Year 5 Day 1

It's been a while since I blogged last. Too much holidaying, working and running around; however I had to blog about our 5th anniversary in Kingscliff. It's amazing how quickly time has gone, although when we think about all that's happened while we were here we've covered a lot of ground.
We celebrated by heading over to Roughies restaurant at Salt, which was in the final stages of completion when we first got here, and had a great meal. We chatted with the chef and manager of the restaurant, as we were the only ones there. We stumbled home taking care to watch for midnight snakes; as we almost trod on one on another midnight stumble.
Fay has completed her first semester at Uni, and she did rather well, by her account. I'm contracting to the usual guys in Melbourne, bless em, and doing all right by that. So life is rolling on here in Kingscliff and we don't see any reason to move anywhere in the next 5 or so years.
In fact after spending a larger sum of money that we wanted to do our place up, we'll have to spend that many years here to get the value from it.
So drop in sometime and see us.

Fay's first Day at uni

Today was Fay's first day at University. Well actually not the first day, but the first day this century :P

She did a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics in Sydney the 70's, and attempted a masters at RMIT in the 80's, but now she has decided to head back to Griffith University on the Gold Coast to do Nursing.

I keep asking her is she is excited, as I seem to be more excited than she is. Her version is that she was excited when she was accepted, but now she just wants to get stuck in.

I'm excited. Unemployed; but excited.

Mountain Biking in Nerang

Fay and I went mountain biking yesterday. It was great fun... at first.

We both fell off and it was pretty hot. I think this photo says it all :)















We'll definitely give it another go, as it was great not having to deal with traffic.

Man of Leisure updates blog.

I finished up my contract on Nov 21. It was great to finish up and get back to Kingscliff.

I've been attempting to get fit and play with all the toy's that I've accumulated over the last 12 months. More on that as I get some photo's.

A Turtle in the creek!!

I was just taking a quick break from working at home (no really!) and I happened to see a sea turtle swimming around out the front of our place.
The first two are from our balcony


Here you can see the scaffolding on the left of the image.

This is a closer shot from the pontoon.

On the work front; I only have two weeks left before I finish my contract. Yay! I'm looking forward to a good long break.

Dinner at Yellow Fins in Broadbeach QLD

Some friends from Sydney were visiting other friends in Brisbane and they decided to brave
the Gold Coast on a Saturday night for us.

The meal was great and so was the service.

It finished of a big weekend for us. We went to a violin concert on Friday night, and had dinner at the Surfers Rowers Club before.

All in all a busy little time. It was great.

Year 5 Day 4

We have been in Kingscliff over 4 years now and we just take it for granted. We still don't miss cities at all and we don't want to move for the time being.
One of the reasons is this nice little chappie. It's the local Osprey taking a bath in the creek opposite the flat. This photo was taken from our balcony.
I'm still commuting to Brisbane, and I will be until November; but then I'm definitely coming home to stay for at least 6 months.
Money is good, but it's not everything.

Fay is almost definitely going to study nursing next year. I'm planning on being a house husband again.

Sorry for the inconsistant posting but this commuting cuts into the interesting blogable parts of our life.

I'll make another post soon.

A fine weekend

Fay and I have just had a very fine weekend.

Today is a public holiday in Queensland, so I didn't have to head to Brisbane, Yay! The contract is going well and I've signed up for another 6 months. The is not that great, but the money is coming in handy. I've had to postpone any adventures for another 6 months, but after that I will definitely get out and do something I haven't done before.

So instead of working I took a ride down the freeway toward Byron Bay. It's a noisy ride, but it's an easy way to cover 75 km's easily. I did get a flat, but that's to be expected.

Yesterday Fay and I did the Byron Bay Ocean Classic. Talk about a beautiful day, sun was shining, wind was slight and the swell was about half a meter. The course was 2.2 km and Fay and I covered it pretty easily, in 47 and 40 minutes respectively.

Saturday was when we celebrated Fay's 0033x birthday. That's based on a computer numbering system called hexadecimal. She got lot's of pressies, although they were a little late due to my training in Brisbane.

Apologies about the long delay in posting; however I find it hard to look at a screen after a week at work.

Someone's going to Melbourne

but it's not me! After whacking on 3-4 kg's over Christmas, and maintaining an unacceptably appalling exercise regime whilst in Brisbane, I've had to give up any idea of attempting Geelong. They hurt enough when you're ready for them, no need to grind yourself down for 6-7 hours to be unhappy with the result.

However, Fay had arranged with her sisters to met up in Melbourne while we were down there. Of course the sisters are not going to give up their get together just because I'm a big wimp!

Today was the first really great day we've had for a few months. We hit the beach and the surf was perfect for a couple of middle age people trying to remember how to body surf. Fay has since gone off to work and I'm sitting here planning an adventure.

A Land of Flooding Rain

In case you were wondering (Not just you Sylvia :P ), the floods are all around us. However we are not cut off; and we didn't get cut off, just. The waters cut the road south to Murwillumbah and almost cut the road an Chinderah. However there was a break in the rain that coincided with the high tide, and so the waters didn't get much above the road level.

It seems like the low is not affecting us as much today, so we may have seen the worst of it. Most of the flooding is upstream in the tweed and it seems to be dropping now.

We seem to be used to the weather here now. I don't mind sleeping in 26C and 92% humidity. I used to think that was a bit sticky. Is this what they call going troppo?

Fay's work

I forgot to add that Fay has commenced her job at NSW Health; about three months after the successful interview. It seems that it's easier to get elected to parliament that to get a part time job at NSW Health.

She is working as an AIN (Assistant in Nursing) in the Community Health unit at Tweed Heads Hospital. She loves it, except for the driving. She didn't let the driving put her off though, she hired a bigger car and took a driving lesson to make sure she was up for it. Of course she was.

Do I need to add that she loves it? I believe she never wants to see another program in her life.

New Year, back at work

The New Year was rung in by us being sound asleep. All the local fireworks were canceled due to the wild weather we've had up here for the last couple of weeks.

The ugly baby Friar Birds did a neat trick on Christmas day. The hopped out of the nest and started wandering around the tree they were in. Their parents kept on coming back to feed them, so we believed they couldn't fly. Three days later, when I returned from Brisbane, they were gone. So I assume that they learned to fly in those three days. Which is fortunate as the wind hasn't gone under 20 knots for very long since.

I've been commuting to Brisbane for just over a month now. The work I thought I had lined up in Melbourne fell through. Luckily I've picked up a contract in Brisbane doing data modeling, which I'm thoroughly enjoying. Which is good because the commute is a bugger.

I have managed to arrange a room at my sisters place for three nights a week, which results in me only driving up and back once a week. My boss is happy for me to do the 40 hours in four days, so I can come home Thursday night and spend Friday with Fay. The only downside to this arrangement is that my nephew has just got himself a drum kit, and my niece has taken up the electric guitar!

Ugly Babies

Two nests were built in our tree this year, one lot of young ones were eaten, but the others have been going pretty well. It may be due to the great camouflage; and also the fact that the birds basically look inedible.

This is the nest. It looks like a cotton wool ball wrapped in straw. If you look carefully you can make out a beak to the left of the top of the nest.

Another look at the nest, and on the left of the nest you should be able to make out a baby's beak, green eye and ear. A hole in the side of it's head!

Rob and Annette's Visit

Rob and Annette are some friends that we met 10 years ago in Sydney while Fay was working at Qantas. They came to visit us on their way to New Zealand for a couple of days of rest. They were lucky that the weather was bad as we couldn't take them up Mt Warning, or paddling in the creek. However they did have to endure walking to the Byron Lighthouse from the main beach and walking to salt a couple of times.

We also managed to eat quite a lot of pretty good food. The Thai in Kingscliff has picked up again, the Choux Box cafe was on it's game, the Salt Bar had excellent pub grub and the Rock Salt Pizzeria served some great pizzas.

So we have some unfinished business with Rob and Annette and we'll have to try and get them back here to try the new Italian in Kingscliff and the new Fins restaurant at Salt.

Comedy Night

We went to our second comedy night at the Salt Bar. At $6 entry you can't go too far wrong. It was actually great.

We decided to cycle down there as it's only 2.5km and we didn't feel like walking. However when we got the the bridge about 500m up the road they were closing it to do some test drilling for the new pedestrian and cycle bridge. We got chatting to the workmen and told them we were heading for the pub and asked whether the bridge would be open later that night.

When we cycled home and approached the bridge, they were waiting for us and started to say that we need to do a breath test before we could cross. We had a laugh and they escorted us across to many knowing smiles from all. We've got some good people up here.

4 Months to the Half

I'm going to attempt the Geelong Half Ironman on February 10 next year. I need to get a goal up so that I keep up the training. Another reason for choosing Geelong is that it seems I'll be spending quite a bit of time down there for work from November to April.

We've been having some big storms up here. Fantastic light shows and heavy rain. We even had some hail last Saturday; however we were spared the big one that hit nearby Lismore in the hills. They had extensive damage.

Fay is slowly getting closer to taking up her job. The main issues are with vaccinations.

On a beautiful day Fay goes for a swim

It's sunny, mild day here today. Everything that summer offers, without too much heat or humidity. Fay decided to hit the creek at high tide, and I took a video of her returning to the pontoon.



Meanwhile I proceeded to do some coding for the fellows in Melbourne, inside, at my PC. Some of us have to work!

Fay has another Job

Fay went for an interview Wednesday and was terribly disappointed about how she went. Until the interviewer rang her up to offer her the job!

It is involved with a team that aims to get old folks who have had a stay in hospital back to their home and living as independently as they can, or want to.

So it's a big step in her career into the area of rehabilitation and trying to improve the lives of the aged, rather than assisting them to get from day to day.

She really likes her work with the aged.

That went fast

One minute it was the 4th and now it's the 16th!

Anyway the pee wees have almost completed their nest. It took a lot longer than usual. The main problem was the female, as she is missing most of her right foot (claw?) and she is constantly flying at the windows and looking at her reflection. Still the male has got most of the nest done and we're watching it every day.

The first triathlon was Saturday. It went well and we had a great time. It's great to be racing again, mind you I probably won't be so enthusiastic in a month or two.

Today was one of those near perfect Sundays. We went for a ride early this morning, had a lazy breakfast after and then read for most of the day. The sun was shining the sky was clear and the creek was full of people enjoying themselves.

I'm packing for Melbourne tonight and I'm heading down for the week tomorrow. It will be good to see the Melbourne Crowd.

Nesting Birds

We have our Magpie Larks (pee wees) building a nest outside our window again. We think they're too late as a lot of birds already have their chicks in the nest.

Still it's fun to watch them build the nest from mud and spit. It's started to rain again, so I think that will set them back again.

More news as it comes to hand.