Mid January
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 to be on, especially when doing backstroke. Then it was really confusing lol.
Most evenings I go for a walk along the ocean where there are some nice walking trails, usually there are mobs of parakeets, Black tailed cockatoo, and sulfur crested cockatoo chattering away.
We found a run-away parrot in the yard this week, it was a beautiful dusty blue color. It couldn’t fly very well so we don’t know that it will survive.
We went to the tea house just up the mountain in Hervey’s range (pronounced Harvey, cause Aussies either need spelling lessons or reading lessons lol). And we had a nice brunch of tea and I had corn fritters and Jenny had scones and Dean had quiche. It was a beautiful drive and a nice day escape. Dean took us on a little hike there where he got us nice and lost (with no help from Jenny and I) but luckily we didn’t go too far so we got back alright. Jenny and I weren’t wearing proper shoes which didn’t help the situation either lol.
Another thing I find interesting is the Australian government makes ads showing how they are using the tax funds. Like “this road was built using coal taxes” or this “this road was maintained by cigarette taxes” and it’s not sponsored by a political party or a politician, it’s just like “Queensland government” or whatever. I feel like this is something that the US government could do a better job of doing, reminding people why they pay taxes (especially when you do a good job) and having long term signage posted where toes benefits go helps people remember why they pay taxes. Probably makes people resent their taxes less. Anyway, I’ve found it interesting and think it’s something we could learn from.
Sunday Jenny threw a cream tea for us and 4 of her friends. According to her, a cream tea is a more casual version of high tea, but I think it was pretty fancy so I’m not sure what more she would have done if it was a high tea. She got out her fine china she got from her mother and grandma and made an absolute feast. The menu: bacon cheddar stuff croissants, beef pasties, prawns, 5 types of finger sandwiches, mango chutney, chocolate roll cake, butterfly cake (white cake with filled jam, cream, and jello), and of course tea and coffee. It was quite the fantastic feast. Jenny pulled out all the stops.
Monday morning I got up at 4:45 am to go join a local hiking group for a sunrise hike up a mountain. I knew it was going to be a hot day, so I decided to get out and go. I grabbed a protein drink and headed to the meeting spot at the university. Along the drive I had to be very careful to dodge suicidal wallabies, which were throwing themselves in front of my car. There were 7 of us and one dog, about half had work to go to afterwards so were hiking at a fast pace, but I picked up the back with the retirees. I consider myself half retired 😂, I live with retirees, I work only a few hours, and I hang around and watch network tellie in the evenings and go to bed early. Anyway, the walk was lovely with a beautiful view. After the hike about half of us went to coffee and chatted a bit and it was nice to hang out a bit. Just a beautiful day.
I’m at the point in my travel abroad I am starting to miss some foods back home. A few of my top things I miss are corn tortillas, American bacon (Aussie bacon is a different cut and much less delicious), and French fries (Aussie chips are just not as good, they are like wedges, and I much prefer a fry). I think about these foods daily. Especially corn tortillas. I normally eat them almost every day, quesadillas are my breakfast of choice and I sorely miss them. Not that I’m not enjoying the food, I continue to eat and enjoy lots of delicious foods, but I do miss a few things.
More Aussie words/slang I find funny:
Sarnie: sandwich
Sarno: sandwich
Sanga: sandwich
Jaffle: toasted sandwich
Toastie: toasted sandwich
Why do they need so many words for sandwich?
Opshop = thrift shop
Salvo=thrift shop
a bit of a dag = not very stylish
They seem to have lots of slang words that all mean the same thing which seems odd to me.
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