I know you have been waiting for a picture of The Big Mango!

I love the Big Mango!!! Just kind of sitting there outside of Bowen on the way to Mackay!!! They do have great mangoes here!!!
And best wishes to Josh and Amanda who just got married outside our hotel room.....I feel like an eavesdropper or something! You gotta love a wedding where the groom wears a tux and flip flops and some of the guys in the crowd are sipping beers during the ceremony!!

Smash Bang Crash

So today I had an accident......not a bad accident and so totally not my fault!!! I was sitting in the car park at Cole's (grocery store) waiting to get out of the car while I was thinking about what I needed to buy when this woman tried to fit her car into the space next to mine (one empty space between me and the next car) unsuccessfully. It was like one of those slow motion things when I saw her coming and thought "surely she does not think she can make it in here at that angle....." and yet she continued to come in and scraped the passenger side of my car, stopped, pulled out, proceeded to go park elsewhere seemingly oblivious to what she had just done!!! So I sat there kind of in disbelief, thinking she was going to park and come over and see what she did but nope.....I got a paper and wrote down her license number and as she finally got out of her car i went over to her and said in my meek little American voice "excuse me, but did you realize you hit my car?".. To which she responded---"oh dear, did I? I didn't think I could fit through there." Sigh. So we walked over and she looked at it and told me that that would rub out. Well, since it is a hire (rental) car I didn't want to mess around with it too much so I made her write down her name, phone number and address and I wrote down mine to give her. She must have been about 80 and said that "they owned the bakery" which does not mean a hill of beans to me and I really didn't care---I just know she hit my car when it was parked!!! So....after I got in the store I called Chris and told him and since it wasn't that much damage he said as long as I had her info we would just call Avis and tell them. The poor thing was all flustered and confused and what was I going to do??? I don't know what you do here!!! Argh!!!
Then I got home and as I was unloading the car and had the door open a bird flew into the car and I had to chase it out!!! Gee whiz!!! My simple day got weird!!! And we have a bunch of geckos in that house---I gave up trying to catch them to relocate--they can eat the spiders. I picked Chris up around 2ish and we started for Mackay---I stopped to take a picture of the Big Mango (will post that later) and then we traveled on till we got here after 6 , unloaded, ate a yummy dinner and now we are about done in for the night. Chris will work tomorrow, I am going to go walk the beach and explore and then we will spend a nice relaxing weekend exploring.

And the headlines today in the Townsville bulletin were about Rogue Wallabies terrorizing Pensioners (senior citizens)> I will try to post the link here. You think you guys in the US have problems...they aren't anything compared to this!!! More later!
http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/article/2008/10/30/19695_hpnews.html

Wednesday

It's been a few days since I last posted so I thought I would throw up a few lines. We are in the Burdekin for 2 days----the good news is that there is water in the house again after last week when Chris got a shower but it disappeared once he left for work!!! All is back again so life is good. When we packed up the car this morning I noticed water bubbling out of the ground by the mailbox where the water cover was so that did not look good!!! Our landlord is in New Zealand until Nov. 23 so I contacted our realtor who came right out and checked it, sent a tradie out and they determined it was a council issue. Just got another email from her that it was passed on to the council and as far as she knew it had been taken care of so hopefully by the time we get back on Sunday night all will be well and taken care of.

Had a lovely lunch out today with a friend who I met through Lorrae and she invited another friend so there were 3 of us and it was just nice to get out. Everyone has really bent over backwards to include me in things and make sure that I get to know people and I really appreciate it more than they know. I know Chris has worried about me meeting people but I have met more people here in the 4 months (yep---it has been that long already!) than I did in a year in Iowa for whatever reason that is!

Tonight we have a dinner out with some of the guys that work at the mills down here and their spouses which will be a great way to meet some more people. Chris has been trying to do this for awhile but our schedules had not worked out until now to take advantage of it.

Tomorrow we are headed to Mackay and Chris will work on Friday and then we will spend Saturday night so that we can do some sightseeing and touring around on Sat and Sun. One of my friends told me about a great national park where the kangaroos come down on the beach at dusk to play and get water so I hope we can see that! We are trying to find some neat places to take Aaron and Thom when they come in a couple of weeks. it will be here before we know it!!!

Will post more pictures soon. Hope you all were able to see my pictures on Picasa---if you didn't get the link and want to see them email me and I will send it to you!

A Lovely Day in Paradise!

View from Castle Hill overlooking Townsvile

Another view from Castle Hill

Dorky looking tourists with Townsville in the background

Is this not the coolest looking tree???? Found in Queen's Garden

View of Castle Hill from Townsville

Pretty pretty butterfly

Another pretty butterfly

Finally had a few more pictures to post today. I think I took about 125 today in a very short time but we went to a couple of very scenic places! Got up early (it is that middle aged thing of not being able to sleep in anymore) and headed into town to get a mocha and a muffin and hit the Cotters Market on Flinders Street. Didn't really find much other than a small basket an indigenous woman was selling made out of palm fronds which was pretty neat but it was nice to walk around. Oh Chris got a couple of pairs of sandals (buy one get one free--can't pass that up!) and then we headed up Castle Hill. We had gone there in March when his boss took us but we had no clue at that time what we were really looking at so it made a lot more sense today!!! It was a perfect day and if we ever move in town that will be my goal to walk Castle Hill several times a week. There is quite a following of Castle Hill walkers, runners and bikers and it is a grueling trek but would be incredible to be able to do!!! But today we drove!
Then we headed to Queen's Gardens which is a huge park with all of these wonderful plants and trees and birds and it was such a great place!!! I could have stayed there for hours!!! There were a few people walking dogs but not a lot of folks there when we were there so we just wandered around and I took tons of pictures that one of these days I will put on Picasa and share so you can see them. It was probably one of our best days yet here because it was just so relaxing!!! So relaxing that Chris came home, read the paper and now is napping!!!
We were happy to talk to Micah today and caught up with him. I think he is doing fine but I sure do miss him. He has a terrible cough and I made him promise me that he would find an urgent care to go to tomorrow---I would imagine it is bronchitus. That is the hard part about being on the road and living in a hotel----hard to get to the dr. if you need to go.
It will be a fun week this week---going to the Burdekin on Wednesday and meeting a new friend for lunch, going out to dinner with a bunch of the CSR folks from there on Wed night and then off to Mackay on Thursday so Chris can go to the mill there. We are going to spend a couple days sightseeing so that will be a wonderful weekend away. I can't wait!!! More to explore!!! More pictures so keep your eyes open!!!

Saturday

Some purty flowers of our neighbors.

Trying out the fabulous new electric mower.....reminds me of our Greenville, Ohio days when we had an electric mower and a really really long cord to mow an acre....

Part of my catch and release program!

Some kind of gecko guy who was in the house (I am waiting on Thomas for the proper identification) -----I know that they eat spiders and little bugs but he can do that outside, not inside. I am getting braver, aren't I??? These guys are cute actually and I don't mind them but they move FAST!!!! I had to lure him into my highly overpriced plastic pitcher (I think I had to pay $10 for this one!!) and get him transported outside to safety.

Going to go pick up Chris' new rental car today--they finally have figured out the best way to get him a car is to do a 4 month lease at a time and it will be cheaper so we are off to pick up the Camry and return the Holden, find a mower finally and spend the rest of the day working maybe on the yard???? We will see. We both crashed early last night---the weeks are catching up with us or something! Next week will be busy so we need to rest up now!!!

A better picture of the sugar cane burning!