Finally -- Dingo Beach!!

Sorry for the long silence but our little Dingo Beach is out of range for our roaming broadband and mobile telephone so unless we wanted to go a kilometre up the road and sit in a hot car with the computer on our knees, we were incommunicado.

We had 10 full days there and they were emotionally charged. We had gone there firmly in the belief we were going to sell the place. Firstly, Isobel fell in love with the house all over again, and secondly the garden was such a disaster it would be unsellable at the moment. Also, the downturn in the market has caused so much property to be for sale that there is very little point in our adding to the list. So we took it off the holiday rentals list and therefore out of the hands of the real estate agent, and were very lucky to work out an arrangement with the man from whom we bought it that he will come back and live in it and put the garden back in shape. He reckons it will take about a year, but that suits his situation and since the holiday rental thing was not working anyway, we do not feel we are losing anything. The garden was beautifully landscaped and has just been allowed to go wild by the guy who was being paid to maintain it. Grrrrrr!! It does not take long in the tropics, especially after the wet season when everything takes off. If he does get it back to where it was before, we may not be so keen to sell. We will have to go through all the agonising all over again the next time we come back.

Warwick was in his element as he is becoming a real bird fanatic and we have such a huge variety of birds there. He is becoming quite expert at recognising them and has them all noted down in the bird book, where we have seen them and when. The sounds from outside each morning were fantastic.

A very friendly butcher bird

One of three blue kookaburras who visited

Blue kookaburra taking stock

It was great to catch up with the people we had got to know quite well and we were very pleased to get a really warm welcome in our own right and not just as "Karen's parents". There was one couple that we were sad to miss, as they were not in their usual place at the pub. We did finally hear she was not well. Lo and behold this morning in Townsville as we were sitting having a coffee her partner arrived at the same place. It turns out she is quite seriously not well and is in hospital here in Townsville. So we spent quite a bit of time with him catching up and we hope she will be better soon. The coincidence of meeting him like that was incredible. We also spent a lot of time with the neighbours on each side and in spite of a fair bit of necessary spring-cleaning we managed several sorties to the beach. The stingers are not yet in, so swimming was OK. Isobel did freak out on one occasion when something dark and large swam by very close to her, but was relieved when it popped its head up and she realised she was sharing her bit of sea with a green turtle! Having now heard about a 64-year-old swimmer being taken by a shark on Cottesloe Beach in Perth just a couple of days ago, one is a little wary of large dark objects in the sea at close proximity!

We would have willingly spent much more time at Dingo Beach but we are already so late we couldn't afford any more time. Since Winnebago had offered us a new sturdy tap of the kind that will now be in all new Winnebagos, we came back to Townsville to have it installed. There were inevitably other small issues to resolve, so the Beast has been with the dealer today and is now ready to tackle the Top End. We do hope the monsoon will hold off until we get across. We will set out to Charters Towers tomorrow on the first leg of the long journey across outback Queensland through the Northern Territory and back to Western Australia. It is getting quite hot now, the precursor of the monsoon, so the air-conditioning might soon be in use.