The start of the safari

Leaving Brisbane we went first to Toowoomba, which of course was the scene of horrendous events during the flooding of a few months ago. One wonders how it could have happened. Then on to a small place called Millmerrin for one night before staying another night in Goondiwindi,

The Victoria Hotel in Goondiwindi

the scene of more flooding. Today we reached Nindigully (population 9!) where the safari starts and we are installed in the grounds of the "oldest pub in Australia". Somehow we have seen this claim elsewhere also! We are surrounded by Winnebagos of all sizes and descriptions, 22 of them in all, and are getting to know our fellow travellers. Dinner is laid on at the pub tonight and promises to be good if perhaps a little chilly since we don't all fit inside and therefore it will be served outside. Brrrr! A matter of wearing layers.

The Nindigully pub

Back on the road at last!!

Hello people. We have spent a very pleasant time with Derek, Gillian, Jessica and Dylan in Brisbane. This included a short spell off to Noosa with the kids in the van. Quite an experience but good fun. We are now on our way to Nindigully to join the Winnebago Club safari to the Gulf of Carpentaria. We are looking forward to it enormously.

It was great to catch up with with Phil and Judy Neck at their beautiful place in Tweed Heads and with Preben and Gunnel Larsen in their super place in Sanctuary Cove. Those friendships are so precious. Hoping we will be able to reciprocate one day in Perth.

Blog will be as regular as communication permits as we advance north through Queensland.

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.

Two repair jobs well done

In the three weeks since we reached Sydney much has happened and we have got to know the ins and outs of the Australian medical scene as well as the Hills bus system. Both can be a bit of a challenge at first. Travelling around here in a large Winnebago is not an option but fortunately once one understands the vagaries of the buses, they work quite well.

The said Winnebago was duly delivered to Winnebago headquarters with an ultimatum that we did not want to see it back until all its woes were fixed definitively this time. They kept it over a week and I must admit there was goodwill and a genuine attempt to satisfy us (probably for the sake of peace also!) They replaced the oven with a new one, also the table, the toilet cassette and the big offender, the kitchen tap AND the whole water inlet system, where the pressure was the cause of the tap blowing all the time and flooding into the drawers below. Sundry other minor bits and pieces were replaced under warranty which by rights we should have paid for, and the van was returned to us, full of diesel, by a driver rather than our having to go and get it. We have not yet been away with it since all of that but we expect everything to be running well when we do get away next week. All in all a pretty correct job after all the grief it has given us.

The other repair job, Isobel's face, was done on Monday and although at the moment she looks as if she has just lost a boxing match, the job itself looks as if it has been well done. The post-operative scans are really very interesting. The surgeon was a bit surprised at the size of the hole but he has reconstructed the floor of the eye cavity with a titanium mesh which is fixed in with a couple of screws. He also picked out the shards of bone one by one and released the nerve, which he now expects has a good chance of coming back to life although not just yet. Since this is really the worst part of the whole thing, hopes are certainly high that he is right as he was originally saying the face could be numb forever. Not a pleasant thought.

It was certainly interesting to deal with a large city public hospital after so much experience with the Clinique de Genolier! One needs TIME and PATIENCE. Time was not such an issue but the summoning of enough patience to sit for often several hours waiting in a queue of about a hundred people who have all been given the same "appointment" time was hard. One doesn't even dare leave and come back as one has only dropped to the bottom of the queue by doing so. Lots of crosswords and sudokus were the order of the day.

It was good to have the support of the family during all of this and although the surgery was part of the reason we didn't get away on a whole family camping trip, it has not prevented us doing day trips. Rob and Lesley both had the week off and we have had some nice outings. We will be heading off on Thursday for about ten days to backtrack on some of the places we missed and to go back to Canberra before coming back for May 9th to start another round of medical check-ups. The nights are a bit cooler now and of course it is getting dark earlier so it will be interesting to see how we do. Canberra was 3 degrees the other night. We do have a heating system in the van, which we have not yet used so it might be an idea to get the instructions out.

Today, Easter Sunday, is sunny and promises to be very pleasant for the barbeque to which we are all invited. There will of course be an egg hunt and a huge surfeit of chocolate.

Happy Easter to all.

Large fly in the ointment

The mountains were beautiful, the ski resorts interesting. Compared to the Swiss ones we know so well, there seemed to be a shortage of skiing space -- lots of trees and huge boulders in the way. We would love to see it all in the winter. The purpose-built resorts looked fun, however.

Coming back to the coast meant warmer nights and beautiful resorts. We tend to seek out the quieter ones and found a beauty at Pambula. We could have spent a few nights there had it not been for the fly in the ointment.

This took the shape of a stupid accident a few days before arriving here. Accident-prone as always, Isobel managed to crash face-first into the bank of a creek which we were crossing on one of our walks, when either her foot slipped on a rock or the rock moved. It all happened so quickly it is hard to know exactly what happened. Normal people, when they break bones, break arms or legs but this is evidently too mundane and she succeeded in breaking the floor of her eye socket! Ouch!! The long and the short of it is we had to spend the best part of a day at the hospital in Canberra after a CT scan in Bega and tomorrow will carry on to Sydney for a further appointment at a hospital there where surgery will have to be done to put a metal plate in to keep her eye where it ought to be. It seemed to make sense to do it in Sydney where at least we will be with Robert and Lesley and not in some caravan park in Canberra.

Needless to say the mood is not jubilant and some of the enthusiasm has gone out of the trip. This is of course temporary and within a short time, all should be well. Today we have toured parts of Canberra and would like to come back. Australians are usually quite rude about their capital city but we found it pleasant and interesting and would like to see more. The weather helped us to be positive as it was a beautiful day -- a rare occurence in Canberra, it seems. What a pity we went out without the camera.

More (and better, we hope) news soon from Sydney.