Calabi-Yau the changing of states

Hello, 

So here we are, working too much. Unable to get any tripping in with me working 72hr weeks on nightshift, has been trying. Almost falling asleep driving the truck at about 3am seems to be a common occurrence, but so far I have had no damage although the other day I managed to drive into one of the sheds..... classic not sure what I was thinking (I left the hoist in the up position...... gutted)

Just a small dent or "dint" as they all seem to say over here, bloody Australians!

I managed to open up some cracked welds on the top ram box but we sorted it.

Well I left the 60 series slip by, not sure if it was a good decision but it had done - 500,000km on the clock scared us a bit. So now I'm still looking for a decent 4x4, we are currently looking at a land rover defender.... What do you think? as you can see i'm really not too fussy about the type, I just want a strong reliable vehicle that can handle traveling around. So if anyone has any suggestions or advice it would be much appreciated. I mean I would love a Toyota troopy 4 door  but have you seen the price.... its insane

 ok here she is....land rover defender 1993

oh but just found a troopy bit high in price but looks good

toyota troopy landcruiser- 1994

Its a cool looking car aye.

Well the other news is that I have a new job, working as a Land management officer for a fixed term in a place called Miles (about 3 hrs inland from Brisbane and 6hrs south of Emerald) I start on the 16th of July. So I finish work at the cotton gin hopefully on friday or thursday.

So this is not a bad situation although Shahn is still doing locum work in Rockhampton and unsure as to how long she will have work or accommodation.

Oh yea man how cool is it that they discovered the Higgs boson... I thought I would just add this video Large Hadron collider

So hopefully we can organise a 4x4, get a place, Shahn find work and finally get to do some fun tiki touring around.

As always... Watch this space!

"The computer say's No"

I have always imagined traveling as an easy step. That everything required for travelling would just pop up when needed and all fall into place, but it is time consuming to plan and I may have under estimated the costs involved too.

To start out our trip to Australia is to top up the bank balance quickly while seeing a bit of our friendly Trans-Tasman neighbours. Get out of our comfort zone and get a taster of what the world has to offer.

We are planning on traveling until June 2014. Starting in Durban with Andrew & Caroline's wedding (which will be a blast and we are real excited about!). I'm also hoping to look for some signs of relatives that lived in South Africa a few generations ago, the Stanhope-Whites.

While in South Africa, we are hoping to do a bit of a contiki type situation with our lovely friends, we are very keen to have a decent look at what SA has to offer.  Then we want to head to Zimbabwe and do further travels through Central Africa, then head North.  Shahn is keen to go to Egypt then probably onwards to the UK and Europe.  We are likely to get working visas and hang in the UK for 3 - 6 months work (money depending) catch up with relatives in England.

We are in the process of setting out a budget for our year long trip. Traveling in Australia  while we work will just be a given so we need to start working out how much we can afford to spend. The age old travellers saying is to have a budget amount, then double it ad that will be our cost - We are thinking $50k for both of us travelling for 1 year .... Ambitious? Not enough?  well the budget is currently underway
                                                                            $10,000 flights and transport
                                                                            $10,000 food
                                                                            $ 5,000 just to make sure

I have just spent part of my day off, looking at round the world tickets and talking with travel agents. Just doing general research into whether a RTW ticket is worth it, a rough guesstimate but the travel agent was that for 9 stops it would be $8k for both of us for flights alone - to put it in perspective, for us to fly to South Africa is roughly $4k, so it looks like a pretty sweet deal and should save us a bit of money (if you have had experience with the RTW tickets, we would love to hear from you!)

I would also like to discuss some parts of the trip so far.  We have been in Aussie for 3 months now, it has given us food for though with different ideas to explore and things we have seen along the way.

Firstly, the vastness of Australia is pretty crazy (well coming from New Zealand where you can cross the country in about 3-4 hours), here we are 3.5 hours inland from Rockhampton but we are not even half way across the state of Queensland.  

Secondly, is the lack of give way intersections in town. Man it is really annoying, it is like driving around in a small town and having the main streets with out clear give way rules so every intersection you have to slow down and look all they need is to add in some white lines and make life easy.... very awkward when no one knows who gives way to who!

Thirdly, another strange thing is the lack of winter! We have grown use to snow and the cold although it is nice to have 16-25 degree days in winter and cool nights just like a NZ summer.

Lastly, Australia have awesome sunsets and sunrises, really vivid colours and because it is so flat you can see for miles. Its quite spectacular.

We have managed to get a few tramps in while we had some time off but now that Shahn has a temp/locum job and I'm working 6 days a week, we have little time for exploring and you have to drive a fair way to get a nice spot to go.  The nearest good tramping is Blackdown Tablelands (see previous posts for pics) but I'm looking forward to doing a little 4wding to places that are out of reach in the Echo. We are also looking at buying a 4wd, just waiting for a nice deal to pop up. looking at this one it old and done too many km but.......toyota landcruiser

Also now that we are planning our trip we would like people that may like a visit from us to send us a email or Facebook message. We would love to catch up with friends and family so please contact us because we would love to add you to our travel plans!

Cheers!

FYI penis anatomy

sorry no pictures this week too busy working but more stuff to come

Living the dream!

Hi lovelies...

So Friday, we had a day off (it was crap as weather so we didn't have any plans - a chill day, if you will) and I received a call from the I-MED X-ray department in Rockhampton.

In a very brief phone call with the manager, he offered me a 4 week casual contract (not with any agency) so he offered accommodation too. So of course, I jumped at the opportunity to get working in radiography again (it's been 5months since Melbourne contract ended)!!! The catch: start Monday 8.30am!

Since I have been working at Luv-A-Coffee for 2ish months, I guess they knew I wouldn't be there forever. So my last day was Saturday, we went to the Irish Pub, had a lovely pizza, cut some shapes on the D-floor and Eaky had too many free beers - all round excellent night!

The girls got me some lovely flowers! So beautiful!!

 

 

I caught the bus from Emerald to Rockhampton, usually a 3hour drive took 4hours gaaahhh!

Was very glad to have rocked up to a lovely apartment, near town and the Mater Hospital (where I'm working for CQMI/I-MED/MIA).

 

After chats with the Manager, this could lead to permanent work - probably because it would be cheaper for them, but still awesome for me! If they train me in CT then I might be able to work in Emerald... Finally things are looking up!!

But they are all lovely to work with, very old general equipment but that's not surprising, so all round I'm one pretty happy lady!

Now if both Eaky & I can get permanent work then we can finally make some awesome money and continue to live the dream!! Hehe!

Xxxx Miss everyone in NZ, send us some news!!

Love Shahn!

Motivation Station

Sorry we have been SO slack this month, seems that this month has seen Michael slogging his ass out at the Cotton Gin, working 6 days a week.  We have both been suuuper busy WORKING. We have been both having Fridays off and attempting to do something awesome on that day off.

We were planning to go to Rockhampton and head to Yeppoon on the 4th of May, but we ended up yarning to a Kiwi guy at Trivia so got home late and then lacked the motivation to get up at 5am. So we minced about for the day and ended up heading to the the Fairbairn Dam for a dip.

We decided to head back to the Blackdown Tablelands, we missed out a real nice track last time that we were keen to look at.  The Rainbow Waters track was a mission for Hugo the Hulk, poor car, it was a rough track and to travel 14kms of gravel took over 45mins!

Our trip to Gudda Gumoo a short 4km round tramp in the Blackdown Tablelands

Shahn standing in the rocks near Rainbow Waters waterfall.  An absolutely stunning place!

 
It really is Rainbow Waters!! So gorgeous!

Eak and his clever bird friend - feeding it nuts, pretty cool!

We finally got our shit together (on 18/5/12) and made the 3hour trip to Rockhampton, with the intention to head to the coast to see the Keppel Islands and to smell the sorely missed sea breeze! Poor old Eaky was struggling after working his 72 hour week and then up at 430am to drive 3hours.  So we cruised on through Rocky, leaving the druggies and hobo looking people behind us and headed to the beautiful coast, to Yeppoon.

Wreck Point Lookout at Yeppoon.  Those hills are what we climbed to take the below pics...

 

The fan like structures are formed from lava tubes travelling up and then cooling.  Formed millions of years ago, and the top picture is a blow hole!

Green Tree Ant (Oecophylla smaragadina)  

Than can be used when out in the bush to make a tasty drink when quenched in hot water.

We ventured 18kms down the coastal scenic route to Emu Park, to the singing ship - a monument to honour Captain Cook who discovered and named Keppel Island in May 1770. It is a huge structure that does hum and whistle in the breeze, just lovely!

Poor Eak is missing his boat!

On we trotted to the Koorana Crocodile Farm, they breed their own Crocs for farming their skins, meat, skulls and teeth - they kill 700/year for exporting and consumption.  We got to see a baby croc being born, below is old love holding the egg and showing us how the female croc helps them out of the egg.  This farm can only use their captive bred crocs as farmed products, any wild caught crocs can only be used a breading stock.  As this farm catches massive rouge, wild, saltwater crocs causing issues in the community. Although  It could be argued we are in their territory but they are a danger to all.

 

Brand new baby croc, only a few mins out of his shell.  He can kill and catch his own prey fresh out of his shell.  Amazing that something so big managed to fit in that egg!

 Us each holding a 3year old croc.  He was incredibly smooth feeling, especially underneath on his belly - that is the main reason they are farmed, their belly skin is work $50/square cm.  Absolutely incredible reptile!

On the way out of the Crocodile Farm, we saw a pair of Emu on the side of the road, still not snakes, koala or kangaroo on photograph.... we will get there!!!

We have been thinking about our future travels, which seem to be sneaking up quicker than expected! Realistically we need to get it sorted, so we need to sort our shit out and make some serious money so we can travel the way we are intending to (far and wide, for as long as we can!)

The potential travel plans just trying to price it all up... just a few ideas still a few places to add this is just a idea as we need to price tickets and all.

Trying to do something extreme while in Africa... Anyone want to climb Kilimanjaro???can't be that bad, only 6000 odd metres to climb. http://www.teamkilimanjaro.com/  http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/climbing-kilimanjaro/

We will endeavour to do better with future posts! Hopefully we have exciting things to report, like awesome jobs!

xxxxx Love Shahn & Eak

Two Months and going...

We have now been in sunny Queensland for two whole months! Crazy how time flies when your busy tiki-touring around and working semi-hard.

Sunset at the Fairbairn Dam

We went for a drive with Richard out to where all the underground coal mines are located, they are about an hour away from Emerald.  We weren't really sure what to expect but there is very little physical impact on mine site, to look at there is just site buildings and then there is the big ass piles of coal being offloaded from conveyor belts.  On the way out there, there was a Police escorted wide load trucks  with mine vehicles being sent to Emerald to be fixed/serviced - If any big loads have Police assistance you MUST pull over, luckily we had Richard with us to tell us to pull over as we would have just rolled on through. Classic! 

We went to see some of Richards mates, Shaun and Dawn Goodman for a yarn and ended up staying for a few beers.  They have two little kiddies Poppy and Guss, they are pretty funny kids. Poppy decided she wanted to paint everyone's toe nails, the boys were not excluded either!

I got bright red toes done, fully all over my actual toes - jandals (oh sorry, thongs... NOT) got a bit hammered too haha! Richard had a delightful shade of bluey-green, he was pretty chuffed! And Eak got gold glitter, he thought his toes looked a lot better shimmery and golden.

Cute little Poppy skillfully beautifying Eaks toes!

Eak has bought a fishing net/crab pot, and on our many trips to the Dam we drop it in to see what is lurking in the lake! On our first drop (bait: blue cheese wrapped in bread) we caught a freshwater cray - wasn't quick enough for a picture.  The second drop we didnt catch anything (bait: just bread). The third drop we caught a cat fish and a mud fish (bait: chicken with stuffing and bread).

Michael with his net (and new haircut, à la Shahn's skills)

Our catch of the day... We tagged and released all of these fishies (and the cray) as we didn't really want to eat them and we are not sure what the size limits are. Yip kosher Coastwatch, right here!

Michael finished up picking watermelons Sunday 29/3/12, after being rained off for 2 days. He started at the Cotton Gin seasonal work on Monday 30/3/12, he is driving some pretty budget trucks (the leader truck with no gear leaver have to use a piece of wire and jiggle it to find the gears up reverse, down a bit neutral, and push it a bit you get forward. Classic and rangi as) and then generally hanging out. Its 12 hour days, 6 days a week with Fridays off.
 

The beast "Leader" circa 1980 - The truck Eak has the pleasure of driving everyday!

Bales of cotton ready to be processed.

By working such big hours it will put us in the black until we can find something more fruitful to spend the rest of our time in Aussie until our further travels fall into place!

xxxx Love Shahn & Eak

Highflyers and High-Fives

Thursday 12th April, Eak flew off to Brisbane for the day.  The flight from Emerald to Brisbane is roughly 1.5hrs long and luckily it was another gorgeous day in sunny Queensland!

Blackdown Table lands from above.

The very flat and expansive area of Central Queensland.

He rocked up to the Qantas Club in Brissy a few hours the lounge had a complete buffet and bar area.  Needless to say, free beers, food and cakes were slaughtered by Michael   - Classic!

Free Beer, Free Food and Free Net = Sweet As!!

Then that Thursday night at the local Mayfair Tavern we have been attending the weekly quiz.  Our team name, 2 K's (Two Kiwi's). We didn't place in the quiz but they have a team "True or False" round which Eak won two rounds of, and he won two bottles of wine!! Man what a sweet day, here I am in all my finery, holding my well earned free wine bottles.  Won by using  useful & obscure general knowledge and a small amount of doing what they guy next to me was doing.

That weekend we decided to take a trip to the Blackdown Table Lands (as seen from above in the earlier pics).  It was a bit of a trek from Emerald, about 2 hours drive, but it was really cool - we were on the look out for snakes but still none to be seen, sneaky snakes! Its 1000m above sea level so it was an awesome place for the Aboriginal people to live.

There were some trippy big ass rocks on the track and some old Aboriginal paintings on the rock face. There was a good campground up there and a few tramping tracks around, which is where we saw these Aboriginal hand paintings. The roads are rough, luckily Hugo handled the ride. Would be worth camping there for a few days, very tranquil.

 Eak has been busy picking watermelons, a very sweaty and a hard job.  We are just ticking along at the moment, but things might be looking up!

xxxx Love Shahn & Eak

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone!

Hope you all had some lovely time off and managed to eat heeeeaps of chocolate!

We have had an eventful Easter weekend, we decided on Thursday night that we would do some tiki-touring around some of the closer towns in Central QLD. On Friday, we left home with a packed lunch and planned to head to Springsure for a look-see.  We also took our togs so we could swing past the dam on the way home!

Central Queensland looks like a desolate place with little to do but hang about, we are wanting to tramp/hike the Minerva Hills that overlook the Central Highlands region - seems no-one in Aussie is real keen on doing that! The area is a dry, sparsely populated but there are some really nice National Parks worth visiting, for example; Blackdown Tableland, Minerva Hills and Carnarvon Gorge, they are all located within a few  hours of Emerald. Why visit Brisbane when you could experience real Australia and get out in the bush and have a look around?!

  

We drove around a bit and decided to head to Old Rainworth Fort, this lovely lady, Colleen McLaughlin had a wealth of knowledge of the history of the area and she had lived and worked on the home  farm (10,000 acres, total of 24,000 acres) - she was a bit of a tough old nut but her family have had 5 generations and 125 years living and working on the farm.

Near Springsure. there was the largest recorded massacre of europeans in all of Australian history, some angry as Aboriginals were pissed (can't blame them as it is reported that 2,000 odd were slaughtered in Queensland alone) about the Europeans taking over their land so they killed 19 people.  As the population was about 300 for the whole area, so they built a fort to keep themselves safe.  At the Rainworth Station they had three building that have been moved there for historical preservation.

 Shahn on the porch of a house built in 1862, the house they built when they europeans settled onto this land.

 Inside the 150 year old home. There was a cellar below the building (it was about 10 degrees cooler in there) and a second level in the roof where a resident Possum lives now.

The building on the left is the Cairdbeign School, built in 1896 and both buildings were re sited here in 1982 to ensure historic preservation.  The building on the right is built in roughly the same era, it was a very old "Queenslander house" and had a massive porch in its day. The house was filled with alot of historical articles from the old occupants.

On the way home, after another extensive yarn with Colleen, we stopped at the public toilets and there was a frog in the toilet bowl! Tried getting a picture but it moved up underneath the rim, not cool! We went for a drive to try head up to the Minerva Hills National Park but it was a bit of a rough road and Hugo isn't 4wd so we had to turn back.

 

These are some wild Brahman cattle, which were on the Minerva Hills Road. They are massive animals and are funny looking compared with what we are used to in New Zealand, but they are used here as they can tolerate the heat, have a thick hide so insects don't worry them. Then we went off to the dam for another lovely dip!

Eak's Dream.... Here is the vehicular device we need to go bush in, so we can look around the outback.  Just need to find a good deal one that is cheap but in good nick, could be a challenge to find one!

Saturday, Shahn had work 8-4pm, was very happy to do this as it was $40/hr! Woo! After a very tough and busy day at the office, we bought some ciders and a cask/box of Midori & Pineapple (to be had with a splash of Sprite) - YUM! Ate some cheese & crackers that Eak so kindly prepared earlier and got prepared to head for the Emerald Rodeo.  It was a beautiful night so we walked about 20mins to the Showgrounds, they had all sorts of events - Bull riding, bucking horse riding, lassoing calves/steers.


On the way to buy candy floss and Mr Whippy icecream (a rodeo must!) stopped off at the Ladies' Toilet and ran into a rather large fellow...

This Green Tree Frog (Litoria caerulea?) was in the Rodeo's toilets, there was another one inside the toilet bowl, but this chap was a lot bigger!

Sunday.  Next on the long weekend events was to head to the Gemfields Fossicking area where we were hoping to get a few sapphires and/or ruby's. We drove 45 minutes to the Gemfields area, we didn't really have a game plan, but drove past Pat's Gems and it seemed quite busy so we wandered in.  Basically you buy a bucket of dirt and then pan it out (shake the shit out of some dirty rocks to get out most of the dirt out) then wash it in troughs (still shaking the shit out of the pan) - there is a technique involved in the washing part so that the sapphires will be centralised in the pan and make them easier to find. Looking forward to getting my own claim and having a bit of fun its not that hard and you could fing a nice gem.

The dude on the right with the black shirt & hat is standing at the shaking of the dirty rocks part and the dude in the blue shirt, bending over is at the washing trough where you wash the dirt off the rocks/gems.

Michael sorting through his pan of rocks and gems with tweezers. Bit painstaking, I know!

 This was our haul after washing two buckets, it took us two hours.  These are all Sapphires! Likely all very low quality/clarity but we were chuffed! There are blue, red and green ones, pretty cool huh?!

 

 

After the gem fossicking, we set off for a dip at the dam.  We took a shortcut, which meant a dirt/gravel road - luckily it was pretty clean so Hugo didn't struggle! Along the road we was two juvenile kangaroos, but we were not quick enough to get pictures to share on here, sorry! Pretty exciting, now we just need to photograph some kangaroos, a snake, lizards, a koala and a turtle!

 

 

Monday, was a quiet day.  We just chilled out preparing for another weeks work, but we went to the dam in the afternoon. We hope you had an equally eventful Easter break!

Until next time...

xxx Love Shahn & Eak