The birds are back in town: Addendum

[Michele] The Cassowaries are indeed still rockin' the Cassowary coast. Robin and I saw a Cassowary on our wet drive back from Innisfail this evening!

Robin did a great job taking this photo from a moving car in low light and zoomed in with a iphone camera that has a smudgy lens.

Robin and I were actually driving back from a dance class that she was trying out. Robin really enjoys dancing ballet but the nearest ballet school (RAD) is 45 minutes away in Innisfail. On the drive back, she and I were trying to find silver linings to driving 1.5 hours round trip for each class. We came up with a few but now at the top of our list is: the chance to spot more Cassowaries!

The birds are back in town

[Michele] Two years ago we had the chance to spend a week in Mission Beach and this was only 6 months after cyclone Yasi.  The region was changed by the cyclone in just about every way, but one of the most startling (except for the stripped vegetation) was the lack of bird song (http://cassowarytales.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/6-months-after-cyclone-yasi.html). In 2009 we were woken every morning by raucous the cries of cockatoos and lorikeets.  At night, the kids would hide under the covers from the creepy calls of the curlews.  In 2011, we didn't hear or see any birds in Mission Beach.

in 2013, we are happy to report that forest is greening up and the birds are back.  The calls aren't as loud for us as they were in 2009 because our house this year is in a new housing track that had been a ranch;. so there aren't mature fruit trees here for the birds.  But we are only a couple blocks away from our 2009 place and I've seen the cockatoos over those trees.

On our first jet-lagged morning Will and I went for a run along the beach around sunrise and we were startled by a kookaburra. Come to think of it the kookaburra might have been calling out because we startled it -- the hadn't yet risen at that point.

The kids report hearing curlews just about every night though they claim not to be frightened anymore by their strange call.  We've also seen some of those maniacal Connecticut-driver like fliers, the starlings.  Seriously, compare starlings in flight to drivers on the Merritt parkway!  I know,  right.  No lorikeets sitings yet but we are keeping our eyes open for them.

I didn't grab any photos of the birds so here is a nice pic from another morning run after the sun had already come up.  This is really just a gratuitous pretty picture to go along with this blog entry.

By the way, the title of this post should be sung along to that notoriously earwormy Thin Lizzy tune.  You got it stuck in your head now didn't you?  See!

Fancy House Empty Pantry

[Michele] Furnished rentals are fantastic for holidays.  They can provide everything you need and can often be nicely decorated.  Our new place in South Mission Beach is gorgeous.  This is by far the nicest house I’ve ever stayed in.  It has a large main kitchen/dining/living area with 7 other rooms, outdoor kitchen/living/dining areas and beautiful furnishings.  Aside from the couch set in the living room and the second couch set in the home theatre, there are 7 more couches (5 outside near the pool).  Clearly the owners take their lounging seriously.   The house also has many beautiful objet d’art, some in lit recesses within custom-built structures. 

So if you are on holiday here, you are surrounded by beauty, and able to migrate comfortably out to the pool and back by lounging from couch to couch throughout your day.  You could even stand up and play pool in the gaming room until lounging urges overtook you again. Pretty sweet holiday!  We are really going to enjoy our 5 months here and sharing the house with our visitors.

OK, but here’s the thing.  The kitchen and pantry are nearly empty. We have got some basics but the miles of kitchen drawers are empty and the vast walk in pantry is bare.  When you are on holiday, you can get by with preparing quick meals, getting take away food and eating in restaurants.   When you are here for six months, you need more stuff.  You need things like flour, scissors, spices, garlic press (see blog from 2009), sticky tape, measuring cups, sugar, spatulas and wine stoppers (yeah, I know that one can just finish the bottle but I want the option of not doing so).   However, since discovering something in the pantry I now know that we will endure this time of sparse kitchen paraphernalia.  The saving grace of this house, the light in the darkness, the appliance that I found in the pantry, which establishes my faith that we can and will thrive in this house, is…. a rice steamer.  Ahhh - civilization.  

She’ll be right.

Jet Lag Haze

[Michele] We all know the pitfalls of jet lag; wide awake at 3 am and can’t keep eyes open at 3 pm.   Everyone who has traveled between the east coast of the US and east coast of Australia (14 hour time difference) has experienced this jet lag.  I am no exception. Since it is currently 3 am and I am wide awake after arriving in Australia yesterday, I thought I would try and focus on a benefit of jet lag.

Arriving in a different land, you are bombarded with a myriad of small and large ways that the locals do things differently than you and your friends at home.  Differences may be as mundane as turns of phrase the locals use and as critically important to adjust to as driving on the opposite side of the road.  The sleep deprived haze of jet lag provides a filter for all of these differences so that each one seems simultaneously fascinating and absurd.  When a friendly dog visited us on the beach yesterday its owner declared “She’ll always con a pat”.   Of course we smiled and chuckled at the charming Aussie.  Then, we turned to each other to figure out what the heck he had just said.  It was a straight-forward phrase but not one that Gavin and I had ever heard before.  Now you non jet-lagged people reading this probably don’t see any absurdity in this at all but through the haze of jet lag we found this phrase really funny.  ‘con a pat’  Bah ha ha!  Jet lag can do that to you.  Revel in the punchiness, and everything Australian will seem absurd.  But do keep to the left on the roadways, that one is important.

The perfect day

Will and Robin - Today was the perfect day in many many ways. One way is that we went blow carting. Americans call it sand yatching, which sounds fancier. And it was really really fun. There is a cart with a sail and you steer and tighten or loosen the sail to make it go faster or slower and there are handles to make it turn. It has three wheels. We went really fast up and down the beach and in the water a little bit. Also I had Pavlova for snack. And twice today we went swimming in the ocean. It was really fun since the waves are big - there is lots of wind and no barrier island. When a big wave comes I jump up and they are pretty high. Also I had really really good dinner at a restaurant and I tried octopus. It turns out that I like it. And I had really really good ice cream for dessert. This afternoon I learned how to play Spades, which is a really fun card game.

6 months after cyclone Yasi

Michele - In a few hours it will be exactly 6 months since cyclone Yasi hit Mission Beach in far north Queensland. When it made landfall, Yasi was a category 5 cyclone with sustained windspeeds of 215 km/hr and gusts of 285 km/hr. It hit just after midnight so our friends spent a sleepless night in their homes and in area shelters. The storm affected inland areas as far as Mt. Isa. While I was out there, we noted that everything was unusually green – they had far more rain the past summer than usual. Yasi is estimated to have caused 800 million in damages. This is far less than if the storm had tracked to the north and hit Cairns or to the south and hit Townsville but here in Mission Beach and nearby Tully the devastation is intense and vast.

One of the most eerie difference between pre- and post-Yasi Mission Beach is the lack of bird songs in the morning. Instead of waking to the lorikeets and cockatoos, we wake to the sound of drills and hammers repairing the neighboring structures. The trees have not recovered enough to provide enough food for the birds. Uncle Larry reports that in Babinda, which is ~100 km north of Mission Beach, he is seeing many more birds than usual this year. As the trees recover, the birds will return. The flightless Cassowary is really struggling with the loss of habitat. The rangers are putting out fruit in feeding stations to help the population get by but there are reports of more deaths on the road as Cassowaries are coming out of the rainforest to look for food.

Damage to houses ranges from blown out windows, to ripped off roofs and walls. The house between our old place and the beach had their roof ripped off. The Elandra (fancy resort up the road from our old place) has part of their roof ripped off. Several of our old neighbors went up the Elandra for shelter during the cyclone. One caravan park is closed and many rental places are undergoing work. Because of the construction and because locals are renting holiday units while their homes are fixed, it is a bit tricky to find holiday rentals in Mission Beach. Well, the affordable ones at least.

The damage to the rainforest and area trees is truly heart wrenching. The Shrubbery restaurant in Mission Beach no longer has any. Without any canopy in the rainforest, the sun is drying out the floor and forcing changes to the fauna. Robin’s former teacher reported that her property now has mahogany gliders where it was too wet for them pre-Yasi. The trees are now leafing out and recovering. Because the trees were often stripped of all limbs, many of them look like the curly ends of toothpicks with the leaves sprouting right from the trunk. All the trees look quite Dr. Seuss-like in their tortured shapes.

Townsville is better than Paris

Robin and Will – We think that Townsville, Queensland is a lot better than Paris, France for many reasons. One is that Paris has some really bad smells and Townsville doesn’t. Another reason is Townsville has a lot more trees and it has a beautiful beach and a cool hill. Paris is much more crowded. Overall, Townsville is more relaxing whereas Paris feels very busy.

Michele - While our views may not be in the world-wide majority, Gavin, G'ma Lorna and I agree with the kids!