News
January 2006.
It is New Years day 2006, and I have just deleted all our old news. We now start anew for the New Year. Our son Michael came to Bundaberg for the first time and had Christmas with us.
We have had the relaying of the "Outdoor Area" bricks done now for four months and the new levels make the water drain properly. The killing of ant nests under the bricks has made keeping weed growth at bay much easier. We also had another area under the front portion of the caravan paved ,as the grass under the caravan previously could not be fully mown and looked unkempt. Another 15 square metres of brick pavers under the caravan A frame has made the front driveway much tidier.
Its been hot and dry as we haven't had much rain for this time of the year. All of south east Qld has water restrictions as the dams are at dangerously low levels.
We do not have a Caravan Club rally in January. Our first rally for 2006 will be in February at Pialba caravan park at Hervey Bay. This is a lovely park with shops and clubs close by.
Our daughter Suzanne has been to Bundaberg twice, for her company to install a new Photo processing machine at a local photo shop. It has been great to have her stay. Anne and Suzanne had a day together while Suzanne was here for some "Retail Therapy."
We miss our friends Delma and Harry Visser who have moved back to Brisbane to be nearer to their family.
February 2008
Time has passed since I have updated this website, so I will endeavour to bring you all up to date. Our friend Harry Visser, who had not long been back in Brisbane, had a massive heart attack and died on January the 5th 2007. We went to his funeral in Brisbane, and finally met Max, Delmas brother. We purchased a new Mitsubishi Pajero 3.2 litre turbo diesel in late December 2006 and the run to Brisbane for Harry's funeral was Mitsy's first trip. It is now 5 years since we moved to Bundaberg from Brisbane, and it was certainly a good move. Mitsy is much better at towing the caravan and I feel much more comfortable with the caravan in tow. Anne is serving her second year as Secretary of the Bundaberg Caravan Club, and will only be Secretary until mid September 2008, so we can travel up north for a couple of months visiting the Eungella State Forest west of Mackay,We have not been here and seen the Wallerman Falls in the Forest. We also would like to go to Lucinda as it has been 20 odd years since we have been there. The Caravan Club gives us lots of fun and I have bought a Satellite TV system for the caravan to access free TV when we are in remote areas with either no or lousy reception. Aussie TV reception at many places outside the major cities is poor due to the distances from transmission towers. Even Bundaberg is about 100 Km's from a transmission tower and everyone needs to have a signal booster to get a reasonable picture but even North Bundaberg has problems with Channel 2 (ABC). Satellite TV gives perfect pictures every time except during severe weather. Anne has been busy downloading music MP3's of our teenage era, and I have compiled them and made 3 MP3's with a combined total of 482 song or orchestral tracks. Each MP3 plays for about 11 hours. We have recently bought a new sound system that plays CD's MP3's and cassettes plus it has a radio tuner. After seeing the picture quality of high definition LCD TV's, we went and bought a 40" Samsung LCD TV with a HD tuner. They have come down a lot in price in the last 6 months as we only paid $1590 for our LCD TV with a full 5 year warranty. Our February Caravan Club Rally was again at Pialba Caravan Park and this year we got some wild weather and lost power 3 times over the week. Our normal wet season has returned this year and he dams are filling up and the desperate water shortage is over for a year or more.
March 2008
Our March rally was at Woodgate beach 50 Km's south of Bundaberg. This is a lovely long sandy beach that has recently become popular after the area was sewered, and prices have tripled in the last 3 years. The first 3 storey flats have been built and over the next few years more will be built. Childers about 30 Km's away on the Bruce Hwy now has a Woollies Supermarket, Woodgate has lots of kangaroos around. Our TV broke while we were here so a quick trip back to Bundaberg was made to replace it with an LG 19" LCD widescreen TV. The India v Australia one day finals were on, but the new TV didn't stop India thrashing Australia 2 nil in the best of three finals. We are still playing Indoor Bowls twice a week and enjoying it greatly. We have booked flights to NZ on good specials, and we are flying to Christchurch on May the 7th , returning May the 18th . We will be staying at some relatives of Anne's in Christchurch, that she found online, who are about our own age. We have not met them but have chatted on the phone and they seem a lot like us. They will show us around the northern part of the South Island, as I have never been to the South Island, even though I lived in Wellington for 2 years in the early sixties. I am looking forward to this NZ trip.
January 2011
Bundaberg has had some flooding in its low lying areas over Christmas and New Year, due to a lot of torrential rain in the Burnett catchment area.
Qld has experienced torrential rain over 3/4 of the state and flooding was widespread including Rockhampton, Emerald, Dalby, St George and Toowoomba, that had a devastating flash flood that poured down the mountain and did a lot of damage in the Lockyer Valley, and finally flooded large parts of central Brisbane and Ipswich Some lives have been lost and many are still missing. Property damage in 3/4 of Qld has been extensive with the fix up bill likely to be about 20 Billion dollars, wiping out lots of small businesses and 6 months farm production at least and a lot of coal production too. There has been lots of fund raising, as most people cannot buy flood insurance as the risk is too high. We have had no flooding in our area but Within 1.5 Kms there was wide spread flooding in Bundaberg making moving around the city difficult without large detours. Rockhampton is still flooded but the level is slowly dropping allowing the Bruce highway to be reopened and trucks to bring supplies from down south.
I have built up a new i5 2.8 Gh quad core processor Windows 7 professional computer with 8 Gig of ram and 1 TB of Hard drive. I have used a new case with lots of fans and the computer is now running cool and not getting hot. Windows 7 pro has a XP compatible function. I hope my new cool computer tower will enable the components to not overheat and burn portions out. At last I seem to have the software for this website sorted.
February 2011
.
What a year 2011 is becoming, firstly 3/4 of Qld had severe flooding with loss of about 20 lives and now a large category 5 cyclone has hit North Qld from Cairns down to Townsville causing a lot of property damage and destroying much of the sugar cane crop and the banana crop. both Cairns and Townsville got only minor damage but the smaller towns in between got serious property and crop damage. What other catastrophe can befall Queensland in 2011. Luckily there was no loss of life from the cyclone, as there was 3 days notice of the cyclones arrival, for people to be prepared and move to safer areas or buildings.
We had our 46th Wedding Anniversary at our February caravan club rally at Burnett Heads, and had a lovely dinner at the local Pub.
NZ now has its own disaster with a 6.3 category earthquake in the central Christchurch area with 105 bodies found so far, but many more bodies have to be removed (Up to 200) from flattened highrise buildings over the forthcoming weeks. We will be flying into Christchurch on a 10 day Sth Island bus tour on March 17th. We will be put up well outside Christchurch to start our tour. At this time the Bus tour company are using Methven, 98Kms west of Christchurch as a base for their Sth Island tours. Grand Pacific tours are using a Ski Resort in Methven at present, but we don;t know just where we will go to outside Christchurch on the 17th March when we fly in to Christchurch for the beginning of our 10 day tour of the south of the South Island. Our Christchurch relations are all OK in the suburbs.
.