Caretaking

13/01/2012
   I’m Knackered!! Just done my first full days work on my own. Phil and I have been sharing the strimming and mowing, a job that needs doing once a week. Pushing a lawn mower for 2 hours in 32C of relentless sunshine is a great way to lose weight………Think I would rather be fat! Jane does the bookings, washing and some watering and pool cleaning, I do the yard (garden) and pool,  it’s a hard life!
 Because the weather has been so hot and dry with calm seas and no wind it means perfect conditions for the dangerous Irukandji jelly fish, which have stung people whilst they were swimming. They are tiny, smaller than your little finger nail, but can cause a cardiac arrest. They have even got into the stinger nets, resulting in a ban on swimming in the sea unless you are wearing a stinger suit. No point in that as the sea is too hot anyway. Consequently the beaches are empty which makes us more than happy to have a pool, even if the water temp is 30C. So far this month we have had 10mm of rain, this time last year 180mm had been recorded. It’s going to change this weekend apparently.

  14/01/2012
  Had our first minor hiccough as caretakers. We have people moving into one of the units in the early hours of tomorrow and have discovered that there is no hot water in the unit. Luckily there are a few empty units, so we have moved them. It wouldn’t have been too much hardship for them to wait until Monday when we can get a plumber out to fix it but everything must be right.
  I continue my daily battle with keeping the pool clean, having to contend with a bathing cane toad first thing. Nothing that a fishing net and my toadometer couldn’t deal with
 Early evening we walked the hours walk to Palm Cove and Apres Bar for a couple of beers. It’s a beautiful walk along the shore, tho we still can’t venture into the water because of the irukandji.

 15/01/2012
  Socially, today was our first challenge, with our newfound friends here at Clifton. We think we scored a draw. Usually there are about 10 or a dozen for Matilda beach gathering, for nibbles and drinks at around 5 o’clock. Tonight there were just 4 of us. O K, Phil and Jules are long gone, Paul and Lorraine are away for the weekend, Kevin and Joan had other plans and Glyn and Alana are drinking carrot juice on their detox diet, how boring! That left us and Allen and Lorraine, their daughters are down in Sydney. So just the 4 of us had a lovely evening beside the ocean knowing that at some stage we would be sent packing as there was a storm approaching. It arrived around 9 pm. Lots of thunder and lightening and heavy rain, but by that time we were safely under our veranda. We just sat in shorts and T-shirts watching the torrential rain filling up the swimming pool.
 Earlier we had done our daily tasks, which amount to not very much. Our current guests seem very happy meaning we are doing things correctly. Long may that continue.

 16/01/2012
  80mm of rain last night, not good, it makes the bloody grass grow, not to mention filling up the pool, tho it does cool the water down a bit. The weather was not too special today, hot and cloudy, not ideal for gardening but better than direct sun. I have planted a tree and  transplanted some bird of paradise shrubs which grow readily here, whether they take to being moved I don’t know, we will wait and see. We have spent a great deal of the day catching up with our blog, we had fallen so far behind the shiny thing is red hot! Don’t seem to get much feed back guys!!