Pictures at last!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I finally found a solution to my technical problems (with a little help from Peter!!) so here are some random shots of our trip so far:

JoJo and Chick at WetSide


Kangaroos


Mother and Baby


JoJo and I at Bundaberg...hic!!!


Bats


Chick moonlight paddling


Chick's new hair do....yes Mum I know it's short but it'll grow back ;-)


Happy New Year!!!

Bundaberg

So yesterday saw us on a mini road trip a couple of hours North to the Town of Bundaberg. To be honest it isn't the nicest of towns but JoJo suggested that we go there to visit the rum factory. Well you know me....typical English girl throw any kind of alcohol into the equation and I'm pretty much there!!! It was a bizarre place. As we drove up to the visitors centre you could see the factory which basically looked like some old rusted farm buildings, a couple of which were painted yellow with the Bundaberg sign on it!!

The Visitors Center itself was a lot more attractive and modern. There were a couple of different tours to choose from but because we were only wearing flip flops we had to go on the museum tour. It was ok but I'm sure the Factory tour was a lot more fun!! I can tell you now how rum is made although I won't bore you all with the details here, I'll save it until I get home!!! The tour ends at the bar which actually is a fabulous idea and I think more Museums should take this approach!!! Then we chose our rum and sat and chilled in the gardens for a while. Unfortunately as designated driver I was limited to one....booooo!!!! We then took lots of silly pictures with us all licking the twelve foot Bundaberg bottle and generally goofing around!!

Chick has developed a new passion in life for the beach. All she wants to do is jump the waves, swim and generally be wet so when we got back from Bundaberg we headed to the beach just before it started to get dark!! It was pretty cool to be on the beach with the moon out and reflecting off the sea and as we got back to the car there were thousands of bats flying overhead. It was a pretty amazing sight as some of them were as big as birds. Bats it turns out don't scare me....I know I'm a weird kind of freak when birds make me scream like a girl!!!

So with her obsession for the beach and swimming Chick's hair has pretty much been like straw and getting tangled and horrible so yesterday we made a radical decision and cut all her hair off....aaaarrrgghhhhh!!!! For those of you that don't know Chick's hair was long, almost all the way down her back and blonde at the ends.....well no more!! She now has a kind of shoulder length curly bob I guess and oh my goodness how grown up does the girl look....think my Mum will probably freak when she see's it but it's much more manageable now!!! I wish I could share pictures with you....it's sooooo frustrating.

Tomorrow we are taking off from Hervey Bay and working our way down the coast towards Surfers Paradise and Byron Bay and then onwards to Sydney to stay with my friend Dori so I'm not sure when I'll get chance to blog again. Until then a Happy New Year to you all xxx

Woodgate Beach - Burrum Head National Park

Yesterday was all kinds of awesome as the sun came out properly for the first time since our arrival. We started off the day at the local Water Park called Wetside. I say Park but really it's more of a huge paddling pool with lots of fountains and falling water...a great aid for cooling off when it's 30 degrees (sorry to make you all sick when it's snowing in England!!!) The downside of course of it being so hot is that my lilly white skin burns to a crisp. I had Factor 50 on all day but by the time we got home I was so red and burnt that I looked like a big piece of raw beef!!!! My feet today have been so sore that I could barely wear Flip Flops although they seem to be calming down a little now!!! Chick really enjoyed being at the park and for the most part she managed to avoid being burned....must get it from her wonderful Father!!!

In the afternoon once we'd had a nap our host Peter asked if we fancied going on a trip to try and see some Kanagaroos, so of course we jumped at the chance. We went to a great place called Woodgate Beach up towards Bundaberg about 150km North of where we are staying. The beach there is unbelieveably lovely...great sand and just the right amount of surf which amazingly was almost deserted. So I sat in the shade (stupid lilly white English skin!!!) whilst everyone else swam and rode the waves and played Cricket. About 4.30pm Peter said it was optimum time for Kangaroo spotting so off we went to the National Park. As we were driving there we saw our first Kanga just sitting in somebody's garden munching on the grass!!!! We pulled over and took a couple of pictures and carried on until we came to a spot where there were just too many Kanga's to count.

They are so tame that we managed to get right up close to them. So close in fact that Chick and Peter were almost touching them (I'm obviously too much of a girl to get that close!!) I got some amazing pictures although they were much smaller than I imagined them to be. As we were leaving the park a different Kangaroo jumped out in front of us and Peter saw that it had a Joey in her pouch. We pulled over the car and managed to get close enough again to get one of the best pictures ever of the Joey with it's head out of the pouch and them both looking at my camera!! It was such an amazing experience and we are so lucky!!!

I'd love to be able to share these pictures with you but unfortunately I have a couple of problems. First is that my shiny new laptop that I wrote about a few posts ago is bloody rubbish!!!! There is something wrong with the security settings on it and I need a professional to take a look at it. Second is that when I was trying to be Technical (read - forcing the damn thing to work) I snapped my camera memory card!!!! On my normal laptop at home I insert the memory card and the pictures just pop up and I presumed this one would work the same way so I didn't bring any of the camera leads with me!!!! I'll try and figure something out as we go along but for now words alone will have to do!!!

Hervey Bay

I was expecting life in Australia to be different and more laid back but what I wasn't prepared for was the hours they keep. The sun comes up at around 5am and once it's up and shining it's pretty much impossible to sleep....especially when I have a seven year old that doesn't much like sleep anyway. The past couple of days has found us awake at 5am and 5.30am which is cool but means I can't stay awake past 8pm!!!!! (I thank God that Santa bought Chick a Nintendo DS for Christmas 'cos it means that I at least can nap on and off for an hour whilst she is entertained!!)

On the days when it's raining, we aren't woken up by the sun but by a cacophony of animal sounds. We have frogs that live in the hanging baskets right outside our window and man they are noisy especially considering how small they are. The other thing that starts making noise at the butt crack of dawn is the birds. Again it's like having my own personal avairy outside the window to keep me entertained.

I should probably mention at this point that I really dislike animals of every kind. I don't even like cats/dogs/cute bunny rabbits although I can suffer them if I have to but what I hate with a passion is snakes,frogs and birds....imagine if you can my joy at being surrounded by them at 5am!!!!! Everywhere you walk you see some kind of wildlife which for the first day freaked me out and then I decided that I can't spend the whole of the next month get scared every two seconds, so I'm gonna have to be brave and just suck it up!

It's working so far as last night I sat out with JoJo and let the frogs jump around us (it was horrible....uuurrrggghhh!!!) but I didn't freak out (too much!!). Watch this space though as I'm sure the second I see a snake or a huge bird I'll be back to quivering in my flip flops!!!

We have quite a chilled out day planned today and are off to explore the Hervey Bay Esplanade and maybe swim in the sea again. The rain has stopped and the sun is trying very hard to come out thankfully, so maybe today we won't get soaked to the skin!!!!