talk about the cricket after the Poms gave us a thrashing in Adelaide. But there is always hope in Perth. Tina and I really haven’t been doing much just a bit of Christmas shopping and holiday planning, the rest of the time just sitting around really. Jan has headed off to Adelaide now as well. I passed my first subject in my Diploma, but I got to say I was very nervous before the exam it has been a long time since I had to do a serious test.
It is the week before Christmas and all our shopping is done and sent off to Adelaide. I don’t have a lot on at work and I'm only looking after a couple of projects at the moment so I'm a little worried that I need a new job after Christmas with my contract set to expire early next year. So I have a bit of thinking to do as what to do next, do I try to pick up a contract in Darwin, Adelaide or North Queensland not sure but Christmas is a bad time of the year to be looking and I have little patience with these job finding events.

Tina & Andy buy a Rain Forest

Well its Birthday month Jason, Carol & Tina, and Christmas too. The week has past and finally the news we have purchased our own little piece of paradise in East Feluga. Nearly 2 acres ½ covered with rain forest on a hill overlooking the Tully Valley. It is 10 minutes from mission beach & 5 minute from Tully. The first piece of land we have ever owned and the first land we have owned together.
Brian has headed off to Roma to help Warren fix his boat trailer and they are flooded in. It is dam hot here and not much rain unlike the rest of the country.

FNQ trip

Well this is the week we are off to Nth Qld, it is a bit slow but we finally get to Friday. I hate early morning flights, I just can’t sleep and we are off to the Airport at 4:00am. Not a bad flight but they all take too long. We arrive, pick up the hire car and head off to East Feluga to view the first property. It is nearly 2 acres on the side of a mountain overlooking the Tully valley. It is nice but a bit steep and has plenty of rain forest on it bloody wet though. We meet the agent and discuss our thoughts , and the move on to other properties.
That night we stay at the Feluga hotel a beaut country pub for $40 a night we get chatting to the locals and have a few drinks. Next day we are off to Tully to meet with a couple of agent and see some more places. We are pretty fussy so it narrows down the available places, some on the Tully river and quite a few old Sugar Cane farms. You have to be careful in this part of Aus with 4,000mm+ rain a year. Yes that is nearly 8 x Adelaide annual rainfall. We are not that keen on the Sugar Cane farms not really much to look at. Anyway we spend a lot of time driving around for 4 days. We stayed at Kurramine beach and Innisfail talked to some agents, and locals about Tully, land sugar cane you name it. It rains for the 4 days we are here especially each time we look at a place or drive through El Arish (we are definitely not buying there) It has been the wettest year for a long time with most of the sugar cane ruined. On the first day a rock hits the windscreen of the hire car and puts a crack in it which continually gets bigger. I got a quote and rang up the hire car place who said it was OK to get it replaced, only $ 240 so a bargain. Anyway my Camera, Phone and now the Windscreen all in a week, they say it comes in 3’s so this has been one hell of an expensive trip. Today we looked around Cairns and did some Christmas shopping at DFO. Back to the Airport and home to Darwin what a weekend. No land purchase either yet, but stay tuned.
Back in Darwin and patiently waiting to hear about the land !!

Wet Season Build up

Well it has become a normal build up now with daily storms rolling in but little rain. We are off to Dundee in the hope of some fishing but it is not good weather expected so it looks like a weekend of working. I get bitten by a centipede and it really hurts so onto the phone to make sure I’m not going to die. It is all good just need to expect some pain for at least 48 hours.
Number 1 on the list is replacing the leaking pump that has been giving Jan the shits for months. Well all of us really it leaks over the floor. I knock that off along with some wiring jobs. Brian has a load of road base so there is plenty of shovelling to do. Saturday is full on and we get heaps done. Another Dundee sunset a big feed and off to bed. We awake to another day of windy yucky ocean, so more work, we are off over to Bobs to work on his roof project. There are some tricky beams to get up and weld and it is hot as. At Dundee you stand on the cliff and it is not too bad, you go back to the Dongers and it is hot but another 100m inland to Bob’s and it is stifling heat. Anyway we get it done with the aid of some beers. After lunch it is time to head home, Brian is staying on so Jan is coming back with us. It is quite funny how Jan fusses over Brian to make sure he will not starve to death. (he has enough food for a week)

Darwin Townhouse