Annies Crazy World

As I said before my son loves fishing, has recently introduced his flat mate to fishing and we set of for the jetty at picnic bay to throw a line in.

One of the things that I loved about Magnetic Island was that there was a lot of backpackers who come from all points of the globe and are all interesting to talk to…when we arrived at the jetty we met a couple of English girls who were fishing for the first time, caught a flathead and had no idea what to do with it, they had asked a passer by and been told that if they didn’t know how they shouldn’t be fishing.

We thought that was rather unfriendly and Sam’s reaction was to pull out his fishing knife, take the fish from the net, remove the hook, hold it for them to photograph and fillet it for them.

We stayed there fishing with them for several hours…several fish were caught all of which, other than a squid, were either under sized or protected coral species that were returned to the water, the only thing that I caught was a peice of Coral…When it came time to go home they came back to our house where Sam cooked up the flathead and squid and they stayed the night.

We went snorkeling around the base of these rocks, I grew up in a beachside town but am not a strong swimmer because I could never learn to breath properly and have to hold my nose to put my head underwater and I must have thought that breathing through a snorkel would be just as hard and I had never tried it before…

I was thrilled at just how easy it was to breath through the snorkel and delighted with how much can be seen through the mask and how beautiful the coral is.

From the beach, the rock that my son is photographing, looked like a Dolphin, from where he was it looked like shelves.

Sam was called in to work this evening…I took the opportunity to catch up on some washing and other domestics and then went down to have tea with him.

While there I got a photo of a gecko and he introduced me to the resident frog.

This photo of my brothers house is the last photo that I took with my minalta camera…The shadow in the top left is a crack in the lens, it has been like that for months and I have been framing my shots so that I can crop of the shadow but it has ruined a few of my photos.

After taking this photo I caught the bus back to townsville where I met up with my son and we went shopping to purchase me a new mobile phone (to replace the one that I drowned when I fell in the water on the first day of my holiday) and a new camera, a Canon PowerShot A720 IS…

By the time we got back to Sam’s place it was dark and we were tired so I didn’t try the new camera out untill the next day.

Port Douglas is one of Australias most expensive tourist destinations what an irony that the mattress on the bunk I was sleeping on was the worst mattress that I have ever slept on, springs with no padding…It is a beautifull location but on the whole way to over the top trendy for my liking.

We headed back south along the coast road towards Cairns, which took us through some beautiful country and to Hartley’s Crocodile Park, which we really enjoyed.

A Good start to the visit was the Tawny Frogmouths at the entrance…Seeing them took me straight back to childhood when my brother Brian, found a baby one that had fallen out of its nest and brought it home…It was a tiny fluffy ball as a chick and we called him Tiny, he was a wonderful pet that lived with us for years, he ate out of the same bowl as the cat and I have a photo of it sitting on the cats back…

We started with a boat cruise around their lagoon where the tour guide told us the history of the park, pointed out where the crocodiles where around the edges and fed some with meat tied on the end of a pole.

It is amazing how far out of the water they can jump and I was thrilled to get a photo of one mid jump, his name was ‘High 5’ and as we were getting off the boat I noticed that my nephew had a ‘hi 5’ hat on (Hi 5 is a kids TV show) and I took his photo to remind me of the crocodlies name.

The second part of the tour took us to the saltwater and then the freshwater enclosures, this part of the tour was great because the tour guide was the crocodile farmer so he new his stuff and even better he loved the crocodiles and was passionate about respecting and looking after them.

Our next stop was Cairns where the kids had a swim and we looked at a few shops before heading back to my brothers for the night.

Lake Tinaroo Caravan Park was a great place to stay, lovely setting and a friendly atmospher and after packing up our camp we had a swim in the pool that had a waterfall at the back and pretty stones set into the bottom of the wadding pool.

After our swim J, V and B headed home while the rest of us headed further north, on our way down from the tablelands, just before one of the lookouts there was a road sign that said camera opportunity and thus we felt compeled to stop and use our cameras.

We arrived at Port Douglas late morning, with time to look around the outdoor craft market before having a picnic lunch in a park by the water.

After a long leisurly lunch we checked out some of the shops before going to find a caravan park and hireing a cabin for the night, after settling in and having a swim/rest we went back down to the main street to get a pizza for tea.

Steve and Michelle had planned to head off north for a few days and I was joining them, at the last minite Joe and Veronica decided to join us for the first day so in 2 cars we drove up into the Atherton tablelands…It was a lovely drive through rainforest with spectacular views…We stopped at Milan Falls for afternoon tea and a refreshing dip in the swimming hole at the bottom of the Falls…

We made camp at a caravan park on the shores of Lake Tinaroo….The Photo of Milan falls is the only good photo I have of the day and it took me a while to remember why I had taken no more photos in the evening, it was because I have very few memories of the evening as I was struck with the worst headache that I can ever remember having, it was making me feel ill, everyone looked after me finding panadol, bringing me glasses of water, massageing my neck and putting to bed in the back of the van where I fell into a deep sleep and woke the next morning feeling well and refreshed.

Steve and family took Sam and dropped him at the ferry terminal so that he could get back to Magnetic Island for work this afternoon, V was at work and my nephew at school which left me and Joe with a quite day to catch up and reminice.

Joe told me a delightful story of this Red Finch building his nest, under the awning at their back door…Mr Red Finch was shy and fluttered off back into the trees if anyone was near the door, Mrs Red Finch was not shy at all and sat brazenly on the line chirping at him to come back and get on with building the nest, because of his hurry to place the straw and get away quickly his nest was not very neat and didn’t look terribly secure so my brother screwed on the green bottom so that the whole thing didn’t fall down on Mr Red Finch.

Photographing frogs can be a little tricky because they have a habit of jumping just as you are about to take the photo, so when I was taking this photo I was so focused on the frog that I didn’t notice the milo smeared mouth and fingers of the nephew that was holding the frog for me and I am glad that I didn’t notice at the time because I love the photo that resulted.

Thursday was mostly a family catchup day, part of which we did visit the Prawn Farm where Joe works…the photo above is one of the prawn ponds, the photo below is the pattern formed on the bottom of the pond when they are emptied to harvest the prawns.

We didn’t see any prawns but were greeted by Ostrichs

My son showed me how to catch a green ant and lick its tail to tast the bitter/sweet nector stored there.

Steve knowing what to look for spied a baby crocadile on the other side of the creek, I would never have seen it without having it pointed out to me.

Neither my brother nor my son can pass water without wanting to throw a fishing line in.

It was a brief overnight stay on the Island before we all headed off on the ferry back to the mainland and an hour and a halfs drive north to Macknade where my brother Joe and his family live.

Sugar Cane is one of the main industries in north Queensland and the drive took us past many kilometers of cane fields and the occassional cane train as it is harvesting season.

As we approached Macnade the Sun was setting.

Joe had a fire going in his front yard to burn out an old tree stump and we used it to enjoy some toasted marsh mellows.

I found this image and thought that it would be fun to share it…about 20 years ago brouches with a collection of beads, buttons and charms glued to them, were fashionable…At a retreat that I was attending a lady brought along her button tin and the makings for a brooch, I sat down beside her and started looking through her button tin which was one of those good ones that had lots of odd bits other thatn buttons in it and I started picking out the odd bits and suggesting to her that she use them on her brooch and when she kept rejecting my offerings I said in, a pretend huff, ‘well I will make my own’ and I found a big button and glued all the odd bits to it, they created a fun brooch that looked a lot better than I expected it to.