Not Before Time

Hmmmm, can’t believe it’s been so long since I last updated here. The year is flying!

We’re still in Mackay, David’s working and I’m looking. I broke my wrist while we were fishing and was in a cast for over 6 weeks, so that put everything on hold for a while, but now the cast is off I’ll start looking again. Soon

We’ve just come back from the Southern Highlands in NSW where Ben and Kat got married – it was just beautiful – everything went so smoothly and it was all very relaxed. Ben and Kat organised it all themselves and did a fantastic job. I was a bit worried about the weather when we got down there, it was cold and wet on the Friday, but Saturday and Sunday turned out just brilliant – couldn’t have asked for better weather.

The venue for the weekend was Peppers Manor House in Sutton Forest (http://www.peppers.com.au/manor-house) which is about 15 minutes from Bowral. The area is beautiful and the venue is really lovely, perfect for a wedding. I was up early on Saturday morning and got some photos of the mist over the grounds and Mt Broughton Golf Course which adjoins the Peppers property . Would have been good to have had a game of golf, it’s a beautiful course, unfortunately time didn’t allow for it.

Ben and Kat decided to have a small wedding with immediate family, so there were 11 of us which made for a very casual, relaxed and fun weekend. We had lots of time together over drinks, a bbq dinner and breakfast during the weekend.

The wedding service was a catholic mass at St Patricks, a small local church, and Father Jarek was so nice and has a great sense of humour (just as well, because David was in fine form). The service was really lovely with all of us being involved – the 2 dads lit the candles, Marg, Liz and I did readings, Martin and Andrea did the offertory, Matthew and Andrea were witnesses, and Terry sat there looking very handsome It was just beautiful. Father Jarek mentioned a couple of times at how relaxed and casual everyone was.

Ben had organised the photographer through one of the forums he’s a member of, and it worked out great. Dan (http://www.danielkcheung.com/blog/ ) is an excellent photographer, and he brought 2 of his friends with him who are also really, really good – Zak (http://www.i-envision.blogspot.com/ ) and Jack (http://www.outsideinpixels.com/ ) All great guys and we had a lot of fun with them. Think they enjoyed it too. All they guys have some photos of the wedding on their blogs. They turned out great.

After the service it was back to Peppers for photos, canapés and drinks and a game of croquet and bocce which was a lot of fun. Kat must have been practicing – she romped it in as croquet champion

I mentioned earlier that David was in fine form. He had been threatening Kat that he would be wearing shorts at the wedding as that was all he ever wore these days – well he did wear a suit to the church, but he didn’t wear suit type socks, he wore his favourite hand knitted ones instead

Then he got changed for croquet

I was wandering around with Ben’s camera which is a bit different to mine, but I managed to get some good photos too. Here are a few of the weekend

The wedding dinner was an absolutely superb 7 course degustation menu with matched wines – the chefs put together a beautiful menu and the wait staff were excellent, particularly Liz who could and did answer any questions about the food and wine.

It was a beautiful wedding, and everyone had a great time. Congratulations to Ben and Kat, on their marriage, and the great job they did organising it all and making sure everyone was included and having fun.

Quilt

I made a quilt for Ben and Kat – got it finished just in time for the wedding.

Runabout

While we were down south, we had organised to buy a Suzuki Vitara for running about while we’re up here in Mackay. Matthew actually did all the running around for us since we bought it in Melbourne, and he drove it up to Sydney for us. We then drove it up here. It’s a great little car, and we are both really happy with it. Will be really good for some fun trips to the beaches and bush up here

We went out for a drive and picnic the other day, with a loose destination being Cedar Pocket, which is a pretty drive through farmland. However we found a road we hadn’t been down before and decided to try that instead. The gravel road took us through the pine forest then joined on to the Kin Kin road. Before we got to Kin Kin we saw a sign saying Doggrell State Forest and decided to head there instead. At first I wasn’t sure it was open to the public – the road is really a logging track and the area as we drove in has been logged and isn’t very pretty . Anyway, we decided to follow the road and see where it would take us, and there wasn’t any signage around directing traffic anywhere.

As we went further in, the road became more like a goat track and the bush got thicker. Some of the track was good and other parts was pretty bad but David had a bit of fun using the 4×4 function on the truck which he doesn’t get to use that often .

Eventually we got to a part of the track where we couldn’t go any further – there was a tree down across the track and just beyond that was a fissure in the ground and it was much too wide and deep for us to get over. The only problem was, the track wasn’t wide enough for us to turn around and on one side was a drop and on the other a bank too high for the truck to get up. The only way out was to reverse. So I got to play scout to make sure he didn’t go off track while avoiding tree branches and holes in the ground.

Eventually we found a place where David could turn the truck around, albeit doing about a 20 point turn instead of a 3 point!

On the way back we checked out an intersection with another track, and it was such a lovely spot and we could pull over a bit in case anyone else came by, that we decided to have lunch there. We could hear plenty of birds around, but apart from some wrens and finches flitting around we couldn’t see them, so I didn’t manage to get any photos. The little birds are too quick for me!

Unfortunately my camera died when I was trying to take photos of the birds, but coincidentally the weather also changed so we decided to head home and we’ll go back another day to explore a bit more. On the way out we passed a track we’d missed going in and it led to a walking track so we’ll check that out next time too.

We got home just in time – it bucketed down!

We went for a drive to Bundaberg last Friday – mainly to check out caravan parks and see if there was work in the area. We think we visited Bundaberg years ago, but neither of us can remember much about it. I was really surprised by how big it is – population is about 85,000 people. We found a park to stay at and it seems like there might be work so we’ve booked in for the week after next and we’ll give it a couple of weeks to see what happens with work. If we don’t get anything we might head further north or go inland a bit. That’ll also give us a bit of time to explore the area.

We had a bit of a drive around, and went to Bargara beach and had some fish and chips on the esplanade which was really lovely – the beach is about 15 minutes from the park we’ll be staying at. Apparently there’s some great fishing off the rocks there.

There’s also the Burnett River which runs through Bundaberg, which also has some good fishing spots. We’re looking forward to checking out all the fishing spots.

Well after 2 months, we finally left cold wintery Melbourne behind and are now back at Standown Park near Gympie. We had a lovely time with family, and catching up with some of our friends. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to catch up with everyone, so apologies to those we didn’t connect with.

David had some work done on the F-Series when we were in Melbourne – he removed the roller door on the top of the tray (which he sold on eBay) and had some toolboxes made up and fitted in to the tray behind the cab, and also had a new tonneau cover made for the tray as well as a bar across the top which will be for our tinny to travel on when we buy one.

Kat’s father Bob was also staying in Melbourne at the same time we were, and David and Bob also got a few things done around the house and garden, and David cleaned up the garage too. So overall it was a very productive time.

I did a lot of walking and photography

It’s good to get back to some warmer weather – the days have been about 22 / 23 degrees here although the nights and mornings have been down to 4 or 5, but that’s ok, we can live with that .

We’ll stay here for another week or so then head up to Bundaberg and see what work is around. It would be nice to stay on the coast for a while close to the beach, and we might be able to get some fishing in too. If we can’t find work in Bundaberg then we might go inland again. Will see what happens.

We stayed with David’s sister Margaret and her husband Terry on the way up, and had a great couple of days with them. Marg has a couple of sewing machines so we set them up and both of us made a quilted bag. I haven’t done any quilting or sewing since we left Queensland a couple of months ago, so it was great being able to do some, especially with Marg who is a beautiful and prolific quilter. Thanks, Marg, I really enjoyed it .

The trip up from Melbourne was pretty good. However, (there’s a gripe coming up here, so jump ahead if you don’t want to listen to me whining!) I’m really surprised at the price of motel rooms and what you (don’t) get for the money! We stopped at 3 different motels on the way, the first 2 each costing $95/night. I’m obviously a bit out of touch with the cost of motel rooms, and I wasn’t expecting luxury rooms or anything, but honestly, they were not good – everything was old and tired and while they were surface clean, they really needed a good scrub, especially the bathrooms. In the first motel, the bed was really, really bad, I think the floor would have been more comfortable! And the air conditioners in both were bloody noisy. Is it really that hard to get a clean comfortable room with a quiet air conditioner for $100/night? In both hotels, the attitude from the owner/manager/receptionist was really offhand and just not interested. Makes you wonder why they go in to that sort of business or do that sort of work.

However, we obviously just picked the wrong motels, because the third motel we stayed at was very good and at $86 was excellent value – and that included a continental breakfast. It was this hotel in Armidale, NSW, and if you’re in the area looking for a place to stop for the night, then we would recommend this place. The room we had was a good size with a really comfortable queen size bed, a wide screen tv and a sofa. Everything was very clean, and David, the owner, went out of his way to be helpful.

We also stopped at David’s brother’s place near Gatton on the way back – it was great catching up with Rick and Carol

I took a heap of photos on the way up, but I did something wrong when I was downloading them on to the computer and lost nearly 400 photos, so unfortunately I’ve only got photos from the last 3 days of the trip.
Here’s a few photos taken on the trip up.