Visual Proof

Some of the frolicking at the vineyard. Don't I look the picture of joy? 

Kangaroos engaging in frolicking of what looks like a very wrong kind but 

I assure you is completely innocent. 

The campsite at Repton. Only a marginally better view than 

Gin and Paul's place. So very jealous. 

The jealous-making view. 

Can you thieve a view?

We Didn't Even Get Robbed

We were under warnings of high crime, wire fences and general mischief on our way into Moree. Happily the worst that happened was having dinner in the RSL with the saddest menu in the land. The drive from Coffs was a lot longer than planned thanks mainly to a grey nomad with his caravan and no idea how to tow the bloody thing. Seriously, I think he decided to take the thing for its first tow on a long drive over some windy mountains. On the plus side, I didn't road rage him, so I should probably consider it a victory. We stayed in a motel in Moree to treat ourselves. I understand that motels don't normally count as treats, but there are no hotels once you hit this far west, so it's as good as it gets. I was quite impressed because they had a modern bedspread rather than one with strange pastel swirls from 1992. I think that counts as 5 star. Dinner was pretty early so we could get back to the important part of the night quickly- watching tennis and drinking wine. We did a quick circuit of the town centre, quick by virtue of the fact that it is three blocks long and decided on the RSL because we couldn't work out which one was the good pub and, quite frankly, Thai food in the outback frightens me. The menu was tremendously sad, not for what was on it, but just because it had been typed up on somebody's home computer and they were too lazy to put a description of the dishes, a list of sauces, or tell you what the sides were. I thought I might try and be healthy which was probably an overshoot and asked if I could replace the chips with vegies. I got such a blunt "no" back that I'm convinced I was served by Barbara from bank land. "Computer says no." Wednesday was our Moree day. Really, Moree was only a stop because it broke up the drive, so it was really a bit of a 'sleep in and do very little' day. We found the nice pub for lunch and a cute bookshop where I bought even more books to add to the pile that is taking over the living room. We mostly wandered around town and checked it out. It was actually quite nice- something I was not really expecting. I'd guess there is more money there than you'd think- there were boutiques selling designer clothes and homewares. Originally I had planned to go to the Artesian baths. Note that I said 'I', Gray has very little interest in this planning stuff. Although it would have been nice to see the sight one of the freedom ride moments, I think that bathing in 37 degree water when that is also the air temp is a bad idea. My book was great, though. I'm still promising photos but the net speeds out this way are just too poor for it. I know you want to see me frolicking, but you'll just have to wait.

The Next Migration

On another move to the tropics now, but very late in starting the travel diary I promised myself I'd do. I'm too much of a slacker to ever build a media empire. So far we've stopped at Newcastle and Repton (20 min south of Coffs) and are now in Moree. The first two stops were for visting, the current one is just because Newcastle to Charleville is just too long for sanity. After I finished hiding from the movers to avoid freaking out about how they were touching my stuff all wrong, we headed up the coast to Newcastle for our first stop: the brother-in-law's new deck. Okay, there was a house attached, but Rob did build a pretty good deck, so that's the part I choose to focus on. We had some of the best BBQ food ever along with a fantastic salad, although Rob would surely argue that the BBQ took the real skill as that was what he did all of Friday night. We ditched Rob and Katie after only one night in anticipation of the shitfight of holiday traffic that awaited us on the Pacific Highway. It was as shiteriffic as we had expected. On the way North, we stopped at Cassegrain winery just outside Port Macquarie for lunch, photos and carefree frolicking. It was good. We got into Repton pretty late, but still had enough light to get the tent up. Our stop in a town none of you have ever heard of was to visit my friend Gin who was also lovely enough to organise her baby shower for the Sunday afternoon I'd be there. The baby shower was the main reason we got up there a day early. We had planned to do a straight drive through on Sunday morning but 23km traffic jams don't lend themselves to punctuality. Coming a day early meant that Gin had other plans Saturday night, but she popped down for a quick visit to gossip and admire the lake while Graham set up the campsite for me. More proof that I am lazy. I threw Gin out at 8:15 when we realised that we had to move soon if we wanted dinner that didn't have a 'Mc' in front of it. Aussie pizza from the North Beach Bowling and Recreation Club. Does it get any better? I stole a coaster. I'll do the rest of this later because I'm getting all bored and hungry now. You have a great rant about grey nomads to look forward to. You might also get some photos if my mobile modem decides to upload them at more the 5kbps.

I'm Not So Sure About This Dog Thing...

I will begin by reminding/informing you that we live in defence housing. It is vital that you understand the way this works ie we take whatever house we can get our mitts on and are then stuck with it regardless of how we feel on the matter. Generally this hasn't been a huge problem, we have lucky enough to have some very nice houses with no gaping holes appearing in the bedroom floor. Actually, that's something they will move you for. Even defence don't want people getting out of bed in the morning and dropping through to the carport.
So, our houses have all been quite good, and we've considered ourselves quite lucky. Our current house is lovely, mostly. We have a nice, big, kitchen, which, despite is size, suffers from a great dearth of storage. This means that we have lots of bench space but no pantry to speak of. I just kind of throw food into the cupboard and cross my fingers that it doesn't all fall on my head the next time I open it.
Our yard is also lovely and big which is remarkable when you consider that we live in one of those horrid estate suburbs with 18 bedroom homes on blocks of land the size of a small car. I think the developers may have been a little bit stunned at having so much yard space as they seemed to have no idea what to do with it. Apparently they decided to just thrown down some turf and runaway to deal with more manageable yards that they could simply concrete over. I don't imagine this to be very entertaining space for a dog to spend all day in. The canine equivalent of watching Senate Question Time all day.
Our neighbours do not have a lovely big yard like us. They have one of the aforementioned concrete yards the size of a Barina. Ordinarily the state of the neighbours yard is suitably low on the list of "things I give a shit about" unless, of course when there are an awfully large amount of power lines running into their back shed or there is an odd odour emanating from behind said shed. In addition to owning a yard the size of a loaf of bread, the neighbours also run a child care centre out of their house.
Some of you may be starting to see where our problem lies. A small echoey yard, screaming kids and a colourbond fence do little to create a calm dog. Steffi does not like the noise. At all. She hates it so much that she has developed a new sport, a sport which involves throwing herself at the fence as hard as she can to STOP THE DAMNED NOISE!!!!!
The small children didn't seem to appreciate this. Nor did the neighbour who we like very much, but who is also absolutely shitscared of dogs. A bad situation for all became worse at about the moment that Steffi managed to pop one of the fence panels out with her acrobatics. Sure, there was not a big enough gap for her to get through, but that doesn't matter when your outrageous dog phobia has you convinced that the dog is about to burst through the fence and eat you.
Council rangers were called. DHA were called. I had a small heart attack. Then the astounding thing happened, our property manager suggested we ask for a move. I would never have thought of this as the only time I have seen anyone actually receive a move was in the earlier instance of the gaping hole in the bedroom floor. Spurred on by the giddiness of having a government worker on our side, we applied. And. We. Got. It. We have to move ourselves, but WE GOT IT.
Note: You may be propositioned in the nest few months with requests for help and offers of booze and pizza if you acquiesce.