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Life before lockdown

Since the last blog post I wrote we seem to have escaped from one disaster and entered an even bigger one! Whilst before we were locked inside due to thick bushfire smoke, we now have clearer air than ever but the slight inconvenience of a massive pandemic..

I had a short but lovely trip back to England in February, mainly to interview for a place on the Internal Medicine Training programme. It had been a tough decision, as we both love our life together out in Australia and have had such fantastic experiences and adventures here. I think both of us would love to stay a bit longer, however with my formal training on hold whilst here and a huge difficulty in transferring said training between the countries if I were to start training here, we essentially needed to make a decision sooner rather than later.

It was brilliant to see family and friends again after so long, although certainly took a little adjusting to the cold temperatures and busy roads again having not driven on anything bigger than a largely empty dual carriageway in 30+ degree heat for 2 years!

I later found out I was successful in my application and got my first-choice job so will be spending the next 3 years in Winchester and Southampton from August! This certainly made the whole ‘moving home’ plan seem more real. Although I am fairly certain our reaction for the first few weeks/months of arriving home will be ‘what have we done?!?’ I know for me, the value of having the support of family and friends close-by going forward will hopefully outweigh the bad weather, overpopulation, and extortionate house prices!

On my arrival back to Australia, the virus was still only in its early stages and we certainly hadn’t predicted at that point the imminent deterioration in circumstances across the world; so little so that we booked everything for a trip of a lifetime for our final 2 months here – a month travelling around New Zealand and a month driving from Darwin to Perth. As you can imagine, that dream has since all been taken away rather rapidly.

Image: Celebrating my birthday with a dip in the Bogey Hole!

In early March, we welcomed Tom’s family back to Australia for another visit! The main wildlife left on the list to see after the last visit was a wombat, a platypus, a Tasmanian devil, and quolls..and so the quest began…

As I was working for their first week here, I stayed home whilst they went on an adventure up to the Bunya Mountains in Queensland. By the sounds of things, they brought the rain with them from England and weren’t blessed with the best weather. However, they enjoyed a relaxing few days away from civilization, followed by a few days at Rainbow Beach featuring a day 4WDing on Fraser Island!

We celebrated Tom’s birthday when they got back to Newcastle and were due to go to the Grand Prix in Melbourne, but unfortunately that was the start of the closure of mass gatherings and so it was understandably cancelled. However, these were the days before social distancing was even in our vocabulary, so we got our flights to Melbourne anyway, spending the day exploring the city and botanical gardens! It was only a brief visit as we had a morning flight to Hobart the following morning…

We rented 2 campervans for the trip and headed straight out of Hobart up to the Friendly Beaches in Freycinet National Park for our first night. The night sky was one of the clearest I’ve ever seen so we spent the evening stargazing on the beach and tried our hand at some long exposure star shots! We also had our first encounter with a wombat (which we almost missed in the pitch black – I only noticed it because I was wondering why something I thought was a boulder was grunting!)

Our route the next day took us up the East Coast further, via Douglas Apsley National Park where we hiked to a very refreshing (read freezing!) waterhole for a dip! We spent the night up in the beautiful Bay of Fires, in another beach-side campsite. The sound of the waves crashing on the beach next to the campervan all night was certainly something special!

Image: Apsley River Waterhole

Images: Bay of Fires

We had a long drive the next day to Cradle Mountain National Park, a place I had missed on my first visit and had been dreaming of visiting since! After covering the very wind-y Elephant Pass and across to Cataract Gorge in Launceston to stop for a stretch of the legs, we eventually reached Cradle Mountain campsite before dark. It was certainly the most equipped campsite we’d had so far – our first shower of the trip was certainly welcomed!

After dark, we piled into one van to drive into the park for a wildlife watch, spotting multiple wombats, possums, wallabies and pademelons!

The next day was forecast for rain from late morning so we got up early and Ellie and I caught the first shuttle bus into the park. The hike to the summit was tempting but the forecast suggested that wasn’t the safest choice, so Ellie and I decided to hike to Marion’s Lookout, one of the stops en route to the summit. We’d been advised against the steep rock scramble route up by the slightly over-cautious park rangers, due to the risk of slippery conditions. Instead we took a beautiful longer route up via Wombat Pools and Crater Lake. The place was breathtaking. Jagged peaks, and mirrored glacial lakes, it was everything I had hoped for! We were thankful for the early start as it felt like we had the Park to ourselves and didn’t see a soul for the route up ….until we arrived at Marion’s Lookout and were surprised to see Tom and Gill already there! Having arrived on the next shuttle bus, they had braved the short steep climb (which apparently was no way near as treacherous as we’d been warned) and beat us to it! We were all suitably red-faced and in need of a chocolate break!

I could have stayed in Cradle Mountain all week but there was so much of beautiful Tasmania left to see so we packed up to start the drive up to Stanley on the North West coast. After an hour or so standing on the ‘penguin viewing platform’ at dusk, we finally caught a glimmer of white coming in from the sea – our first fairy penguin sighting! The extra special moment was hearing cheeping noises behind us, turning, and finding two hungry little baby penguins stood at the entrance of their burrows, waiting for their mum to come back with some food!

We spent Gill’s birthday driving around the Tarkine wilderness in the North West. On our first stop at Bluff lighthouse, I managed to get a leech bite on my ankle but unfortunately didn’t notice until about an hour or two later when it was the size of a slug and had injected copious amounts of anticoagulant into me! Ellie saved the day by being the only one of us composed enough to safely take it off! But the bite mark then didn’t stop bleeding for most of the rest of the day…!

That night was the long-awaited platypus sighting, just outside Burnie. It didn’t seem like the most promising spot being very close to an industrial area, and although there were plenty of pademelons about I wasn’t hopeful about seeing a platypus and regrettably retired early to the van. Not long afterwards, Tom snr saw an unmistakable outline through a moonlit reflection on the water, passing under the bridge!

Another long drive the next day brought us over the Central Plateau conservation area and down to Mount Field National Park, not far from Hobart. We stayed in the overflow campsite there, and were surrounded by hundreds of pademelons, lots of very tame and enormous possums and even saw glow-worms on an evening stroll down to Russell Falls!

It was from here that things started to get slightly more stressful….

Whilst we were away, not only had Australia closed its borders, but so had some states, including Tasmania… so thus started a saga of flights repeatedly being cancelled by the airline, and rebooked, and cancelled again, and rebooked, and cancelled again…you get the idea. This of itself was merely a slight inconvenience if it wasn’t for the fact that not only had these cancellations meant Tom’s family missed their flight back to London with Etihad, Etihad (and most other airlines) had now grounded all international flights!

We extended our campervan hire and camped out near Port Arthur in Eaglehawk Neck peninsula in the South East, only an hour or so from the airport if we needed to make a mad dash for it at any point! It was certainly a beautiful place to be stranded and managed to make the most of it with some hikes and a break-in to the now closed Port Arthur Historic site!

After the third or fourth cancellation we decided it best to just go to the airport and wait for them to put us on a flight. It turned out that of the few flights that had been flying, only 50% of the passengers had shown up, so we ended up with a spot on the first one out. If only we’d known that sooner we wouldn’t have been in the difficult position of trying to get Tom’s family repatriated along with thousands of other tourists!

Alas, they were in luck as a relative works for BA, so after multiple international phone calls, she managed to get them safely on a flight home much sooner than many other people!

Despite the mildly stressful end, it was a fantastic trip that we were lucky to even do, as had it been a week later, Tom’s family would have never even made it into Australia!

 It was back to work for the both of us – the Emergency Department has been eerily quiet as there has not been the influx of COVID19 patients in Australia we were anticipating and many fewer people are attending unnecessarily (and more worryingly people who need to attend but aren’t…)

Tom and I are now just finishing up at work having already handed in our notices prior to knowing the world was about to turn apocalyptic, so we are now trying to sort out how we will spend the next few months without any options to travel like we had initially planned! We’re at least making the most of the fact scuba diving is on the government-approved list of daily exercise...!

We hope you are all staying safe and staying well in this rather mad time and we can’t wait to see you on the other side! xxx

[timtamtalestakestwo]

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

...and the fires are not delightful...!

Happy belated New Year!

Finally finding time to check in on here after a fairly busy and smokey Christmas season!

Tom finished off his table tennis competition at the end of November, making it all the way to the final and coming second in his league, but more importantly winning the medal for the most improved player overall in the season! Extremely proud!!

December for me was spent what seemed like endlessly transitioning between nightshifts and dayshifts, and madly trying to make it to as many choir rehearsals/performances as possible in between shifts! 

Tom had almost 2 weeks off work for Christmas as his office closed, which I was obviously not bitter about. At all. I had Christmas day off work so after my midnight and morning singing commitments, we headed down to Swansea beach with snorkels and paddleboards in tow to enjoy one of the first less-smokey days in 2 months! Having had an Aussie-style Christmas dinner last year, we both couldn’t resist a big British Christmas roast with all the trimmings this year (I even voluntarily bought brussel sprouts....I don’t know who I am anymore...!) Was so lovely to skype both our parents on their Christmas mornings too - it’s definitely the hardest time to be away from home!

As a Christmas present, my parents very kindly got us tickets to go and see ‘Cirque Stratosphere’ in the Sydney Opera House concert hall! We’ve been looking out for something to see for ages and this was just perfect for us! We made a trip of it, booked into a room in Potts Point with a pretty spectacular view overlooking the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge, and enjoyed a stunning walk through the botanical gardens which were in full flower! Dinner reservations were at the Oyster Bar, right on the harbour’s edge - it was definitely a bit of a pinch-me moment! The show itself was absolutely fantastic; breathtaking, heart-dropping and outright terrifying circus acts, all linked with the theme of space exploration. We enjoyed watching a chapter of Badu Gili projected onto the sails of the Opera House afterwards! Thank you M&D!

As you all will know, the fires in NSW have been pretty dire over the past few months. We have thankfully been safe in the city, it just all felt very apocalyptic for a few months with a lot of smoke and ash from the nearby fires making the air quality very dangerous; there was certainly a noticeable sky-rocketing of respiratory admissions to my hospital! The deep red sun caused by the thick layer of smog, darkness by late afternoon, and everything smelling of bonfires became a normality. We were certainly the lucky ones though. Lots of the places we drove through on our road-trip from Melbourne to Newcastle last year have now been destroyed with hundreds of homes and too many people lost. Some rain in the past week as seemingly eased things at least temporarily so trying to make the most of some blue skies for now!

I’m briefly popping back to England next week for a short 10 days and am so excited so see my family and all my close friends who I have been missing dearly - the days are so jam-packed I think I’ll be needing another holiday afterwards!! Thankfully, I am moving onto a part-time role when I return so hopefully will able to do just that!

Sending lots of love back home from the both of us!

xxx

[timtamtalestakestwo]

November 2019: Caro came to visit for the weekend, featuring a great fun (and smoky) trip to the Hunter Valley!!

[timtamtalestakestwo]

October 2019: A wonderful post-exam weekend escape together in Blueys Beach, with some great diving off Forster (although with the view of thousands of hectares of land on fires on the horizon. The start of months of catastrophic bushfires in the state...)

[timtamtalestakestwo]

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong....

After dropping the Chrises at Sydney Departures to catch their flight back to the UK (see previous blog post for part 1!), I headed onwards to the Domestic terminal to catch a flight up to Darwin. Arriving at 1am, I had a rather sleepless few hours on the floor of Darwin airport before greeting my parents through arrivals at 5am! We had 3 weeks of Outback adventures ahead to catch up on all we’d missed from a year apart!

We picked up our Britz campervan for the first part of the trip and headed straight in the direction of Kakadu National Park on the red dirt roads in the very hot sunshine to get straight into holiday mode! The evening was spent at an old aboriginal site called Ubirr; here there were ancient ochre paintings, beautiful rock formations and stunning vistas, perfect for a sunset viewing!

We’d heard there might be a possibility of seeing crocs in Kakadu although none of us were convinced we actually would. However, a stroll to Cahill’s Crossing proved us all wrong; on arrival we could see the ominous backs of about 12 crocodiles swimming around in the inaccurately named ‘East Alligator River’. There were locals fishing in the river standing scarily close to the edge, given that behind them were multiple collections of flowers and crosses commemorating people who had been killed in recent years by getting just that bit too close! It was incredible to see the crocodiles climbing out of the water and watching their size triple from what it had appeared in the water!

All those black dots in the water? Crocodiles!

A stunning walk around Bardedjilidgi sandstone outcrops and a steep hike up to Nawlandja lookout overlooking the Nourlangie escarpment provided some of our first exposures to the incredible Kakadu landscape! Given how much land was burning all the time (at one point there were embers right up to the road we were driving along), we were surprised at how green the landscape was.

We braved another close croc encounter on a walk around Anbangbang billabong and also spotted our first Jabiru! It looked absolutely enormous – especially in comparison to all the other birds on the billabong!

Spent the night at an unexpectedly beautiful campsite on the Mary River where we were surrounded by wallabies and kangaroos!

It was time to head across to Litchfield National Park – a smaller area and surprisingly quite different landscape to Kakadu given its relative proximity. We stopped off en route at the ‘magnetic termite mounds’ – so called as they are aligned with their main axis running north to south and orientated such to minimise midday sun exposure and warmth inside the mound. There were also some enormous mounds- up to 5 metres high!

We did a walk to Buley rockholes (which themselves were full of people swimming) but we found our own private one just a few minutes downstream to have a much-needed refreshing dip! Our walk took us down to the popular Florence Falls, and then onwards to the stunning Wangi Falls where we were staying the night! Wangi falls had been closed until the week prior due to crocodile sightings so it was safe to say my mum did not look one bit relaxed for the beautiful sunset swim in there!

Buley Rockholes

Wangi Falls

We squeezed as many hikes as we could in our short time in Litchfield so our last full day there was spent hiking along the Upper and Lower Cascades (literally clambering down a waterfall). It was so hot and we found an inviting rockhole mid-hike but had left our swimmers in the van– my dad and I are not ones to miss out on a plunge pool swimming opportunity so we just jumped in in our clothes! Lunch was at the top of yet another waterfall amid the Tjaetaba walk through a sharp contrast of monsoon forest and savanna landscapes! We finished the day with a walk around the Tolmer falls which were worth our close shave with heat stroke in the high temperatures of the afternoon!

We briefly explored Darwin town centre and harbour before driving to the airport for our flight to Alice Springs for our Red Centre adventure!

 Flying in we could see no evidence of any human life anywhere close until we got off the plane and saw there was in fact an airport there! It had just been expanses of red dirt as far as the eye could see, with no town in sight! We were staying in an amazing ‘glamping hut’ I found on Airbnb called Under The Hump. Sitting outside by the firepit having our kanga steaks with a beautiful view of the stars will certainly be one of me lasting memories of Alice! We weren’t quite prepared for the cold weather we would be faced with though – going from 32 degree mornings to 3 degrees was a bit of a shock to the system!

We explored the town and rather fell in love with its character! A small sleepy town surrounded thousands of miles of desert! Having lived by the coast all our life we realised it was the furthest any of us had ever been from the sea!

We explored the famous Todd Mall markets, and went to the Todd River (I was hugely disappointed by this as was expecting an actual river and was met by an expanse of sand. Apparently I was the only one to not be aware that this would be the case. My Tripadvisor review would be a generous 1star as far as rivers go. Same goes for the actual Alice Spring which I didn’t realise we had even seen until I was told later – because it was again just sand.) We spent a fascinating few hours at the National Women’s Pioneer Museum at the old gaol and a visit to the Telegraph station which allowed telegraphs to be sent between Adelaide and Darwin and was the site of the first European settlement in Central Australia (I imagine the Spring actually had water in it at that time….) – although should be acknowledged that the Arrernte people have inhabited what is now Alice Springs for thousands of years prior!

One of my favourite days of the trip was exploring the absolutely breath-takingly beautiful West MacDonnell ranges along the Larapinta trail. We started about 2 hours from Alice at our furthest point, Glen Helen Gorge. It was a deceivingly cold day despite the basking sunshine so we passed on taking the ‘refreshing dip’ here and felt for the many people we saw running who were doing a 4 day Larapinta trail run!

Mum trying to protect herself from the cold wind!

The next stop was the stunning Ormiston Gorge with hike around the top and through the middle of the gorge (which again had no water because dry season!). The other stops along the way are probably best described with photos rather than words. They included the Ochre pits where indigenous people collected ochre to use for rock and body paintings, which they used to tell Dreamtime stories and in ceremony; Serpentine Gorge with a steep hike up to a lookout over the West MacDonnells; Ellery Creek Hole and Simpsons Gap. We had hoped to see a few rock wallabies along the way but unfortunately they may have been hiding away from the cold!

It was a long 5 hour drive down to Yulara (the small resort town for Uluru). 5 hours along a straight road with fairly barren red dirt desert either side; even just this relatively short distance made us appreciate how enormous and sparse this country is. We caught our first glimpse of Uluru and Kata Tjuta from afar as we approached and what a beautiful sight it was! We found a viewing area next to our accommodation where we watched our first of many Uluru sunsets!

We spent the next 3 days exploring the National Park, learning about the significance of Uluru to the Anangu people and all about the local culture and traditions. Seeing Uluru up close was much more impressive than I'd imagined; what looks like a fairly uniform rock from far away is made of up so many caves and gorges and rock formations which all have cultural significance and stories behind them!

Mutitjulu Waterhole

The other place of significance in the National Park is Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) which is a contrasting collection of rocks (the formation of both Uluru and Kata Tjuta seems to be still very much undecided so I’m struggling to know what to call them!). We did an absolutely stunning hike there called the Valley of the Winds with some breathtaking viewpoints.

After lots of beautiful sunset viewings, we braved a very early start, armed with a thermos of hot tea, to drive into the Park to watch the sunrise. It was certainly a popular event but we could see why – watching the colours change over Uluru with Kata Tjuta in the distance was just spectacular! 

Our legs were exhausted from a lot of hiking so we spent our last day going to workshops and talks put on by the resort, learning about bush tucker, aboriginal hunting tools and even a didgeridoo lesson!

It was time to fly back to Newcastle but what a trip of a lifetime we’d been lucky to experience! It was great to finally show my mum around the place I’ve talked so much about over the past 5 years and to take her back to Sydney to see where they both lived 31 years ago, and meet up with some of their old friends!

Sadly, their life back in England called, so it was another goodbye but we parted ways with so many incredible memories to last a lifetime! 

It was back to hospital life and the revision grind for me....

[timtamtalestakestwo]

A whale of a time!

Firstly, a huge apology for the radio silence over the past few months! It has been an embarrassingly long time since our last update – the reason mainly being that I have been studying for an exam I have just take in Singapore and needed to focus on that for the past few months!

I’m hoping I can make up for the silence with an update on some pretty amazing adventures over that time!

At the end of July, we were very excited to welcome two of Tom’s best friends, Chris and Chris, to Newcastle! I was unfortunately working the first week they were here but was lovely to have the evenings together and celebrated the first night with kanga steaks, crocodile snaps and shrimp on the barbi! They all went off for a few days in Sydney and the Blue Mountains to see the sights, do some hiking, and introduce them to the amazing Australian food scene!

Was great to have them all back for the weekend and borrowed some extra bikes and cycled the Fernleigh track down to Belmont and back before eating a sickening amount of dessert at San Churro!

We had a very early 03.30am start on the Monday to fly to Brisbane and a 4 hour drive up to Hervey Bay, with a stop for a hike at Noosa en route to stretch the legs and to fill our stomachs at Sunshine Beach!

We were staying in an Airbnb just a couple of minutes’ walk from a beautiful beach and enjoyed a BBQ there using one of the public bbqs one evening! Awkwardly a big group of (likely vegan) yogis congregated for an evening yoga class on the bandstand a few metres from our barbeque, right in line of fire of our billowing BBQ smoke!

Hervey Bay is famous for being the place where all the migrating whales congregate for mating season so is a perfect place for a spot of whale watching! We’d booked onto the Tasman Adventure boat, headed out into the bay, and before long spotted our first whales. I hadn’t expected to see them so close up but they were swimming right up to and under the boat, poking their heads out and fin-slapping for us! It was an absolutely incredible experiences and one of the highlights of the trip for me!

The next day we’d booked a trip over to Fraser Island! I’d been here 5 years previously and remembered the treacherous bumpy sand roads so we rented an old 4x4 for the day instead of being tied to a tour group. The drive down 75 mile beach was one of the highlights for all of us and we spotted a dingo by the water too! A slight hiccup came in the form of bottoming out the car on a bit of wooden paving, blocking the exit of probably the busiest site on the island, with queues of tour buses waiting to leave!! After much trying, we eventually summoned the help of a bus load of people to help us pull it off and swiftly were on the move again!

Maheno Wreck

Dingo spotting!

75 mile beach!

Wading down Eli Creek!

Refreshing dip at Lake McKenzie

With the Chrises soon to be flying home, we squeezed in an essential trip to the Hunter Valley for a day of wine-tasting a lot of wine-buying!

Unfortunately their two weeks here had come to an end but I was off on another adventure, so after saying goodbye to them at Sydney International airport I caught the bus over to the Domestic airport and hopped on a flight to Darwin to go and meet my parents!

[timtamtalestakestwo]

Peter took us flying in his plane from Warnervale up over Lake Macquarie, to Newcastle and Nobby’s! 

Amazing experience and stunning views!!!

[timtamtalestakestwo]

I’ve well and truly neglected the blog over the past few months so here are a few photo posts to summarise some of the fun activities that have been had between some very work-filled weeks!

Rachel came to visit me from the UK at the start of June and we had a wonderful week together (despite a lot of rain), eating and drinking our way around Newcastle and the Hunter Valley, and even braved a winter dip in the ocean baths!

[timtamtalestakestwo]

Easter Adventures: Part Two

Please scroll down for Part One if you haven’t already seen it!

At the end of our first adventure I still had another 10 days of annual leave to go, and unfortunately Tom had to go back to work so I did the next part solo.

I had decided to fly out to Tasmania to visit my 4th state, hire a campervan and explore as much as I could in a week! It was somewhere my dad has visited many times for work and had always spoken very fondly of it so was excited to see what was in store!

Day 1: An early morning flight out of Sydney meant arriving in Hobart by 09:30. As I stepped off the plane in my shorts and T shirt, my body had a bit of a shock to be greeted with a blistering cold wind! I wasn’t quite prepared for the significant drop in temperature Tassie had in store compared to sunny Newcastle! I picked up my ‘camperwagon’ (essentially a people carrier with the back converted into a table/sofa which could then be made into a bed, with a roof box on top and an ‘esky’ to keep my food cold) and warmed up inside, looking at a map of Tasmania to decide where to go! Hobart is very busy on a Saturday due to their famous Salamanca markets so my plans to have a quick look around were swiftly abandoned due to the sheer terror of trying to find anywhere to pack this vehicle 2.5 times the size of my normal car! So I drove out of Hobart CBD up to famous MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) which was described by David Walsh, the owner of all the artwork, as a ‘subversive adult Disneyland’! It is no secret that I struggle with the concept of a lot of modern art pieces and this was no different, although it was a very impressive museum and I did understand some meaning to some of the works…! 

Once I had exhausted by art gallery capacity, I started the drive down to Eaglehawk Neck and the Tasman Peninsula. My first impression was the sheer amount of roadkill – every 50 metres or so there were carcasses of wallabies, possums and wombats. However during a brief drive in the dark that evening, I could see why as the roads were teeming with animals trying to cross! I found a spot at Tessellated Pavement which lacked any ‘no overnight camping’ signs and decided to park there for the night! Before nightfall (which is at 5pm this whole trip..!) I made some visits along the jagged coastline to the beautiful Tasman Arch, Devil’s Kitchen and blowhole! Without wanting to use up the battery life on my head torch on day one, I was in bed by 6pm!

The ‘Tessellated Pavement’.

Tasman arch

Day 2: An early morning video call with my lovely girl friends in England who were having the first weekend get together there without me! Whilst extremely sad not to be with them, it was absolutely amazing to catch up with them and made extra special by the news that one of them is pregnant! 

I then drove further into the peninsula to go to Port Arthur, the famous former convict settlement which in the 1800s was the destination for the hardest of convicted British criminals. The area was chosen for its location as a ‘natural prison’ – surrounded by miles and miles of dry forest, this place was un-survivable for anyone who tried to escape, although there were some both funny and sombre stories of those who tried (none were successful)! The level of torture they endured whilst in prison was extremely harrowing to hear. There was also a ‘Separate Prison’, a new model of prison where prisoners lost their identity, were called only by numbers, could not speak, had masks on and were confined day and night. It was thought that this model would bring the prisoners’ minds to a ‘more healthy condition’ but all it did was make them all very mentally ill. ‘Point Puer’ was an island within the area where boys as young as 7 were sent from the UK for crimes (one boy was sent for stealing a toy from a shop!) and in contrast to the Separate Prison, were taught skills and crafts to give them a focus and provide opportunities for life after prison – prisons like this were then set up in the Isle of Wight to save having to ship them all to the other side of the world! The day I went also happened to be the 23rd anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre – a terrible mass shooting at the historic site, and one of the worst in Australia which led to fundamental changes in national gun laws. 

That afternoon I drove up to Freycinet National Park and set up my camp at the beautiful ‘Friendly Beaches’. There was a stunning sunset (this will be a recurring theme of this blog post…) and lots of very friendly wallabies! I made a big hearty pasta dish on my stove and sat star-gazing at the very clear night sky!

Day 3: The sunrise from the beach the following morning was equally stunning and was a lovely calming way to start the day! I drove down into the National Park to do a long walk down to the clear waters of Wineglass Bay, across the barren isthmus to Hazards Beach and then an undulating bush walk! Arrived back to a wallaby investigating my van and when I went to go fill up my water and left the door open, it tried to hop inside! Northward bound, stopped off at a few places including Bicheno – famous for its penguins and blowhole before reaching Bay of Fires – again another beach stop, and if the fiery sunset was anything to go by I can see where it gets its name! I had company whilst I made dinner that night – a wallaby with its joey and 2 possums who seemed very persistent in trying to get in on some of my curry!

Day 4: Tea on the beach with the sunrise! Waking up before 6am after a good 11 hours sleep each night was a pretty foreign concept to me! I packed up and drove back down to St Helen’s, 10 minutes away as I had spotted a public shower in a carpark whilst driving past the previous day! This was my first shower of the trip and it was so very needed. I never thought a $2, 3 minute slot in a grotty shower in a public restroom would feel like the best shower of my life! I was heading away from the coast I had rather fallen for, and inland towards Launceston! It was a stunning drive, varying between windy narrow roads up mountains, barren plateaus, and profiles of jagged mountains from surrounding National Parks! Instead of trying to navigate my van around another city, I went straight to Cataract Gorge, just on the outskirts of Launceston, and did a beautiful walk along its edge! This was followed by a drive north along the coast of the Tamar River; the region is famous for its many wineries but unfortunately being my only driver, I was not able to indulge in such activities! 

Cataract Gorge

View over Tamar River

Day 5: Treated myself to my first meal not cooked on a camping stove for breakfast and went out to a café called Bryher in Launceston. It was top on the Tripadvisor list for breakfast and I can see why! They used all local and seasonal ingredients, and I was served up an enormous and filling bowl of porridge topped with quince, walnuts and brown butter – absolutely perfect! Today, I was starting my journey south again, but this time through the centre, which involved some very very winding mountain roads up to the Central Plateau Reservation. Gone were the lush landscapes of the coast, and replaced with dry and bare trees as far as the eye could see! I found a beautiful spot to camp next to mirror-like Meadow Bank Lake which proved for a lovely afternoon of photography!

Day 6: I had rather been looking forward to the sunrise from my current spot but woke up surrounded by a fog right up to my windows – I couldn’t even see the other van parked only a few metres away! However over the course of 30 minutes, it lifted to exposure a rather stunning misty sunrise so I was by no means left disappointed! It was only a 30 minute drive to my next stop: Mount Field National Park, where I had decided to spend my penultimate night! It is famous mainly for its waterfalls and platypuses! My van was set up right next to the river where I know platypus sightings were regular but despite all my attempts, involving crouching silently for a very long time at dusk and dawn, I didn’t see any! I did a few lovely walks around the National Park and was again joined by a possum for dinner! 

Russell Falls

A Tasmanian Pademelon

Day 7: Savoured my last bit of countryside before driving back to Hobart for an explore! The parking was just a stressful as I remembered so ended up quite quickly driving out and up to Mount Wellington which overlooks the city and surrounds! I was unprepared for how cold and windy it was up there but the views were to die for! There were no campsites or overnight-camping-friendly carparks in Hobart so ended up finding a quiet-looking residential street in Sandy Point. After getting used to trying to sleep with the van angled downward into the gutter, it was looking promising until the road became a boy racer’s playground at about midnight. Not the best night’s sleep but considering the quality of the previous 6 nights, I could hardly complain!

Day 8: I spent my final morning exploring the famous Salamanca Markets in central Hobart, and the very autumnal Botanical gardens of Tasmania which were beautiful! It was sadly the end of my trip, so it was back to Newcastle and a new job in Belmont Hospital!

There is so much left I’d love to see in Tasmania, particularly Cradle Mountain National Park where I have a list of hikes to do already! I was utterly blown away by the place so it’s safe to say this will have been the first trip of many, I hope!

[timtamtalestakestwo]

Easter adventures: Part 1

Our blog posts are like buses - none for ages and then two will come together! It’s been an adventure filled few weeks so apologies for the delay!

Since our last update I have finished my 6 months of oncology. It was a bittersweet departure – it was the longest I’ve ever worked on one job so had developed some lovely relationships and was sad to leave such a great team of skilled and fantastic humans. It was an emotionally challenging job at times and I think we all really helped each other through that. However, it was time for pastures new and other challenges! Before that though, Tom and I both had some time off to enjoy!

For Easter Sunday, we had planned a roast lunch together at home between my cathedral commitments but in a last minute change of events (last minute being at 11.30 after the morning service) with the rest of the my choir friends in a dilemma of where to go out for lunch, I ended up (after a quick call home to Tom) inviting them all over for lunch at ours! We all went via the glorious Harris Farm market en route and each picked up some hot roast chickens, salads, drinks and cheese and it ended up being the easiest Easter lunch ever and was very lovely to spend time with them all!

First thing on the Monday, we packed up the car and headed north up to Coffs Harbour; a fairly long drive made pain-free with lots of podcasts and digestive biscuits! When we arrived we did a lovely walk out to Muttonbird Island and saw some of the last remaining very fluffy Wedge-tailed Shearwater chicks which the island is known for. There was an organisation there who had put up posters about what to do if you found a chick in the city – sadly the chicks would mistake the city lights for the moon and fly in the wrong direction when they were ready to leave, so there were volunteers who collected the lost and returned them back to the island in the evening for another go!

Day 2:

Breakfast on the beach in Coffs followed by quick detour to see the famous ‘Big Banana���! We had decided to drive inland a little along the Waterfall Way to Dorrigo National Park – a very lush rainforest in the clouds and much colder than Coffs. As we walked out to a lookout point we saw a python in the tree right next to the walkway; our first snake encounter since arriving and thankfully an uneventful one! We did a beautiful walk through really lush rainforest, with eerie mist between the trees! The walk was steep downhill to a waterfall – now unfortunately we have been spoiled by the enormous grandiose waterfalls of Iceland and so on arrival Tom was fairly underwhelmed to have walked all this way (with a steep uphill climb back imminent) for a fairly small waterfall! Still, it was a beautiful walk and certainly the most ‘rainforest-y rainforest’ we’ve seen since arriving here! Was then a short drive down to South West Rocks for night number 2!

Day 3: An early start to go diving at Fish Rock Cave! It was to be a 40 minute boat ride out, and two dives with an hour on the boat in between. Since our recent boat dives have ended up with both of us bringing up our breakfast, we had come armed with sea sickness tablets but thankfully the wind and swell were much more manageable than previously! We’d also heard news that divers had seen a whale shark there 2 days prior so we were eager to get in the water!

(At this point I probably advise both our mothers to close their eyes and scroll down a bit to Day 4).

The first dive was amongst 7 or 8 grey nurse sharks, about 30 wobbygongs and lots of fish. I wasn’t sure what my reaction would be to the sharks but it was absolutely mesmerizing to look down and watch them swimming up and down between the rocks so gracefully! We even saw a guitar shark up close which the dive club not seen for a while. Managed to find myself a lost shark tooth on the bottom to keep as a memo!

Our GoPro decided not to work on the first dive so this is obviously not my photo but we were on top of the rock crevice seen here, looking down on a scene not dissimilar!

The surface interval was spent refuelling with a cup of tea and some biscuits. Tom had a few issues with getting the dive centre to give him the weight he needed which led to a bit of an uncomfortable and floaty first dive so we tried to add a bit more for dive 2. This one was Fish Rock Cave, which is Australia’s only true ocean cave and was about 125 metres long. It was pitch black in there so torches definitely needed and for about half the length was space for single-file only, including a vertical ‘chimney’ to swim up! We saw a snoozing turtle, lots wobbygongs, crayfish, eels and again a whole host of different fish! One of my favourite parts was when the cave started to open out and there was just this bright blue glow ahead filled with the profiles of the marine life swimming around! We were very lucky with the conditions that day and the visibility was about 15 metres, which made the dives even more fantastic! Tom has put together some footage from the second dive in the video below to give you an idea!

Once we’d changed, fed and watered ourselves, we made a quick trip to Trial Gaol, one of the prisons used for deported convicts in the 1800s - a fairly thought provoking visit made slightly more light-hearted by lots of kangaroos hopping around the place!

We then drove down to Port Macquarie for the last part of our short trip! We were staying just outside of Port in a slightly more rural place called Sancrox. The night sky was unbelievably clear so it was an excuse to attempt some long exposure shots of the stars which I don’t think came out too badly!

Day 4: ANZAC day. We didn’t quite make it to the 5am dawn service after post-dive exhaustion but we made our way into town for the 10am procession and service in the town square by the cenotaph. The procession involved cadets, marching bands, veterans but also schools, scouts and girl guides. We had a good position right next to the memorial and it was an expectedly moving ceremony with a playing of The Last Post and a young boy singing the New Zealand and Australian National Anthems.

We did a couple of short walks along the coastline before starting the drive back to Newcastle in time for me to get things washed and packed before heading off on my solo adventure the next day! More of that to come...!

[timtamtalestakestwo]

The Tim to my Tam

It has been back to the routine of work since our last post – both very busy with work; Tom with lots of ongoing engineering projects and I just with busyness of oncology life and overtime shifts, so you’ll probably be glad to hear this will probably be a bit of a shorter one than the previous!

We celebrated our 3rd anniversary on the 28th February with a very delicious dinner at Rustica, a restaurant next to the beach with beautiful ocean views!

That Sunday, following singing in the morning, ‘the lunch crowd’ had planned to head down to Eleebana on Lake Macquarie for a big picnic lunch to celebrate my upcoming birthday instead. It was a stunning day, and we set up camp with picnic blankets on the Lake’s edge, armed with lots of nibbles and food, as well as a kayak, my paddleboard and lots of board games! It was a fantastic celebration with lovely friends given I was working on my actual birthday the following day!

I woke up to a pile of lovely presents from Tom, including some accessories/books to go with the flashy DSLR camera I had treated myself to earlier in the week! Work was as work-y as Mondays go although a patient of mine had remembered my birthday and I received my first card and present ever from a patient – a 6 pack of gin and tonics he’d forced his wife to go buy! I was obviously over-the-moon and therefore graciously glazed over the fact he’d addressed the card to ‘Clare’ which they then proceeded to call me until he was discharged because I didn’t have the heart to tell them that wasn’t my name…! 

That night Tom surprised me with dinner out at an Indian restaurant I have been wanting to try for ages- mainly because of the divine smell which emanates from it whenever I’ve cycled past! Not one for any form of spice, Tom went for the safe option of a korma only to be caught out by a delicious-sounding but extremely-spicy lamb mince stuffed naan. My only photos of the evening other than this one are of him with a flustered red and sweaty face!

We’ve spent a number of evenings down near the beach trying out my new camera (we saw 3 Tawny Frogmouths at once although failed to get a decent photo due to the lack of light…) or sat on the Anzac walk or on our balcony watching some very impressive lightning storms out to sea! They’re not like anything I’ve ever seen in the UK!

It was Tom’s birthday the next week so I sent him off to work with some fudge brownies I’d made, although given he only works in an office of 3-4 people, I thought it was only fair that I took the remaining 20 brownies to work with me!! It sounded like it was made up for by lots of pies and chocolate mudcake at his work too so I don’t feel too bad! We had more nutritious kangaroo steaks at home for dinner followed by a fun night at the new Timezone which has just opened near our house (basically a games arcade for kids but at night the grown-up kids take it over!). 

We had booked for his birthday dinner on the Friday night at Talulah’s – a place I have raved to Tom about since I moved here but had failed to ever take him. It certainly did not let us down – to be honest I will never say a bad work about somewhere with baked camembert on the menu!! It was all phenomenal food as always!

I’d unfortunately been called in to work the whole weekend so no break for me but Tom kept occupied playing table tennis at the new club he has recently enjoyed! Sounds like he’s been able to slot into a League which started just before he joined, and is enjoying getting back into it and meeting some new people!

We had our first diving trip after over a month out of the water – a club dive down at Norah Head. It was a shallow shore dive the morning after a big storm- unfortunately we found there wasn’t really anything to see at all aside from a lot of sand… the surge was pretty decent and the dive was so shallow it was difficult to stay under the water as a result so the team decided to can the dive 45 minutes in. Still, at least it got us back in the water and shouldn’t be too long until our next dip!

^ A snorkelling afternoon in Swansea to find some Octupi!

It’s work as normal for us in the coming weeks up to Easter. I’ve managed to bag another 2 weeks annual leave following that - we’re hoping Tom will manage to get a few days off with the numerous public holidays surrounding the Easter weekend so we can go on a short adventure, but since he hasn’t accrued annual leave since our last holiday, I’ve booked for a solo adventure to explore Tassie for a week in a campervan and get a bit of hiking in!

Our time differences are all a bit out of sync for the week or so with the clocks changing at both ends on different dates but for the next week we are 10 hours apart instead of 11...and then will be 9... :) Happy Mothers’ Day to both our lovely Mums! Sending lots of love and hugs across the oceans! 

xxx

[timtamtalestakestwo]

We’re back...

It’s been a hot minute since our last update...I think the last one was reflecting on our Aussie Christmas which seems a very long way away now!

A couple of weeks after the last update, Tom and I started our annual leave with a short flight from Newcastle up to Brisbane to stay with my lovely friend Julia (my housemate when I first lived here 5 years ago) and her partner, Matt. It was great to finally introduce Tom to them both having talked about Julz all these years! It was a very flying visit, filled with lots of amazing eats, as is the thing to do in Brisbane!

From there we headed north up the coast to the even hotter climate of aptly named Sunshine Beach, just south of Noosa, where we stayed in a beautiful little Airbnb with a pool and a garden, and 50 metres down the garden track to the beach! We did some beautiful walks along the coastal path, interspersed with swims in crystal clear water to cool off! One morning, we decided to hire a double kayak, packed it up with 5L of water, lots of snacks, and even more suncream, for an adventure up Noosa river towards the Everglades! We passed one of Richard Branson’s many private islands, and kayaked many kilometres of both very narrow mangrove-lined estuaries to wide open river surrounded by eucalyptus forest. We were aiming for our turnaround point at a large lake about 12km away which was off the edge of the map we had, so over the last 45 minutes before finally reaching it, there was a lot of ‘it’s just round this next corner, I’m sure of it’ repeated for about 15 corners. We were so hungry when we arrived, and the lake was so big, we didn’t have the energy to kayak further to find a place to land, so we ended up wedging the kayak in the rushes so we could eat our lunch on board! The way back proved tougher on our spasming back muscles but many games of ‘I-spy’ kept us going, and the beautiful ‘golden-hour’ light as we kayaked the final stretch topped off an absolutely fantastic 8 hours of kayaking! We also made a trip up to Rainbow Beach and the beautiful Carlo Sandblow followed by a seafood platter feast!!!

We ended our stay by popping along to the well-known Eumundi markets and stumbled across an old map stall, selling original prints of maps from the 1800s/early 1900s from all over the world. I found one with Bosham on (with Sturts’ Farm even marked on it!) from the 1850s and Tom found an old one of Rutland which had his road marked on! Was quite odd to find in an old box in a small town on the other side of the world!

We arrived back on the same day that Tom’s parents finally arrived in the country! Was so amazing to see them and finally be able to show them round! Wasn’t long until we headed off down to Melbourne to start our big road-trip back up to Newcastle!

Our first night was on the 55th floor of the EQ tower in the centre of Melbourne – certainly not one for anyone with acrophobia but wow what a fantastic view! It was even more special at night with the city glistening beneath us! The Australian Open was nearing the final (we could even see the stadium from our bedroom!) so the atmosphere in the evening was buzzing.

It was just a quick visit as the following morning we headed out of the city, down the coast and then inland to our first of many rural farmstays, just near Neerim South. We’d been upgraded to ‘The Farmhouse’ and it’s safe to say we were all completely gobsmacked when we arrived! Given this was Tom’s parents’ first AirBnB experience we had some expectation management to do as not all AirBnBs would be this fancy! It was enormous, very smart, and surrounded by acres and acres of farmland filled with parrots, kookaburras, deer, wallabies and the (despite huge efforts) unsighted wombats!

I am aware that if I describe our whole trip in detail both I, and you will be here forever, so I will try to just let the photos to the explaining. But to summarise our route and highlights…

We drove from our first night to Walhalla – a beautiful and somewhat eerie old gold-mining town in the middle of the forest which once had a population of 5000 or so, and now of 10. Drove through lots of dry expanses of farmland to our next stop, ‘The Burrow’ – a house built into the side of a hill with gorgeous views and our own little echidna to watch emerge at dusk! I made sure we didn’t miss Raymond Island- well known for its large population of koalas. It was extraordinary walking around the island and looking up at so many koalas snoozing in the branches! 

Our next stop was the only place we had for 2 nights – a large house on stilts in Wonbyn, with yet another beautiful view across to the sea! We made the most the BBQ on the balcony and although the weather turned, we were treated to some very dramatic lightning storms over the ocean! This part of the coast is well known for it’s whaling history and whilst visiting a small inlet which was once a whaling station, we spotted a fairly decent size animal breaching the water every few minutes. It wasn’t like anything I’d seen before but thankfully I was with a couple of more-than qualified conservationists who suggested this might be a Dugong. The only thing being they are only found a few thousand kilometres up the coast and being a protected species, really shouldn’t be here…! Unfortunately we never found out if that’s what it really was but Tom (senior) did report it to the local marine agency who, perhaps understandably, didn’t seem overly convinced without us providing a photo!

Eden was a beautiful stop off and a fascinating hour or so spent at the Killer Whale Museum there, devoted to ‘Old Tom’ – allegedly the head killer whale who would signal to the whalers when the different whales they were after were in the area!

Next stop- a ‘farm motel’ near Bega (Bega being known for it’s cheese and peanut butter factory, what was there not for me to love!). Slightly less fancy than our earlier farmstay but the surroundings no less beautiful with a beautiful creek at the bottom of the hill where I spotted a couple of terrapins! We also went to the amazing Pioneers Museum in Bega which had a phenomenal collection of items from the last 150 years of the town!

Our penultimate night was in Depot beach, a tiny seaside village where kangaroos filled all the gardens and roads! It was also a great spot for some snorkelling and a close encounter with a big stingray! Again, the place was surrounded by rainforest which we ventured into for a beautiful walk down to a very still, tranquil lake, only be attacked by leeches!

We stopped off in Nowra – a request I had made, as my Grandparents had met there when my Gran had been training my Grandpa in the Fleet Air Arms in the 1940s. We visited the Fleet Air Arms base there (which is still active) and the museum attached. Saw the Fairey Gannet, the planes my Grandpa used to fly, and felt very special to be at the place that saw the start of such an adventurous life together!

The final night of our big trip was spent in a very architecturally pleasing converted grain silo on another farm a couple of hours south of Wollongong! It was an early sign of a good place when they’d left little chocolates on our bed on arrival!!! The farm was at the base of a big plateau, which had a Blue Mountains-esque feel with expanses of dense eucalyptus forest and beautiful waterfalls, swimming holes, and plenty of dragons and lizards!

My summary was not very short, apologies. There is a lot I haven’t even mentioned but I’ll leave it at that for now so you don’t fall asleep if you haven’t already! It was a wonderful week enjoyed by all – I’ll let the photos do the rest of the talking!

It was straight into a set of night shifts for me, and Tom and Gill continued their roadtrip north to Brisbane and back. They filled their last couple of weeks here with lots of trips to local National Parks and long walks, days on the beaches, snorkelling, and a week with my Tom at the end with a trip to Sydney and lots of delicious dinners out!! We had to sadly say our goodbyes this week as they flew back to the UK and the cold weather but was absolutely lovely to have them here for the month!

I hope it won’t be such a long hiatus before the next blog, and I hope it will also be a little more concise…

The next couple of weeks see our 3rd anniversary, my birthday and Tom’s birthday so I’m sure we’ll be keeping busy enough! Ooo and I forgot to mention that Tom’s visa has come through (so he is now on my visa) and doesn’t have to be deported so I will leave you with that fantastic news!

Have a wonderful week all! Love from us both xxx

[timtamtalestakestwo]

A New Year in the Antipodes!

Happy New Year! Can’t believe 2019 is already upon us…I’d only just started being able to write the year ’18 correctly first time and now we’re changing again! We’re hoping it will be another one full of adventure and new experiences for us!

Our first Aussie Christmas was a very sweaty and mildly bizarre experience but was all round great fun! The run up was pretty busy with a lot of singing – Tom came along to the Christmas Eve Nine Lessons and Carols after a request for ‘the least boring and God-y’ of the lot! A knackering service for the choir with a huge amount of singing but was really enjoyable and went really well! We all went for a quick well-earned gin in the pub for an hour before needing to head back to the cathedral to prepare for a sweaty midnight mass! Home at 01:30 and a few hours’ sleep before needing to be back on Christmas morning for 07:30! An absolutely exhausting 16 hours but special to be able to spend it all with my friends. A few hours later I was done for the day and went home to greet Tom who was already tucking into his traditional Christmas ham on toast!

We were completely spoiled by lots of Christmas presents from our families and each other which we opened throughout the day (Tom unsurprisingly refused to carry forward my family tradition of only opening one or two presents a day so Christmas is stretched over about a week!)

The heat was ramping up so we packed the car with body-boards, Akubras and swimwear and headed straight to the beach to jump in the ocean! The water was so warm and the waves pretty strong so had a great fun few hours catching some waves to build up our appetite for our first Aussie Christmas dinner- king prawns (of course) for starter followed by kangaroo fillets for main and a mince pie for me and a chocolate mud cake for Tom! It was also made extra special by a Christmas Day skype to both of our parents as we reclined in a food coma!

We were both off for the rest of the week and having decided to stick around Newcastle, we spent our days at the beach, in the ocean baths, paddleboarding, and swims in the creek and our evenings having BBQs on our veranda!

On the Friday we went to Swansea to meet with a guy I sing with who is also a very keen diver who has dived round here for 30 odd years, and a couple of his friends, and we dived Swansea bridge together! The visibility was much better than the last time we did it and saw some stunning life, including a big puffer fish, an octopus, a big moray eel and huge shoals of beautiful Eastern Stripeys!

I was back at work on the Saturday afternoon and with the next few days as completely skeleton staff it was fairly stressful – particularly when I was the only oncology registrar covering 4 peoples’ jobs looking after 40 oncology patients by myself! Tom just about got through his one day of work that week before another 4 days off… life is tough!

We saw the New Year in with our ovely friend, Emilie, with a classic English roast dinner (our first since arriving) and games night at our house! Life is always great fun when she is about! The official Newcastle fireworks were called off due to a big storm in the evening but we stood on our balcony and watched a couple of smaller displays across the city as the clock turned midnight!

A group of friends I worked with in Poole (some currently working in New Zealand and some came from England) arrived for a week in Newcastle so was lovely to catch up and have Emma to stay. Her and I braved cycling the Fernleigh track on a day which decided to become 40 degrees when at our furthest point from home! We re-fuelled at a lake-edge café and then headed back on what felt like a much longer and fairly unbearable hot cycle home but we made it in one piece and proceeded to consume ice cream for the rest of the day to recover!

Tom and I are both back at work this week and he found out that he will be going full-time from February which is brilliant news! Only 2 weeks ago until we go on holiday to Noosa for a week and then his parents arrive for our trip together! So much to look forward to!

We hope you all had fantastic Christmas and New Year and that 2019 is going well so far!

Lots of love from us both! xxx

[timtamtalestakestwo]

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!! A few photos from our first Aussie Christmas to share with you until we manage to get our next blog post up! Thank you all for all your generous Christmas gifts too - we felt very lucky! We hope you all had a wonderful time too! xxx

[timtamtalestakestwo]

Diving into December

Following our last post, we both had a couple of busy weeks of work- I had a very busy set of nightshifts which were fairly horrible. Had, from what I can gather, a record number of medical admissions overnight on the first night and was just flat out admitting for the whole 12 hours- thankfully the ED was full of snacks to help me on my way as I didn’t have any time to leave all night.

The weekend was action packed – we headed down to Swansea to dive under the bridge. I had chosen to do a refresher dive as it had been almost 2 years since I’d last been underwater – it was reassuring to build confidence again with some skills in the local pool and then head in for a relatively shallow dive which Tom tagged along for. The visibility wasn’t great being low tide but we saw an octopus, lots of rays and enormous fish! 

It was also a busy weekend for my choir with Advent Carols – a slightly special event for me as 4 years ago, that was the final thing I did with the choir before I flew back to England at the end of my exchange, so brought back lots of emotional and precious memories and was nice to not have to think about leaving them any time soon this time round!

Advent carols 4 years ago below!

Tom headed up to sweaty Queensland on the Monday with his boss to do some exhaust temperature testing on a train – a flight from Newcastle to Brisbane, another flight to Mackay and then a drive to Nebo- all of that to *just about* be in another state- we would have crossed about 6 countries had that been back home! It was, as expected, significantly hotter up there (in the 40s!), and by the sounds of it, very challenging to be labouring under the strong sun for more than an hour at a time especially when it involved being dressed from head to toe in bright orange PPE! The testing went pretty smoothly and thankfully the week became less labour intensive compared to day one!

The house felt very quiet that week so I tried to keep busy, going round for dinner with my friends over here from Poole and buying and decorating a Christmas tree in an attempt to make us feel more festive! Not quite the same without the smell of pine needles and mulled wine wafting through the room but with some Christmas carols playing in the background we are just about adjusting and now have lots of presents under it to look forward to opening!

A sunny weekend called for a trip to the Hunt and Gather Markets by the beach with some friends, and a celebratory birthday Sunday lunch/picnic for the twins’ (The Two Veronicas as my family refer to lovely Emilie and Veronica!) on the bank of Lake Macquarie at Toronto. 

That night we had the dive club Christmas cruise on Lake Macquarie which was a beautiful evening- we ended up getting to know a couple from Liverpool who came travelling here for 3 months…and 4.5 years later they’re still here! No idea how that can happen…no idea…(I have every idea.)

We had Tom’s work Christmas do last week at The Grain Store – a 7 course menu with a beer paired with each course! With neither of us being big beer-drinkers as such, I think we managed about 2 out of courtesy before politely declining. The food was fantastic though and a great comedy act in the middle who had us all crying laughing! It was also really lovely to meet some of Tom’s colleagues who’d I’d heard lots about!

I did my Nitrox diving theory exam the following morning which I passed despite feeling slightly furry-brained. Also got taught how to calibrate and measure the nitrox mix in a cylinder and how to work out the operating depth depending on the percentage mix!

We had yet another party that night which was my choir Christmas party- thankfully a fairly low-key BBQ affair but lovely to catch up with friends and Tom to meet a few more of the crowd! He became the hero of the evening after eventually completing one of those tricky metal puzzle things (where you have to disconnect various pieces which don’t appear to be disconnectable despite hours of pulling and prodding) which no-one had ever completed before. We made a swift exit before he was asked to put it back together again!

We had a very early wake-up call the following morning at 04.30 to drive down to Terrigal on the Central Coast to be ready to dive HMAS Adelaide at 06.30 with some people from the club! It had almost been called off due to the large swell – it’s a 15 minute boat ride out to the wreck which was VERY lumpy. All was ok whilst the boat was motoring with the wind in our face, but once the boat moored up at the buoy above the wreck it felt fairly hairy, and having to get all the kit on whilst trying not to be sick wasn’t the most pleasant of things. We knew the feeling would go as soon as we got under so we threw ourselves overboard and once we were 5 metres or so down it was calm and clear! We descended down the line and arrived at one of the helicopter decks. The visibility was fantastic at about 15 metres! HMAS Adelaide is 138 metres long by about 15 metres wide and was used during the Gulf War, and in East Timor, before it was sunk in 2011 to form an artificial reef where it now lies in 32 metres of water. It was amazing to swim through the bridge with all the phones and controls still there. There was plenty of sea-life to see as well as all the ins-and-outs of the ship! It soon came time for us to ascend back up the line nice and slowly. We hit about 8 metres and paused for a little bit – the swell was starting to become apparent at this shallower depth and I started to get the seasickness giddiness…I started swimming further up with the swell worsening the shallower I got and could feel myself retching. As my head emerged above the water, my regulator came out and the contents of my stomach very quickly became food for the fish. I felt slightly bad as I was aware Tom was not far below me and was therefore probably getting a face of it..but then he soon emerged and did exactly the same thing!! The first diving vomit for both of us! We went back to shore for the surface interval and with our stomachs feeling slightly delicate decided we might just take it easy and do an easy shore dive for the second one rather than heading back out into the swell! Apart from the latter part, it was a fantastic dive and we’d love to go back again (perhaps when it’s slightly less lumpy!).

(Not us as we failed to get any footage, but just so you can see!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PinUz48DXJw 

A very inquisitive pelican thinking Tom was about to feed it fish is about to be severely disappointed...

We’re both in our final week of work before a week off over Christmas for me (and a lot more than a week off for Tom. I’m not bitter at all.) Then only a few more weeks before Tom’s parents arrive which we are both really looking forward to!!!

We are looking forward to experiencing our first sweaty Christmas and hope to we can speak to you all back home at some point to share part of the day together!

Merry Christmas to you all! We miss you all very much and sending all our love across the oceans!

PS. Quick plant update. We now have 4 sunflowers (although some pesty caterpillar appears to be eating the leaves!), a micro pineapple, some mini peppers and some tomato plants yet to bear any fruit...

[timtamtalestakestwo]

Fire, wind, water and...sand.

Following our weekend adventure to the Blue Mountains, I started back at the same hospital but in a new job since my first 3 month term was up! This term: oncology. It’s not a specialty I have done specifically before although I had had some exposure during out-of-hours shifts, as we admit all of general medicine, oncology and haematology. There are no juniors in oncology at the Mater to help out with all the jobs so it’s pretty busy, although I have really enjoyed it so far. I am much preferring the continuity of care, and the opportunity to build rapport and trust with patients in this job (compared to the acute medical unit where I’d admit people and then never see them again or find out what happened) as well as the opportunity to do procedures like ascitic drains. As expected, it is emotionally quite challenging at times - cancer is a very frightening and emotional prospect when diagnosed at any age but I find it hits home even more for me when I’m caring for people my/my siblings’ age and even younger than me. Seeing the strength of those people and their families despite everything they’ve been through certainly makes me think twice before complaining when my alarm goes off in the morning to get up for work!

The following week was a busy one for me due to a concert at the weekend so most evenings were taken up with rehearsals – I think it all paid off though as the concert went smoothly; for my Mum who is probably the only one who will care, we did Bach Camerata, Zadok the Priest, Gallipoli (a beautiful remembrance piece, the composer of which was in the audience!), and a few other bits which clearly didn’t stand out hugely in my mind…! The orchestra did a few stand-alone pieces as well including Barber Adagio for Strings which I think Tom enjoyed as I think it was the only one that was familiar for him.

We went to the dive shop to try on and buy a new wetsuit after many evenings of looking at sizing charts for online wetsuits and realising fairly rapidly that my shape is apparently not normal and if I wanted something to fit my height I would also need to double my diameter… thankfully trying them on in person was much less stressful as we found one that fit quickly, and I picked up a mask and snorkel too! This was all packed into the car the next weekend as we had booked a couple of nights in Boat Harbour up in Port Stephens. The AirBnb host called us in the morning to let us know of a big bushfire causing a road closure on the only road that leads to Port Stephens! We kept track of it on ‘firesnearme’ (ultimate Australian website!) and headed up when the road had re-opened! The wind was around 30 knots coming from the outback which had caused both a dust storm and a rapidly spreading bushfire!

We stayed in a beautiful beach-style studio in Boat Harbour, a few minutes’ walk from 3 different beaches! The first day was spent hiking up (a very windy!) Mount Tomaree at Shoal Bay with beautiful views in all directions, and to Cabbage Tree Island which is the world’s only known nest site for Gould Petrel and public access is prohibited to avoid any accidentally introduction of exotic species or disturbance to the critical habitat! 

^ The closest beach is Zenith beach where we later snorkelled

^Yaccaba head and Cabbage Tree Island in the distance.

^Mount Tomaree in the background!

We walked down the mountain to Zenith beach which was the only vaguely protected space from the wind! As we donned our new wetsuits and snorkels we spotted a pod of dolphins fairly close to the shore – they were out of sight by the time we got in so we set about along the rocks, looking at lots of lovely coral and fish, but before long we could hear the high-pitched squeals of the dolphins under the water and ended up amongst the pod! Not bad for a first snorkel in this country!

That evening we headed to Soldiers Point to watch a beautiful sunset as we ate a delicious seafood-based meals (they obviously both involved scallops...Tom’s were even wrapped in bacon- I think it was a food dream come true for him!) . As the sun disappeared we were left with a less romantic, but still pretty dramatic view of the bush fire in the distance.

Saturday called for more beaches (3 more in fact!) and more snorkelling and paddleboarding at Boat Harbour although the visibility wasn’t so good, followed again by yet another sunset and seafood based meal at a beautiful tapas bar called Little Beach Boathouse in Fly Point- are we sounding like a broken record yet?!

^Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh..

I was due to start work at 14.00 on the Sunday so we drove to Stockdon dunes en route home for some sandboarding!

I’m on nights this week and Tom is off doing some more courses for his work so we’re having very brief overlaps in the evening! We have both had a realisation that Christmas is approaching scarily quickly and that we feel anything but Christmassy… eating mince pies in front of the aircon whilst drenching in sweat doesn’t quite scream festive just yet..!

I hope you are all well and are looking forward to the festive period!

[timtamtalestakestwo]

And then there were two.....

 finally arrived in Australia on the 13th October after a tiring 24 hours flying across the world. I was met at Sydney International by Jane and she seemed reasonably happy to see me!

We then took a short trip into Sydney itself in order to find some breakfast and I was told the white building was quite famous!

Breakfast was found in a trendy little joint that I promptly made mess of myself due to a combination of sleep deprivation and unexpectedly spicy eggs.

The rest of the day was taken making our way back North towards Newcastle and my new home with Jane. This essentially involved me falling asleep on various forms of transport and being laughed at!

The evening was spent at the local cathedral’s annual quiz and dinner which was where I met a lovely group of people. They included Jane’s “Lunch Gang”, re-meeting the two Veronicas and a group that I’m sure will become good friends.

The following week, before I started work was taken up by acclimatising to the new time zone, joining a gym, skyping my parents, walks in the morning and buying new things for myself and the house. Primarily this was a second-hand BBQ. Which the mammoth task of cleaning took up the next few days in preparation for the housewarming lunch we had planned. We also joined a dive club but have yet to go as I await my kit to be shipped (mid November!).

We visited the Blackbutt Reserve just near home where I was introduced to Koalas for the first time as well as various other colourful birds! More Australian wildlife was to follow!

In the following weeks I started work at BMT as a Mechanical Engineering and set to getting booked onto courses, doing inductions and learning about Australian Engineering Standards. Lots of interesting stuff to do and learn and I look forward to getting stuck back into proper engineering work including computer modelling and structural engineering calculations.

A couple of weeks on and Jane had a surprise Thursday and Friday off work so we made hasty plans to head down to the Blue Mountains National Park, famous for its blue hues due to the eucalyptus tree oil. A long drive down and we finished the Thursday with a walk from Govetts Leap to Pulpit Rock Lookout and back. Running short of water we had to beg some local climbers for what supplies they could spare. A start reminder that a short 7km walk in England would be unlikely to result in heat exhaustion but here it could! The evening was topped off by a huge Japanese feast which we thoroughly deserved and the sight of wild possums and giant water rats back at our AirBnB.

Morning of day 2 was spent visiting Wentworth falls for a quick walk. Jane had visited them before on the final day before she flew home last time! We then drove to the Jenolan Caves for an afternoon tour of River Cave. The drive to and from felt very “frontier-y” with true Australian towns, villages and bush passing us on either side. No tourists cafes here, at least until we reached the caves. The highlight of the drive was meeting a mother wallaby and joey on the side of the road, but was fairly short lived as it attacked me! (Jane edit: hopped inquisitively in his general direction as he ran away screaming!)

The caves themselves were spectacular with the usual vast halls of rock and hundred-thousand year old stalagmites and stalactites.  The highlight of the river tour, as you can guess, was the river. It periodically appeared during our walk with sections that dove into the depths and were beautifully lighted and gin clear. All they did was reignite my wish to jump into them and see where they went! Something I’m sure my mother wishes I didn’t do!

The only oddity of the tour was our guide, an 70 year-old spritely character that appeared to know nothing about cave formations, the age of the caves or their contents and who had a distinct dislike of the British educational system. Which made being trapped underground with him an interesting experience to say the least!

The evening involved more excellent food at a restaurant that only served 8 things, called 8Things, and a relaxed night with a film.

The return journey to Newcastle involved acquiring some dive kit for Jane and an incident with a spider that we don’t discuss…. Needless to say, ones first encounter with a Huntsman (look it up!), should not be on a motorway doing 120km/h!

Another week at work and the weekend arrived as did my dive kit from the UK! Yay! As I’m only doing a 2 day week next week due to doing an extra day on a course, much to Jane’s disgust, time to get back into the water! :D

We cycled the full length of the Fernleigh Track on Saturday, something my parents must do on one of their days here. It was a lovely trip through the local bushland with plenty of potential stop-offs, birds and lizards to see. It was capped off by a late lunch down in Belmont before the return trip.

It was Remembrance Sunday this weekend and as Jane was singing I went up to the ANZAC WWI Memorial on the cliffs for 1100. A moving place to be away from the crowds and with the few individuals also there for remembrance. I then met Jane down at Fort Scratchley to see the poppy display, reenactors and look around. This was followed by going to the local cinema to see the film ‘They Shall Not Grow Old'. A fantastic, moving and solemn look at the raw nature of the First World War with remastered and colourised original footage.

With many more adventures to follow, I shall simply end this blog with the following poem and audio clip (link below poem):

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

https://codatocoda.bandcamp.com/album/iwm-ww1-armistice-interpretation