Join the club

When we first moved up to our little rural environs, we were continuously quizzed by the coastal residents about the other people who live waaaaay up here on the mountaintop. There are persistent rumors -- similar to the type you hear in certain areas of the States about the kinds of places brought to mind when you hear the Deliverance soundtrack for example -- but we’ve determined that tales of swinging farmers are a combination of the townies’ ignorance about country life; they simply can’t imagine what passes for entertainment without shopping, dining, and pubs to occupy their time, and a heapin’ helpin’ of plain ol’ xenophobia. I’m happy to say we’ve met quite a lot of people and haven’t yet been approached to join any secret society (though this may be a result more of our general physical appearance and less our neighbors’ morality) however, we are definitely members of another local club: The Ex-Pat Club.

I initially worried residents might resent foreigners moving in on their turf, much as I did the flocks of newcomers perpetually descending upon Florida, but no worries, mate, we are in the majority here. Off the top of my head I can name a dozen or so German, Swiss, and Austrian neighbors, two Brits, a Canadian, a couple Kiwis, a handful of Thais, a Torres Straights Islander, a Zimbabwean, an American or two, even an Iranian, and most of the other Aussies here hail from other regions as well. There are still a few old-timers around, third and fourth generation families easily recognizable by their surnames posted on all roads not named after creeks or mountains, and they have been friendly and welcoming. Basically, if you're not Aboriginal, you're an immigrant. Admission to the club, what passes for the secret handshake, is as simple as answering two questions: 1) Where are you (or your accent) from? and 2) How did you end up here?


We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations, far away. We have learned that we must live as men, and not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.

-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

What next?

After working a couple oddball jobs, Jorge replied to an ad in the paper for a construction manager. He emailed off a general resume with “references and additional project details upon request” and received a prompt email back requesting an interview and those additional project details and references. After the interview, where he was happy to learn the position was more administerial and not running a crew, something he hopes to never suffer again, he was offered the position which includes housing, food, and travel allowances and told to name his salary and preferred schedule.

Sound too good to be true?

It’s in Papua New Guinea.

The girls don’t want to go and I can’t say that I blame them. They love their school and new friends too much to move again and have really have blossomed these past few months. We’ve all settled in quite nicely; however, we don’t have an endless supply of the green stuff. We initially planned for a six-month stay and recently juggled finances to accommodate our new extended plan with the knowledge that the sale of our properties would afford an investment in a permanent situation here.

Have you been following real estate trends lately?

Jorge chose a six-week on and two-week off roster. His two weeks off would be paid and the company would fly him back and forth, or fly us all up there when desired.

We came here with the goal to spend more time with each other, working together as a family, and this certainly runs contrary to our plans. It comes down to the money because that is a finite resource (the Melbourne Cup is only an annual event, after all), and this opportunity affords infinite new possibilities. I mean besides earthquakes, cannibals, malaria, tsunamis, dengue fever, volcanic eruptions, headhunters…


Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course…

-- Homer

The Kids Are Alright

Everyone wants to know, how are they doing, really?

For your consideration:

Exhibit A

The big crack you heard, that was Grice coming out of her shell. She nominated herself as a candidate for School Captain (a move which surprised us all), spent three weeks agonizing over the content of her speech, presented it Monday along with ten others vying for the position, and Tuesday was declared the winner in a landslide election. Next year she and her male counterpart will announce and present the weekly award certificates at the student assemblies Monday mornings, and perform the duties of Student Council member: organizing fundraising efforts and dances, and representing the school at formal events.

Exhibit B

Elle voted for someone else.


Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix.

-- Harry S. Truman

Turkey Day

As an ex-pat, I’m feeling a tad left out this time of year, especially when my Yahoo page loads and the first thing I see is Martha’s glistening gravy boat and a link to six troubleshooting tips for the perfect mashed potato topping. I’m not knocking Martha, some of my best non-traditional Thanksgiving traditions were inspired by her, like Pommes Anna and sweet potato fritters (met by my father with a weak smile and a look as if awaiting a punchline or the appearance of some REAL potatoes), cranberry upside-down cake, and haricot vert with garlic and almond slivers.

As I was typing that I thought: Wow. With all this Thanksgiving talk I can almost smell the turkey cooking now. Wait. I do smell it. Or something…


(A BRIEF INTERLUDE WHILE I CLEAN UP THE CHICKEN SOUP THAT BOILED OVER)

Anyway, getting into the holiday spirit, I decided to list a few things I am thankful for today:

SELF-MOTIVATION

I haven’t got much, but I appreciate those around me who do.

-- Sarabelle surprised me this week by announcing she had gone in to see her principal to request taking advanced courses next year in order to graduate earlier. The principal will speak with her teachers about it.

-- Grice is presently working on an assignment to create a book for the first graders on energy. Her classmates’ efforts average around five pages. Grice is engrossed in the subject and has a rough draft comprising twenty fun-filled pages thus far.

-- Jorge has three jobs, like a proper immigrant. This morning he began with the second coat on a paint job for a neighbor, then went off to his regular daytime employment at a resort, and when he is done there he goes on to pull an overnighter as a security guard. We nearly laughed ourselves silly over that last one. The girls wanted to know if he had to wear an embarrassing uniform or got to carry a gun (no and no.) He is actually guarding the costume department and wardrobe for a movie that is shooting in town. Fool’s Gold stars Kate Hudson, Matthew McConaughey, and Donald Sutherland, and is partly set in Key West with Port Douglas standing in for the southernmost isle. Imagine that, it’s cheaper to film halfway around the world and pretend its Key West than to actually do it there. Sure he has to stay all night with creepy mannequins staring at him, but he gets to sleep (his snoring scares away the bad guys), help himself to the food in the fridge, work on his real estate course, make more money than at his day job, and is privy to all Kate Hudson’s measurements. When he finds some extra time, he will finish his volunteer work cleaning and repairing the elementary school’s tennis court.

A DECENT HAIRCUT

I took a big chance today and got my hair cut by a complete stranger. I had been holding out for a return trip to the States so Todd, the guy I had been happily going to, could have at it again. Even if I had to wait another six months. See my photo up above? That's Todd Hair. He seriously scared me at my first appointment after I requested he just “do something with it,” flinging hair up in the air over my head as he sliced away, keeping up a constant chatter and rarely taking his eyes off himself as he spoke -- you couldn’t blame him, a big strapping lad who beautician’s license photo reminded me of a young Richard Grieco, though Todd’s eyebrows were more devilish – but the results were wonderful. Of course, Todd was a stranger when I first went to him, but our mutual friend, J, spoke very highly of him and her hair alone was a big endorsement.

Then J told me that Todd was killed in a car accident in September.

I got a little teary while the new hairdresser shampooed me today. She did an adequate job, didn’t get any soap in my eyes, even did a relaxing massage-y kind of thing, but it wasn’t nearly as invigorating or as fun as having your whole scalp rearranged like Elmer Fudd’s in The Barber of Seville episode, while listening to Todd’s latest exploits and his big, booming, contagious laugh.

Her cut was very precise, not exactly a bad thing when it comes to a haircut, and though she asked far too many questions instead of delivering a cheery, snarky monologue, to her credit she didn’t try to sell me any fancy skincare treatments even if my complexion currently resembles someone in a Faces of Meth “after” photo (it’s just hormones and humidity, Mom), and for that I am especially thankful.

FRIENDS

Old ones, new ones, ones who surprise you with a bottle of hard-to-find ant juice.

NEWSAGENTS WITH LARGE SELECTIONS

Went in for a few school and office supplies, came out with The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel; Lisey’s Story; Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (wherein I have discovered I am an Oxford comma kind of girl); and another Lynne Truss effort, Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door. I also noticed Carl has a new book out, Nature Girl, but I decided to show some self-control.

THIS

...along with the built in iSight camera on my laptop enables me to scan in all the UPC symbols from all my books and get my library under control. Best program ever.

HELLMAN’S/BEST FOODS MAYONNAISE AND THE ONE GROCER IN ALL OF FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND THAT CARRIES IT

There is no substitute. Slap some on white bread, add a little stuffing and a lot of black pepper and think of me.

Happy Thanksgiving!


'Twas founded be th' Puritans to give thanks f'r bein' presarved fr'm th' Indyans, an' . . . we keep it to give thanks we are presarved fr'm th' Puritans.

-- Finley Peter Dunne [Mr. Dooley]

Happy Birthday!

Awwww, look at those little ridges!

(Donna, I replied to your note below.)

We received an excited phone call this morning: Ashaki was missing all morning but they just found her and she was having her puppies right now!

We jumped in the car and arrived to find her tucked under the woodpile with her new litter. When they settle in a bit, we'll go pick out a little girl.


I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

-- Alexander Pope (on the collar of a dog)

Funky

As The Wet gets underway I am noticing some new things, particularly the way things smell. There is a peculiar scent I now associate with The Wet: Body Funk, a condition that borrows its appellation from an ineptly named piercing and tattoo shop down in trendy Port.

I noticed it immediately when we moved into the first house. A subtle whiff of putrefaction, nothing as obvious as a dead animal though nearly as gagging; one not easily identified or located, but one which punches you in the face when you finally discover its font of nastiness. An appalling, wandering, ghastly smell; heavier, cheesier than any standard mold or mildew stank you’ll ever come across. It turned out to be the fabric shower curtain the owners had left behind, the source pinpointed after I had the misfortune of taking too close a sniff. The second instance of the creeping crud was detected while viewing a property for sale up near Cooktown. This time it was our tour guide. The realization that this stench could manifest itself in human form was truly frightening. Good God, could I ever possibly smell like that? But granted, this guy was a hermit who lived in an open shed, a roof and no walls, out in the bush, whose hygiene appeared to be slightly lacking to begin with. Recently we looked at another property for sale, a charmingly ramshackle Queenslander on five acres, a bargain, that we might have snapped up were it not for the odiferous emanations wafting out of the bath house. The termite damage, the bedroom that was nothing more than an open porch, none of that that fazed us, but, put it this way, our own family’s body funk we might be able to tolerate, but we are not going to spend money for someone else’s. A few days ago I again crossed paths with the noxious scent. My friend, who is generally clean and well kempt, opened her car door and it blasted me. Was it her or her vehicle? I’m not going to get close enough again to find out, but if she could stink like that…

I showered before bed last night and woke this morning smelling like someone’s grandfather. Maybe I should reconsider my mother’s Christmas offer of a new bottle of Chanel No. 5.

Like lice, apparently body funk is just another inconvenience of life in the tropics.


That smell…that smelly smell that smells smelly…

-- Mr. Krabs

The OK Corral

Yesterday our friends invited us greenhorns over to watch, help, stay out of the way, whatever, while they tagged and branded seventy head of their cattle headed off to market. They thought we might enjoy it and we did. We watched mostly, we helped a little (I closed one chute door once), and stayed out of the way a whole lot, especially when that last little heifer freaked out and caused a heap o' trouble kicking our friends' dad squarely in the...well, ouch, use your imagination.

After a while, the girls got restless and went off to round up some wild mulberries.




As I was a-walking one morning for pleasure,
I spied a cowpuncher a-riding along.
Whoopee ti yi yo, git along little dogies,
It’s your misfortune and none of my own,
Whoopee ti yi yo, git along little doggies,
For you know Wyoming will be your new home.

-- Anonymous

Ashaki

See the big belly? Less than a week to go...

Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, is bordered on the north by the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, but the girls do not care about the literary roots of the name, nor the fact that it comes from one of their mother's favorite stories, they refuse to call their dog Limpopo.

Any other great ideas?


Somewhere, what with all these clouds, and all this air,
There must be a rare name, somewhere…
How do you like “Cloud-Cuckoo-Land”?

-- Aristophanes (Birds)

Melbourne Cup

The Kentucky Derby ain’t got nothing on the Melbourne Cup.

Jorge, without my prior consent, volunteered us to assist today running the Sweepstakes that our local tavern was hosting in conjunction with Australia’s most famous horse race, with twenty percent of the take to benefit our elementary school. Good thing we went too because the other key person did not show up making Jorge and I two-thirds of the team. We sold tickets and raised about $1,000 for the school’s P&C.

As with any official school sponsored event, there was alcohol served so Jorge and I spent the afternoon swilling champagne because unlike the Derby there is no official drink associated with the event.

Unless you live in Kentucky, when was the last time your teachers stopped their lessons and made you listen to a horse race on the radio? Grice was fortunate enough to have to deliver a paper to the office and got to see it live on television with the rest of the staff. Several of the teachers wore hats. Apparently funny hats are de riguer. Men and women arrived for the prix fixe lunch wearing fancy outfits and “fascinators”, Australian for “funny hats”. The fascinating part was figuring out what bird gave his or her life to spend eternity perched on the head of these people. For weeks the Cairns Post has featured full-page spreads on Melbourne Cup fashions. For those who must know, I wore my fifteen-year old Liz Claiborne tropical print linen skirt and newer button down cream, French cuff blouse (the same outfit, sans pearls, I wore and ended up on the front page of the Boca Beacon with my boss and Catsitter Extraordinare for the premiere of Hoot.) It was hot and I was sweating, which almost inspired me to bet on Glistening in the Calcutta event, an auction for each of the twenty-three horses running in the Cup, because we all know women don’t sweat, they glisten, but Pop Rock was our first choice being the only name that rang a bell (our kids have eaten them and we are not so old that we haven’t enjoyed them either) until our hostess, the owner of the tavern, outbid us. Then I thought we might buy Mandela, being all politically correct and all. Instead, caught up in the excitement of the day -- and after having our glasses refilled several times -- we ended up wildly bidding on Delta Blues because it was the most American sounding horse after Pop Rock, and because Jorge had just spent a few days in New Orleans with his brother and niece surveying investment potential there before returning to Australia, and because it reminded me of Jorge’s buddy Mike, whose favorite blues tune is Stormy Monday by the Allman Brothers, and because, well, I don’t know, just because.

Our new landlord and his wife were there. Let’s just say there is no doubt we will be able to make the rent this month. And I could even afford a hat or two.

Melbourne Cup Results


Australia is a lucky country run by second-rate people who share its luck.

-- Donald Horne (The Lucky Country)

Moving

The last two weeks or so have been jam-packed. Grice and Elle had swimming for HPE (Health and Physical Education, pronounced “Haych Pee Ee”) which I volunteered to help out with all day and all week long, then there was a P&C (Parent and Community, pronounced the usual way) meeting and pot luck supper, plus the high school’s annual sort-of-near-the-end-of-the-year award ceremony where Sarabelle received a Merit Award, and we also packed up all our belongings and relocated to our newest temporary abode with all the difficulties of new phone and internet service, so please excuse the break in posting.

We’re now living in a guesthouse on the side of a mountain. The owners’ property includes most of the mountain, their fortress of a house up above us, and the 40-acre piece with the convertible stables, two creeks, and several ponds that they recently subdivided and will be placing on the market down below. The owners don’t mind creative financing, they don’t need the money, but are primarily concerned with finding good neighbors because the properties share access and water systems. They are taking us out for a test drive.

The cottage is only a one bedroom, one bath space, but it has soaring ceilings, plenty of square footage, an almost-gourmet kitchen, laundry, large screened back dining porch, and a very clean bathroom. The owners were beach resort developers so the place has the feel of super-roomy, upscale motel accommodations from the generic artwork to the headboard and hair dryer mounted on the walls. The best part though is the land itself. The property was formerly a working mine and logging site so there are trails and roads all over the place. Our landlord maintains the old roads, connected some others, and pushed a few new ones in too. From their house you can see the mountains all the way down south to Cairns, about a 90-minute drive from here, and if you take the path up past their house, you can see the sea. There’s a 90-foot waterfall and spots with names like Picnic Pasture where you can laze around after a hike through the rainforest. It’s like having your own private park. When I was around nine, back in the days when childhood was fun and dangerous, we visited friends of my father in Connecticut who lived across from a beautiful park with terraced rock gardens and heavily landscaped walks. With endless hiding places and armed with coffee cans full of marbles, we played the most fabulous war game ever (and nobody even lost an eye.) Now my kids can experience the same delights.

Elle, after a walk down the mountain where we discovered the back side of one of the horse paddocks, crossed a hillside covered with blue-tops, and found three ponds before visiting the creek this afternoon, excitedly said, “Let’s go adventure some more stuff, Mom!”


Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals: so that, unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape – he is a shaper of the landscape. In body and in mind he is the explorer of nature, the ubiquitous animal, who did not find but has made his home on every continent.

-- Jacob Bronowski (The Ascent of Man)

Elle stumbled out into the living room this morning in classic Elle fashion, underpants and bedhead, flashed her index and middle fingers in a sign of victory, and announced with a big grin, “Two more days…!”

Sure she has been missing her dad all along, particularly when Mom dishes out punishments, but since the extended phone conversation yesterday, our requisitions for goods and clothes, Elle has been especially excited. Dad is bringing back her one special request: Her white high heel sandals (actually Grice’s hand-me-downs from three flowergirl stints.) Totally impractical, I know, but Elle has a shoe fetish. Has ever since she could grasp objects in her chubby, dimply hands. Clothes? Toys? Who needs those when you can strut around in high heels and underpants?

Chris, our house and cat sitter extraordinaire, has officially usurped me as the Queen of Packing. All hail Chris! She was on hand to help Jorge with his transcontinental treasure hunt and managed to fit all the books, clothes, special stuffed animals, and blankies into two, small, airline-sanctioned boxes. Jorge has a few more last minute special items to secure before boarding his flight, namely a tube of Neutrogena Anti-Acne, Anti-Wrinkle Cleanser, because you don’t know how many years it took me to finally find a product that keeps my skin in manageable condition and one that targets that narrow demographic of women with zits in their crow’s feet and my current tube is just about empty; some Dell Crossword Puzzle books, because crossword puzzles here have incomprehensible Australian references; and maybe a Vanity Fair, because you can only occasionally find the UK version here, which unfortunately does not include US editor Graydon Carter’s fabulous anti-Bush tirades.

Two more days…!


You are eternity’s hostage
A captive of time.

-- Boris Pasternak

[Ed. note: Today at the newsagency I Iocated an International edition of Vanity Fair, only two months behind, but it did contain Graydon's Editor's Letter.]

Time Out

“There, there, dear, I’m sure he’ll be back…” accompanied by a sympathetic, knowing smile and the promise of assistance if we need anything, has been the general response when I answer locals’ queries about my husband’s extended (again) absence. Add to this the facts that our rental house has been sold, we have been given notice to leave, rentals here are practically non-existant, the choice properties are being snapped up by wealthy drought refugees from the south, Elle snapped the door off our brand new clothes drier by swinging on it, the real estate market in Florida still stinks, and probably will for some time, and you can see what fun I’ve been having lately. Without jinxing things though, I will say things are starting to look up…

In the meantime, when confronted with too much reality, I soothe myself with a heavy dose of fantasy. In addition to the second season of Lost, I have been catching up on all the movies I’ve been wanting to see but haven’t had time for: Donnie Darko, Finding Neverland, Crash, The DaVinci Code, The Village, Walk the Line, I Heart Huckabees, and Romper Stomper. Continuing in the Australian Legends vein, I think I’m due for a little Mad Max and maybe The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

With a three-day weekend ahead plus a couple more movies, I should be able to get through the next few days until Jorge returns.


Now I’ve got schemes
And I’ve got schemes
Let’s get together and dream some dreams
Let’s go
Time’s a wastin’

-- Carl Smith (sung by Johnny Cash and June Carter at the Grand Ole Opry)

After hearing the story from a friend about how upon responding to the shrieks of her five month old she discovered a huge python in the baby’s crib -- they did what any self-respecting Aussie would do, they put it outside. The snake. Not the baby -- and after I publicly outed myself as a paranoid with a vivid imagination who can’t differentiate between a psychotic murderer and my washing machine, and after breaking my promise to myself and foolishly watching another couple of scary movies, I must tell you this:

Last night around midnight, after being awakened by the two cups of coffee I had swilled right before bed, I climbed back under the covers and heard another noise.

Scritch scrotch,scritch scrotch

Coming from inside the house. In the kitchen, again. And I hadn’t done any laundry lately.

I crept through the house and in the dark could make out a bulky shape moving by the back door. By the size I determined the uninvited guest was not two-legged and by the scratching I determined it was not no-legged.

Please don’t be a rat…please don’t be a rat…please don’t be a rat…

I switched on the porch light to softly illuminate the intruder and found this:



Armed with a broom I tried to gently push the soccer ball-sized mass of spines toward the now open back door but he defensively curled up into the corner and eventually worked himself under the cabinet below the laundry sink. I called Jorge who offered no help, and only laughed about the most elusive creature in our neighborhood, the echidna, one I’d been trying to catch a glimpse of for months since he spotted some by our driveway coming home late one night, being trapped in our kitchen. The kids were woken up to experience nature face-to-face. Sarabelle was put on guard with the broom while I gathered coolers and trunks to cordon off the area. With the lights turned back off, he waddled out the door about ten minutes later.



How long was he in the house? We had been out to dinner for a couple hours. Did he nose the not-so-securely-closed door open while we were out? Or had he strolled in during the day while I had the back door propped open? We’ll never know. But he was inside long enough to wander around unnoticed through the house and leave us a surprise in the unused third bedroom.




Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start away sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!

-- Robert Burns (To a Mouse)

Whoops

Forgot to post some pithy quotations after the previous bunch of photos. I won't let it happen again.

Be not careless in deeds, nor confused in words, nor rambling in thought.

-- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Part 3 - Cont'd

Holiday Part 3

Yesterday was busy.

First on the agenda was a visit to the Rainforest Habitat Wildlife Sanctuary which is conveniently located in the same parking lot as our grocery store. We went early for their Breakfast with the Birds program. Bird poop in your orange juice (and on your table and on your seat) is a small price to pay for so much fun. Especially if you come with us, because we get the local price.







Besides the fantastic enormous aviaries, there are other walk-through animal enclosures loaded with native animals. This is a must-see for anyone coming to visit, unless you have ornithophobia or pteronophobia, in which case I recommend you stay far, far away.

After the Rainforest, and after grocery shopping, we returned to find the realtor waiting, unannounced, to show another group of people through the house. After that slight inconvenience, we packed up to meet our friends at a local swimming hole, one we hadn't seen yet.

Then it was movie night. The kids watched Two Brothers and Babe with our swimming hole friends while I cooked dinner, made popcorn, and enjoyed some adult conversation.

Today the movie festival continues with the conclusion of Lost Season One, a series Stephanie convinced me I should not miss and which Sarabelle, Grice, and I are now completely hooked on; a family favorite, The Nightmare Before Christmas since this is probably as close as we will get to trick-or-treating this year; and continuing our Tim Burton worship, Big Fish.

Part 2 - More Mill Pictures

Holiday Part 2

The next day we had to be out of the house because the realtor was showing the place so I planned a tour of the sugar mill. Before we could go though, a visit to a local clothing store was necessary. Safety regulations require closed-toed and closed-heeled shoes, which half of our group did not own (sandals and bare feet get you in everywhere else around here, even the grocery stores, churches, and restaurants. No shirt, no shoes, no drama, mate.) We lucked out on a great sale and even found a beautiful pair of leather boat shoes for one member of our party, one who didn't even need shoes. They were only $10.00 (AUD). How could I pass that up? On to the mill we went.

The sights! Humongous steaming pipes and vats; a massive antique steam engine so close you could touch it, and lose your arm if you were not pulled completely inside the machine and pulped into cane juice (but we were good and stayed inside the very narrow yellow safety lines and were fortunately not wearing any loose articles of clothing); a certain industrial beauty; our friends' dad up on a very high catwalk waving to us.



The sounds! Well, whatever deafening roar we could hear through our mandatory hearing protection. Thunderous clanging, whirring, and a constant hissing. Our guide wore a bull horn strapped to her side but none of her commentary could be heard. Luckily we had been briefed before about the process of making sugar and she held up information cards throughout the tour to explain which part of the operation we were viewing. We also had to don hardhats as part of the safety requirements, but with all the giant machinery, hot pipes, boilers, and steam venting all over the place, a hard hat wouldn't really help. All I could think the whole time I was in there was, "She's gonna blow!"



The smells! Mmmmm. Molasses. And other vague molassesy smells.

And of course we got to taste our way through the plant, sampling the syrup and various refining stages.



One of the difficulties in planning sightseeing activities while Jorge is gone is that if we did want to go anywhere majorly exciting, like, say, the Undara Lava Tubes for example, we would eventually have to do it again when Jorge got back, which is generally too complicated and too expensive. Well, this was pretty incredible so I'm definitely going to have to take Jorge when he gets back, after the kids head back to school. I have an affinity for factories thanks to Fred Rogers and Mr. McFeely. The best episodes of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood were always the ones where he toured a plant, whether it was a crayon, pencil, bowling ball, bubblegum, or shoe factory. Even the mushroom farm episode was pretty cool. Our friend told us to be sure and talk to her husband, he can give us a free private tour. I can hardly wait.

Holiday

Our favorite neighbors, afraid the children would have nothing to keep them occupied during their two-week school holiday, and who don't realize boredom is a wonderful catalyst for creativity, probably because they have no children of their own, stepped in by generously donating their Yahtzee and Trivial Pursuit games, taught us all to knit, and delivered a large supply of twelve-foot, freshly cut bamboo poles from their farm so the kids could build themselves a cubbyhouse.



In between those activities, we've done a fair bit of sightseeing.

First we visited High Falls Farms for brunch...



...and learned from the proprietors that there was a nearby glass studio so we went to take a look. Talk about hot -- and no, I'm not referring to the Swedish glassblower, though he was admittedly in nice shape -- there we were, in the middle of a rainforest clearing baking in the burning sun with three huge furnaces blasting while we watched the artist create a glass bird sculpture and then a ruffle-edged bowl.

Fight the Good Fight

If you can, please help.

Thanks.

Go "Just Cure It!"


Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!

-- Mother Jones

Licked

Maybe because we all looked like Professor Quirrell or because I felt like Professor Snape, we sat through the first three Harry Potter movies Monday. It was the only way to keep all four of us distracted and still long enough to kill all the bugs. The other suggestion was to take everyone scuba diving. At some point the creepy crawlies would simply be crushed by the pressure. I chose the less expensive option:

1 1/2 cups Olive Oil
80 drops Tea Tree Oil
60 drops Eucalyptus Oil
40 drops Thyme Oil


Nasty little buggers.

-- Oliver Wood (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

Simple Pleasures

Elle and her friend D twirl around on the backyard swing



Grice prepares to unwrap the biggest chocolate bar they've ever been allowed to eat



Elle keeps busy while Grice picks out some produce at the local farm stand


Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires.

-- Lao-tzu

Pick, pick, pick

If God knows how many hairs on our heads, surely he knows how many hairs I pulled off my daughter's yesterday, because I lost count after the first several dozen. All the websites instruct you to comb through wet, conditioned hair to allow the nits (a.k.a. louse eggs) to slide off BUT THEY LIE. These things do not slide off and after listening to Elle shriek a few times and finally flat out cry, we switched to the less painful removal process of yanking each affected hair out by the roots. She fell asleep in my lap, poor infested little darling.

I planned to keep her home again today to do a second round, but was assured by more than one parent that it is not worth having her miss school since the other kids are loaded as well, you are not protecting them nor protecting her, so after washing out the conditioner that she slept in under a shower cap to smother any live critters with citronella soap and coating her again with more conditioner mixed with a few drops of Tea Tree Oil, I pulled her hair tightly into two pigtails, ran through the cautions about hugging, sharing hats and hairbrushes, instructed her to politely and discreetly disobey her teacher's instructions to "lie like logs" on the carpeted floor at storytime, and sent her off.

Now it's Grice's turn.

Sarabelle and I have clean heads and we plan on keeping it that way. I purchased a bottle of disinfectant touted by the manufacturers as being the appointed producer of antiseptics, air fresheners, polishes, cleaners, and laundry products for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to sanitize all hair brushes and combs. The awful, ultra clean sickroom smell of the stuff fills our house and I wonder if this is what her royal highness smells like up close.

The next few weeks will entail a routine of combing Tea Tree-conditioned hair at least twice weekly to break the cycle and lots of laundry, although burning all garments and bedding in a large bonfire still holds major appeal, and I'll bet if we were to dance naked around the fire all the neighbors would keep their buggy little kids away.

Jorge sends his sympathies but we all agree it is much better that our dear, obsessive compulsive cleaner is on the other side of the planet.


Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation: not because any man's troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive what ills you are free from yourself is pleasant.

-- Lucretius

The Monkey Wrench

Now that Jorge has been out to visit the island, he has, once again, decided that it is just too valuable to sell. It's already priced too low and hasn't had any real interest. We're not giving it away. Even if the polar icecaps melt and it's underwater in a few years, even if a hurricane comes and wipes us out, even if the red tide never goes away. It's just a magical place and is now officially off the market.

The green house, which has very little chance of selling due to the current market in Southwest Florida, is still available, however.


They change their clime, not their disposition, who run across the sea.

-- Horace

Heebie Jeebies

Some people have wondered what it was that set us off on our homeschooling journey. Initially I had no altruistic or lofty goals, those came much later. Mostly, it was because it was easier than the alternative; easier to keep them in one place than registering, unregistering, and re-registering during our unsettled period; easier than traveling back and forth two times a day in a boat I wasn't very skilled at operating in questionable weather; easier than getting up too early in the morning; easier than preparing uniforms and lunches and participating in giftwrap and bake sales. Way easier.

My number one reason for educating my children at home, however, was to avoid this.

During our recent conversion to public education, we had been fairly lucky in avoiding this particular plague.

Until today.

Elle has had an itchy head for the past few weeks. Never saw anything. No nits, no bugs, no bites, no redness, no flakes. Nada. Nothing.

Then today, after moisturizing her scalp all night with coconut oil in an attempt to relieve a possibly dry scalp, and a discussion with the Sunday Market's soap crafter about the most beneficial bar for itchy skin, and the purchase of Neutrogena T-Gel shampoo and a special comb just to be sure, we found what appears to be
our first nit.

Go ahead, scratch your head in sympathy. It is feeling pretty crawly up there right about now, isn't it? Guess who she's been sleeping with all week since Dad left?

Giving credit where credit is due, the teacher/dad of one of the girl's friends did not snatch his daughter and run screaming in the other direction when I sought his expert opinion today. He said lice are a part of living in the tropics and no big deal. They have gone several rounds with the nasty little buggers in his home.

Tomorrow the kids will stay home and we will douse ourselves in highly toxic pesticide.

Or shave our heads.

Or both.


I consider your conduct unethical and lousy.

-- Peter Arno

Yee Haw 2

The search for used cowboy shirts proved fruitless (thank you, Becky, for your offer), but I did manage to pick up some cheapo bandanas and the costume above (purely for its shock value.) My kids, besides being discriminating, are also apparently unflappable. Instead of being horrified that I would suggest wearing such a ridiculous outfit, my desired reaction -- I only planned on maybe getting some use out of the hat and vest -- they actually argued about who would put it on first.

Sarabelle won.



Here are (clockwise from top left) our friend, K.; Sarabelle; Khan the Kelpie; and Sheriff Elle, on K's ranch, wearing their actual party clothes, heading out to the dance.



The dance was great fun, and yes, there was quite a large turnout. The corrugated metal hall had been decorated to perfection by Grade 6 and 7 students with hay bales, cattle horns, and a wide variety of native foliage. The Stumbling Mountain Goats took over after all the classes had performed their various reels and had everybody on their feet, including this reluctant dancer (but only when we were treated to a cover of The Soggy Bottom Boys' big hit, from one of our all-time favorite movies and soundtrack.)




And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

The Phone Call You Do Not Want to Hear from Across the Globe

Jorge is on the phone with his plans for the day and to wish us, all tucked in, a goodnight.

J: ...so then I'll probably go by the insurance office...

(From somewhere on our side of the line): BANG!BANG!BANG!BANG!BANG!

Me: What the f*** was that?! Hold on a minute... Holy s***! I think someone's banging on the front door...!


Now, "front door" here is a misnomer. We don't have one. Instead there are two sets of sliding glass doors that pass for a main entrance, added when the original porch was enclosed. This means that anyone coming up to the house can see pretty much everything, including the pajama-clad, unarmed (except for her telephone) woman, coming to investigate. A long silence ensues as I remember that I did not close the front gate, realize I did not leave the porch light on, and never forget for one second that neither set of sliders lock. I have to walk right up to the slider to reach the outside light switch.

Click

Nothing. No one on the porch. A few more exterior lights click on to cover the vast expanse of yard and...

BANG!BANG!BANG!BANG!BANG!

Me (into the phone): Oh my God! It's doing it again! What the f*** is it?!

More silence as I stand frozen to the spot wondering if someone is banging on the children's window. I step into the hall when it occurs to me that I have not turned on the hall light for soft illumination as intended, but in haste flipped the switch to their bedroom instead. The girls are brightly on display in front of the pitch black windows.

Sarabelle is rolled under her cot wrapped in her green blanket, looking like a giant caterpillar and Grice is immobile with the blankets over her head, doing a pretty good imitation of an empty bed.

S (weakly): Mom...?!

Me: Shhh.

BANG!BANG!BANG!BANG!BANG!

Me: (into the phone while the kids shriek in the background): It's inside the house.

Long pause while I muster the courage to check the back door.

Me: It's...it's... Oh, it's the washing machine. The load is unbalanced.

Loads of nervous giggles follow as we assure J we're okay.

J: Jeez, hon, you scared me! It sounded like the end of The Blair Witch Project!


Yes, we recently watched that movie again with Sarabelle and Grice, to demonstrate the simplicity and creativity of the low-budget horror blockbuster. My extended silences, panicky narration, and frequent use of expletives obviously brought that to Jorge's mind.

I went in to settle the girls back down, which took awhile with all that adrenaline pumping, as they relayed their earlier terrified conversation to me.

S: What if it's a murderer?!

G: What if it's someone trying to escape from a murderer?!

S: And they're all bloody! And the murderer is right behind them!

G: Or it's the murderer in disguise pretending to be hurt so we let him in...!

---

Things to Do

-- Get dowels cut to jam sliders shut
-- Leave porch light on day and night
-- Secure gate every evening
-- Remember sound washing machine makes
-- Never watch scary movies before J leaves on a trip


The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman; the lover, all is frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The form of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush suppos'd a bear!

-- William Shakespeare (A Midsummer-Night's Dream)

GWTW

Da DAAA da daaaaaaa
Da DAAA da daaa...

Quit it, it's so annoying. Do you have to do that every time?

Why, yes I do. I just can't help it, it's so stirring.

Sarabelle had to do a multimedia presentation comparing and contrasting life as a thirteen year old today with someone in her family's experience Way Back When. Because Sarabelle has that innate tendency to go against the flow -- much like I did when for International Day at school I chose to showcase my predominently English roots instead of my weaker Irish lineage, particularly since 75% of the class seemed to suddenly be as Irish as Paddy's pig, and taught the class as part of my multimedia show to sing "God Save the Queen," nearly causing our poor pastor, whose father had been dragged through the streets behind a horse for being a suspected IRA sympathiser, to have a coronary -- she decided to do her paternal grandmother instead of one of her parents like everybody else was doing.

Now, without blatantly giving away Gabby's age, I will only say that two of the greatest movies of all time came out the year she turned thirteen, Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. Don't bother doing the math. This necessitated a trip to the video stores in town to search for DVD versions and then a mini film festival when we got home.

We have cassette versions of both these movies at home and have watched them numerous times, but not until viewing them with the captioning on did I realize how much we had missed, especially Gone With the Wind. I had the opportunity to view it on its big screen, remixed and remastered, re-release a few years back, but even my ear, attuned as it is to a southern accent, or even Hollywood's version of a southern accent, lost about 20% of the rapid fire dialogue. And what fabulous dialogue it is, not even counting the hundreds of famous lines. With a running time of 238 minutes (and for those of you still not doing the math, that's two minutes short of FOUR HOURS), all of us, including Elle, sat in complete and utter silence.

At least until that famous score kicked in and I was shushed for humming along.

Da DAAA da daaaaaa...


She's just a pale-faced, mealy-mouthed ninny and I hate her!

-- Scarlett O'Hara

Yee Haw

Who knew my children were so discriminating?

Tomorrow night is the primary school's Bush Dance (which, by the way, does not mean we will be circling a fire holding spears and wearing grass skirts), a licensed function (which, by the way, does mean there will be alcohol served and pretty much guarantees a good turn out) with a live band and a cowboy theme.

My kids, used to the large trunk full of odd clothing and accessories that has enabled us to never (to the best of my short-term impaired memory) purchase a single Halloween costume or any outfit for their countless theatrical presentations, are coming undone with the simple request to dress like a cowboy, seeing as how the Costume Box was one of the items we deemed necessary to leave behind.

Apparently authenticity is the key.

---

No, I will not buy you a pair cowboy boots. No, I will not buy you an Akubra hat either. We live in an area of cattle ranches. These people are cowboys. Do you see what they wear? They're barefoot and they have on regular clothes. How about you wear your overalls?

That's a farmer, Mom.

Okay, how about you wear your camouflage shirt underneath your overalls?

That's a redneck, Mom!

What if we black out one of your teeth?

That's a hillbilly, Mom!!

Well, The Stumbling Mountain Goats are a hillbilly band...

MOM!

Okay, I got it. Think Brokeback Mountain, right?

Forget it. I'm not going.

---

So today's challenge, find a thrift shop and a couple of cheap, second-hand, plaid, button-down, long-sleeved cowboy shirts. The kinds Elle insists have "handcuffs" (which means, I think, pearly, snap fasteners at the end of the sleeves.) Come to think of it, handcuffs might be a fun accessory. We could do Frank and Jesse James...


Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger.

-- Abbie Hoffman

So close and yet so far

Jorge flew out last night.

Hon, I'm flying on September 12th...

Yeah, I know, just after midnight, but It's still 9/11 back in the States...

Not that I'm a complete paranoid, but those other guys, the liquids-on-the-planes guys, were definitely cooking something up and what more perfect opportunity to rub our faces in it than to pull another major terrorist act on the anniversary of the first, right?

So we dropped him at the international terminal (Really, terminal and depart, such funereal terms the airline industry chooses. Instead, why not Happy Travel Building and Time to Fly? They need to think about that.) carrying only a small backpack with a change of clothes and his briefcase. He was wearing flip-flops and had left behind his braided iron slave bracelet and belt to avoid the removing of shoes and metal detector delays (Please step over here, sir...) that are routine when he flies.

There was a brief mention of September 11 here yesterday and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) ran the documentary The Falling Man, which we watched, transfixed, last week.

Maybe I am fascinated with the images from that day because we were the minority of people who missed it all. The girls and I were in New Jersey and had gone to visit a local museum just after a call from my mother making sure we were not going into Manhattan and telling us to check out the TV, where a quick look showed one burning tower. Terrible accident, we thought and called my brother, working near Times Square, to ask if he could see it. He had not heard the news but headed up to his rooftop to watch. We arrived at the museum a few minutes later and after paying our admission to the woman who sobbed, "Terrible, isn't it?" figuring she must have known someone involved in the accident or was an overly sensitive person, proceeded to spend several hours alone enjoying all the exhibits. Not until my (ex) sister-in-law came back grey-faced from a chat with her museum co-workers did we learn what the rest of the world already knew. We saw the smoke across the river, but not until we attempted a U-turn in a driveway which turned out to be the municipal airport and were stopped by soldiers brandishing automatic weapons did we begin to believe it could be true. For the rest of the week we sat stunned, glued to the television.


Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

-- Francis Scott Key

Croc One

From yesterday's Cairns Post. Caption reads: Goodbye: Croc Hunter Steve Irwin waves to onlookers as he leaves Port Douglas marina on his fateful last adventure to Batt Reef Friday. Picture: Paul Hanley



And from today, after Jorge and I did the banking, picked up his airline ticket, and had lunch in Port, Croc One back at the dock with flowers in the foreground. Picture: Me.



Here are the tears of things; mortality touches the heart.

-- Virgil


Crikey!

-- Steve Irwin

Dunk

My excuse? Busy studying. Okay, so truth be told, there is a little more to it than just buying your agency and sales licenses. There are seventeen modules to complete. I am now one multiple-choice and four short-answer questions away from having completed five of the modules.

In the meantime, we traveled down to Mission Beach last weekend for a trip out to Dunk Island, which recently reopened after being ravaged by Cyclone Larry. The kids skipped school Friday and then again on Monday when we decided to extend our stay because the weather forecast was for one more day of perfection. You can see the depth of my committment to their institutional education. We snorkled and sailed and shell hunted in the impossibly blue water. We fished and went horseback riding. And ate. We played tennis and squash and Grice even discovered her passion, ping pong.

Grice also earned the title "The Girl From Snowy River" when the horse she was scheduled to ride (not the one below) suddenly reared up, not once, but twice, and Grice remained calmly planted in the saddle. It seems the poor horses were left to fend for themselves when the island was evacuated before the storm and they're still understandably skittish.


He sent the flint stones flying, but the pony kept his feet,
He cleared the fallen timber in his stride,
And the man from Snowy River never shifted in his seat—
It was grand to see that mountain horseman ride.
Through the stringy barks and saplings, on the rough and broken ground,
Down the hillside at a racing pace he went;
And he never drew the bridle till he landed safe and sound,
At the bottom of that terrible descent.

-- Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Melissa B...

...I just saw your comment. Here, for anyone remotely interested, are the listings for our Florida properties:

Island

They use the word "quaint," so be warned.

Mainland

Please feel free to email me: marlynnemail-schola (at) yahoo (dot) com


Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaay?
Proputty, proputty, proputty -- that's what I 'ears 'em saay.

-- Lord Alfred Tennyson (Northern Farmer: New Style)

Unbelievable!

These pictures came via email from the co-worker of a cousin of a friend of a neighbor. The neighbor, an Australian sheep farmer, was puzzled at the disappearance of sheep on his farm.

After a few weeks of sheep disappearing the farmer decided to put up an electric fence.

This is what he found!


Heh, heh, heh.


Rumor flies.

-- Virgil

Suzy Homemaker

I decided it was high time to repay some of the kindnesses done by our neighbors, and opted to present them each withone of these, the Florida State Pie (your tax dollars at work.) But to make that recipe required Graham Crackers. Australia does not have Graham Crackers. Australia does not have anything of the sort, though the local shoppers patiently suggested any number of alternatives to the frustrated Yank in the biscuit aisle. Thanks to the internet I was able to come up with this which was pressed into service, literally, as my pie crust (I’m not so obsessive as to bake the cookies and then smash them up again. C'mon.) Jorge, on one of his trips into Cairns last week to meet with Immigration Lady 2, was kind enough to honor my request for a food processor, as we have no kitchen implements other than forks, knives, and spoons, making piecrust creation nearly impossible, bringing the expense of each of the pies to around $75.00.

With the invitation to a real Australian cookout this past Friday, prawns on the Barbie and steaks from a freshly slaughtered cow, came the request for an accompanying dessert and side dish. The girls brought home two large sacks of oranges after a visit to the neighbors’ yesterday and today we’ll crank up the juicer attachment. It slices! It dices! It… Nevermind. I'm getting my money's worth.

About Jorge’s trip into town: He was granted a three-month Returning Resident Visa allowing him to travel to the US and back, to help finish up a job that has run into some difficulty. This opens the door for the remainder of us to receive Returning Resident Visas at some later date. Maybe we’ll still be back around the end of November after all?


What is more agreeable than one’s home?

-- Cicero

Daily bread

The days have slipped into routine.

Wake up
Walk kids to bus stop
Clean house, or not
Read
Meet kids at bus stop
Cook dinner
Go to bed

Oh, and do paperwork. Loads and loads of paperwork. Paperwork from two governments that love to crank out the wood pulp products in duplicate and triplicate, among them the Australian census -- which I considered fun, I love filling in all those little bubbles -- and a giant heap from the REIQ where I am applying for my real estate agency license, the equivalent of a broker's license in the US. Please don't be too impressed. You basically buy the thing. There are 17 modules of instruction that must be completed, most focusing on marketing rather than ethics or legislation. That real estate licensees are lumped under the same government division as car salesmen is rather telling. It is estimated to take from 12 weeks to 12 months to complete, although with my busy schedule, I am thinking more like 12 days.

Oh, and we also enjoy unexpected visits from neighbors popping in for a cuppa. So far, probably because we leave all the doors and windows wide open (including the one the bird still crashes into), we've been surprised by several deliverymen; potential house-buyers who've noticed the For Sale sign out front with its advice to Enquire Within (I have to remember to black that part out); the ex-Kiwi-acupuncture-student mom and her kids, schoolmates of our girls; and my German friend returned yesterday with a basket of fresh eggs, homemade rosella jam, a bible, and several religious tracts. Not only is she an ex-Catholic, a description not meant as a snipe against anyone, but as a general characterization, one other ex-Catholics can appreciate, she is Jehovah's Witness. But we won't hold that against her. The earliest version of this year's planned homeschool curriculum included a study of the Old Testament, right after the epic of Gilgamesh and alongside our classical Greek studies. And in a poke at my mom, a gentle, humorous poke, not a snipe at all, the girls spent the evening in their bedroom reading What Does the Bible Really Teach? and looking up corresponding verses in the good book.


Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

-- Joe Hill (from The Preacher and the Slave)

More serendipity?

Funny how things work out sometimes, isn’t it?

Just as I was lamenting my lack of support here, no family, no friends, no internet, and a husband who only humors me when I try to discuss plans for the future, we had a surprise.

The two daughters of a family in our community and our two eldest girls attend classes together, one with Grice at the primary and the other with Sarabelle at the high school, both sets simultaneously becoming friendly. The topic of pets arose and the neighbor girls learned that the new people have two cats and a hedgehog back in Florida and have been looking for a dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, to be precise. (A dog that I, crazy researching person, have been trying for years to convince my husband and children would be the perfect match and worth the wait.) The neighbor girls excitedly told their mother about the new American girls, who are very nice, don’t swear, and are looking for a dog, and the whole troop, mom, girls, brother, and their champion Ridgeback bitch came over for an impromptu visit, bearing a just-baked chocolate sour cream cake.

The mom, a German ex-pat, ex-Catholic, grinds her own flour, bakes her own bread, and makes her own gourmet cheeses from her hand-milked cows on their solar-powered, television-free, organic dairy farm. She thinks the world is going to Hell in a handbasket and was thrilled to hear of some nice girls for her daughters to befriend. She has no great affection for government of any sort so I got a “Good on ya!” when she found out we had homeschooled instead of the usual puzzled stare. We’ll be getting together again soon.

Jorge came home from work too late for a piece of cake, but early enough to enjoy some lively conversation and fall in love with the dog. The mom decided right then and there to give into requests from other breeders to mate her Ridgeback because she wants us to have a puppy.


The long arm of coincidence.

-- Haddon Chambers (from Captain Swift)

Blah, blah, blah update

Still waiting for the courier to deliver my external modem, a retrofit, for the privilege of hooking up to our slower-than-coconut-oil-in-winter home dial-up service.

We’ve got another vehicle, another Toyota Landcruiser, a smaller model than Mrs. Troopie that our neighbors have nicknamed “The Red Devil.” Jorge drives that so I once again have at my disposal the 4 Runner -- now called “Migaloo” (because you know, all our vehicles must have names) after the rare albino humpback whale who annually visits this area’s waters, whose name means “White Fella” in an Aboriginal language – although there is really nowhere for me to go these days. Driving on the left has become second nature, though I still catch myself starting for the passenger’s side door on numerous occasions. Then I pretend like I meant to do that in case anyone is looking.

The sun finally made a long-term appearance and boy, was it worth the wait. It is spectacularly, painfully beautiful here.

Both of our Florida properties are officially on the market. We have prioritized our list of possibilities as follows:

A) 119 acres, riverfront, ponds, 5 bedroom house, pool ($$$)
B) 40 acres, double creekfront, ponds, liveable stables ($$)
C) 5 acres, creekfront, spring, 2 bedroom house, horse ($$)
D) 80 acres, creekfront, ponds, vacant land ($$$)
E) 5 acres, creekfront, swimming hole, vacant land ($)

Whatever sells first and whatever is still available will decide which way we go. Que sera, sera.

Finally, a couple highlights from my week:

-- Cackling Kookaburras at the school bus stop

-- Overhearing big, leathery cane farmers debate which recipe website is most helpful

-- Listening to Elle surmise that the hatch in the ceiling must lead to the basement since everything in Australia is opposite.

-- Seeing the red creep into the socially awkward, techno-geek’s (wait, is that redundant?) face as he relays, after noticing my neoprene computer carrying case doubling as a lap pad, that Mac portables get so hot there have been reports of men’s genitalia being seriously burned, and then realizes this may not be a suitable topic for mixed company.


The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.
-- Voltaire

Bringing you up to (really slow dial-up) speed

Why, hello again! Let’s see, what has been going on since iWeb imploded…

HEALTH AND SAFETY

Jorge had a head-on in Mrs. Troopie. A “smash-up” they call it. He’s okay, the other driver was okay, but Mrs. Troopie, well, we’ll be keeping her for spare parts. Jorge has decided that she is the Best Vehicle Ever and one day we’ll get another one. For now, he’s got the 4 Runner and I’m home playing the role of farm wife, modern farm wife with her MacBook Pro, keeping myself warm cooking up huge meals for the family’s tea time. (Your main early evening meal, or dinner, is “tea,” which may or may not include that particular beverage; a light bite later in the evening is “supper.” Tea may be had anytime but is referred to as “a cuppa.” On the job Jorge gets a 30-minute “smoko,” a midmorning break originally named in the old days for a cigarette break but smoking is not permitted anywhere these days, and not lunch but a 15-minute “sit down.” Got it?)

I thought we were living in Australia, but apparently we’ve made a wrong turn and ended up in Scotland or Ireland or the Pacific Northwest or some other lovely, green, wet, cold place. The locals are freaked out by the weather. The paper has already run their special pull-out pictorial supplement titled, “The Big Wet,” chronicling the unusually high rain falls, flooding, and ferocious cyclones. I suppose everyone thought that meant it should be over by now, like Bush’s, “Mission Accomplished,” but, no, it continues to drizzle and I am forced to cook to justify turning on the gas stove, our only source of heat. We are all adapting, resigning ourselves to constant sogginess and bad hair lives, but I am wondering what the lack of sunshine will eventually do me. Will I need a sunlamp? Vitamin D supplements? Antidepressants?

Hornblower…?!

PROPERTY

For nearly the same price (check currency conversion rates here) we can choose one of the following, all in the same neighborhood – the same super wet, green neighborhood henceforth known as Green Acres -- all available as lease/purchases or with extended closings:

A) The house we are in now – 6.5 acres, seasonal creek, concrete block house in need of major renovations, too close to highway. $360,000 AUD

B) Beautiful custom built house, 3.5 acres, small but enlargeable pond, well back off road. ASKING $360,000 AUD

C) 40 acres, two clean permanent creeks, liveable stable for use during construction of a house or easily convertible to a house, well off the road. Owner has maintained old logging and mining trails through this and his adjoining 160+ acres for fabulous walking/horseback riding. ASKING $360,000 AUD

Do I even need to tell you which one has us most excited?

Another really tempting one is:

-- 119 acres with a five bedroom house, granny flat (2 bedroom apartment downstairs), inground pool, great raised bed vegetable gardens, pastures, ranch hand quarters, numerous other outbuildings (barns and such) four dams (ponds), one kilometer of river frontage bordering the property with a side branch of the river running through the property, and all the necessary equipment, fences and squeezers etc., for running a few head of cattle. Just outside the rainforest, much drier with more sun and less rainfall. One end of the property is located at a major crossroads (some highway noise) which makes for good development potential (ability to subdivide a few riverfront acres that would essentially pay for the place), and the other end is "downtown," referring to the center of a village with 225 people in it. This one is $550,000 AUD and would pretty much take all we’ve got but is a bargain for the price.

I think I’ve seen every inch of property in the Green Acres surrounds; I should be a real estate agent. Oh, wait, I am, though I only seem to spend money.

SCOOL

The girls started their first full week today (Monday, July 17). Grice and Elle go off barefoot (though I make them carry their Crocs in their backpacks because the thought of using the school toilets without shoes on makes me gag) and Elle wears her uniform hat from the moment she goes out the door until she comes home, looking like Corporal Agarn on F-Troop.

Sarabelle went off to her first day of high school last week adamantly refusing to make any friends because that would make it that much easier to return to her old friends in the States, and because we’ve seen Mean Girls, and came home that afternoon excitedly telling tales of all the nice girls she had met. She’s already volunteered to be a buddy to the Japanese students coming in a few weeks and has asked her Japanese teacher for all the lessons she missed from the first half of the year so she can communicate better with the visitors. Sarabelle ended up in Grade 8, a recommendation by the Deputy Principal, so that she will be with same aged peers –- something she assured me is “quite important at this age” -- and because Grade 8 students sample all the electives before choosing their classes in Grade 9. Sarabelle thinks school is pathetically easy, for example her homework assignment was six pages of coloring in fractions, so is certain she will have straight A’s on her first report card. For an assignment to write twenty historic events – we used our Greek timeline and threw in major events in American history i.e. the Declaration of Independence, creation of the Constitution, Civil War – the teacher commented, “We don’t care much about American history, we’ve got our own.” Sara and I had a laugh about it, because we know ours is so much more exciting and interesting being based on revolution and rebellion… What have they got? Convict settlements. Take that Mrs. Stick-up-yer-arse. You can despise American culture all you want, I do, just don’t disrespect my Founding Fathers, got it? She’s also been penalized (penalised?) by another teacher for her American spelling. It’s “artefact” not “artifact” and “civilisation” not “civilization,” but again we had a laugh because Sarabelle, Miss Scripps-Howard Spelling Bee Participant, had one whole week to study and learn the new, correct Australian spelling. She’s got Hippocratic Writings and Archimedes and the Door of Science tucked under her bed, and both she and Grace eagerly agreed to work on at least one lesson from their Saxon Math every weekend. I’m not worried.

Grice is now halfway through Grade 6 and Elle halfway through Grade 1 though they just finished Grade 5 and Kindergarten, respectively, back in Florida. Grice received the sweetest card her second day from a little girl, a classmate, who lives across the street, stating that she would like to be Grice’s friend and eventually have her over after school. Elle received a journal to record her nightly reading and in the space reserved for comments on her very first assignment wrote, “I liked it but next time I need a harder book.”

So, they’re doing just fine, thank you.

A relatively new development in Queensland education has been the inclusion of religious lessons in the curriculum. In order to please everybody, or most anyway, families are given a choice of Catholic, general Christian (Protestant), Baha'i, or Non-religious training for their once-a-week class. I speculated the Non-religious class may be basically a free period and was told, oh, no, the children may silently read or work on their homework. Yeah, that's what I thought. I initially chose the Baha'i instruction, which teaches there is one god that all major religions worship and that all prophets of various beliefs are mouthpieces for this one being, though there are differences in the interpretations. The class examines the commonalities between all religions and focuses on values, specifically living The Golden Rule. My kids nearly had a stroke (as I’m sure my mother will when she reads this) and insisted they go for the Non-religious (free period) class, which also happens to be the class that 95% of the other students are in. Whatever.

WILDLIFE

We’ve got a pair of Little Kingfishers, brilliant blue and white birds, which according to our identification book are not often seen. These two are very visible here, perching on our garden fence and divebombing the minnows in the fishpond. The one we assume to be the male, the bigger of the two, crashes into our living room window at least 20 times a day. At first we thought he was attacking his reflection. We think he must be braindamaged. If he wasn’t before, he sure is now. We’ve got to find a way to scare him away from that window.

CURRENT EVENTS

What in the world is going on out there? Without cable television, a high-speed home internet connection*, NPR, or any factual, unbiased newspaper to read, I am in the dark about the goings-on in the rest of the world. Australian news is mostly national and then mostly sports related. Sunday evening dinner at a local pub gave us our first glimpse of the situation in Israel. As one patron said watching the cable broadcast of launching missiles, “Five minutes of the evening news can ruin your whole day.”

We sure hope Grice and Elle’s former Florida teachers have postponed their trip to Israel and that all their family is safe and sound.

* Two-year contracts with hefty penalties and expensive disconnect and reconnection fees are the norm here, so until we find our final destination we are still using the internet café in town. Now that we only have the one vehicle, trips into to town are few and far between.

The sun did not shine,
it was too wet to play,
so we sat in the house
all that cold, wet, wet day.

-- Theodore Geisel (Dr. Suess)

Surprise, Surprise!

Road SCHOLA is back.

“Where are all the pictures?” you ask, “The blathering travelogue?”

All gone, I’m afraid. iWeb has blown a gasket, or some other technological term, so I am back to try, try again.

You can continue to read about our adventures Down Under here, on good ol' Blogger, where the links and comments are oh, so much easier to manage.

As time permits, I'll repost previous text-only entries for those of you who had trouble loading all the graphics. Pictures will be added to new posts when I get set up on a photo host.

We'll see how it goes...


What we anticipate seldom occurrs, what we least expected generally happens.

-- Benjamin Disraeli

B-Day

It seems we’ve been celebrating Elle’s birthday for weeks.

Last night, after presents and cupcakes at the house, we went to dinner in Port Douglas ending the night with a round of shots for our entire table, courtesy of our waitress, Naughty Natty. Letting the kids do shots -- virgin, in my own defense -- is probably not the high point in my parenting career, but it was definitely memorable.

Today was spent on horseback riding in the mountains. The owner of the business and our tour guide, S, took us on a great ride through the rainforest on part of Queensland’s oldest, and long since abandoned, logging road, along the top of a ridge overlooking Mossman Gorge with views to the sea, and back across her spectacular pastures. S is a former model who grew up with horses, ran with Jerry Hall back in the days, and is now back on the farm. She had us greenhorns whipped into shape in no time riding the intermediate trails. At one point a dirtbike rider came down the path though it is clearly marked as a violation of park laws, and S threw herself in front of the motorcycle, railing at the guy for disregarding the rules and endangering her horses and riders. She was absolutely fearless refusing to let the guy through, and I wondered if in addition to riding lessons she would consider offering assertiveness training.

Happiness Is a Warm Puppy.

-- Charles Schulz

Work

We got up before dawn and headed into Cairns for the monthly government-sanctioned auction. Most of it was beer and liquor from cases water-damaged in Cyclone Larry, but our interest was the teak furniture listed. We came soooo close to purchasing a giant, hand-carved, Indonesian teak canopy bed, it was just us and one other bidder. I was happily waving my paddle until we arrived at our predetermined quitting point. After the competing bidder raised the stakes another $25 guaranteeing them the bed, Jorge poked me and said, “Go!” I obediently continued to raise my paddle with every new poke until I reached a point 150% over our original estimate, then I promptly shoved the paddle into Jorge’s hands and made him ultimately responsible for the bidding. We finally stopped because we’d calculated the additional expense we would incur hiring a truck to move the massive piece, and then paying to have it moved again when we settle into our permanent spot, which would have almost doubled the final price. It still would have been a bargain compared to buying it new, but a logistical nightmare. When we are all settled into what should be our final destination we will go back and hope for another shot at some big exotic furniture. We should have bid on part of a collection of framed autographs with photos. The first one, George Burns’s, was dropped down incrementally from an opening bid of $100 to $20 due to lack of interest, and I, thinking he might go to $10, hesitated. Before I could raise my arm, the auctioneer had passed on it. The auctioneer couldn’t get anybody interested in Billy Joel’s either, he got down to $20 and finally suggested ripping out the picture and at least keeping the frame before moving on. Tom Cruise, Arnold Palmer’s glove, Lindsay Lohan, and the bimbo collection, Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, and some other Aussie chick, all sold for $90 - $150. Not that I’m such a big George Burns fan, but at least he’s dead. Elle won a set of porcelain dolls for her birthday present and we picked up a couple of carved Indonesian wood panels before heading to the mall.

We went clothes shopping for a few more short-sleeved shirts, shorts, and socks for school, another quilt, this one wool filled, which provided Jorge and me with our first deep, dream-filled sleep since we moved into this house and allowed me to go to bed without wearing sock liners, thermal socks, my Irish knit sweater and looking like a bag lady -- we really were fooling ourselves thinking we could move one degree farther from the equator; it’s bloody cold here at night -- and Jorge picked up some work clothes.

Yes, Jorge got himself a job. He saw an ad in Thursday’s paper, called to inquire about it, and was told to report Monday morning. It’s been about 30 years since he was a regular employee. His new position? Painter. Very relaxing, very Zen. He’s already thinking he may take a second job building an addition for some new friends on his weekends off. Both jobs pay more than what he would have paid his subs for similar work in the US, and he’s a pretty generous boss. The only trouble might be that Jorge makes all the other painters look bad; he’s too hard a worker, and a bit OCD on top of it all. The ones we watched paint the resort we stayed at took their time starting, had a break for tea, then a long lunch break, and finished up fairly early. It took an awfully long time to get the building done. Jorge will have to try and remember that he is working by the hour now.

The kids also have a business venture planned to take advantage of Port Douglas’s Sunday Market, but I am not at liberty to discuss their top secret plans just yet.

Anybody remember the skit, maybe from In Living Color, with the immigrant family? The dad had fourteen jobs, the wife twelve, and the lazy son only nine. That’ll be us.


Avarice, the spur of industry.

-- David Hume

Cars

Mrs. Troopie has a problem. She runs great, but her body is too rusty and will likely prevent her getting a road worthy certificate. Poor old girl, I know how she feels. See, they’re really picky here about public liability. I guess it has something to do with the fact that the government picks up the tab if you should happen to be driving down the road and a large chunk of rusted metal happen to fly off the decrepit but mechanically sound vehicle in front of you, causing a chain reaction which lands you in the hospital. Theoretically, of course. Plus the fact that the seller, Beck’s de facto husband who lives farther back in the bush than even she does, hasn’t signed some critical form and doesn’t have a fax machine within 100 kilometers. Also Mrs. Troopie was only registered as a three seater, so if we were to add seats we’d have to start from scratch. We call it a “Learning Experience” (make sure you do the finger quote marks when you say it for the full effect.) Fortunately, not a very expensive one. She will make a terrific farm vehicle. Supposing we ever get a farm. In the meantime we have purchased another truck, an older, as yet unnamed diesel Toyota 4 Runner (4WD); a friend for Mrs. Troopie.

We bought that after spotting it on the side of the road on our way into Cairns to look at yet another truck. The owner, B, works at a local crocodile farm, so the day we picked it up we met him halfway at his job. He was busy getting ready to do the feeding show when we arrived, so we decided to go in and have a look. (I’ll let you in on a little secret: There are deeply discounted unpublished prices for locals. You have to know the password though, and I’m not telling. So we got in for about 50% of what all you regular tourists would have to pay, unless you were with me, because, I have a Queensland drivers license now, which might just be enough of a reason to come visit, eh?) Anyway, the place was nothing like Palmdale’s horrifying Gatorama attraction; this was top notch all the way. B told us to make sure we got there early to get good seats, which we did, but he failed to mention that while we were stuck in our good seats listening to his partner do his spiel from the safety of a special enclosure, B would actually be in the pit feeding the biggest monsters keeping them from causing trouble during the show. He was just out of my camera range. Below are pictures of B guiding our boat tour, one of the many crocs he encouraged to leap right in front of my camera, and a few koalas from the zoo exhibit that were so close we could’ve poked them with a stick. Like the snake.

Then, because we had a theme going, picking up the new truck and dropping off the rental, we took the kids to see Cars while we were in the city. My impression? Great animation, good story, and Americans sure love their cars. It made me just a little homesick.


I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.

-- Roland Barthes

Good News/Bad News

Do you want the good news first? Of course you do.

I passed my Drivers License test. With a perfect score, no less. Exciting, huh? It was only my second try! For a thirty question, multiple choice test it was surprisingly challenging. It was all that “Give Way” stuff that threw me off the first time. But, hey! I’m legal now! Never mind that Jorge passed his the first time...

Getting a license to drive a car in Australia is apparently harder than getting a license to sell real estate here.

One realtor we spoke with, a hilarious Canadian named Mike, who you must use if you are ever in need of some property in the Port Douglas area, explained the steps to us:

1) Take week-long real estate course

2) Take real estate exam. Have exam scored on the spot

3) Incorrect answers will be circled in red. Sit back down and answer those questions again. Have exam scored on the spot again.

4) Repeat Step 3 as necessary until Passing Score of 100% is achieved.

Oh, right, I almost forgot, the bad news...

We had an appointment in Cairns today with the immigration people. No answers yet. We can’t expect to have visas issued until we’ve been here for several more months; one month in country ain’t gonna cut it. So we’ll try again later on. They also want to see the kids enrolled in an educational institution as part of our commitment to residency, so it looks like they’ll be starting SCOOL July 11, when the locals finish up their holiday and the second semester begins.

Owning property does not help our case at all. Because the house we’re presently renting is on the market and we are not interested in purchasing it, we’re probably going to just move right into Port Douglas, rent a place and be done with it.



All the news that’s fit to print.

-- Adolph Simon Ochs (Motto of the New York Times)

The Kuranda Experience

Because we needed an excuse, we told Elle we would take her to do The Kuranda Experience, yes, that’s what the brochure officially calls it, for her birthday. This included a visit to the Tjapukai aboriginal culture show; a trip up over the rain forest and Barron Gorge in a glass bubble of a gondola, hanging by a little thread, to the town of Kuranda, an old mining-turned-hippie-artist-colony town, on the Skyrail; and a ride back down the range on the Kuranda Scenic Rail, a mine train line converted for sightseeing. We had done the Skyrail and train before, but Elle was too young to remember it, and I was disappointed that we had missed the Tjapukai show last time around, so this was a good opportunity to kill several birds with one stone.

If you are up this way, don’t miss the cultural attraction. Besides enjoying the Dreamtime and dance shows, we tried our hands at spear throwing (which I am pleased to say I am very good at) and boomerang throwing, learned didgeridoo techniques (and how to save a small fortune by playing on a piece of PVC pipe), and had a lesson in bush food and medicine. Even if you’ve done the trip up and down the mountain before, do it again. Sarabelle and Grice were as excited as if they’d never seen it before; Grice screaming the entire ride up the Skyrail, “Oh! Oh! Take a picture, Mom! Quick! Over there, get a picture of that, too!”

I’m sticking all the photos down below because it seems when I pull up the published site, that the pictures within the post are slipping, covering up some of the text. Let me know if you see it too. Maybe it’s just me...

Here then are shots from the dance portion of the show (I wish I had taken pictures of the kangaroo hunt dance, but I was too fascinated to move), boomerang throwing lessons, Skyrail views, and some of the Kuranda locals.

If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.

-- Herodotus

Scenery

Here are some views we get to enjoy every time we head out from the house to run errands:









Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment.

-- Ansel Adams

I rest my case.

No wonder an acquaintance of ours scoffs at the quality of the Australian school system. In his entire career as a mining executive he never had one secretary that could spell properly.


To the uneducated, an A is just three sticks.

-- A. A. Milne