Bronze Whaler on Wheels: A trip to Australia

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and New Year. All the best for 2020. I wonder if they will be called the roaring 20's in the future.

We got home 2 Sundays ago from our trip to Australia. We had a wonderful relaxing time and caught up with all the relations there.

Christmas Eve gave us a great spectacle of a thunder storm that went on for quite a while. We had been watching a movie when it started. As Katrina and Craig (our daughter and son in law) had a close encounter with lightening not so long a go and lost a tv as a result, we thought it prudent to turn it off until the storm had passed. It was quite spectacular and well worth the intermission.

Eddie's brother, Harry, Tristan (our son), and his boys came to Katrina's for Christmas. We had a lovely dinner out on the new deck, which is huge. Jasper the dog is very funny about the new deck and will only go on it from the door and will not walk up the stairs or the 3 steps at the end where it meets the upper garden. They are trying to train him, by putting some of his food up the steps, but it is a slow process. He doesn't seem to like change much. He wouldn't go out on it for a while, but soon overcame that when he realized there was food out there.

For our second week, we went to Bribe Island and stayed in an apartment at Woorim Beach. The apartment was straight across from the beach. We swam twice a day most days. Eddie's nephews and niece and their families came for the Sunday and we had a pot luck lunch and then went and had a swim. We were surprised when Harry got out of the car instead of his daughter in law, Jasmine. She is doing a secondary teachers course and stayed home to do an assignment, so Harry came in her place. It was nice to have another day with him. Lots of fun and laughter for the day.

My girlfriend from high school and her husband came and stayed on the Island too. Their air B & B was right behind us. We were able to walk between the accommodations very easily. We couldn't have planned it any better, if we had tried. We had a great 2 days with them. We did some fishing, but nothing was biting. Except the yabbie Eddie was using as bait, that bit him. Ha ha.

Our third week was at Coloundra with Tristan. On the Monday we went and picked up Noah and Asher and had them with us for the week. It was pretty neat to have them for so long. We took them to the beach each day. It is within walking distance from Tristan's house, so very handy. In the evenings we went back down and had our dinner on the water front. It is well set up with picnic tables and bbq's too.

We took the boys to a bird park at Maleny one day and had an interesting time learning about the birds. The macaws sat on our heads and shoulders. We were told not to wear any shiny jewellery as it would be stolen. They have lost diamonds, necklaces and even hearing aids. There are beautiful gardens too, but we didn't really look at them too much. It was a pretty hot day.
There is a lovely view of the Glass House Mountains from the sanctuary, but it was a smoky day, so it wasn't very good on the day we were there.

We got home about 4 30 on Sunday afternoon and bought a few groceries to see us over night. We took Monday off, so that the washing got all up to date and food is in the house. Sadly all good things come to an end and it was back to reality last Tuesday. Luckily Eddie didn't have to start at stupid o clock, so that was nice. In fact he had good starts for 3 days in a row, which was a nice way to break back into work.

We could do with some rain here. We went to Ngaruawahia on Saturday to visit friends and we were surprised how dry the paddocks are over that way. It isn't quite so bad here.

It got to 35 degrees yesterday at the caravan, so we were a bit warm!

Below is a selection of photos from our holiday.