On board Blue Heron

Kate finds a stowaway!

Now the holidays have kicked in I have spent a few moments selecting a video or two for those people who wonder what it was like on board on our ocean trips. The first one is on the first or second day before our "sea legs" arrived!




The second one is Hamish and his father on early morning watch as the sun is rising. A bit of male "bonding". Which meant I got to sleep in a little - yay.




This is a bit of fun at Vila.

There are some more but Lindsay recommends I embed some of the good ones from his youtube site as it doesn't have the 10mb limit that blogspot has. I'll try that tomorrow!

Coochiwoochie

Here we are out enjoying an early morning walk around Coochiemudlo Island while Kate and Hamish are at surf life saving. It look us 2 hours to walk across and back. A pleasant morning, so nice we decided to do it more often. So far we have been out again for a morning walk 0 times! Oh well we had good intentions but we will walk around the island again next Sunday.

Just when you thought it was safe to go to the beach!

We have just got back from a fabulous morning on Coochiemudlo Island - a small island on Moreton Bay about 1-2 miles off Victoria Point. It is very pretty and reminds us a bit of some of the Hauraki Gulf Islands.

It was Kate and Hamish's first time at the surf life saving club there. They had great fun while we watched and enjoyed the atmosphere from the shade of some pine trees.

Hamish enjoying the boards.

Thumbs Up!



Bottoms Up!!

Long time no blog!

Well goodness me time flies when you're at work! Here we are and it's September. We have been here in Redland Bay 7 months.

Hamish is enjoying high school, and life in general, especially since starting up playing hockey again. His team came third in the local competition. It took him time to get used to playing on real turf after years of astro turf on the North Shore. Anyway now it is swimming season and both Hamish and Kate have signed up to a local swim club and will also be joining a surf life saving club called Coochiemudlo Island Life Saving Club, starting next term (Depending on the qualifying swim.).

Kate has been really loving her CAPA dance classes owned and run by her gorgeous and very talented cousin Kristy. They had their studio performance last holidays and now it is practice for the exams. She has settled into her new school well and is looking forward to going on her first school camp on the Gold Coast in November. Better still is the Loop Camp also on the Gold Coast which is run by a network of school chaplains on week two of the September holidays.

We have had visits from both sides of the family with Nana Phyl in June and Grandma Gwen and Grandpa Ken in August. It was really lovely to have them over here. We finally bought a decent car and took them both to the Tambourine Mountains. These are in land from the Gold Coast. Very pretty and full of neat nicy-nacy type shops plus a great lolly shop run by a very nice man which was, of course, the kids favourite shop. We want to go back and check out the tree top board walk that has been advertisied on tv.

Today we decided to go and check out the film set of the Narnia movie. There is a replica of the Dawn Treader and it is on hydraulics . It is built on the end of Cleveland Point. We saw it before filming began with my parents. At that time it was fairly quiet there and the film makers had built a small grandstand for the public. Well the nice grandstand has been removed. We had to park quite a distance away as the road was closed and walk to the Point. There were plenty of others there. I wore a very bright pink top that I had given to me. But it was no good. I didn't get talent spotted but neither did any one else in our family! We think we saw Prince Caspian - a very yummy looking bloke who was standing round chatting. The kids thought they caught a glimpse of Lucy but couldn't be sure. You can see why movies cost so much. We were there about 45 minutes and they seemed to film a 2 minute shot at least twice. We saw some strange Narnian creatures. And the pirate like crew. I think the best bit was the yummy coffe and chocolate ice-cream I ate on the way back to the car.

We have started the process of importing Blue Heron - Lindsay the Brave has been doing battle with a couple of government departments and managed to get the paper work sorted. A big achievement. Blue Heron passed the termite dog inspection. She also got a very good compliment from the inspector who also did a moisture reading of the interior. He said it was the driest boat he had measured.

I am enjoying teaching here in Australia. This is despite a very unsupportive state government who refuses to pay teachers here a decent wage. They are the lowest paid in Australia and significantly lower paid than NZ! Here the hourly rate looks ok until you get told that you will only be paid for 25 hours per week. Plus if lucky enough to be offered permanent work you can easily be sent to where ever the department wants to send you. Hmmmm. The great things are the lovely people I work with and I have had some very cool professional development. The kiddies are super with a good splattering of kiwis thrown in!

What have we been up to?

Hamish's 13th birthday. We took a friend from 

school to The Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. 

Finally we got to see and cuddle a Koala!

 Also saw Dingos, Wombats, Snakes and 

probably the best bit was the Birds of Prey.

 Hamish got to hold a Sea Eagle - quite

 heavy for a bird 3 kgs plus a 6ft wing span.

A Barking Owl.

A family picnic at the Gold Coast in March. Fairly lumpy surf but still good fun.

Daisy Hill Koala Sanctuary - We went here in January but there were no Koalas. We did meet this very friendly Wallaby and a Kookaburra.

Shooting the tube at wet-n-wild! We all had a great day here.

At South Bank. A fake beach in the centre of Brisbane beside the river.

Hi ho hi ho its off to work we go...

Well we are still in Brisbane and have decided to stay put for a while. Hamish is now in year 8 and over here that means he is going to High School. Kate has started at the same school as her mother and her cousin. We are really enjoying being close to family for the first time ever! We have two lots of cousins nearby. Over the Xmas holidays we had a bit of a look around. Brisbane is a lot like Auckland as a city. The people are extremely friendly and amazingly helpful. Photos to follow.