Cooloola Cove - Redecorating

Deborah’s vision for redecorating Kaz’s house is rapidly being realized. I can’t give too many details because Kaz may be reading this blog and I don’t want to spoil the surprise. But suffice it to say that there is beautiful color on several walls which were once plain jane off-white. Paint, for some reason, is very expensive here. The 4 liter (1 gallon) can of paint we bought cost AU$70 (US$48); about twice what you’d pay in the US. Even the 1 liter (1 quart) cans of paint and primer were AU$30 (US$20). We used every last drop. It helps that Kaz had some spare paint lying around and that Lorraine brought some extra paint as well, much of which was mixed together to create new colors. Deborah has been painting and distressing many of the furniture pieces as well to give the once incongruent collection a more cohesive style. She has also been changing the placement of furniture and wall hangings, addressing the bedding, and digging for treasures in the closets, the yard and even the rubbish. She’s going for a contemporary cottage (shabby chic) look, based on Kaz’s existing furniture/belongings and her stated preferences. And it’s all looking good.

Once the interior changes are completed we’ll work on a plan for the exterior. There are a lot of great plants in the yard but some are hidden or in awkward locations and need to be pruned or moved. And drainage is a big issue. The big grassy back yard is a bit of a swamp right now with all the rain we’ve been having. Even though the last couple of days have been quite warm and sunny there are still sizeable puddles in the yard. The group of Ibises splashing around out back is happy, but it doesn’t serve the humans quite so well. Kaz doesn’t expect us to do any work on the yard, but I know Deborah can never be fully restrained. We do at least want to come up with a plan for regrading, planting areas, dry creeks, paths, etc. to make better use of this ½ acre lot. Hopefully this great weather will hold out.

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Kaz's house.

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Back of the house. Note the solar hot water heater on the roof.

The swamp.

While Deborah works on refinishing furniture, her husband works on his vitamin D intake.

Cooloola Cove - Lorraine Returns

Lorraine drove all the way up from Brisbane to spend the weekend with us, enduring a 4 hour traffic-congested ordeal on Friday night. It was great to see her again, the first time since November. She was kind enough to bring some spare bedding and paint for use in Deborah's redecorating efforts. Lorraine also brought four bottles of wine. We caught up on family news and heard about her trip to the States in December and January.

The weather here was less than ideal for her visit – warm and sporadically sunny but with rainstorms blowing through in rapid succession. On Saturday we took a walk along the waterfront path in Tin Can Bay and had lunch at the Marina. Sunday the weather was worse with only the briefest of respites from the frequent rain squalls. We nevertheless drove to Rainbow Beach, achieving only a quick look at the sand before making a mad dash back to the car as the rain began to pelt us once again. I drove Lorraine’s car to give her a break and also to get more practice on the left hand side. I did pretty well, almost assuring that I’ll have a hard time when we go home and I have to switch back to the right side. We won’t have a car for our last two weeks here so we took advantage of Lorraine’s wheels to get a few things at the hardware store and also to stock up on groceries. We also stopped at the bottle shop (liquor store) to get another six-pack of beer to hold us through our remaining days (for most Australians a six-pack would last about two hours). The sight of me, until recently a nondrinker, buying alcoholic beverages still causes Deborah to giggle with perverse pleasure.

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Deborah and Lorraine

Mangroves

Paperbark Trees

Cooloola Cove - Hervey Bay

The lovely Miss Myra has flown away home. We drove her up to Hervey Bay, where we returned the rental car. We had a nice breakfast before sending her off to the airport with someone from the car rental agency. Deborah and I then spent a couple of hours walking around Hervey Bay, including the long bayside path and the small botanical garden. Hervey Bay is noted as a base for trips to Fraser Island (although we did ours via Rainbow Beach) and also as a base for whale watching (not currently in season). After our wanderings we caught a bus back to Maryborough where Kaz’s daughter Julie picked us up and drove us the rest of the way back to Cooloola Cove. Now the house feels a bit strange. We had got rather used to having Myra around. Her 12 days with us went far too fast. Sadder still, in all that time she didn’t see a single kangaroo.

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Deborah and Blake at Hervey Bay

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The local postman.

A typical queenslander house.

The botanical garden.

Passing "motorists" stop for a chat. (Hervey Bay is a popular retirement community).

A monitor lizard.

Resident at the botanical garden's Orchid House.

Sorry, Lisa - more flower pictures.

Bye Bye, Myra.

Cooloola Cove - Fraser Island, Day Two

The second day of our tour of Fraser Island covered more ground than day one. We stopped by a popular creek that led into the woods, climbed a headland known as Indian Head for great views, visited the Champagne Pools (basically large frothy tide pools good for swimming), stopped for photos of a shipwreck and some colorful rock formations know as the Pinnacles, and finished off deep in the interior of the island at the sandy shores of Lake McKenzie.

We saw two more dingoes, including one which walked right past us, just a few feet away, as we were leaving Lake McKenzie, although Deborah had her back turned and was completely oblivious to it until Myra and I pointed it out to her. Dingoes do occasionally attack and even kill humans, particularly children. The increasing number of violent encounters between dingoes and humans since the 1980s are thought to be a result of intentional and unintentional feeding of dingoes by tourists. The majority of attacks by dingoes on humans have occurred on Fraser Island, which has the genetically purest strain.

On the drive back to Rainbow Beach the driver spotted a spikey sphere at the edge of the surf, which turned out to be a puffer fish. The little fellow was in full expansion mode, obviously agitated or excited about something. A busload of tourists handling him and gawking at him probably didn’t help to calm him down, which seemed necessary if he was ever going to deflate and thus be able to swim back to deep water without being constantly pushed back to shore in his current soccer ball shape. At last we put our cameras away and climbed back on our bus, leaving him to his struggle, hoping for the best.

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Watch your babies.

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View from Indian Head.

Indian Head


Deborah and Blake



Champagne Pools.

The Pinnacles.

The Maheno shipwreck.

Just a bit rusty.

The girls at Lake McKenzie toasting with the previous day's leftover wine. They aren't picky.

Our spikey friend.

Cooloola Cove - Fraser Island, Day One

For our final sightseeing adventure before Myra’s departure we decided on a two day tour of Fraser Island, reached via a short ferry ride from Rainbow Beach. Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world and is accessible only with 4WD vehicles. Despite being essentially a big pile of sand the island is extensively covered in forest and dotted with lakes and streams. The eastern shore serves as the main highway while the limited inland roads are narrow, undulating, bone rattling rivers of sand. Somehow our military-style tour bus had the mechanical wherewithal to navigate the treacherous terrain. We saw more than one self-drive 4WDers trying to extricate themselves from axel-deep sand.

Fraser Island is famous for its dingo population and we saw one trotting along the beach the first day. It looked a bit scrawny, not as if it had recently ate anyone’s baby. Our first major stop was the spring-fed Lake Wabby, which is reached by a long walk through forest and across sand dunes. This provided the opportunity to add to my collection of photographs of Deborah trudging miserably in the heat up steep, dusty trails. The lake was a popular swimming hole (too popular for my taste) and a beautiful green color. After lunch we rode on more bumpy roads (in an apparent attempt to dislodge said lunch) and walked through a temperate rain forest. The evening meal was a decent enough buffet affair, and was followed by a stroll around the resort grounds looking down for lizards and up for the unfamiliar stars of the southern sky.

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The highway

The bus

The travelers

The dingo



The forest

The misery

The girls

The rainforest

The rainforest, again.

The beach.

Cooloola Cove - Bowling for Dolphins

Despite having seen dolphins from just a few feet away earlier in the week at the daily feeding, we took a Dolphin Ferry cruise on Saturday to venture out into Tin Can Bay and see them from several hundred feet away. We did indeed see a few, and they even displayed some entertaining acrobatics, but my typically slow shutter finger left me with mostly photographs of slightly rippled water. The weather was sporadically rainy – we almost didn’t even go – but it turned out to be a pleasant cruise.

On the way back to Kaz’s house we stopped by one of the two Lawn Bowling places we’ve passed several times, wondering if it might be possible to, as the Australians say, “have a go” at the sport. It turns out you can only play as a guest of a member, but two very friendly older gentlemen offered to act as our hosts and lend us some balls (or bowls, I’m not actually sure what they call them) and show us how to play. Our primary instructor was George, an immigrant from Bulgaria, who showed great patience in teaching us technique, strategy, and the importance of not dropping the balls on your bare feet (one can play with bare feet as a substitute for flat soled shoes). We had great fun and plan to take George up on his offer to host us again anytime we like.

Thar she blows.

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Stormy skies.

Deborah and Myra.

Deborah puts the wrong foot forward.



Myra lofts the ball too much.

Blake bends his back too much.

George explains why we should consider golf or tennis instead.

George shows us how it's done.

Cooloola Cove - Grooming

Any sightseeing plans I had for Thursday were thwarted by the rain. Somehow the other members of this travelling party convinced me a worthy substitute activity would be to get pedicures. Deborah and Myra found what they describe as a lovely little one-woman skin care salon. For three hours they had their feet soaked, exfoliated, sanded, massaged and, I think, polyurethaned. Their cuticles were trimmed and their nails were cut and polished. Deborah’s feet were in such a sorry state from months of living in sandals that the poor salon owner nearly dislocated her shoulder trying to sand them to a reasonable texture. There was a hazy cloud of Deborah’s skin filings floating in the air, landing on the retail display. The resulting feet were admittedly pretty, but I’m not sure I would ever have the patience for such an extensive operation.

In other grooming news, Deborah decided to take advantage of Myra’s presence to get a much shorter haircut, one more in keeping with the warm, humid climate in which we currently find ourselves. This occurred in a couple of stages of increasingly shorter results, as Deborah grew braver. She now looks gorgeous and about 12 years old. I guess that makes me look like a pedophile.

Guess which one of us didn't have a pedicure.

Cooloola Cove - Maryborough

On a rainy day we visited Maryborough, the town where Kaz’s daughter lives and the one through which we passed on our way down to Cooloola Cove. Maryborough is the birthplace of Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers, whose Myra-sized statue stands on a prominent corner on the main street. It was market day so we had a chance to browse the stalls of vegetables, crafts, and the always tempting Kettle Korn. Maryborough features a broad, green riverside park and plenty of historical buildings. Our favorite stop was the Brennan & Geraghty’s Store. It was established in the 1870s, operated for 100 years, and then turned over to the National Trust, which now operates it as a museum. It is full of decades old tins, bottles, boxes and advertisements. The caretaker/historian, whose style of beard was as old as the establishment, was full of informative descriptions of the store and its contents.

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Brennan & Geraghty’s Store

Banyan tree in Queen's Park

An Ibis poses.