Those of you who are friends with Nancy and Glenn on Facebook/Insta will already know that they made the big trip Down Under! I can’t express how wonderful it was to go pick them up at the airport in Rocky – you never truly understand how much you miss people until you’re waiting at the airport and they walk through the doors. One of my favourite scenes in Love, Actually is at the airport when everyone’s so excited to see family and friends they haven’t seen for awhile. It’s especially nice when you know someone came out of their way to visit – Yeppoon isn’t exactly on the standard international tourist itinerary! So we got to spend a few awesome days with Glenn and Nancy – and Hugh and I have now signed up for liver transplants 🙂
While we consumed plenty of red wine, there was also scotch, gin, and tequila in the mix. We picked up this bottle of not-tequila for Nancy to try. It’s made in the Whitsundays and made headlines a year or so ago because it was called Tequila – turns out, “tequila” is like “champagne” and you can’t use the word if the agave is not grown in the Tequila region. So it is Agave Spirit 🙂
Our first stop en route to Yeppoon from the airport in Rocky was the natural habitat of kangaroos – the golf course! Here is Nancy with her first kangaroo-in-the-wild experience:
And Glenn and Nancy down at the foreshore behind the Yeppoon sign:
The next day, we went to one of our favourite places, Cooberrie:
Between Nancy, Glenn, Hugh, and me, we have about 1,000 photos and videos of all our animal interactions! Lots of fun feeding kangaroos and emus. I’ll leave Glenn and Nancy to share theirs, so just a few here:
(notice my “muhCRAWmee” water bottle holder 🙂 I still get a kick out of the Australian pronunciation of macrame)
And while 3 of us had no interest in holding a python, Glenn took his chances – watch this video as the python is moving more than Glenn might appreciate :).
Another animal encounter comes free of charge if you use the toilets out by the emus:
Yes, that’s a large tree frog living in the toilet!
I have experienced smaller tree frogs living in outdoor toilets, but they’re usually tucked up beneath the rim and you just see an arm stick out when you flush. This fellow made peeing a little more intimidating – glad he was in the men’s toilet not the women’s!
The next day we went to another of our favourite places – Koorana Crocodile Farm. Dramatic warning sign there:
Here’s a video of one of the 3,000 crocodiles there. It’s truly an amazing tour and learning experience – we’ve been 3 times now and love it every single time. At the end of the tour, you get to hold a little crocodile:
That afternoon we went down to Emu Park to see the amazing war memorial walk along the ocean.
The next day we trekked up to Fan Rock and Pebble Beach.
We also took Glenn and Nancy to see our talented friend Sarah playing at the yacht club. It was a fun-filled visit! Lots of laughs and we hope Glenn and Nancy enjoyed getting to see our new home 🙂
We have a new creature visiting our yard this month – a black-headed monitor!
About 2 feet from nose to tip of tail. Pretty chubby in this photo, must have eaten a few geckos. Have only seen him a couple times so not sure if he’s living here or just stopping by en route to somewhere else.
I’m not sure how well you’ll be able to see this, but check out how thick this spider web strand is:
A spider wrapped this strand completely around the post and then ran it up toward the roof. The single strand was a good 8 feet or more in length and STRONG. The fact that you can actually see it in this photo (mid-right) shows how sturdy it was but I could press on it and it would move up and down but wouldn’t break. We never saw the spider that made it and we took it down before Glenn and Nancy arrived, but it really was quite a wonder.
In other interesting finds, a few weeks ago Hugh and I were wandering along one of the beaches and came across this:
A skeleton about 15-20 cm end to end. I posted it in the Yeppoon Facebook group to see if anyone knew what it was – lots of guesses of seahorse (tail/spine was bending wrong direction though) or some type of ray, but no one knew for sure. I then remembered that CQU has a marine research unit down in Gladstone so I sent them the photo to see if they could tell. They weren’t 100% sure either so put me in touch with someone at the Australian Museum down in Sydney. Well, this photo certainly got a lot of attention! They eventually reached one of their marine experts, who was just about to head out on a research expedition, and he confirmed that it’s actually a shark! He figured either a triakid (hound shark, smooth hound) or carcharhinid (whaler, requiem), with the latter possibly being more likely in this area. Very cool!
This past week we’ve had some fires burning in the area. Nothing serious, just smoke in the air, but we really haven’t experienced that since living here. I was on campus on Monday and there were fires burning at Mount Archer, so there was quite a bit of smoke on campus.
And then fires were burning a bit north west of Yeppoon on Wednesday and we had to close the windows overnight:
In other smoke-related news, we went to see Bjorn Again, an ABBA tribute band, a few weeks ago. As we arrived at the theatre, we noticed smoke billowing from back stage and people were being evacuated. Yikes! We waited in our car to see what would happen and it was only 15-20 minutes and they let everyone back in again. Not sure what happened, but the band members had a good time joking about it. They commented on the curious custom in Rockhampton of having the band meet the audience in the parking lot before a show, and then they kept a fire extinguisher on stage with them:
They put on a tremendous show! Andrea – so many of their songs remind me of our Harmony Sister years, belting out the hits on the fireplace hearth in the basement! Check out this video – not a song I remember hearing too often on the radio, at least not compared to all their other hits, but I definitely remember playing the album with this one on it in our basement 🙂
In other curiosities, someone in the Rockhampton Foodie group posted this picture to see if people remembered what this tupperware container was for:
Does it look familiar to any of you in the northern hemisphere? Hugh remembered having one many years ago, but not for the item it was used for down here in the southern hemisphere. Here it was used for probably the most favourite food item in Australia, which I consider to be disgusting and which my mother tried tricking me into eating many times as a child. See if you can guess and I’ll tell you next blog 🙂
In much more delicious food news, Glenn and Nancy brought 2 of my favourites that you can’t get here!
Trying to make the Miss Vickie’s last, but not going so well. And I can’t wait for Hugh to make a cherry cheesecake!
In yet more food news, Hugh has started working on sourdough again, seeing if he can figure out the magic formula for our new climate here. It’s still not rising as much as it should but the flavour and texture is definitely better!
In addition to climate, another significant difference between Canada and Australia is the complexity of the tax system. Even with very little to claim on our Canadian taxes, it took me HOURS to get through doing them back in March and it took CRA almost 3 months to review and determine that I had made a mistake and somehow owed them $200 instead of getting money back. I paid the $200 right away, figuring it wasn’t worth spending time arguing with them, and they had the $200 in their hands 3+ weeks before it was due. They then proceeded to charge and cancel $2.10 in interest several times:
And then one day, they refunded $2.10 into my bank account and same day demanded that I pay it back, but the only amount it would let me pay was $2.11:
So I paid that right away, again not worth fighting about – only to find a few days later that they’ve deposited the refund I originally expected back in March! In the two weeks since, they have posted nothing in my CRA account to indicate that they made a deposit or why. Will be interested to see how this saga continues.
Contrast this with the ATO (Australian Tax Office) where it took me less than 2 hours to do my taxes and that was only because I checked and re-checked the form 4 times because I couldn’t believe it was so simple. Upon submitting the taxes online with their beautifully easy to navigate system, I was asked to complete a satisfaction survey. I almost died laughing when I saw this question:
In the dropdown options for how long it took to file your return, the LONGEST option was “more than 60 minutes.” Wild. I then had the refund in my account in less than a week. And along with the notice of assessment, they give you a breakdown of how your tax dollars were allocated and what the debt and interest payments are:
How brilliant is that – so simple and transparent! And then a friend was telling me that when something is billed to Medicare here, you get a statement showing what the total charge was and what made up the charge (e.g., total billed to Medicare was $200 and was comprised of GP billing $100 and Radiologist billing $100). So then you can look at it and see if it makes sense. In a friend’s most recent statement, there was an unknown doctor’s name on the statement and there’s a number to call if you want to question something. I’ve always thought that was something OHIP should do, both to increase patient accountability and provider accountability. Here it’s standard practice. I love it!
Speaking of Medicare, we filed (here they say “lodged”) our application for permanent residency a month ago. Unbeknownst to us, you are allowed to apply for Medicare as soon as you apply for PR. So we could have Medicare in a couple months! And we should find out about PR in the next 3-10 months. Fingers and toes are all crossed!!! In the category of “it’s a small world”, the physician doing our PR medical exams is the mother of one of my students – let’s hope that student has said nice things about me… 🙂
Some more Aussie vocab for you:
“Rort” = swindle (noun and verb)
“Argy bargy” = kerfuffle
“Have a think” = think about it
And then “methane” is spelled the same and means the same but is pronounced “meethane.”
Had an interesting opportunity to supply Canadian trivia the other day. A store that seems to be in every town in Australia called The Reject Shop has been purchased by… Dollarama! The local Facebook groups were lamenting that yet another US store was taking over and I was able to let them know it’s actually a Canadian company. The Reject Shop carries some good stuff so I’m hoping Dollarama just supplies its operational expertise and leaves the products as they are.
I can’t remember if I’ve previously shared this other curious difference between Australia and Canada – the centre road lines are white here instead of yellow (and the lines between same direction traffic are also white). It’s a little confusing if you’re on a highway that changes between being divided or not as you see the white line and wonder if the other lane is same direction traffic or oncoming traffic!
While it’s now spring and starting to warm up here, it’s starting to cool down in the northern hemisphere and many of our Canadian friends are gearing up for curling season! You will recognise the name Hugh Milliken and just this week it was announced that he’s leading up a team in Australia to create a dedicated curling centre somewhere in Australia! Probably won’t be in Yeppoon 🙂
OK, you probably need another cute kangaroo photo to start your day, so here is one Hugh took at the golf course this week:
I love that the mama is posing for Hugh with a joey in her pouch while the papa is mooning Hugh 🙂
Have a great month, everyone!