Before and after

the day has come for me to show off the result of all our hard work in Dobell Palace. As you can see we have managed to make quite some improvements on the house.


I absolutely LOVE the new kitchen! What an improvement from the old one, it is unbelievable! No more lime green, no more disintegrating plywood and dripping taps, everything clean and white and solid.
Thank God for Ikea! We now have plenty of storage for all our kitchen things and I really enjoy cooking in it, which makes Craig think the kitchen was a good investment after all :-)))

Here the lovely lime green old bathroom with tasteful brass and way too many flowery tiles...


and this is what it looks like now!!! Very sexy indeed if you ask me. The room feels so much bigger and brighter - Am loving it!

It is quite a sad day today as Craig had to go back to work and caught a flight down to Canberra very early this morning, not a happy bunny! He has been off work for 15 months and we do know how lucky we are to have pulled this off but it is hard to go back to the old work life. And wo weird to be apart again all week. What am I going to do with myself?!?!?! Well, I have started looking at the job market as well since I am expecting my work permit to come through in March. Wish me luck!

What a week!

What a week we had! Dear me! The worst bit must have been grinding down the concrete floor! I have never seen dust so fine and watched in amazement how it travelled through the house, through the tiniest gaps in the sealed doors, out the window, around the house and back into another window. Fascinating, really! I am sure all the neighbours agree as well?



But it got better from there. Our German Tiler Dieter has done a great job with James help and all the floor tiles are down. Perfectly straight as well! Now we just need to be patient until Monday when he will come back to finish the bathroom and the kitchen splashback. Hurrah! Am very very very pleased!! What a lovely Valentines Surprise!

I had three hours of Mandarin lessons today, my brain hurts and I have not felt so silly in a long time. Sitting in a jam-packed quiet library exploring Chinese plosives at the top of my voice with about 20 people watching and listening in bemused silence. Oh well.. hopefully I will never see them again. I feel like I know nothing at all but Siqing, my laoshi (teacher), kept saying "you welly good lurna!". There you go! I will keep practicing my tones... Zaijian! That is goodbye!

Brisbane City

I have spent a few days in town this week to make some progess on my immigration paperwork and to get out of the house a bit since we cannot do much at the moment. And I have to say I like Brisbane more and more the more I see of it. There are lots of intersting galleries,lots of decent shops and great al fresco spots with delicious coffee and ample opportunity for people watchting. We like that!



I am also very pleased to report that I have passed the immigration health test with flying colours. The docs were particularly impressed with my eyesight and the stabiliy of my repaired knee! The doc also had his ACL replaced and he said he wished it turned out as well as mine! Hee hee. Thank you BUPA!



This is Eagle Street, THE business district in Brissie, right by the waterfront and of course these skyscrapers are full of international lawfirms... Dear God! I am still struggling to imagine going back there....

More kitchen progress

I am so happy! Yesterday James brought our new wonderful and extradeep and long spanking new kitchen benchtop and it fits perfectly and looks amazing! I am so pleased... So good to be back with some work space, a sink and a stove! We just need to get an electrician and plumber to come round and connect it all. Oh well, details!


I have also managed to find a lovely German tiler called Dieter who is available next week and will start putting our tiles down on Wednesday. I cannot wait so see it all come together and it will be so cool (literally) to have a shower again...

Turtles in Bundaberg

I spent the last weekend in Bundaberg together with Vanessa (who I met in Peru travelling) and her friend Kristie (who Vanessa met in Ecuador travelling). I have not had a girlie weekend break in a while and really enjoyed it, especially the singing along to cheesy 80s tunes in the car!
We drove up to Bundaberg, which is four hours north of Brisbane on the coast and met up with another friend of Vanessa and enjoyed some time on the beach and a night out with way to much Bundy Rum and a very good cover band with a rather handsome front man!

The second night was amazing as we managed to book us into the Mon Repos Nature Reserve for a spectacular night visit on the beach to watch Loggerhead turtles hatch. The largest concentration of nesting marine turtles on the eastern Australian mainland occurs at Mon Repos and is the most significant loggerhead turtle nesting population in the South Pacific Ocean region. Successful breeding here is critical for the survival of this endangered species. What a wonderful miracle to witness!


We stood in the pitch black night and listened to the park ranger explaining the life cycle of the turtles on this beach and how they always come back to lay their eggs on the beach they were born. They have the magnetic imprint of this location in their little brains and manage to find their way back there from no matter where they are in the ocean. Unfortunately, only about 1 in 1000 turtles makes it to adulthood and manages to reproduce. Which is why they are so endangered.



Once the little ones started wriggling out of their nest there was no stopping them. About 130 of them hatched at the same time and scrambled out of their hole in the sand and ran down the beach on their tiny tiny little flippers. It was the cutest and most fascinating thing!!! We had barely recovered from the miracle when they called us over to the other side of the beach where a huge mama turtle had climbed up the dunes to make a new nest and lay her eggs. She was laying her 4th batch of eggs that night and the professor who examined her with ultrasound said she will probably lay 2 more batches this season. That would be over 800 baby turles just from one mother!!


It was brilliant to watch this huge turtle dig a bottle shaped hole in the ground using her back finns and then laying her eggs in it and covering them up. I felt very priviledged...very excited and very peaceful. I slept like a baby in our little cabin on the beach dreaming of little turles exploring the ocean....