Flooded Roadtrip…

Hi, Jeff here, blogging from a small mining town in the middle of nowhere called Emerald.

We are moving office from Cairns To Melbourne and needed to transport all the equipment ASAP.

It’s a 3000km distance which we planned to do in 3 days as we were shutting down the computer server for the islands and then quickly (and safely) driving a couple tones of stuff down the middle of OZ direct to Melbourne. Well, that was the plan anyway. WE managed to do about 1200ks yesterday after waking up at 4 loading the back of the bakkie (Ute as they call it here). We packed the big trailor the night before but there was no way to lock the back of the bakkie so had to do it in the morning. We then drove until about 7 last night… We were  doing ok but it started raining pretty heavily the last few hours and pouring over the road… exciting stuff.

When we got to the Route 66 Motel, it was kinda nice hearing the rain fall on the tin roof as we laid our tired heads to rest before waking up at 4:30 the next morning… unfortunately the rain never stopped…

we woke up in the morning at 4:30 and the rain had not stopped.
At this stage we were just disappointed that we’d have to be driving extra carefully in the rain…
We got on the road again and managed to drive 10ks across some flooded roads, only by about 1/2 a foot which was not ideal but we could still make it safely across…
On oncoming car then flashed us and we stopped side by side… they told us that we better try find somewhere to turn around as there is no chance we will be able to continue on the road as there were a few creeks pouring over the road and rising rapidly. We’re driving with a huge trailor so doing a 3 point turn was not really an option – we carried on driving till we found a gravel turn off to a farm and were able to head back where we came from.
We went bak to the motel and reserved another night… we then went online and saw a list of closed roads on the regional websites… we called the cops to confirm roads were closed and yes… North, South East and West roads were closed. We are officially stuck in Emerald. Pete went back and got some sleep as he only got 2hrs the night before. I went online and sifted through about 80 email and caught up on any urgent work stuff.
Later when most business had opened up we went into town and found the info centre to see if there was any other way out or what other options were availabel to us and how long we may be stuck here… it turns out there isnt much in the way of getting out and we could be here for a few more days… who knows?
We cam back to the hotel, confrimed we’d be in for the night and did some more work. in the afternoon we went to the bridege we had driven over through that morning… the first time we crosseed it at 5am there were some campers under the brduge, when we went there now, the water had risen 11 metres and was still rising… we spoke to a local who said last time this happend it took 3 days for the water to get this high. today it took half a day…
Taking the advice from the girl at the info centre who said we were lucky not to get stuck between two creeks when driving and that we should make sure we have food and water in the car, we decided to go to the supermarket… it seems we were a bit late… the checkout lady said people had come in earlier and were buying all the fresh milk and canned goods etc. We bought the last few bottles of water can cans of baked beans…
At this stage it started to sink in that we may be here for a while…
We kinda laughed but its rather concerning.
We made a list of the impact of not getting the computer server to melbourne in time and considered options of flying it to melbourne via plane or heli if necessary…
Reports were coming in over the radio and TV about the floods all over the east coast and they had a 4 day and 8 day forecast which didnt look like it would ease up. Not ideal at all.
Luckily we have internet access and can do some work remotely, but we need to get the system up and running in melbourne asap and the coastal road seems to be the best bet to get to melbourne – this is a diff route to what we planned but is a bit longer… plus the road to get there is flooded in 4 different spots… so there isn’t much we can really do.
We noticed when we walked back to the motel that its the closest building to the river and the next house to it is raised on stilts – the roof of the motel is the height of their floorboards… dont feel like waking up in a river.
Who knows how bad this will get… seems like the climate is getting it’s own back on us for trashing the environment, destroying the ozone and polluting everything we can find.
our car is one of the only cars that are not 4×4 in this town… seems everyone here drives a 4×4 – one little old lady was telling us about her 4×4 which can raise it’s clearance level by 4 inches just by the push of a button… pretty cool.
So, right now we just have to wait until they open up the roads. WE still have 3 days of driving and 2900k’s to cover.
To add insult to injury, I missed a jack Johnson concert 10yrs ago for reasons out of my control and was over the moon when I heard he was playing in melbourne – JEn and I booked our tickets way in advance and have been looking forward to seeing him for ages… the concert is Wednesday and unless we get to leave tomorrow it doesnt look like I will be able to make it in time. I am really really really bummed about this. sigh. what can you do. fingers crossed we can get outa Wolf Creek (I mean Emerald) tomorrow…

Since then, the roads are stil lclosed and the main one we needed has washed away.

WE are now looking at chartering a plane to fly the server back to melbourne

GetSmarter Internet Super User Course “Elevator Pitch”

Hi Guys

I’ve been doing the GetSmarter and UCT Internet Super User Course for the past 2 months or so and I must say first of all IT ROCKS (and I’m not being biased!) 🙂 The module I am currently on is “Publishing Yourself” and we are learning about blogging, vlogging and all sorts of interesting things. Our assignment this week is to create a blog on wordpress and add a post giving an ‘elevator pitch’ of ourselves as the authors. So I thought… since Jeff and I already have a wordpress blog… why not update it with a post for my assignment? So here is our elevator pitch (being written at 10.50pm melbourne time)…

We are two professionals (an attorney and marketing manager) who quit our corporate jobs to travel, experience different places and people and make some memories… Well that WAS the plan. And this blog was initially thought to be a record of our travels and a way to keep our family and friends updated. But life seems to have other plans for us. Within a few months of living and working on a tropical island off the coast of Oz, Jeff was offered sponsorship as the marketing manager of Hideaway Resorts. It is such an incredible opportunity and we decided to jumped at it. We have just moved to Melbourne and this blog will now be about our lives and experiences as we settle in to Ozzie culture for a while. We hope you enjoy it! The jeffiner 🙂

Ps. Things have been crazy with the move to Melbourne but I will update with the latest news soon!

Cairns, you’ve been good to us but we’re moving to MELBOURNE!!!

hello everyone

After 3 months in Cairns, it’s time to say goodbye. Jeff is being sponsored by Hideaway Resorts (initially on the temporary sponsorship visa but it may lead to a permanent sponsorship in the future) and its head office is relocating to Melbourne so we need to move down there. We are super stoked about the move as Melbourne was Jeff’s favourite city when he travelled around oz after school and it’s the arts and culture ‘hub’ of Australia, meaning there are awesome opportunities for me to follow my passion in makeup (I’m studying at the Academy of Makeup next year! yipppeee) and for Jeff to explore his in crazy art installations… YAY!

Cairns is a fairly small town (by no means tiny in ozzie terms though, especially up in north queensland where there appear to be some serious one horse towns!) and we have gotten to know it well. The CBD has been laid out in a grid like fashion so once you know the street names you can find anything! We have been living very close to where we were working so we have gotten used to walking to work, the shops and anywhere we go out. In the last month I have only been working part-time (from 7.30 – 11.00am) so Jeff has been coming home for lunch everyday and we’ve been having lunch together which has been cool. After initially partying pretty hard when we arrived in Cairns, we settled down into a good routine of working, exercising (I have shown the esplanade who the boss is!), chilling, doing cool stuff on the weekends, ok ok and occasionally having a big night out 🙂 places we explored around Cairns:

Port Douglas: beautiful little seaside town with an amazing restaurant called Salsa… mmmm….

Mossman Gorge: pretty lush gorge with waterfalls etc – it was nice but quite touristy

Daintree and Cape Tribulation: Rainforest, rainforest, seriously thick rainforest right on the beach

Kuranda: Hippie town renowned for its markets

Yungabarra: Tiny town in the middle of the Atherton Tablelands farming area – known for its monthly market

Green Island: We went on a day trip and did some good snorkelling and even saw a turtle yay!

We also went to a few music events – Reggae Town Festival where we saw John Butler Trio (awesome band that jeff has known for ages but I only got into over here – they rock!), The Illumination Party – trance party at a bungy jump location which was very average compared to cape town trance parties… these guys could learn a thing or two about TPs up in north queensland like making it more than a 1 night event and making sure that the music is actually turned on and stays on for most of the party… We also saw Lior at the Tanks Botanical Gardens – a cool ozzie dude. And there were tons of free events on the Esplanade (like our Sea Point promenade except not as beautiful) with street artists and performers showing off their stuff.

A highlight for me in the last 3 months was definitely doing a photo shoot with Martine Cotton, Autumn Roxye and Meagan Kelly. It was the first shoot I have ever done hair and makeup for and I am so stoked with the whole process from beginning to end. I will put up photos once they have been completely finalised.

So now for the next part of our adventure! I feel excited and apprehensive at the same time – everyone says we’ll love Melbourne and I can’t think of any reasons why we wouldn’t except for the fact that our families and south african friends aren’t there… We miss you all very much 😦 but at the same time such great things are happening for us here.

Thats it from me for now – next time we write it’ll be from Melbourne baby whoohooo!

lots of love to you all xxxxx

grafitti and other stuff

Ok so… jen has just gone to work and I asked me to update the blog coz its been a little while…

Im sitting here listening to a song from Simone Elias who we went to go watch play live last night with Martine Cotton – the photographer who we have been using for the photo shoot on dunk and bedarra… ok let me rewind a bit. One of the big projects I have been working on at work is arranging a whole shoot for both islands before the end of the month as that is the deadline the pictures need to go out into the travel agents publications. Not really ideal as a shoot of this nature requires months of planning and preparation but I raised my concerns and they wanted it to go ahead anyway. Not one to turn down a challenge, I have been working flat out the last few weeks and managed to get everything organized – shot list, running order, call sheet for 30 staff to do various activities, helicopter, videographer, photographer etc… unfort the weather up here is very unpredictable and because it took so long to get the go ahead/approval we only really had Thursday morning to get heli shots of all the activities… we woke up at 3:30 am and drove 2hrs to mission beach to the helicopter so we could start shooting from sunrise… the sky was clear and starry, but when the sun rose, there was a big cloud bank on the horizon moving in quickly… darn. We flew around the island a few times getting shots and video, but the gray cloud was making the images look too flat so we decided best to save costs and send heli and videog back and just use the photographer for interior/on the ground shots which didn’t matter so much about the weather. It was a frantic day and a half but we got some good pics and are planning to come back to the island next week hopefully when the weather is better. These images need to be captured and every day that goes by we miss out on getting them out there.. I was really upset becuae it had been perfect weather the 3 days before but I was waiting for the go-ahead. Oh well. It was great to see all our old friends on the island. I couldn’t chat too much as was running around organizing staff for pics, children and parents, props, wardrobe, food, transport etc etc but after dinner I popped in to the staff bar for a couple beers which was great. Everyone was asking about Jen the whole time… she’s a popular girl 🙂

There is currently a Cairns arts festival happening at the moment so there is all these exhibitions, circus acts, movies, concerts, installations and activity happening on the esplanade and around cairns – it’s a great vibe here.

Even the graffiti in Cairns is cool… check out the pic below done in Chinese… it just looks so much more appealing than normal writing (the little flower is cool) – I don’t know what it says – probably something like “jou ma se po3s” ha ha.

All the power boxes on the side of the road have also been painted… I have started a mini project taking pics of each new one I come across and will post all the pics in a few weeks once I have most of them… pretty interesting.

Also saw a huge graffiti wall… Check out how small jen is in the one picture compared to the artwork… it extends about 80m up the alley to the left…0

There is a music fest in 2 weeks where a cool ozzy band called john butler trio is playing – can’t wait.  I’m gonna pop in to work now and check out ticket prices online and also post this blog.

Oh, if you get a chance, check out www.facebook.com/dunkisland – I started a facebook photo competition and there are some awesome pics being entered… one of them is of this snake eating a chicken on the farm… its pretty gross but funny at the same time.

Till next time…

What a whirlwind few weeks!

Wow so much has happened in the last couple of weeks I don’t quite know where to start. We had a really busy period at dunk over the Ozzie school holidays, we all worked really long hours and very hard. Jeff and I were tired and getting a little bit over waitressing and bartending. The good thing was we wracked up some serious overtime so we got a fair bit of time off when the busy period ended. We started thinking about our next step and jeff decided to put together a proposal to the dirctors of hideaway resorts ( the company that owns dunk and bedarra islands) to get a job in marketing at the head office in cairns. A bit of background- over the past 2 months jeff had been giving the directors ideas for marketing dunk island which they had liked. They even started implementing some of these and would call jeff for advice every now and then and he had a number of meetings with them. So we thought why not make this a fulltime, official role? We spent hours typing up a motivation and proposing a 3 month trial period at the head office. A few hours went by and jeff got a call from the owner. Two conversations later it was official – they wanted him up in cairns asap! Wow weee.

We didn’t really know what to do from there but we had the next 3 days off so we thought we’d have time to work it all out with our bosses etc. However the owners had more exciting plans for us… Pack your bags you are going to bedarra for 2 nights on a research trip!! Bedarra is a 5 star island resort also owned by hideaways and is considered to be 1 of the most exclusive and luxurious resorts in oz. We also just happened to go there on the gourmet series weekend which involved 2 communal 7 course degustation dinners, the first paired with Louie roderer champagne and the second with leeuwen estate. The whole weekend was un-be-lievable!! We were treated like royalty, dined with the rich and famous and generally had to pinch ourselves every so often to double check that we were not dreaming!

After the weekend in bedarra it was back to work for 3 days and then we flew up to cairns to start our next chapter. We arrived and came straight to harbour lights where we are currently living in a 2 bedroom apartment with Andrew the one owner of hideaways. We are on the 11th floor and have incredible views overlooking the harbour and city – absolutely stunning! Jeff always seems to land our bums in the butter! The 1st few nights were just party party party and then jeff started work. The first week was fairly stressful for both of us as jeff was thrown into the deep end and I was job hunting which is never that fun. But we are both doing much better now as jeff is getting into his work and I am starting work on Thursday as the manager of the gingerbread house, a little deli/coffee shop on the same street as jeff’s work 🙂

We have been here now for almost 2 weeks and are starting to settle in nicely. Tony and Katie, friends from dunk, are here for the next little while so we’ve been seeing a fair bit of them. We also have friends popping up every now and then from dunk so it has been super social so far and we have realized that we ate so lucky we’ve made some really good friends! Everyone in cairns is so friendly as well so it’s great! Katie cut jeff’s hair last night (she is a hairdresser by trade) so hone is the surfer boy look and the corporate Mohawk is back 🙂

A heart-thumping day out

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Oh yeah! We got 2 days off together and went bouncing down the Tully river with Tony and Katie. So much fun. It’s classed as a grade 5 river meaning there are some scary rapids. We woke up early to take the ‘Carboat” (see earlier post) across to the mainland. The sea was so rough it was just as hectic as the rafting. We arrived soaked with no spare dry clothes to put on. Rookie error. Lucky jen could borrow some pants from Katie.
It rained basically the whole time (it is in a rainforest after all) as dad would say it was character building and added to the adventure. Only 2 of the dams 4 turbines were letting water thru which meant it was more technical than usual with some big drops into the pools!
It was great fun, we got to rock jump, float a rapid, get pelted under a waterfall, have a lunch Barbie and I even got to guide us thru the one rapid at the end of the day. We never tipped out the whole time so our gide asked everyone on the group who was keen. Tony and my hand shot up with a few others. There were 6 of us keen which was enough to fill 1 raft. Weall got in and paddled upstrem to the rapid where we proceeded to turn sideways and flip the raft on it’s head!
After all the excitement we still had to go back on the rough sea. The guy had not been operating all day as it was too dangerous but he said he’d take us back as it would get even worse tomorrow. Katie and Tony stayed the night on the mainland and we went crashing back thru the big waves and swell back to dunk island. We had white knuckles the whole way but made it without swimming.

Australians claim the rully river as ‘The best white water rafting in Australia’. The only way well find out if that’s true is by rafting a few other rivers… Watch this space

Barefoot – the way to go

I’m not much of a beer drinker, but have discovered a cool beer in OZ…

It’s called Barefoot Radler (apparently there are some issues with the name Radler, so it’s changing to Barefoot Cave next week) but its flippen good. It’s carbon neutral! I havent seen any beers (nor many other products) claiming to be a carbon neutral production. This is definitely the way forward for the environment.

Its a pretty unique taste… got lemon and lime in it – kind of like a shandy. The beers here all have an indication of how many ‘standard’drinks it is equivalent to coz there is absolutely no drink-driving. Barefoot is 1.1 standard drinks, whereas your usual beer as approx 1.4 standard drinks. I had a good few of them last night and didnt have a hangover this morning (prob got to do with the no additatives/preservatives). It’s got a bit of a ‘girls’ drink perception to it kinda like apple cider, but there are loads of guys who appreciate it after a day in the sun.

Got 2 days off today and tomorrow so, we’re going to book a rafting trip down the Tully River with Tony and Katie (the best rafting in Oz… grade 4 rapids here we come.) Will have a few Radlers afterwards for sure… pics to follow…

Its been a while…

Hey guys
Sorry things have been quiet from my side – I’ve been working pretty long hours at the terrace and inbetween that, sleeping, eating, having some well deserved drinks and doing some exercise I’ve had little energy for anything else. For the past 2 or 3 weeks it’s just been myself and Emily (whose a team leader) waitressing at the terrace, opening, closing and pretty much running it. We have our own bar down there so we generally have a bartender shifted down there too but if it’s not busy enough we do the drinks ourselves. It’s always murphys law that when I’m in the restaurant alone a group of guests will come in and order complicated cocktails! But it’s all good and I’m getting the hang of it (i think!).

Jeff and I had one day off together on tues this week and we had a great day. We spoilt ourselves with a couples massage at the spa (a dollar a minute for staff) – it was divine! Then we checked out the lunch at the staff canteen which looked awful so we headed down to the jetty cafe, had a cocktail and ate some good food 🙂 then we came home, had a nap and then hit jess’ tues training session- weights, squats, abs, cardio – pretty intense. Had a good chat to the mamma and then watched a movie and hit the sack. What a good day!

We are off together on mon and tues this week and are possibly going white water rafting on the tully river on tues for the day – I know Brian will be happy to hear that 🙂 still need to get all the details and see if we can arrange it. Otherwise we had planned to go to mission beach to check out Joe and peta’s camper. We think we have Joe persuaded to sell but we’re still trying to break peta! We’d like to buy their camper asap so we can go for nights away on our days off and explore a bit further afield than the island.

I gotta get ready for work now but hope that you are all well! You must be feeling patriotic right now with the world cup- we are! There is constant banter between the soccer fans here. Miss you all xxx

Imagine driving one of these Carboats to work on the highway

Yesterday we went for a walk to coconut beach (Jen will post some pics of the spiders we saw soon).

When we got back we went and had a cocktail at the Jetty Cafe when this rubber duck came speeding up to the shore and istead of skidding to a halt it carried on driving right up the bank of the beach – it was such a surprise!  check out the link to the below video clip as it reverses back into the water with the passengers who didnt even have to get their feet wet getting in or out…

http://qik.com/video/7289337

All sorts of goodness

We got our first pay cheques last week and were pleasantly surprised – looks like we’ll be saving some decent moola 🙂 we hardly have any expenses as food and accommodation are deducted from our pay before we get it so the only things we pay for are booze and any activities we want to do that aren’t free. It’s a surreal thing never having to cook and pay bills- it’s like we are not in real life here.

On Friday we had been married for 6 months, jeff picked and arranged some wild flowers for me which was such z nice surprise. We decided to celebrate on Monday when we both had the day off so on monday evening we took a bottle of champers and our dinner in tupperwares up to the 9th hole of the golf course – beautiful views of the island and sunset! We sat drinking champers out of camping mugs, having a laugh and thinking how lucky we are! Just as the sun was setting Tony came up to where we were sitting and asked if we wanted to join him and Katie, his girlfriend, for drinks at the main bar. Tony and Katie are an English couple who’ve been here about a year and a half, they did fruit picking to extend their working holiday visa, and are a really cool couple. So we played some pool, drank too much and generally had fun.

Yesterday we were also off so we decided to do a trip out to the great barrier reef. Adriana, an American girl who works here came too. We got a good discount on the trip because we are staff. It took an hour or so to get there on the boat and then we spent a few hours on eddy’s reef snorkelling, having lunch, reading, snorkelling some more- you get the idea. The snorkelling was good although we think we’ve been spoilt by snorkelling at manemba atoll in Zanzibar because eddy’s reef couldn’t top that! The water was also surrisingly chilly and as we’re in save mode we didn’t want to pay to hire wetsuits. But it was a good day all the same.

Two exciting things happened to me in the last week- firstly, a girl was leaving and couldn’t take all her clothes with her so gave me some of her stuff- this may not sound exciting to you but when you’ve been wearing the same 5 tops and 1 pair of shorts for nearly 4 weeks this was like Christmas for me! Also one of the smaller restaurants on the island opened, the terrace, which is an Italian restaurant, and all the food and beverage staff have been saying how good it is to work there compared to in the main restaurant where I’ve been working- thing is it’s difficult to get shifted at the terrace, all politics etc. I mentioned to the duty manager who does the rosters that I worked I’m an Italian restaurant part time for 3 years and next time I checked the roster I saw that I’ve been shifted to work at the terrace for the next 2 weeks 🙂 I have my first shift there today starting at 2pm and working till close which should be around 10pm – those are mt hours for the next 2 weeks. Not bad. Jeff is on minibar splits which means from 9am till about 1 pm he goes to all the rooms and restocks the mini bars. Then he’s free from 1ish till 5.30pm and then he works in the main bar from 5.30 till close.

Until next time xxx