Bluewater

After spending a great 10 days with relations (Sarah’s family) in Townsville where we swam, walked on the beach, ice skated and talked and talked and talked some more we are now regrouping as a family at the Bluewater free camp about 30km’s North of Townsville.

The Children

The Adults

                                                                               

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The Water Park on the Strand is a wonderful place, free and fun!  There are toilets and changing rooms and free BBQ facilities all on the Townsville foreshore!










The highlight of the water park is the big bucket that fills with water and then tips onto a roof then cascades down onto unsuspecting children!  Our girls like to watch it fill with water then run and hide while yelling “The buckets tipping!!”

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We also visited Parrallend Beach where between gates 8 and 9 you can run your dogs off lead.  It’s not a patrolled beach so the kids only paddled close to the shore while keeping watch for Saltwater Crocodiles and Box Jellyfish!  The Jellyfish (Stingers as they call them here) are most active between November to March but you do get rogue ones that are around at other times.

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The Warrina Ice Skating Rink was a lot of fun.  None of our children had skated before so it was great to have cousins to show them how it was done then help them do it.

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Bluewater free camp has some basic facilities like, toilets and an outdoor cold shower.  For the children there is a playground and a river for swimming.  The girls and Jireh have spent a lot of time today enjoying the playground and the river!  After dinner they went back out for more playing in the cool of the evening!


Morning photo’s




















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Night photo’s

Long overdue update!

The bus is strangely quiet!  With all but one of the puppies now rehomed and also Sambo (the puppies father), life is returning to some sort of normal!  The two puppies we have left are still living under the master/family bed and wake during the night and at 7am every morning!  We’ve seen some nice sun rises but it’s been so cold some mornings it’s hard to drag ones self out of bed!  The coldest it got was –3.9 degrees Centigrade ( that’s 24.9 F) with a good white frost.  It was so cold that when I tried to boil the kettle the gas wouldn’t work properly!

We have spent the last couple of weeks building some new storage units in the bus between the bunks and the master/family bed.  The drawers we had were falling apart, we had only paid $5 for them and they’d lasted nearly 3 years so that’s not bad!  Our friends in Roma kindly let us stay on their street frontage, use their power and carport, and gave us as much plywood as we needed! We still need to put doors on the front but otherwise it’s looking great!  We have four dog beds at the bottom and shelves above.  Will get some decent photo’s one day!

Here is Dixie and Asta chilaxing in one of the dog boxes.

We have now left the coldness of Roma as we make our way north to Townsville to meet up with Sarah’s brother and family who live there and her Sister who is coming over from New Zealand for a visit.  After spending some time in Townsville we plan to head to Cairns to deliver the last of the puppies to their new owners!

Spent the night in a rest stop between Roma and Injune we were the only ones there!  The girls went for a walk and the dogs and puppies had a swim!

Michael with Asta – she was wet and dirty!!

Next night we camped in a road side stop between Injune and Rolleston. Lots of space but no facilities. 

We had the first campfire we’ve had in ages!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We found a neat playgroud at Springsure.  There was no one else there so we took the opportunity to give the dogs and the kids a good run around!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the playground fully fenced, Jasmine took the opportunity to give her dog some disc training!  Asta had fun trying to round Sparkie up!

 

 

 

 

We have made it as far as Emerald and are noticing the difference in temperature.  From –3.9 overnight to 6 (42.8 F) deg overnight makes a big difference!

We also now have a new laptop – hope it proves more reliable than the other ones! Here is Jasmine loading it for the fist time!