Austraya Day

 25/01/2012
  Coffee morning with the boys plus Cynthia at Palm Cove, the boys being all ex cops and so is Cynthia. Palm Cove is much quieter now, a popular tourist resort generally, but now we are into the wet and the kids have gone back to school and the bloody stingers are back so nobody is there. The rain is the main talking point at the moment as there is a severe low trough moving south from the gulf country. Here in the far north east we are just about escaping it, we had 80mm last night, but up on the tablelands Atherton had135mm, and further south from here is much worse. It was beautiful this morning at Palm Cove but by 5 o’clock the rain came so we are in for some more tonight.

 26/01/2012
 It’s Australia Day( it’s also republic day in India!) and we hosted a small get together this afternoon. Only 7 of us as Kevin and Joan are in Melbourne, Paul’s Lorraine isn’t well, Glyn and Alana have gone to Port Douglas and Frank and Julie had other arrangements.
 We spent the morning clearing up after the nights storm, mostly leaves and branches, then setting out tables and chairs around the BBQ area. We were threatened with heavy rain around lunchtime but it didn’t arrive until everything on the hotplate was cooked  which was a stroke of luck. A quick exit stage left to the cover of the car port where we ate our snags and drank our beer and wine with the rain sheeting down. The rain ran through the carport and we got damp feet, but so what---------it was warm!!
  We had a lovely time chatting to our Aussie mates, who were thrilled to be invited to an Australia Day party by a couple of Poms, but hey, partying is what we do best!
 There seemed to be lots of other parties round about and we can appreciate the evident Aussie  feeling for their country. Perhaps it was the same in India?!!

 27/01/2012
  If yesterday was Australia Day, then today must have been Australia No Action Day!! According to the radio news the majority of the country has phoned in sick so there is not a lot going on. Some of the workers who have been upgrading the road outside our unit since November last year turned up early this morning. They clattered and banged about a bit until 9 30 then went home! Council workers seem to be the same the world over.
  As an incidental, the council road workers don’t seem to work on Mondays, a bit like having training days, so they have just had 4 weeks off for Christmas now Australia day suddenly turns into a 5 day holiday. This is the place to be boys!
  We went into our usual Friday routine of strimming, mowing and pool cleaning then later retired hurt to the rugby club to have a drink with Frank and Julie and 2 of their daughters. We didn’t win the meat raffle (17 prizes) but we might win the next test match against Pakistan. It’s supposed to live on Radio Five Live through the computer, but it ain’t working! Must be run by Cairns Council!

 28/01/2012
  On our free trip home last night on the courtesy bus, we were in the company of a nice old boy who came over as a cross between Baggy Saunders and Michael Barrass. He sports the Baggy beard and speaks like M B. He has spent all evening in the smokers section, dealing with several schooners of beer, who is he?? A local G P who has lived here since 2003 after emigrating from the U K. Not many of them left!
 Not a lot of clearing up this morning as we didn’t get our nightly storm last night.  Mooched around doing a bit of gardening until it was time to walk up to Palm Cove and Après for a couple of beers. We intended walking back but the storm we didn’t have last night arrived whilst we were in Apres, along with tonights storm, a double dose you might say. We caught the bus home then sat watching the most spectacular thunderstorm with sheet and forked lightening.
 Still unable to listen to Test Match Special    some rights issue nonsense!! Huh
     Later………..
  Useless set of cricketers, just managed to scrape a loss from the jaws of victory. Luckily nobody here has noticed so far.

29/01/2012
  Aren’t we lucky? One storm a night is normal, two in one night is unusual, three is taking a liberty. Around  4-30am we had some sort of a minor hurricane, no structural damage but lots of mess taking us much longer to clear up this morning.
 Once that was done we rolled out the van and drove up to Palm Cove for brunch at Coffee Haven sitting on their deck in 33c of glorious sunshine, hard to believe after last nights storms. We walked off brunch along the jetty dodging the fishermen and their families trying their luck. Seems like a good way to spend a Sunday morning, even if you don’t catch anything. Maybe some of them should try fishing in the stinger nets which are again closed because of stingers. The lifeguards who patrol the nets caught two small reef sharks and a Barramundi in the Palm Cove net yesterday whilst they were trawling for Irukandji.
 Back at Clifton we spent the afternoon staying cool in our pool, we have no guests this week so we can call it ours.
 Mid evening we held a disjointed chat with Phil and Jules via skype. They obviously had been ’on it’ for some time, as had we. Not a lot of sense either way!