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