Mackay Crabs!

Mackay is home to 2.6 quadrigazillion crabs. You can’t see them but they’re there. Once the tide moves out they come out of the sand and eat all the algae that was left by the tide. They leave little balls of sand from which they sucked the life. They move in groups of a couple of hundred to a few thousand and from afar it looks like the entire beach is crawling.

Rockhampton Rodeo

The horses are on amphetamine because the first rider we see gets ejected into the stratosphere and the second one lands in the middle of the ring 1.3 seconds after exiting the shoot. A mid range flight followed by an ungraceful landing has the cowboy limping to the gate. What’s interesting is that he landed face first, but he is limping.
We can get so close that we get sand all over our faces and if we reach out, we could touch some of the animals that flash past. Pretty cool.
It’s time for the bull riders now, and the fun is over. This is serious. These bulls are world class and are registered as 80-92 point bulls which make them very, very dangerous. The bull names are intimidating: fire eater, widow maker, twister, scene of the crash, bone crusher and my favorite: red bull. One of the bulls, is huge, as high as a horse and is furious. As soon as he exists the shoot the bull jumps about 2 meters high and 5 meters far and shakes the rider like a rag doll. 8 seconds later the rider jumps off, victorious and very lucky.
Anyway, time for a steak. The Great Western servers the very best eye fillets in this part of the universe.

Rockhampton

In 18 days I will have traveled to Sydney three times, to Rockhampton once and to Mackay once. Basically one flight every 2 days. I won’t talk about Sydney as that was all business. But Rockhampton was awesome.
A little town on the Capricorn coast Rockhampton has the biggest cattle industry in Oz. It is also where you can find salt water crocodiles or salties as they’re called here. Well let me tell you this: they are big bastards. The biggest ones get over 1000 kgs and have a generally bad temper. I didn’t know this but salties are found from Rockhampton up. They can be everywhere, out on the reefs, inland in rivers, in billabongs. They are really dangerous. The guide tells us that if there is Barramundi, there are salties. I piss my pants and ask whether I took a risk fishing for Barra yesterday and the answer was “you were lucky you were fishing in lake Awoonga where the salties can’t get to”.
The guide throws some chicken at one of the bigger ones and with the sound of a car’s trunk closing the mouth snaps shut. WHACK! Pretty impressive. With my new found respect for murky waters and what may lie underneath we make our way to Mackay… Yes north of Rockhampton…

Don't - F*$K - with Kieran

After watching Kieran viciously destroy my good humour by spitting and regurgicating the few bites I managed to feed him on the floor, I lost my usual good temper.
His unrefined pallet, lack of taste and his inability to savour or relish quality foods, represent the very height of barbaric behaviour and a direct insult to my culinary feats. And yet, somehow, the bright eyed, self satisfied and prodigically behaving mongrel presents himself as gourmet gastronomist when tasting his foods.
After a mild reprimand I was treated to the furious wrath of a baby scorned.
A barrage of cries pitched at the regions of the brain that host pain was unleashed upon me. The yelps of anger are so powerful; they penetrate bone and made my head explode.
Don't - F*$K - with Kieran! is the hard learned lesson here.

Dollies

My mate David and I, both young fathers, figured it was time to go fishing and leave the ladies with the kids. Of course I hadn't given a lot of thought to the fact that mother's day was this weekend, nor that I had been in Sydney all week. Facts that Emma tenaciously helped me remind. But a man's got to do what a man's got to do.
The fishing was okay until we hit a school of Dolphin Fish, or Mahi-Mahi. These are hunters and have an almost fluorescent green colour, like grass, but more intense. I caught the first Mahi-Mahi and the captain yelled: let it fight for a few minutes, they'll go crazy. And indeed the Mahi-Mahi's get so aggressive that they'll bite at the lure even before it hits the water. We quickly catch 16 splendid specimens before they dive to deeper depths and swim out of range. We see a 60-70Kgs Marlin close to the ship and about 100 dolphins all around us. A great day!
Emma's Mother day dinner was very remarkable, she had Mahi-Mahi off the BBQ till should could eat no more. Deeelicious.

Rainbow beach carwash

Rainbow beach is famous for its fantastic beaches and of course the RainBow-Beach-Car-Wash-Scoreboard. The locals keep a scoreboard of cars that couldn't outrun the incoming tide or got bogged. Judging by the numbers, 2002 proved a very productive year for the local scrap yards and disastrous for tourists, about 30 cars got washed. This year promises to be good too, the count is up to 12. It's quite nasty really, the 11 km beach ends with a very steep rock wall several tens of meters high. When the tide comes in, there is nowhere to go for the car, and it will drown... Hence the Rainbow Beach car wash.

We decide to test our 'Suzi' and make a run down the beach, it's really cool and I tempt fate -encouraged by Emma- by driving through the waves and have water splash up a few meters. The next day we decide to drive on the beach at InSkip Point a little less perilous beach where the car can actually dodge the incoming tide. A very nice little weekend in southern Queensland.

Swiffer

Well Kieran is crawling and because he drags his body where ever we walk in the house we call him Swiffer.

Kieran is starting to pull his weight and is becoming more and more usable. Whenever I spill something on the kitchen floor, I only need to call Kieran, and he comes crawling, thus moping up the floor. Excellent! Everything is working out well, since mum does the washing of Kieran's clothes. Hehehe. Might be something to having kids after all.

St Patrick's day

 Emmanuelle's last name has some Irish provenance. mcArtan over the years has changed to what it is today. So, we are pretty sure Kieran (nice Irish name) is at least 1/256th Irish. Which of course on st Patrick’s Day is more than enough reason to go the pub and celebrate.

We grab a few silly hats and make our way to the Irish club and an Irish Pub and an English pub.

Carrying a baby on your arm surrounded by self-proclaimed Irish is a good way to be photographed and to meet people. Kieran and I are superstars; our picture was taken more often in that single night than Madonna in her entire career.

One girl even asked for Kieran to wear her sunglasses and do a "The Hangover" picture.

Snorkeling

Okay, I'll admit it, they scared us into waring a stinger suit. The feared Irukandji made it down to the Whitsundays abundantly while we were there. It hurts like hell and you need morphine as soon as possible, so you will be airlifted out to the nearest hospital.
But after 10 minutes in the water you forget the fear and enjoy the water.
I actually got to see my first Maori Wrasse, a gentle fish that grows up to 2.2 meters. This one is only about 1.5 meters, but big enough to be imposing.
The beaches of one of the islands was made out of 100% coral. Beautiful.

Booking cheap tickets

Tonga is the only group of islands in the Pacific that was never under colonial rule. It was just too small and too far and of no important trading value or strategic value. It is so beautiful that Captain Cook returned to 'discover' the islands 3 times. To get there means a painful red-eye flight through Auckland to a dot in the middle of a huge blue patch of water. (Total 12 hour travel). The main attraction is to go dive with the majestic Humpback Whales, the very best time to do this is August.

So why am I telling you this?

Emma and I like to keep an eye out for good deals to fly around the region. And one day while on the internet I found what I was looking for. I grab the phone and call Emma: "Holy Shit, Holy Shit, Holy Shit!" Emma by this time thinks I've been fired, crashed the car or worse.
I've found return tickets to fly to Malaysia for 200 bucks. From there it's another 100 bucks to anywhere in china or South East Asia. We do our research: what's the best place, when is the best season. And once we're ready to book... Too late... all sold (in less than a day).
Damn, hell, devil, crap, shit, merde (shit always sounds better in French).
Okay, so this is how advertising works: we are now desperate to book anything we can find and heavily hit all the websites with offers. And we find one! WE ARE GOING TO TONGA! We'll be going end of August and we shall be swimming with the mighty humpback whales.
I am so happy!

Strine

During the second World War the Dutch army (who had resisted a full 6 days to the German invasion) came up with a full proof test to sniff out any German spies. They simply asked to correctly pronounce a few Dutch words like "Vliegtuigen op Schiphol" which to any other-Language-speaking-person is impossible to utter correctly.

Here in Australia they might be able to do the same thing, should the country be invaded, by simply asking to correctly pronounce for example the following:

Australian	-->	Stralian	-->	Strine
Bacon and eggs	-->	Baked n eggs	-->	Backed necks
Ham and eggs	-->	Hamn eggs	-->	Emma necks
Scrambled eggs	-->	Scrembl eggs	-->	Scremblex
How much is it	-->	Howma chis it	-->	Emma chisit
Art Gallery	-->	Argallery	-->	Ark ellery
Not yet	-->	Natchet	-->	Nar chet
Did you go to (the concert)	-->	Dja goto	-->	Jeggoda (the concert)
New year's eve	-->	Nyear's eve	-->	Ear's eve
Actually	-->	Actjelly	-->	Egg jelly
Air conditioner	-->	Eggonditioner	-->	Egg nishner
Couple of minutes	-->	Coupla mins	-->	Garbler mince
It's going to rain	-->	Sgonna rain	-->	Scona rine

Whitsundays Pictures

	Couldn't get enough so we hopped on a small Cat.
	Now that is a pancake stack!
	Breakfast at Hamilton Island and some of the locals
	Breakfast at Hamilton Island and some of the tourists
	The only means of transport on the entire Island is by... Golf cart.
	Pool + Bar + Cocktails + Sun = :)
	Our UpYourKilt sailboat
	One of the islands we visited
	Whitehaven beach
	3 feet
	Flying Baby at Whitehaven
	Wanna go for a swim?

Skydiving

G'day mate, so you're going to jump out of a perfectly good plane? The guy is huge and has wild eyes. This will be my 13th jump, he says. Lucky number 13!, the other instructor adds and continues with a story of an unfortunate chain of events of a mate's mate that did an imitation of a floor-pizza on his 13th jump.
Emma is doing her usual: Woohoo's! while we get explained how we might have a remote chance not to turn into pavement spaguetti if we follow a few particulary intriquite instructions.

The next thing I remember is hearing READY?! 3! 2! 1! GO! a push and all of the sudden nothing but air rushing not past me, sssssssSSSSSHHHH!!!! after about 20 seconds of hurling way too fast to earth the chute opens and we are flying.

I get to control the chute and we go into a cork screw twist, yeeeehaaa. After landing I can hear Emma Screaming (she jumped 4,000 foot higher) she has explainded to the instructor she wanted to be thrilled. Guess she got what she asked for. They perform a couple of what I can only describe as triple 72 twist, barrell back flip, killer loop olly salto's.

Mega-Manue is a billabong sky-diver
Nice!

Smooth Sailing

The wind is just fantastic it seems to be blowing from the correct direction wherever we go. The water temperature is 29.7C and it is partly cloudy so we don't get too much sun burn. We sail past the kilometres long Whitehaven beach in one tag. We get the occasional excitement when the winds whip up a bit: Emma steers the ship into heavy seas and big waves crash all around us. Alan shouts out 'Take it easy Em!' Emma replies: ‘don't worry you won't get wet’. To which Alan replies, ‘it's not the wet I'm worried about, it's the living!’


The sea is rough, and we do not insist. Hamilton Island is our next course; with the wind in our backs and sun in our face.