30th and 31st January

On Tuesday we got up with the intention of ordering our house furniture as we didn’t want to leave it too late. We headed off to Super Amart and ended up getting our dining furniture, lounge stuff, outside furniture and family room items all there. We got a good discount so we ordered and they’ll deliver when the house is ready. It was nice to actually get it done so it’s off our mind now. The only other things we need to get are from IKEA. After a hard days shopping we went to look at a pool place in Palm Beach but the stupid enquiries woman gave us the wrong address so we never found it! Still, we did find some nice quiet little beachy coves in Palm Beach so that wasn’t so bad. We came back to the hotel and decided to go out for dinner as we’ve pretty much only been eating lunch and then having a snack at night. Many people recommended the Hogs Breath Café for dinner, but it was sooooooo yucky! We didn’t eat hardly anything and they still charged us! I ordered one of their specials which is a prime rib tender steak and I asked for it well done. Needless to say it wasn’t. It came back pink and bloody in some parts and wasn’t that tender anyway. Angela had chicken parmagiani and it was gross. She barely touched it. It was expensive and a waste of money, so we decided from now on we’ll just have something easy and simple, like a hotdog! We can’t wait to get into our own house so we can make salads and barbeques and things. Surfers is very busy at night and there’s a lot of Japanese people here too. It’s a vibrant place and is definitely suited to young people. There’s just a great feeling about it, and although it would be too much to live here all the time, it’s nice to visit.

Well…. Wednesday morning didn’t start out well at all. We got the terrible shocking news today that granny McLean died. We just don’t even know what to say. The odd thing is that yesterday morning I woke up really upset and didn’t want to check my text messages because I’d dreamt I got one that said ‘your gran died’. I was relieved when I read them that there was no such message.. and then this morning when I woke up and there was lots of texts from mum and dad saying to call them urgently… well I just knew. It is so sad and so horrible and it’s the first time we’ve really felt the pain of being so far away. Not that we could change it if we were any closer, but just to be there for people is nice. After going through the crying and crying stage, I think I’m now in the shock phase where it doesn’t feel real. Don’t know how long that will last. All our thoughts are with the people there who are in the middle of it and are grieving.

We were planning to go to the beach today to swim and boogie board, but after the news we didn’t know what to do. We eventually decided just to go as it’s better to be having fun as much as possible rather than sitting in feeling bad. The beach was amazing. I tried boogie boarding as you can see HERE. It is very difficult as the waves are really powerful, but it’s fun and the water is so clear and shallow near the shore that it’s not too scary. It does get a little bit worrying when a huge wave of white comes towards you, but it’s still fun. We stayed there for around an hour as we didn’t want to get burnt. We are now heading to Brisbane to pick up our bank cards and upload all this for you.

Also, just a couple of new photos of the house with the roof on as you can see HERE.

Australia Zoo and the Sunshine Coast... Almost!

Date: 29th Jan 2007 - Australia Zoo!

Well we decided to head North to the Sunshine Coast and as we were heading up that way, there was an accident on the main road and it was completely closed. This meant that we had to take an alternative route and as luck would have it we ended up passing a big sign for the Australia Zoo, for those in the UK, Steve Irwins place. We drove along Steve Irwin Way and thought we’d just stop into the zoo since we were passing. It was well worth it.

The zoo is absolutely massive and has all kinds of cool Australian animals in it. As you can see from these photos HERE, it was great to get up close and personal with some of them. The entire time we’ve been here has been a constant koala and kangaroo watch as there’s signs around places saying to look out for them incase you hit them! Anyway, we didn’t see any until the zoo and it was absolutely brilliant. As you saw in the photos, we got to feed kangaroos, cuddle a koala and see lots of crocs and other weird things. It was a really good day out and even though it was very warm, we just kept gulping down the water to keep us going. I can’t believe how exciting it was to just have a roo come over and eat out of your hand – so cool! After we’d been at the zoo we decided to head on to Mooloolaba or Maroochydore so off we went.

When we arrived at Mooloolaba, it was a very quaint little beachy place compared to the Gold Coast, but when we looked down at the beach, it had tons of rocks in it! We decided to keep on going to Maroochydore to see if we liked it any better, but we ended up pretty disappointed with that too. It’s not that it’s not beautiful there and lovely, it is, but it wasn’t what we were looking for. Many people had told us how lovely Noosa was and since it was only 30 minutes north from where we were, we headed up that way. It did have a nice beach and we went out for a walk along it, but the main problem seemed to be that it was all very chic and boutique like, not really our thing so after much deliberating we decided to drive all the way back to the Gold Coast. It took 2 and a half hours, but at least we knew that we’d made the right decision in the UK when we chose the Gold Coast over the Sunshine Coast. It just seems too isolated up there.

It was late by the time we got to the Surfers Paradise, well, late by Gold Coast time anyway. We decided to just stop at the Holiday Inn and check out the room availability for the night and the prices. We didn’t want anywhere expensive so when we were told the room was only £65 a night we booked in for the remaining 3 nights we have on the Gold Coast before heading to Melbourne. We couldn’t believe how lucky we were with the hotel!!!! We have a balcony with a view right out onto the beach and it is literally 5 minutes to the beach from here. You can see our room views HERE if you’re interested. Not bad for such a cheap price and the room is huge too. It’s a nice hotel even though it has no internet access which sucks. We didn’t do much really that night as we had a big day of shopping ahead.

Girlfest - Update!

Well that is Girlfest over with! It is Monday morning and we're heading off to the Sunshine Coast to be surfys for a few days hahahaha. The first night of Girlfest was really good because it was comediennes that were on the entire night so it was mad fun. We were glad we'd come along for that and as you can see in the photos there were some mad ladies on stage. The one in the bra is doing an impression of Shakira hahahahaha. On the Saturday we didn't stay at the hotel as we didn't much fancy the pool party which looked a little bit overwhelming with over 1000 lesbians surrounding the pool area to party hard! Have to be honest and say that many of them were behaving like teenage boys, but they had fun and at least it was a safe place to do so. We went to the shops on Saturday and had a look around at prices for our electronic items for the house.

On Sunday we decided to go to the Logan Hyperdome, a huge shopping centre that is only 15 minutes from the house. We were lucky enough there to find a little saleslady named Val who helped us out and managed to get us a huge discount on all our electrical items because we were buying them all at the one time. We saved over $1000 and managed to get a double fridge freezer, wireless home theatre surround sound system and dvd player, vacuum cleaner, microwave, washing machine and 50" plasma..... now that sounds scary and it is.. but what was the total price in pounds? Just over 3000 pounds. Yup, for ALL that cool stuff. It's very cheap here and with the discount even better. We had a look at pool prices however and those weren't at all cheap. They were DOUBLE what we'd originally thought. The reason for this is that you have to add in landscaping, fencing, cleaner, solar heating, lights etc etc. We're a little bit upset about that, but thankfully we have amazingly kind parents who would also love us to have a pool and it looks like we're going to be able to get one. It will be a godsend because it's sooooo hot here even in the evening and it'll be nice to swim at night.

On Sunday evening we went to the Girlfest film night. The two films that were showing were Loving Annabelle and Imagine Me and You. We'd already seen them both as we own them on DVD but thought we'd go along anyway. It was good to see the films again even though some of the audience ruined the first one by laughing at tragic bits and yelling out stupid comments throughout. It actually made me call them f**kwits, which Angela found very amusing and I'm sure my mum reading this will be disgusted at LOL. Anyway, it was true, thankfully for the next film it wasn't so bad as alot of people left. We realised that even in a sprawling room full of people, we're our own little group and we're sooooo thankful for that. We can entertain each other far more than when amongst a group of crazy people and we're happy about that after being together 9 years.

We might not have the internet for a while now, we know there's a few places on the Sunshine coast that do allow access with the account thing we bought, but we'd need to find them first. Don't worry we will text and things though. It's a beautiful 34 degrees outside today with blue skies. We're going to make sure we wear PLENTY of sunscreen when we head to the beach later. We haven't booked anywhere to stay yet so that is our first port of call. It's scary how quickly our money is being used up. We're looking forward to being in one place so we don't need to spend so much!

The reason we're still in the Brisbane area is that we're waiting on the bank cards so hopefully they'll be there when we go in on Wednesday and then we can head off to Melbourne. It's a 20 hour drive inland from here so we're not sure where we're stopping or anything yet, just treating it as a big adventure.

That's all from us other than the usual updated photos that you can find HERE.

Email Contact

Hi everyone, just a little note. Our ntl email address and thumbbandits addresses aren't in use at the moment so please if you want to contact us can you do so at our mac account. That's the only one that will be getting checked on a regular basis.
Thanks!

Gold Coast, House, Travel

Date: 26th Jan 2007 - Australia Day!

Where to begin, ok let's see, where were we last.... OK, so we were planning a SeaCat trip across to the city. What started out as an adventure fast became a nightmare (of comical error and stupidity!). The handout in our apartment informed us that a trip to the SeaCat terminal would be a 15 minute walk, with this in mind we set off in the blazing sun... 40 minutes later as we rounded a riverbend, we saw what we thought was the terminal, thank goodness!! Alas it wasn't, now we were confused. We knew we'd gone the right way as we had a map. We then saw the ferry coming, and it went past us, a further 10 minutes up the road!! We missed it, so we waited for the next. We took a lot of photos of the trip, but to save you all mass boredom, we've only posted a few. Some of the Sea Cat and some of the houses on the riverside. You can check them out HERE, oh and check out that bird we saw that just spiked a fish!

The house build is ongoing and they seem to be working at a fairly fast rate, so here's hoping it's ready when we think it will be and we're not left stranded! You can check out updated pics of that (should it float your boat!) HERE. As you can see the roof frame is now up etc. We also discovered the basketball court and park across the road, something for Cat!

The Gold Coast
Wow... not much else to say really. We decided spur of the moment to take a drive down there yesterday since it's only 25 minutes from the house and wow! You can check out the pictures HERE.

Because we don't have the internet and this isn't our computer (we're using the hotels as they don't have wifi!) it's difficult to remember what order we did things in, so forgive the jumbled nature of this. Last night (Thurs 25th Jan) we drove into town to check out South Bank. We wanted to see the inner city beach, which is, just what it sounds like, right in the center of the city. It was really cool, you can check out pictures of it HERE.

You can check out our Misc photos HERE. We did this to try and keep things neat for you all. Hope you've liked this update! catch you later!

Australia Day 2/3

Date: 23rd Jan 2007

Car pickup! The lovely Trudy picked us up at the apartment at 1pm and drove us to the dealership to pick up the car (pics HERE). The personalised registration hadn’t arrived yet, so it has the regular regi on it at the moment, but we’ll post an updated pic in the week hopefully with the proper registration plates on it. As soon as we got the car we headed to the nearby shopping area and bought sat-nav, but we still managed to take wrong turns!! We then drove to the house and was surprised to see it on the go, the frames were up (pics HERE). It’s just off the main motorway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, underdeveloped at the moment, but a huge growth area. We also finally met the lovely Brett (realtor / friend) in the flesh and he was as charming in person as he was via email. He also showed us around the show home, which is the same as ours will be. It was beautiful, bigger than we imagined. We will probably change the colors slightly and we now know it’s definitely big enough for a pool. Cath chose the right bedroom and the garage is huge!

We left the house and Brett and headed to the Westfield Helensvale shopping center 10 minutes from the house, got some groceries and then drove back to Brisbane. Decided to just go back to the apartment, nabbing fish and chips on the way as it was the only place within walking distance we knew about. After dinner we were so tired we had to go to bed and it was only 8.30!! Up this morning (23rd) at 6am. Seems like we’re already getting into the Brisbane way of life! Today we’re planning a sea-cat trip across to the Queen Street Mall and then over to South Bank to take some photos, which we’ll upload for you all next time. We’re hoping to find a wi-fi place in the Mall and I guess if you’re reading this around the 23rd Jan, we managed it! More later!!

Addendum: There's a couple of random photos of the river here near our apartment. You can view them HERE.

Australia Update Day 1

Date: 22nd Jan 2007 - AM

We arrived yesterday after a looooong few flights. The flight to Heathrow was fine at a mere 55 minutes or so, we then had to leg it to make it to the connection because the handout said it was going to take 75 minutes to get from where we landed to where we were leaving for Singapore (an hour later). In truth it only took us 20 mins, whew. The London to Singapore flight was around 13 hours and my goodness was it ever boring andcraped!! For some bizarre reason the multitude of ‘time passing’ gadgetry we’d taken remained in the bag as we were just too tired to bother. We opted for watching a couple of films and some comedy TV.

Singapore Airport (Changi) wasn’t as exciting as we’d thought it would be, but then we didn’t have much time to check it out. We made a point of eating Singapore Noodles in Singapore though and also bought a new camera (10.1 megapixel!) and we bought a DS game also (Gunpey). The next flight from Singapore to Brisbane took about 7 hours, though this time we managed to sleep a little, as well as playing games on the in-flight entertainment system. It didn’t seem so bad.

Arrival!!!
Weird… it smells and feels like Florida or LA! It didn’t take long to get through customs and everyone was quite friendly. Got a cab to the Manhattan Apartments where we’re now staying. The whole area here really looks like Santa Monica and the apartment is beautiful (pics HERE). We’ve got a view of the river from the bedroom which is nice and it’s amazingly quiet here. This morning we got up around 6.30am and we intend to get into this habit everyday (yes people that know us well, we’ll wait for you to regain composure lol). Today we’re going to walk down the street to get some essentials. We walked to the ‘servo’ (petrol / gas station) last night and got some, but they didn’t have shampoo!! We also realised there’s no hairdryer! Trudy, the lovely lady from the Kia dealer, is picking us up around 1pm to go get the car then we’re really not sure what we’ll be doing. Probably getting a sat-nav system and driving down to where the house is being built. The weather is bright and sunny, but fairly cloudy with the actual sun peeking through now and again, not sunny enough to get a tan due to the sun peeking through intermittently! It is going to be around 32 degrees Celsius today though.

Asides: Last night on the way back to the apartment from the servo we saw our first cane toad!!!! Cheeky little mite was sitting right there on the footpath! Other wildlife spotted, a tiny cute gecko above the elevator actually inside this building. No other wildlife to report, we’ll try and remember to keep the camera with us for our next spotting.

More later no doubt!

Ambro Update! - Safe Arrival

Wee Ambrosius arrives safe with new friend Lee

We're happy to report that our little fluffy baby has arrived at the Sydney quarantine station safely and is her usual friendly self. We set the alarm last night for 2.30am so we could phone at the time we'd been told to and spoke to her minder Lee. She sounded very nice and assured us all was well and that Ambro had a wagging tail and was very happy to be out of that awful crate.

It will be another 4 weeks or so before we see her and we're looking forward to that very much. She'd better remember us or there will be trouble lol

No other updates, too tired right now. Up at 4am for the trip to the airport and then it's off to London, then Singapore and finally Brisbane.

Peace y'all.

Ambro in the air

Wee Ams the jetsetter!

Well today was a very stressful day as we awoke at 4.45am knowing that it was the day we had to put wee Ambs on the flight to Australia. We headed to Glasgow airport where we had to drop her off at the British Airways cargo terminal. There was nobody there when we arrived, but soon after they showed up and it was all go from there. We had to take Ambro into the building and put her in her little crate that was on the scales. She was then sent through the xray and we got to say bye to her. It was one of the most horrible, torturous events ever. She wasn’t too stressed out when she first got in, but when she realised she wasn’t getting back out she starting crying and licking our fingers through the grate. Angela and dad were crying and I did everything I could not to because I knew if I started I wouldn’t be able to stop. After we said bye, we went and filled in the paperwork and that was that. We had to drive home, praying every second that she’s safe and well on her journey around the world.

Throughout the day today we’ve been thinking we hear her walking around the house or whimpering. We keep looking around for her and shutting doors behind us so she doesn’t get in, all the while she’s down at Heathrow in the animal reception centre. Her flight from Heathrow to Sydney didn’t leave until 21.45pm so she had a long wait at Heathrow. As soon as it turned that time, we immediately started checking the live flight tracker to see if she’d left and she was airborne at 22.20. There’s a stopover in Singapore for refuelling and then it’s off to Sydney. It really is a very weird day today. It makes you realise how used to having her around you become and how totally painful and stressful it is knowing you’re not with her when she’s making such a huge journey. All we keep telling ourselves is that at least she doesn’t know what being on a plane is and all she knows is that she’s in a dark, warm place for a long time. She will hopefully not be too scared and we will be able to report in soon that she’s arrived well at the quarantine station in Sydney.