This week was not as action packed as our few weeks previously, as we used our time to recover from the month on the road and begin looking into settling into Cairns. We are hoping to stay up or around here for the next couple of months and ideally find some work, paid or voluntary, to keep us occupied.
We arrived in Cairns just in time for, what we now know was the first in a series of, a lovely dinner. This was followed by a catchup, a proper introduction for me, with Nicola’s first cousin once removed, Moira, her husband, Jim and Daisy the Bichon Frise. We had an evening of chatting and drinking wine before they showed us to our luxury room, a palace having just come from our little camper, having very kindly offered to put us up whilst we settle in Cairns.
Monday we were kindly dropped into town by Moira so we could do a spot of shopping and I picked up a couple of new accessories for my camera as well as sorting out an issue we had with our flight date changes. Afterwards we walked back past The Lagoon, a free beach-side pool, to check it out. Perhaps “beach-side” is a little misleading however, “mudflat-side” doesn’t sound half as appealing. We walked back to the house along the esplanade admiring Cairns’ mudflats.
The next few days were pretty docile, with the odd trip to the road where all the car dealers are situated, reading some books and researching jobs, cars and places to live for the next few months. Friday we dropped Moira and Jim off at the airport as we had agreed to dog-sit Daisy for them over the weekend, before heading out with Daisy to a car garage. That evening we bought a car!
As the weekend contained most us wallowing around the house, complaining the car wouldn’t be ready until Monday and walking Daisy that pretty much is complete summary of the week. I said we hadn’t been very busy!
Today was a little more exciting however as we had to head over to the Bank to get a cheque early on as apparently it’s illogical to want to spend more than a few hundred dollars on a card! After having recovered from the realisation that this would then incur a $10 charge and calming myself down somewhat we headed over to pick up our lovely new (to us) Nissan X-trail!
With our new found freedom we took a drive up to Port Douglas to see Auntie ‘Shaz’ and Paul. Shaz being her Aussie name and definitively not one I gave her in any attempt to reflect how cool she is or to “Aus her up a bit”. Once again we took the stunning drive up to Port Douglas along the coastal road.
Once in Port Douglas we took a nice long walk along Four Mile Beach with Sharon and the two dogs; Ruby and Django. Afterwards we headed up to the Marina where we met up with Paul who had just finished work for a couple glasses of wine and a catch up. The bar we had stopped at, On The Inlet, has the added attraction of Grouper feeding at 5pm everyday. There is an old grouper that the fishermen used to feed after returning which still visits daily now the jetty is a restaurant and bar to feed. Unfortunately for us the grouper fish didn’t come to visit.
Paul then took us down to the beach once more and we were treated to some slightly sandy sausages and s’mores fresh from the fire, whilst we all had a glass of wine and continued our catchup. We passed the evening with stories about the family and a toast to Nicola’s Grandpa as the night coincided with the second anniversary of his passing.
A Ginger Down Under
19th August 2015