Leaving On A Jet Plane !

Singapore Part II and beyond......

Singapore Part II

So, where was I ?

On day 3 of our stopover in Singapore we decided to take a trip to the Jurong Bird Park. Being the stubborn stupid one that I am, I decided that, rather than just hop in cheap taxi for the 15 minute trip to the park we should take the MRT to experience travelling round the island properly. After another 15 minutes of walking fruitlessly around in the searing heat and humidity we finally found the station (bearing in mind we could have probably got there by now). Anyways, we got the MRT, then got off at Jurong at the end of the line, expecting to see the entrance to the Bird Park but it was nowhere to be seen.

Another 10 mins fruitlessly trying to hail a taxi in the hot sun and we finally got one to take us the seeming miles to the park. It was the one problem we had there, that despite there being hundreds of taxis, hailing one was very hard (admittedly mainly because they were already hired).

The park itself was fantastic ! It was one of those days when we seemed to time everything to perfection. First we arrived just in time for the talking and performing bird talk/display, then walked up to the Lori Loft. This has hundreds of Rainbow Lorikeets and other small parrots / parakeets in an enormous rainforest enclosure with walkways above it linking “stations” in the sky. You buy a cup of nectar liquid and are then bombarded by loads of hungry noisy Loris, jumping onto the edge of the cup, your shoulders, arms and head all desperate for a nectar drink ! They’re absolutely everywhere, bathing in the sink where the guy prepares the nectar, falling into his plastic jugs for a bath, perching on the rails and cables of the walkways and then swooping in flocks below you across the enclosure. Awesome !!!!

When we finally managed to pull ourselves away from the Lori Loft we moved on to the monorail which took us to the waterfall enclosure, a huge enclosure with the largest man made waterfall in the world (allegedly!). It’s something like 200 metres high and a great photo opp. With birds flying around. We walked around in here and again stumbled upon a bloke with little cups full of meal worms that he was dishing out free to people. You hold them up in the air and the birds would swoop past and snatch a worm or two from them. He was also throwing live crickets into the air and the birds would catch them mid air as they flew past. There were some amazing coloured iridescent starlings, blue winged kookaburras, all sorts of amazingly coloured birds, some of which would get tired of the fly by method of feeding and just perch on your hand and pick worms from the cup.

Next up were some Pelicans, perching obligingly on a couple of stumps in the water for me to take pics of until TWS and the kids decided that they had had enough of cooking in the sizzling sun and begged me to move on to the final highlight of the tour, the Birds of Prey display.

Here, in another amphitheatre, keepers put on an amazing display, everything from eagles, owls, kites, vultures and buzzards, all catching meat thrown into the sky and swooping low over and amongst the crowd close enough to touch, the wing from their wings ruffling your hair (if you had any that is before anyone comments on my lack of it follicles !).

A cracking day out all in all.

So, the last evening in Singapore. We decided to treat ourselves to a meal at Boat Quay, a quayside famous for it’s restaraunts, the buildings of which are of the old Singapore, surrounded by the towering skyscrapers of the new city.

We were determined to sample the famous seafood no matter what the kids wanted and so I had Chilli Crab which was enormous and Lou had an enormous lobster platter with the tail and the body the front and rear of a wooden shape of a Junk !

So, onto the last day,  and that was spent in the pool at the hotel.

Brisbane

After a 10 hour overnight flight from Singapore we arrived in Brisbane at 6 am and got a maxi taxi to our Motel. We booked this from our hotel room in Singapore the night before as we had lost the details for the one we had originally booked. The one we were staying in was the Best Western Hacienda, 6km from the airport and I’d just like to say at this point, don’t ever stay there !!!!

The rooms had artexed walls, some white but a feature wall painted avocado green, non-matching chintzy bed covers and a kitchen worktop along the other side of the room. All of this was complimented by the most horrendous disinfectant smell. Euurrrgghhh !

Anyways, we assured ourselves it was only for 1 night and so walked down to the CityCat stop on the nearby Brisbane River.

The CityCat as the name suggests is a catamaran service that runs up and down the river, the stop we were alighting at being the last stop inland. It was $16 (£7) for all of us (5) and the tickets last all day and you can get on and off as many times as you like.

The boat really rips and if you’re lucky as we were you can stand on the front deck and feel the wind in your hair, take some piccies of the very nice waterfront homes with boats moored at the jetties at the end of the garden and if you’re stupid like me, lose your shades over the side when they get caught in the wind as you pan sideways to take pics! Bugger !

Good to laugh at all the people trying to get onto the front deck but being told by the “driver” that they couldn’t stand where they were, i.e in front of the sign that stated “no-one to stand in front of this sign”. The look on their faces as they turned round to read the sign that they hadn’t noticed was priceless.

Something that was nice was that when we were looking at the route map for the cat, a woman who works for them comes up and asks if she can help anyone and duly gave us advice on the service. You just don’t get that in the Uk, especially not unsolicited from a friendly cheerful person.

So, we spent a nice day in the city, went for a walk in the Botanical Gardens (where to Zak’s delight he was able to buy a “Golden Gaytime” ice cream/lolly), and then had a pleasant meal at a waterfront Bistro. Rather annoying is the fact that because it was a bank holiday they up the prices by 20% ! Totally up front about it, signs outside telling you but hey ho.

Got a bottle of wine at the drive through Bottle O on the way back and had a quiet/early night  in, ready for the 8:30 minibus to the airport.

The minibus duly arrived on time and we were ushered to the group check-in for Virgin Blue. The lad on the check in Steve was brilliant. What we had realised after packing our overweight suitcases was that unlike Singapore Air who are pretty good if you’re a bit over the weights, Virgin Blue are the equivalent of Ryan Air and so the excess baggage should have run into hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

Stevo being the top bloke that he is told us that he wasn’t going to charge us for it seeing as it was easter and that we were new to the country. He also tried to blag us that his mate at the desk was an indigenous aborigine (I believed him) but then confessed that he was actually from South Africa.

An uneventful 2 ½ hour flight later and we arrived in Cairns. I say uneventful but I’m forgetting the views through the windows of the plane of bits of the Great Barrier Reef (yes, I managed to squeeze a few shots off with the camera at this point !)

Cairns – Week 1

We landed in Cairns and it was raining ! warm but raining never the less. Everyone has been most apologetic about the weather but it’s no biggie as there has been plenty of sunshine and heat in the mornings and as I say, it’s still warm even when it’s raining.

True to their word, the hospital had arranged for someone to meet us at the airport and they had a taxi voucher to get us to the apartments.

We arrived at the CitySider Apts and MMJTBFC had surpassed himself again ! not only had he picked up the keys from GHD and left them in an envelope near reception (closed as it was Easter Sunday) but he had also left us a welcome package consisting of a couple of tinnies, choc eggs for the kids, a local paper (complete with front page headlines about lunatic speeding bikies!), a book about Tropical North Queensland wildlife and a free pass for  for the SkyRail, the cable car service up to Kuranda.

Top bloke !

For the next 2 days we settled in as it was Easter i.e. bank hols, went down to the Lagoon on the esplanade, checked out the apartments pool, the mall in the CBD (which is a good size and includes supermarkets, the railway station and free parking) etc.

The first night, the kids were in the pool at the apts as dusk approached and suddenly loads of massive flying foxes (fruit bats) flew over, going to feed after spending the day hanging in the local trees. Wow ! massive things, silently flapping their way across the sunset sky. Even better when one “buzzed” the pool and flew over our heads about 10 foot of the ground !

We’ve also seen lizards, large blue butterflies, cute little asian house geckos that stick to the walls of the balcony and other crazy insects.

So, after making the kids walk everywhere for a couple of days we decided that we needed some transport, and went to Rent a Bomb. As the name suggests, they specialise in the cheapest rentals available and our silver early 90’s Ford Falcon Station Wagon (4 litre V6 auto)  was $250 for 7 days. It came complete with oxidised paint on the bonnet and so many dints and scrapes that when the guy had finished marking them all on the pre-inspection diagram he admitted that if we did damage it any more they probably wouldn’t notice ! So off we went to look for a car to buy, picking up a “carton” of Corona bottled lager from the drive in bottle shop on the way (we panicked having driven in their and picked the first thing we saw that we reckognised, i.e. expensive imported lager ! $57), windows open (hand wind jobbies) as the air con was barely working.

We drove up Mulgrave Road which is where all the car sales places are and stopped at Pacific used 4X4. There was a car parked in the road next to the lot which attracted our interest and after speaking to the salesman discovered that it was the manager’s (Brendon) car.

It was a Nissan Patrol 2.8 TD, 1998, 120k kms, 7 seats, manual, top alarm in mint condition, full service history, all bills inc. recent tyres snorkel (for driving half submerged in a river!) and special suspension with a $3000 Alpine stereo system inc. pre-amp, sub woofers in the back etc. etc. for $22990.

Brendon was a top bloke, went for a test drive and he told me he had lived in Wales near Lake Vyrnwy and Scotland and we both laughed at how we disliked the Welsh !

When we got back we agreed a price at $22000 and he helped fill out all the paper work and got us a quite on the insurance as they are agents for Suncorp. $560 fully comp (£220) which I thought brilliant for such a big car.

Off we popped to the bank and nipped back to pick it up. Went for a drive then up to where the kids will be going to school, and then got a bit lost in the hills in the dark, driving along roads bordered by glow bugs lighting up the undergrowth. Cool !!!

What else have we done since then ?

Driven half way up the road to Kuranda, realised it wouldn’t be a good road for Lou to drive up after a night shift ! very steep and twisty and even when you get to the bottom I would still have a half hour drive to work, dropping the kids off at school on the way.

We took the Rent a Bomb back to ask if it was possible to get a refund even though we had rented it for a week and that was no problem (1 day rent + $25 penalty).

Spent a day or two driving round suburbs and can’t seem to find the pole homes that we have seen on the net (apart from the ones up in Kuranda) and most of the modern estates leave us cold. The houses are so close together, have very small rear gardens and the houses themselves are small so we can only presume small room sizes as most of them are 4 bedroom !

Did like some roads down past the schools (the ones where the glow bugs where, on the way to Crystal Cascades) but only a couple of houses for sale down there. One in  a recent estate with pool, end of close backing onto reserve (bush/rainforest) for $455,000 and a rainforest pole home on 2.5 acres but it’s listed as “high $500,000’s”.

Either way, we probably can’t buy while we’re both on our 3 month probation periods so we are hopefully renting one of the aforementioned 4 bed rabbit hutches near the schools for 3 months or more for $350 a week.

Finally, we went to see the principal of St. Andrew’s Catholic College on Friday for our “interview”. She was very nice and the interview which we had prepared for (i.e. talking about how we liked the ethos of the school, their holistic approach to education etc. despite not being “practising Christians” ourselves ! ar*e licking basically!) didn’t really materialise ! it was basically us trying to pressure her into squeezing Jedd in as they had places for Zak and India but not Jedd.

I gave her the hard sell, saying that we were here to stay, that we would be living just down the road etc. etc. and Lou gave her the mother side, saying we wouldn’t split them up and it was either all of them or none of them.

A nice bloke from Adelaide called Keiran showed us round the grounds while she tried to persuade the teacher in Year 4 to fit him in.

Gorgeous peaceful setting in the Redlynch Valley, surrounded by hills covered in Rainforest, loads of new buildings going up including sports arena, 1000 seat Performing Arts centre, loads of IT stuff inc. trolleys with 30 laptops on, 1 for each student as well as the usual IT rooms with desktop PC’s, a citrix system to allow access to work, library etc. from home available to all students, linked to tuck shop cards on which you can specify what food you won’t allow your kids to eat e.g. crisps and when they try to buy them with their card the computer says “no”. Loads of stuff available at lunch time, after school, sports teams going to places like Brisbane for tournaments, instruments available for all who want to try them etc. etc. etc.

She rang us back while we were at the nearby Estate Agents (realtors) to confirm they would take them all ! sorted !

So that’s us so far, everything going smoothly, I start work on Monday and the kids start on Tuesday. Every person we’ve met so far has been great, friendly, interested in where we’re from and how long we’ve been here etc.

Jeff is picking me up at 10 am tomorrow morning and taking me to pick up my bike and we’re going for a leisurely ride up to Port Douglas, meeting Lou and the kids back at his in the arvo for a Barbie !

Got helmet, gloves and lock from bike shop round the corner (Wayne Leonards) and went back for insurance. Spoke to nice bloke called Robert who is a Kiwi and got a good deal, again about $560 fully comp., mainly because they allowed you to use your car no claims on your bike insurance, even though I had already used them to discount the car insurance !

Now, I’m determined not to play the “oz vs uk” game but that would NEVER happen in the uk. Back home you can’t use them more than once and you certainly can’t use your car NCB on your bike policy. I ain’t complaining though !!!

He also told me about a charity ride they’ve got coming up next month up to Cookstown up the Cape Of York. Overnight job so will be sure to do that and take some pics.

Finally, on the subject of pics, no net access at the mo and I’ve been a bit busy ! but will post up the links once I’ve sorted them out and got them online.

Lovin it so far !!!!