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Showing posts from January, 2024

Eungella National Park

  After leaving Townsville, I started my journey south. I made it to my first stop of Bowen. I had a quick coffee and lunch and went and enjoyed some beautiful views of the beach, but it was too hot to stick around so I headed up up the mountains towards Eungella (pronounced Young-galah). The drive up the mountains was beautiful, beginning with the rolling foothills, which are mostly pasture land, and then turning into steep, twisting rocky roads up the side of the mountain. I checked into my hotel and found that I was the only person staying in the entire resort. I have the whole place to myself. I wandered down to the river, just the five minute walk from my room, in hopes of finding the platypus. I’ll be honest, I was not overly optimistic about finding a platypus after my failures, with finding koalas at magnetic island, I was certain that the platypus would be also hidden away from the heat and the bad weather. I knew it was the best possible time to go because they’re supposed

Cyclone Kirrley

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  Okay, I’m on the road, and will try to start posting more since I’ll be up to more adventures. As I head south it will start to cool down, and I’ll actually be able to do stuff outside again when it’s not 5am without nearly dying of heat stroke.   This week was an adventure, but not in the best way. We got hit my cyclone Kirrley. It was nearly a direct hit, category 3 cyclone. The days up to it were filled with the failed hope that it would reroute and go hit someone else, but as cyclones go it wasn’t too bad. In the days prior I took advantage of the cool weather going on some nice afternoon hikes and this bush curlew tried to scare me away from its partner and baby.   It hit Thursday evening, shortly after dinner. We watched out the windows as the tops of trees snapped around us as the wind whipped about. Around 7:30 we heard a big thump and something rolling off the roof. It turned out the lid of a ceiling vent tore off the roof. So Dean grabbed a ladder and climbed way too high

Mid January

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  Hike group Mt douglas Mt Douglas  Turkey Evening walk Tea house Run away parrot Well this week was my intended week to leave Townsville, but I’ve been delayed by a potential cyclone early this week, but it’s been a nice week and I’m not too sad to spend another week or so hanging around here.  I’ve been swimming laps once a week or so at the community pool. Until this week I’ve always had my own lane when I was swimming, but this week I had to share. Which was fine. I asked ‘do you mind if I join you’ and they were chatting but said yes so I jumped in and started to swim. When I get to the end and do a turn I came really close to hitting the guy behind me, and I was like ‘oh hes kinda in my lane’ 2 strokes later I realized, he wasn’t in my lane, I was in his. They swim on the left here too, which did not occur to me until that exact moment. 😂 They were probably cursing this idiot who joined their lane and swam the wrong way. It was difficult to remember which side I was supposed

New year!

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  It’s been a good and busy start to the new year. I’m gathering supplies to begin journeying again soon. I’ve got a tent and cooler and almost everything I need before I begin traveling. Now I just need the weather to cooperate long enough for me to begin my journey.   This week I went for a beautiful hike up castle hill. I got there at 8am, it’s about 2 km round trip, 400 ft elevation gain and I figured it wouldn’t be too hard of a walk. What I didn’t account for was the dang weather. 95 degrees and 92% humidity in full sun is quite a feet, and while I had plenty of water and took lots of breaks, I reckon I got a bit of heat exhaustion on the way up. 2 days later and my muscles are still really sore and I got home and slept for a few hours after the hike. I think I’ve learned my lesson that if I went to hike I either need to be up at 5am, or not go at all. In the following days I’ve been going swimming though to still get some exercise in, but even the pool water is quite hot and y

Christmas to New Year

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  Well, I haven’t posted for a while, it’s definitely gotten harder to motivate myself since being here at Dean and Jenny’s cause I’m spending my time being social in the evenings when I normally would have been writing my blog. It is what it is. So I’ll do a general update covering Christmas through the new year!   A few days leading up to Christmas were busy with lots of good food and drinks and social activities. We go on evening walks a few times a week, which is a nice way to get out of the house when it’s getting hotter out. In the days leading up to Christmas we visited Dean and Jenny’s friends and had lots of delicious foods. We made some good Japanese dishes agadashi a fried tofu with soy dipping sauce, sushi, and miso soup. On Christmas we had latkes for breakfast and went to a friends house where were were were the audience of their friends’ grandchildren who are 2 and 1. They ran the show making sure they had everyone’s attention the entire time. We had a decadent lunch o