Another narrow escape

We mentioned rain on our way up towards Brisbane. Indeed it did rain -- heavily and it was a fairly miserable journey in all. However, as soon as we crossed the Queensland border we had blue skies and sunshine and NO RAIN. Oh joy. It has continued that way and we have not seen a cloud although it IS cold in the mornings until the sun has had a chance to warm things up. Imagine our relief on reading the papers the other day and seeing pictures of several of the places we had just passed through -- under water this time. How often has this happened now?

We will be celebrating Jessica's 14th birthday on Tuesday. How time flies. While she is very much a young lady in many ways, at the same time she is a great soccer player and will be playing in a match this afternoon. We have to split up as Dylan also has a concert at the same time and we have to support both!

Derek is off to Townsville to work on a rugby league match and will be back tomorrow. This is quite a regular event. He was not working the other day so he took us to Noosa -- a very nice resort.

More soon.

Back on the road

Finally, we are on the road again, heading already for the next pitstop (Brisbane) to allow Isobel a little longer to recuperate before we set off on the safari. It is pouring rain and flooding is forecast between here and Brisbane for the next few days. It could be interesting. We are using the van's very efficient heating system for the first time. Very comfortable.

Hello, we are still here!

Apologies to our followers. We have been silent for a long time. This is because after the eye surgery we took off for ten days to catch up a bit with the places we had missed by having to hotfoot it to Sydney. Canberra in the autumn was beautiful, if cold, we caught up with an ex-colleague of mine from Ecolint, Geneva and an ex-colleague of Warwick's from the ILO. Both were such fun after such a long time. We had to head back to Sydney for a specific date to follow up on the surgery and to broach another problem, which was getting more and more worrisome. In fact I had developed a hernia in the scar of last year's surgery, which was growing and when I saw a specialist about it he left us in no doubt that it had to be fixed. The risk of strangulation was too big and the idea of going out into "Woop-Woop" with it was not good. So that has been done and was more dramatic than anticipated. It has not been much fun to say the least and I am again very weak and fragile (not good at that) so we are still here, waiting for the go-ahead to move on at the end of next week. It has been great to have the support of the family through all of this and they have been super but at the same time looking out of the window at our van sitting there is heart-rending. We are about two months behind schedule and we need to be up in Queensland. Apart from anything else it is so cold here, which is not what we came to Australia for! So assuming I get the all-clear from the surgeon on Monday we will be on our way before next weekend although having to take it easy. We will stop off in Brisbane where we can again enjoy the hospitality of family, by which time I should be on the mend and ready to embark on a safari with the Winnebago RV Club which goes up through the middle of Queensland to the Gulf of Carpentaria. It sounds great fun. We hope we can do this.

Warwick is his usual patient self, extremely supportive through thick and thin although I am sure the poor guy is quite pissed off deep down.

So back to blogging soon, I hope. Watch this space.