Down...over...across

If you are driving to your new posting in Defence, one question is always asked by your workmates, ‘Are you towing something?’ Defence provides a generous daily allowance to drive to your new posting as well as a reasonable number of days to make the trip. If towing, the daily distance allowance is reduced, thus increasing the number of days that you are entitled to travel and therefore the allowance. In 2014 we returned from Darwin with an ancient and character filled 1984 Jayco camper trailer, affectionately known as Matilda. This time we have gone up market with an Avan Cruiseliner Adventure Plus known as Morrie; the name deriving from the fact that it is a van and one of our favourite singers is Van Morrison. Morrie is proving to be a good investment. Compact, light to tow and easy to set up Morrie is providing convenient, inexpensive and homely accommodation. With all the mod cons, microwave, air con, three-way fridge, running hot and cold water we are living like royalty i...

Compared to Cairns, most places can realistically be called the ‘big smoke’. Sydney and Canberra give us two big highlights and one constant smokey challenge. Seeing our scattered family is special. An early Christmas celebration with the extended Quadrio clan is a treat. Richard’s brother Scott and his wife Jenni welcome fifteen family members for an early Christmas lunch. An annual tradition that started almost ten years ago, provides a memorable tribute to the year. Each family produces an i-movie which showcases the year’s highlights. Set supposedly to only one song, each movie features achievements, birthdays, sporting highlights, travels, moves, births and much more. Richard’s eighty-five-year old mum, aka Gran and Great Gran is the only member of the family that appears in every presentation. No one can really believe another year has flown by. The day finishes with a memorable afternoon tea with our youngest son Pete and his wife Ashley in a very tiny ...

What is your address? It is a simple question that until recently we have never had trouble answering. Now it’s absurdly complicated. Richard has a QLD license to an address in Cairns that he has now vacated. It’s over six months since Wendy finally moved out of our family home of over two decades in Eastwood. It’s still five weeks till we arrive in Perth where Richard needs to find a unit to rent.  Wendy spends her time at Arakoon and being Mum and Grandma to our family scattered around the country, as well as spending time with Richard. Home is basically at 78 Smoky Ridge Drive, Arakoon, a short distance from South West Rocks. Visiting for three days in transit is a wonderful blessing and a significant amount of work. Maintaining any house is a challenge – doing it by distance adds to the complexity. For Richard, mowing the lawn, removing lantana, spreading mulch, pulling weeds and feeding the fruit trees is a taste of heaven. An afternoon walk on Gap Beach is a highlig...

As survivors of the 1960’s Social Studies curriculum we have a reasonable grasp of this nation’s regions. The coastal fringe, the golden slopes and the western plains. One that alluded us was The Granite Belt. Nightly on the news in QLD one cannot escape the plight of this area of the Great Dividing Range which stretches from Queensland’s Darling Downs to the New England region of NSW. Centred on the town of Stanthorpe this is a region that is all but bone dry.   This normally subtropical highland region is presently dominated by death and dust. Gum trees are dying. Scrawny stock graze on dust. Towns are limiting residents to a mere100 litres of water per day. It’s pretty grim. This is not the arid western area doing it tough. This is lush, productive country being brought to its knees by an unprecedented prolonged lack of rain. Thankfully this week they did receive 30mls, a mere drop in the ocean of what is really needed. We stay 40kms west of Armidale...

Do you know of anywhere on the east coast of Australia where the sun sets over the sea? We know of one, but this week we found a second. A touch over 700kms south of Airlie Beach is a place we had never heard of, until a friend at church suggested that we make it one of our stopovers. 1770. 1770? Yes, Seventeen Seventy. It is one of only a handful of places on the east coast where Cook came ashore during his epic sea voyage of 1770, on HMS Endeavour . Someone had the idea to name the place, after a date and to build a memorial cairn to LEUT James Cook. This was dedicated by the Fleet Commander of the RAN in 1926, while the original HMAS Sydney lay anchored in the bay.   On the headland at dusk we are joined by about 40 people including backpackers, tour guides offering champagne and a couple of leather clad bikers (who actually arrived after the sun had set). It is indeed a glorious golden spectacle as the receding sun sets the smoky skyline ablaz...

Is there anything sweeter than sugar? Driving through North Queensland today, bound for Airlie Beach, the so called ‘Dry Tropics’ are not all dry. Having endured the driest November in a hundred years, most of the landscape is painfully parched. Dust seems to be the only outcome for a farmer ploughing her fields in the midday sun. Approaching lunchtime, however, the picture changes in an instant. Brown is replaced by green. Water flows through deep channels. Pipes carry moisture into thirsty fields. The Burdekin Shire boasts wonderfully fertile irrigated land. Green acres as far as the eye can see, disappointingly, boasts just one crop, sugarcane. There is one thing sweeter than sugar and that is water. The Burdekin is blessed with a vast underground aquifer that brings the land to life. The western diet is increasingly criticised for including too much sugar. Sadly, this incredibly fertile district, which could be producing vast amounts of nutritious food, is only satisfying...

There are many words that start with the letter F. The F in FNQ means Far North Queensland. To say FNQ is a special place is a complete understatement. Incredible scenery, wonderful weather (okay its occasionally a touch wet and warm), no traffic and friendly, happy people are hard to beat.   A week in Cairns is not enough. Ten months and we have only scratched the surface. Cairns for us in 2019 was never plan A, but sometimes plan B, C or even F, results in adventure, challenge and surprise. The reef draws the tourists but stunning waterfalls, Green Island, the Atherton Tablelands and Cook’s town (Cooktown) were unexpected highlights. Rusty’s Markets (an amazing weekly fresh food market) and Mungalli Dairy (providing the creamiest bio-dynamic milk) were our culinary delights.   Now belongings are boxed, the removalist truck has departed and we are heading south. Cardwell, two hours south, is not just a half way stop to Townsville. Cardwell’s picturesque shorel...