A day out!

 21/04/2012
  Billy -no -mates today, as we didn’t meet any of our friends at the boat club. Brother Stephen should have gone into hospital for an op to blast away some kidney stones a couple of days ago, but it’s been deferred because he has an eye infection. He was a no show along with the rest of the boys who generally show up on Saturday afternoon. No worries we just sat on the deck and quietly got hammered!

 22/04/2012
  The mad French woman who lives in the village (she is actually very nice, just a little eccentric) had left 6 mature palm trees yesterday whilst we were out, so planting them out was my main job for today. The whole of the yard is mainly grass and needs something to make it a bit more attractive. I have planted shrubs, palms and stuff that may well be weeds but it looks good.  Anneck, our mad French lady, is quite a character here. She rides around the village on her pink bike with her two small dogs in her basket at the front, and always wears an Easter bonnet with flowers around it. We must get a photo of her before we move on.
 Planting done we spent the afternoon at the boat club planning a BBQ at ours for next Saturday, with brother Steve, Charlotte, Trevor, Warwick and his daughter Sarah, should be fun. Rounded off the weekend with sundowners with Allen and Lorraine.

 23/04/2012
  We had our first day trip out today , the first since Barry was here at Christmas. Our lack of excursions being down to lack of legs. We packed up our eski, put budgie and towels in the van and drove up to Mossman Gorge, about 50K north from here.
 The coast road is truly spectacular , where the reef meets the rainforest, and when the sun is shining it lives up to it’s name of the Turquoise highway. We had visited the gorge in 2009 but couldn’t recall much about it. Since then there has been a boardwalk added making life a lot easier for old stumpy though she isn’t actually using sticks, boot or legiron! We wandered around the gorge and rainforest but didn’t bother going for a swim. Don’t know why as the water was crystal clear and plenty of it after the wet season. . There is a brand new swing bridge over the river which was built by the Royal Australian Engineers in 2010. Very smart!
 Still no sign of Bob the builder.

 24/04/2012
  Tomorrow is Anzac day and a public holiday so we had our weekly coffee get-together this morning (Tuesday) which will confuse me for the rest of the week. We have got into such a routine any move away from the norm, confusion sets in!
 Bob the Builder finally showed up and like all good builders gave the job two coats of looking at, scratched his head and went away muttering. He will have to make a report to Brisbane. Another couple of weeks and it won’t be our problem, we will be out of here.
 In the meantime we have a few tanning days plus BBQ’s now the weather is back to normal……..having said that, the forecast is for a minor blip at the end of the week.