Catch-up II

Next Jorge came for a nearly two-week visit. We all took a break from our routines and headed down to Dunk Island for a few days.

Just as we made it to the bottom of the southernmost range, about a three hour ride from our place, the clutch went out. Completely. And we also discovered the fan had somehow chopped the radiator hose to bits. We had three and one half hours to catch the last ferry to Dunk, and we were still nearly an hour away. But the Fates and a very helpful Toyota service manager smiled on us, and we went from this...



(That's actually Craig the manager under there. In the driveway. Doing the work himself. In his good shirt. When he found the only hose available would take several hours to be delivered, he cobbled one together from bits and pieces. A real MacGyver, that one is. If you're ever in Innisfail and your car falls apart, go see Craig at the Toyota dealership.)

...to this...



...and this...



...with 30 minutes to spare.

While on Dunk we enjoyed some of this...



...some of this...



...a little of this...



(You can only go without a television and Sponge Bob for so long, you know.)

...and a lot of this...



(the view from my semi-permanent lounge chair.)

After Jorge headed back to Florida, the girls and I once again participated in the local Trivia Night fundraiser. I thought we were pretty international last year, but this year's team included an American, New Zealander, and Australian (me, Bee's mom and step-dad) with the new additions of their neighbor, a Finnish retired nuclear physicist (a Manhattan Project contemporary) and his two WWOOFers, a Japanese girl and a French guy. We also had another Australian, a music teacher, to help overcome the language barrier and physical handicaps (a faulty hearing aid and two players who left their reading glasses at home.) I am happy to report we correctly answered all the American questions this time, including my being able to name Pablo Escobar as "Drug Czar." I am from South Florida, you know. This year we held our own tied for second and third mostly, until the end when we made a big move catching up to the top team, losing to them by only 1.5 points in the bonus round.

The girls were on their own team with Bee and some other schoolmates. They determined they couldn't win early on and decided to go for notoriety and place last instead by intentionally giving silly answers (Q: What Latin phrase associated with universities means "nurturing mother"?; A: Mama Mia.) They still beat one of the adult teams.


I've taken my fun where I've found it.

-- Rudyard Kipling (The Ladies)

Catch-up

Let's see... Since my last post, erm, last month, what's been going on?

Well, first there was ANZAC Day. Here is Sarabelle with a couple band friends pre-performance...



and Grice and Elle checking out the local pride on display at the Courthouse Hotel before the parade and memorial.



Lest we forget...



Afterward we stopped by our Witness friends' house for tea. M (aka Dr. Dolittle), has a kookaburra family she has hand-fed for years. I gave it a go, hoping I would not lose an eye in the process.





Horrible photos, I know, but in my haste to get the girls down to town I left my camera behind and was forced to purchase a disposable.

Then the rollinias came in.



We have two big Rollinia mucosa trees, just outside our door. Last year the landlords came and took them all, passing a few on to us. This year they left the harvest to us and we passed a few on to them. Not many though.



The fruit tastes like a lemony vanilla custard. They're beautiful when you pop them in the fridge for a bit, but even then they don't have a very long shelf life, 2-3 days tops. I think I will go have one right now, before they go off.

Here's what happens when you leave them on the tree too long.



We have been battling the birds ever since.

(That's not a little furry animal in there peeking out by the way, those are seeds left over. And yeah, time to trim those bangs.)




I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Madeleines

Chris at the Thinking Parents Wiki asks what sights, smells, sounds remind me of home?

Aside from the things that are exactly alike, sugarcane fields, cattle ranches, especially the flowers and palms, and license plates honoring "The Sunshine State", there are loads of things here in Far North Queensland that remind me of South Florida. Receiving our “Cyclone Awareness” guide and tracking map in the newspaper; being suspicious of any body of fresh water other than a swimming pool, and even then that cautious double check you do just in case...; and the summer downpours -- more so if they are accompanied by strangely comforting blasts of lightning and house-shaking thunder as both are fairly rare here -- all prompt memories of their northern hemisphere counterparts.

I thought I smelled my grandfather two years ago when we moved into our first rental house here. As the smell grew stronger, and more disconcerting considering it took place while I showered, a little detective work finally revealed it to be a giant mold colony growing in a fold of the shower curtain left behind by the owners.

Sitting on the couch surrounded by the kids introducing them to classic SNL bits via YouTube, most recently Will Farrell’s “More Cowbell” and his follow-up cameo with Queens of the Stone Age, flings me back in time to the sense of where I was when I first viewed them, on any of several comfortable beds or couches in any of several comfortable houses.

One significant reminder occurs whenever I’m up late at night on the computer. Just like my husband, Lulu, the four-legged member of our family, wakes up, stretches, glares at me still on my laptop way past the time decent folks should be in bed (I swear she even looks at the clock), utters a pained melodramatic groan, and then huffs a great sigh of exasperation before flopping back on her doggie bed.


We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.

-- Marcel Proust

Neighbors

Our friend Em brought this over for us. It's one of three recently shed python skins they found on various parts of their house and landscaping. This is the entire skin, all nine feet of it, from the tip of its nose and eye coverings to the very end of its tail.



She knew we'd appreciate it.



And we did. Some more than others.




I like to keep a bottle of stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy.

-- W. C. Fields

Wednesday

After her school work was done, and after a little time on Toon Town, Elle had aikido. Miss D, the instructor's wife, and Elle knocked each other around a bit.





When class was over we spent some time cuddling and feeding Penelope, a rescued baby padymelon Miss D and her family are nursing until it can be released back to the wild. Penelope has been in their care for at least six weeks. She was hairless when they first got her. That small you never know if they'll make it or not. So far, so good.



Those are my hands. That's all you're going to see of me today. That's enough.



The five minute drive home was uneventful, but spectacular.



If you look real hard, up on the side of the mountain, just above the center line of the road, it's practically pointing at it, there's a little break in the trees, and right there, that little dot...see it?...that's our landlords' house. The guesthouse we rent is not visible but is located down a little to the left of the Big House. The first house we rented was on a street that turns off to the left just where the road seems to end. Pretty good photo considering it was shot through the windshield. By me. As I was driving. (Miss Booshay understands.)



We were in a hurry to leave the house for akido (blame the aforementioned Toon Town) when we discovered a baby snake under the carport on our way out the door. In our rush to leave, we tipped this container over him to take a look when we got back and maybe identify it. As you can see, it was still there.



Even though we let him go, he was not very happy. We suspect it was venomous. Pretty much anything but a python is around these parts.




A person can stand almost anything except a succession of ordinary days.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Home School

No, we don't stand up and salute any flags saying the Pledge of Allegiance or singing Advance Australia Fair before beginning our school work. We don't have designated times for specific subjects or breaks either. Come to think of it, not much we do resembles a formal educational institution, but when I saw this at a neighbor's garage sale for a bargain price, I could not pass it up. The fact that it came from a local state school that recently celebrated its centenary makes it not only a true antique but a pretty cool souvenir.




Bear in mind that the wonderful things you learn in your schools are the work of many generations. All this is put in your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children.

-- Albert Einstein

No Worries

-- The kookaburras go off at exactly 6:00 AM. There is no Daylight Savings Time and no need for an alarm clock.

-- Our friend's husband, a local law enforcement officer, went off to the neighborhood pub early in the evening for a beer or two. Around 10:30 PM, the wife woke up to use the facilities, and while sitting on the loo on an otherwise still night, heard her dear husband belting out a tune down at the pub. He ended up staying until 2:30 AM literally closing the place down. He had to lend a hand at the bar after the publican sampled a few too many of his own wares.

-- Other neighbors who live on the main street in a rambling historic building, had a woman come rushing through their often-open front doors with some convoluted story about missing mates and mixed-up meeting places, asking questions, and hoping for some assistance. The neighbor and her husband were doing what they could to help the visitor and had offered her a cup of tea when looking around, the realization slowly dawned on their guest: Oh my God. This is your house. I thought it was an antique store...!


The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.

-- Julia Cameron

Curtain Up!

I should have learned by now, that any time I say "I'm sure" of something, events usually prove me wrong. Like below, when I said I'm sure we will be back at least once more... in regards to visiting the creek.

The remainder of our break has been spent mostly hanging around the house watching rented DVDs. We enjoyed Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Pride and Prejudice, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World, the Royal Ballet's Tales of Beatrix Potter, and (before you go thinking you see some Keira Knightley/Geoffrey Rush/British history/British lit thread connecting them all) Sicko, by Michael Moore.

Elle, a born entertainer, finally acknowledged her inclination -- a tendency I have reluctantly witnessed develop since she was an infant -- while watching Pirates of the Caribbean for the second or third time: Mom, how does somebody get to be in a movie? She thinks it would be great fun to get paid to work as an actor. Her sisters and I thought so too, but privately wondered how that would work with her persistent shyness.

One notable exception to our movie marathon was a taste of real culture, a concert we attended yesterday afternoon down in Port. A few local musicians, led by the neighborhood's World Renowned Cellist, put on a children's concert in the incredibly intimate 142 seat theatre. Prior to the final piece, three door prizes were raffled off for the kids. Elle leaned over and whispered that she was nervous in case they might call her number. Sure enough, she was the third winner. I barely had time to confirm that it was her ticket number when, instead of playing shy like the prior winner and insisting I go up with her or in place of her, she popped out of her seat, marched down the center aisle, and jumped up on the stage to claim her prize.

What did she win? A gift certificate for DVD rentals.


There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

-- Oscar Wilde

Break

The girls are enjoying a week off school for the fall break between terms. I'm not having such a bad time either. We've already been to the creek twice in the past three days and I'm sure we will be back at least once more before school is back in session.










Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.

-- Leonardo da Vinci

More Pictures

Around the house

Bad luck birthday

Yalkula Station

Battle of the Bands


The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.

-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

Up to Speed

So yesterday we finally get our high-speed internet hooked up and what do we do first? Catch up on long-neglected correspondence? Check bank account balances? Search for and install necessary software updates? Upload photos for friends and family? Nope. Our priority was to download and watch the first four episodes of LOST Season 4 back to back. We ate up all our allotted high speed limit for the month in one shot and have been knocked back to a slower rate. But it was so worth it. And we still have two episodes to go before we catch up. Don't think that just because we now have to wait 17 hours for each remaining episode to download we won't do it either. At least we can use the telephone at the same time.

In the meantime I am slowwwwwly uploading bunches of photos to my Flickr account (beginning with our Christmas trip to Florida), checking account balances, and sooner or later, though later being more likely, I will get caught up on all my correspondence.

Here are some pictures to get you started...


The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre
Observe degree, priority and place.

-- William Shakespeare (Troilus and Cressida)

Shut down

Tuesday’s flight was rescheduled for Wednesday. Wednesday’s rescheduled flight was set to go out at 11:00 AM. Then 2:00 PM. And then 7:00 PM. When I finally heard from Jorge, calling, I assumed, to say he had safely arrived at his destination, he was still at the airport. They were now estimating a 9:00 PM departure. He was going to forget it and head home. Two hours later, when he had not arrived, trying to discover whether or not they did indeed take off, I had to go through a ridiculous series of phone calls. The airline 800 number is only active Monday through Friday 8:30 - 5:00. No help there. A call to their reservation service, handled through another major airline, produced a drone who would not tell me whether or not the flight had actually left the airport due to “privacy policy,” despite this information being readily available online and I was stuck on the phone with her to ensure that at least, with only dial-up, I would hear the call waiting signal if Jorge tried to reach us. Another call to a slightly more helpful rep, who placed her own call to the actual desk agent at the airport, who in turn supposedly contacted the flight control tower, and relayed the information that they now expected the flight to depart the airport at midnight. Alas, four of their six aircraft were grounded for repairs, one was grounded due to inclement weather, and the only operable plane was coming in on a flat tire. We apologize for any inconvenience!

This morning, after 8:30 AM, I was told they flew out last night at 7:40 PM and the return flight, arriving at 2:00 PM today, was expected to be on time.

Right.

Meanwhile yesterday, the bus never arrived to pick up the girls in the morning for school, our local bank branch was closed because of staff shortages, the attorney was late coming back from lunch, other key airline employees were absent from work, and two of our favorite eateries were closed, all supposedly on account of the weather, yet Jorge and I were both able to navigate numerous landlslides, flooded areas, and road washouts, and Jorge reached the airport via time-consuming, labryinthine detours. Makes you wonder how much of our current weather crisis is legitimate and how much an excuse to shirk responsibility.

Phone and internet service are prohibitively expensive and internet service is still predicated on usage and contracts with heavy cancellation penalties. Even the fastest connections are not capable of keeping up with the rest of technologically advanced society.

It’s pretty third-world here, for a developed country. How do businesses manage to get work done?


Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.

-- Benjamin Franklin

Currents

The girls and I got a little too excited this evening picking out electric dog training collars online. Elle romped around the living room until Grice’s command “Stop!” and a loud buzzing noise caused her to drop and writhe on the floor. We compared prices and features opting for the models with the longest range. A Rhodesian Ridgeback is nothing but fast and is quickly out of sight chasing kangaroos or your landlord as she zips by on her four-wheeler enroute to the horse paddocks.

Sarabelle played her first gig on the electric bass this past Friday. One of the area dads, a musician himself, put together a night to showcase our local junior talent. While the weekend edition of the big city paper had several stories about drunken teenage parties getting way out of control, here were our kids, and their families, having a terrific night out with soda, chips, and some surprisingly good live music. It may turn out to be a regular event. Sarabelle’s friend, who is also a boy, played in another band with his two brothers. They had groupies. Screaming girl fans. It was hilarious. But Sarabelle did not find my musings as to whether her American thighs were the inspiration for their cover of “You Shook Me All Night Long” nearly so funny.

Jorge has been here to finalize some real estate dealings and help us move and was able to catch Sarabelle’s performance. Tomorrow, provided the flight is operating, not like today when it was cancelled because “the plane was broken,” and he can even get to the airport in the first place given the huge amount of rain that has fallen in the past 24 hours, he flies over to a little outback town to manage some business interests and then will return to Cairns just in time to say a quick goodbye before heading back to Florida. The plan du jour is for the girls and I to stick it out here at least until July 23, when we can finally make our application for citizenship.

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.
-- Marcus Aurelius

Quarantined

In between garage sales, downpours, packing, a visit from Jorge, and moving, Grice and Elle picked up what seems to be chicken pox. Nevermind that they had both received the double varicella vaccines early on and had only a 5% chance of ever developing the disease to begin with; nevermind that no one in either the elementary or high school or entire town has heard of another case, they both got spotty and scabby and the doctor and our other medical friend agreed that it was probably a very light case of the pox. I thought they were only bug bites. Elle was not the least bit inconvenienced by her 'illness' and Grice got a letter from the doctor excusing her from school for the entire week, so she was quite pleased.


Look, look, see, see,
Coming down the lane,
Here comes Scott,
Here comes Dot,
Here comes Chicken Jane.

(from "Between the Lions")

Little Johnny wants to play.

I remember when I was in high school how exciting it was to listen to the radio early in the morning waiting for the snow report.

...blah, blah, blah... (newscaster starts listing outlying areas, the ones people always name when you recognize that accent and ask where they're from and they say "Boston" and then you dig a little deeper and ask whereabouts, and they mention their town's name and then you both know that's most definitely not Boston, just some wussy, wannabe suburb) Boston... quiet now, here it comes... All Schools, No School! (newscaster continues listing insignificant bedroom communities as you either head back to bed or over to the cousins' to hang out)...

Well it was not exactly like that today. Except for the exciting part.

We were up, washed, dressed, fed, brushed, in the car and on our way to the bus. Wow! Look how high the water is! Oh my God! Spear [Creek] is right up the bridge! It's on the road! I wonder how high Rifle [Creek] is? Whoa! Amazing! What about Bushy...?

A few more twists and turns before a line of stopped cars with hazard lights flashing alerted us to the fact that Bushy had most assuredly "gone ovah." There was one loud groan from Sarabelle, who can't bear to miss school, two loud cheers from Grice and Bee (who had slept over), and a "Cool!" from Elle. We were 99% of the way there, we could see the principal's house at the elementary school where the bus stop is, but it was not meant to be. We watched someone tow a car off the bridge that had attempted a crossing and had been swept sideways; chatted with another high schooler about to enjoy a day off, caught up with his mother and debated whether or not our vehicles could make it through the .5 meter water and the accuracy of that roadside depth gauge; and took a wade a little way out onto the flooded bridge before turning the truck around and heading back toward the house.

If this had been South Florida, people would have been cursing out the Army Corps of Engineers or the water management district honchos or their local municipality's water and sewer crews or the DOT, wild because they can't get to where they have to go and wondering who is responsible for this fiasco?! But here? If you can't make it across you either sit tight and wait it out there, or turn around and wait it out somewhere else, preferably at the nearest pub.

After a day of errands in Cairns, accessible by another very wet but more navigable route, the water receded enough to get Bee across Bushy and back home. With more heavy rain expected this evening -- we're sitting beneath a huge monsoonal trough -- Sarabelle opted to stay overnight at Bee's house guaranteeing she does not miss another day of school tomorrow. Grice preferred to return home with me and Elle and take her chances.


Nature, time, and patience are the three great physicians.

-- H. G. Bohn

Come again another day

It rained last night.

I mean, it rained.

It rained so hard an inexplicable panic gripped me -- me, who has been through hurricanes, violent storms at sea, and even a blizzard. I don't really know what it was that worried me so. Was the roof going to collapse from the sheer volume of water pounding down on it? It sounded like it, but this house has been through a fair number of wet seasons. Was the water going to come up into the house? We're up too high living in a stilt house or what they call a high-set. Would we be stranded here on the property? I love solitude and there's enough food and books to last us a few days. Would we be stranded and lose power and phone service and a crazy old hermit crawl out of the bush and break into our house and try to kill us and then me, the kids, pets, and car would all be swept away in a flash flood as we tried to escape? Something like that...

So I sat up most of the night reading -- Deepak Chopra's fictionalized biography of Buddha, which, surprisingly offered zero comfort -- waiting for the rain to stop, working up the nerve to run out and pull my car back under the house where it belonged and hoping the windows were all rolled up tight.


Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.

-- Buddha

Thinking On My Feet, or, rather, Pacing the Floor

Our lease on this house is up today and I advised the owners of the other house on five acres that we would not be moving into it since Jorge is not coming back and until last night I was not sure where we would be come February 1. Needless to say, I have had a few sleepless nights. But yesterday afternoon the landlord’s agents finally gave me the green light to stay one more month, giving me time to liquidate and ship the balance of nearly all our belongings, and we also heard back from our old landlords at the flash, mountainside fully-furnished, easy-care cottage who are willing to have us back for a time. The only sticking point with the old landlords was the dog, not that we have one, we got Lulu while we were staying at their place initially, but whether or not she had been fixed yet -- don’t want to be attracting dingoes or the neighbor’s pig dogs -- and coincidentally we have Lulu scheduled at the vet's this morning to be spayed and get her travel requirements, rabies vaccination and microchipping, taken care of. Funny how things work out like that, eh?

So we will be completely mobile, no furniture, household items, extra clothes, tools, or tons of books to weigh us down; just what we can fit in our suitcases and trunks and jump on a plane with, back in much closer to town. With all that thinking on my feet over and done, I may begin to drag them a little now, especially as the time to make our application for citizenship is right around the corner...

In the meantime, Sarabelle and Grice are temporarily back to school (how else would they get to see all their friends and say goodbye?) Sarabelle is still adamantly for staying, Grice is still ambivalent but at least wanted the opportunity to ride the big luxury tour coach (subcontracted and passing for a school bus) down the mountain to get a small taste of high school. Elle looks forward to returning to Florida where there’s television, video games, and Disney World.

No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

Australia Day

Initially I wasn’t really sure what this day was all about. It comes at the end of the summer break just before the kids return to school, and though it always arrives on January 26, Monday is an official day off for everybody, banks and businesses closed, so it’s a bit like Labor Day except that they have their own Labour Day in May. There is some flag waving involved along the lines of the Fourth of July, though they already have their own independence day of sorts, Federation Day, January 1. The roots of the celebration commemorate the first landing (or the first invasion to the Aboriginal residents) so it’s a bit like Thanksgiving too, including the emphasis on sports with Maria Sharapova winning the Australian Open in the living room and a ball game on the radio outside, but without the turkey and fuss.

We spent the day with a mixed bag of friends, old ones, new ones, with the Aussies outnumbering the Kiwis, Yanks, and Brits by only one, celebrating our hosts’ son’s birthday as well as the birthday of Em, Bee’s mom, grilling chicken and fish kebabs and snags on the barbie, drinking champagne and homebrewed ginger beer, swatting flies (“...it wouldn’t be Australia without the flies,” according to one partygoer), laughing a lot, admiring our host’s Southern Cross tattoo, one I’m sure he sported prior to January 26, though we had never noticed, and wrapping things up with an impromptu game of cricket.

That’s Australia Day.


Every tradition grows more venerable -- the more remote its origin, the more confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and inspires awe.

-- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Stage Four

Five weeks flew by and now we are packing up to return to Australia. Nearly all books and most articles of clothing have been jettisoned as plans remain to fly back to Florida once we tidy up all those loose ends. We finally told the girls and it has been a very emotional 48 hours.

For those persons residing in the States, please, when you hear of our pending return do not reply with “Oh, Good!” or any variation of that thought. Though it’s tempered with sincere delight at seeing us once more, you may end up on our list of people to never speak to again. Just a friendly warning.

I have been trying to convince my head that this is the right decision (and that I ever had any real say in the outcome), but my heart tells me we are making a horrible mistake.
We are rapidly working through Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance, but seem to have stalled out at least one step before Acceptance. It will be a long time coming I’m afraid.

Despite all my rage
I am still just a rat in a cage.

-- Billy Corgan/Smashing Pumpkins

Works for me.

Nana requested a Christmas photo this year and while the thought crossed my mind on several occasions during the past two months, I was left waiting for inspiration to strike. Fortunately, on our half-day sightseeing in Japan, the girls just happened to be wearing green, red, and white sweaters and were in a mood that they did not mind putting their arms around each other in a way that did not suggest intentional bodily harm. Voila! Christmas photo.




There are many scapegoats for our blunders, but the most popular one is Providence.

-- Mark Twain