Dusk

.Dusk, Whitsunday Island. The calm of the evening after a beautiful day.

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Off to Townsville Australia.

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Off to Townsville
Leaving Surfers paradise was a bit of a mission; because the street was completely blocked we were not able to walk just next door with our luggage to the bus station. We were forced to call a taxi to take us right around a big block and back up the street to the meet the bus. We could have walked the suitcases around I suppose as they are on wheels but it was just too far. As taxi drivers ourselves we were very embarrassed to ask the poor driver to just take us next door. He didn’t even bother to put his meter on, he said just give him what we think it is worth, so we paid him what we would charge back in NZ for the same distance, but no tip as he didn’t go the way we asked him to, taking the long way round wasn’t in the equation for us.
We quite enjoyed the hour-long bus trip to Brisbane airport, relaxing in the sunshine, not having to drive. There is a 4 lane highway all the way, a toll road and quite new I think, a good fast highway.
Landed in Townsville on a lovely warm sunny day, Daphne, Erle’s sister was there waiting to pick us up, lovely to see her and be taken back to her cosy flat in the suburb of Roselea. Daphne has fairly recently retired and has not been too well of late, we found her quite down and depressed and lonely and unhappy, all that will change! We shall make it!
We all relaxed and chatted over duty free whisky and a bottle of wine for me, catching up on a years absence. Daphne has plans for entertaining us tomorrow, we are going visiting an old friend that Erle also knows, I don’t but that is not a problem, I can get on with nearly everybody. Michal turned out to be a Yugoslavian native though he has been in Australia a long time, we all got on well for the morning. He showed us around his big garden and plucked a ripe Papaya from his tree and gave it to me, I might be his friend for life as a just love fresh ripe papaya, we shall all have it for breakfast for most of the rest of our holiday. Showed us his ride on mower his prized possession, but wouldn’t let us ride on it!
Michal’s home is a genuine old ‘Queenslander’ built high above the ground on poles, to keep the house cooler and free of snakes and other nasty things, he has made his den in the lower ground floor of this house, he said he only cooks and sleeps upstairs as it is so much cooler downstairs and his dog lives down there too, we found it rather comfortable there too.


Views from the top of Castlehill in Townsville. Towards Magnetic island.
And over the city,

Daphne then drove us around Castlehill to a lookout over the city, nice views from up there, right over the city of Townsville and out to Magnetic Island.


Once we were back home again we told her to pack herself a bag for a four day holiday in Airlie Beach, The Whitsundays cause we were taking her for a short break away.. She wasn’t at all keen, quite happy to lend us her car so we could go, but that was not what we wanted so we twisted her arm and forced the issue, and said we were all leaving in the morning whatever. I had to pack up some food from Daphne’s fridge as she wasn’t going to, so into the eskee chillybin went the papaya, bananas, yogurt, weetbix, butter, marmite, ham and tomatoes, and bread, that should pretty well cover all the breakfasts for us all plus the milk and coffee jar.
We shall be leaving by 10am in the morning – all of us!

filling our days in Surfers.

Filling our days in Surfers Paradise
We never intended to do very much while in Surfers Paradise, we just wanted to blob out on the beach and relax, so that is basically what we did. Wandering down to the beach to stroll along the squeaky sand and people watch most days, and as we passed several gaming halls I was kept happy too, playing a few coins and winning back many more, we just what I had in mind for this week, we are just not theme park kind of people, we love to swim but the idea of a hyper super slide made us feel quite ill, so we found other smaller treats to enjoy.
Every day as we walked through the nearby Mall a nice Asian lady would paint one of my finger nails, just a tester, each day she painted a different image , like flowers, butterflies, stars, so I ended up with most of my nails painted; each one different!
We did have a lovely day at Carrara Markets a really huge largely under cover market place full of small stalls full of everything you can think of. We seemed to dash between all the food stalls, mainly the wonderful and new to us Greek food, there is a custardy pie made with filo pastry we simply loved! Dolmades are also yummy. Didn’t need any lunch that day and not much dinner either.


We also spent a day at Pacific Fair a huge in fact the biggest in Australia market place with over 350 small shops with lots of food outlets too, but no Greek food fortunately! As this day was hot we found the icecream sellers more interesting.

We also spent a great (for me; not Erle) day at Jupiter’s Casino where I managed to play most of the day and only lose less than $5.00, I feel so lucky everything I touch seems to win at the moment, love the feeling.Every day we made for the big spa pool and as we had it to ourselves we could swim in the warm fizzy waters to our hearts content.


The best day we had was the day Erle’s son Gregor and grand daughter Emily came to visit us, we had so much to catch up on as I had only met Emily once before when she was a shy 5 year old now she is a delightful young women. They stayed to go out to dinner with us at the RSL Club, the meals there were superb inexpensive and delicious, a great evening was had by all of us I think. Gregor took this lovely photo of the two of us in a strange iron chair out on the street when we all walked down to Wendy's to buy icecreams to finish our evening off sweetly.I had hoped to be able to visit a dear friend who had just had an operation on her knee but were unable to, however we had a lovely chat on the phone. Next time we will meet up when she is not so incapacitated.



We also had to fun of watching repairs being made to the bulging building wall, from our birds eye veiw, watching the very tall crane was interesting to us and we could do so while enjoying a glass of cool wine from the safety of our balcony. We were never in any real danger.


I am not a big shopper so we only window-shopped as we wandered around the streets, fielding off Estate agents wishing to sell us apartment s in various sky- scrapper both new and old; some of them quite affordable too, but hardly buying anything, a good cheap holiday really.
Queensland Apartment buildings are all actually owned by some big conglomerate or other, but each separate apartment is privately owned from the conglomerate and are furnished and maintained to their standard of personal taste and their bank balance., then the appartments are let out to tourists like us while the owners don't wish to be in them. We feel the folk who owned our rooms were not rich at all and didn’t use the rooms often, there was not a single extra item beside the basically required things in it and lots of painting and repairs were needed, we asked for the three light bulbs that were not working to be replaced, and they were but we just managed with what was there otherwise, we used dining table chairs outside on the balcony as there was nothing else.
All too soon our 7 days were over and we were preparing for the move to Townsville and the rest of our holiday.

Sunset among the sky scrappers of SurfersParadise.

SkyWatch for this week is Surfers Paradise for me, do check out many more lovely skies from around the globe.
These pretty sunsets between the sky scrappers took our eye, on different days. Fascinating to people who do not have a sky scrapper in sight usually.

Danger in Surfers paradise.

Danger at Surfers paradise: Second day.


This morning we decided to go shopping and stock up with food for the rest of the week that we could easily prepare for ourselves, mainly breakfasts and lunches as we had already discovered the RSL (Returned Serviceman’s League} Club across the street where meals are very reasonable and very good.
So, loaded up with big bags of goodies from the supermarket we headed back to the Islander apartment. We ran into the Manager of the building standing at the base of the Backpacker’s part of the building with his arms out stretched around the corner of the 12 story brick building sort of holding it up and stopping it falling on anybody! He said ‘Go back. Go back. Cross over the street and walk that way, there are issues here. It could be catastrophic just catastrophic, the whole building could fall into the street any moment’ He was panicking big time.

( If you look just above the man in the white shirt, there is a white sign on the wall, the bulge goes right through the sign, on the black part of the wall, it can be seen if you enlarge this photo. Top photo shows the appartment block we were on the 8th floor of and the Vegas in Paradise gambling rooms I frequented sometimes.)






Far too curious about what was wrong to heed his advice we demanded to know what was the problem, so he showed us where the wall was starting to bulge along the front. The bulge can be seen in my photo if you know where to look but it is hard to spot. Having seen the bulge we walked smartly across the road and into our part of the building, wondering about how safe we might actually be should that wall crash into the street. Soon after a few road cones were placed across the pavement to stop people walking past, but the road was not closed to traffic.

The next day we went to observe how the bulge in the wall was. By now the bulge how grown and several bricks had broken along the line of the bulge, a few more road cones appeared on the pavement, but back packers living in the building were not evacuated.
We watched from a safe distance how this wall slowly became worse over the days, til finally on the 5th day after the bulge started four Police cars arrived with lights and sirens blaring to block of the busy street. They stayed all day and all night before they were replaced with other security people to guard the area and keep sightseers away. A very big crane arrived that could reach right to the top of the building, it had a big red basket on wires within which a group of building inspectors were carried up to the top to inspect how much damage had been done. They checked extremely well every brick, virtually, while they were deciding how to approach the fixing of the problem.
The news and TV men arrived to watch all the action and report upon it, the papers and TV were full of it that evening.

It appears that the damage was only in the three foot strip across the wall that we could see, and maybe lower down too. Subsidence had occurred beneath the corner of the building where a stream used to flow, years ago, very heavy rain had fall over the previous month and the area had scoured out. The inspectors decided to pin most of the brick to the concrete backing then slowly remove all the broken bricks and replace them. Ofcause they will have to fill in the subsidence beneath the building too, but I am not sure how this will be done or how it will be stopped from happening again.
We were absolutely safe at all times, but I quickly got online to leave messages on my facebook page to let family in Australia and back home that all was ok with us.

On our way to Australia

Our views from the 8th floor of Surfers Paradise




We have family and friends in Australia, all in the hot tropical north of Queensland, so we were easily seduced by the advertised cheap fares. It was cheaper to book a 7-night trip to Surfers Paradise and go on up to Townsville for another week, than to just fly to Brisbane and handle our own accommodation. So we were happy to have 7 lovely days in Surfers paradise, I have not stayed there for over 40 years so I expected plenty of changes and I certainly found them! Back then, it was just a small town of single story buildings, I stayed in a small motel beside to beach, but that’s long gone.
Surfers now is: just a tourist haven, a concrete jungle, Theme parked to extinction, a jumble of highrises that block the sun, full of beach bunnies and topless at that, yes its all of that, though we didn’t see too much topless bathing as it was too cool, but Surfers is more than that. There is some great cafes, a beaut Casino, apartments for all at every price range, some of the biggest shopping centers I have ever seen, and ofcause the great beach, it also has still got the wonderful squeaky to walk on sand that I can remember loving so long ago, plus a lovely climate and lots of friendly relaxed people,; not all of whom are tourists, about half of them are fellow Kiwis who have made the big shift to Auzzie, to the warmer weather and the better pay that can be had over there. A few years ago we might well have upped -camp and moved over too, but now we are retired and happily settled in Picton, also a tourist town! Tourists are happy people.
We left Picton on the Bluebridge ferry and stayed overnight in Wellington, our Capital city. I had only just booked into the hotel when the leather strap on my handbag pulled away from the bag! Lovely, at 7pm at night and leaving on the 4am plane! But this is our biggest city, the receptionist told me to go to the railway station and look for a little Indian mans leatherwork and bag repair shop. I didn’t think it would be open still, but it was and he was more than happy to repair the bag while I waited and only charged me about $5.50 for his work, which was just perfect, I can’t tell where the repair was made now, so as I was delighted with the job I actually gave him a tip! Not like me who doesn’t believe in tipping ever, but I gave him $10 and told him to keep the change. He gave me a big smile and wished me a happy holiday.
Getting up and out to the airport by 4am was hard but we managed it and had a good flight to Brisbane, it didn’t take long and we were on land again, but Erle’s library book was not, he left it in the pocket of the plane!
Its still there, if you find it send it back to us!


The bus took us to our accommodation, in a 12 story highrise! Half of which is cheap back packers and our half is much more expensive fully self contained 2 bedroom units with a balcony and a wonderful view. A trifle shabby and rundown, a good lick of paint would not go amiss, but still it was comfortable enough for a weeks stay. And there was a great big spa freely available to us, which we put to good use.
We were quickly unpacked and back out on the street wandering down to the beach, it was too chilly to go in for a swim but it was nice just to get out feet wet and squeak the sand as we walked along snapping photos.





Views from the beach on an overcast windy day, still plenty of people on the sand and in the water.

Storm clouds near Bowen

Big black layers of storm clouds gathered as we drove towards Bowen, in Queensland Australia, eventually some rain did fall, but we seemed to drive right under and through the storm as we continued on our way to the Whitsunday Islands and wonderful sunshine.
Taken through the windscreen as my Husband drove.
Find more good skies on Sky watch each week.