Happy new year!

Happy new year, everyone!

I'm taking the opportunity of the rainy Sunday to add an update.  

After Christmas we spent a couple of days up north in Bundaberg area catching up with Matt's sister, Sandra, and her family.  They were taking a leisurely trip south from their home in Mackay and stopping off in Bundaberg to watch the turtles laying eggs on the beach and they invited us to join them at their hotel. 

It was great to get out of the city and see a bit more of Queensland.  Bundaberg is the home of Bundaberg rum as well as ginger beer and a bunch of tropical fruit drinks.  (rum and ginger beer, if combined I understand, is called a Dark and Stormy but I can't in all honesty recommend either, as the rum is amongst the worst I have smelled and I'm not fond of ginger beer).  Matt floated the idea of looking for work up in this area, but after spending a bit of time wandering about town, I decided wasn't that keen.  It's basically a distillery plus services for the huge farming hinterland surrounding the town.  Sugar cane, macadamia nuts, melons, mangos and so on are plentiful with roadside stalls popping up every 10 miles or so.   The local news was full of talk of the discovery of mass graves of hundreds of indentured Torres Strait Islanders who died while working in the cane plantations.  Death rates were high amongst the indentured workforce and the ban on them being buried in marked graves with the rest of the community was only lifted in the 1950s, apparently.

When we met up with Sandra, Simon, Alice and Tom Henderson, we headed straight out to the coast - a small seaside resort nearby called Bargarra that had several cafes and pubs on the promenade.  The moon was nearly full and rising large over the horizon, making white, wavery reflections in the calm sea.  Further out the red and green lights of the shipping lanes shone out and lights flashed from shipping traffic and buoys intermittently.  A cool sea breeze was a relief after the stifling heat of the day but the temperature was still in the mid 20s Celsius.

Matt and I decided not to attend the turtle laying session in the end.  The session involved standing about in groups on the beach supervised by rangers who would radio each other to alert groups to turtles landing on the beaches.  The groups would then beetle over to where the turtles were laying and jostle each other for the best position to cop a look at their back ends.  This apparently could take several hours of standing about covered in sand flies.  Now I'm all for communing with nature and whatnot but Matt and I hadn't spent any time alone for over a week so we decided to spend the evening together back at the hotel instead.

The turtle-watching Hendersons reported back the next day. While Simon and Alice went home when the torrential rain started (heaved sigh of relief that I'd missed that), Tom and Sandra stayed on and helped move the eggs laid near the shoreline up the beach so that they wouldn't be swept away before hatching sometime in February.  

As it happened, we had the next four days to ourselves at Pam's place as the family was away.  Bliss.  This part really felt like a holiday - glorious views across the eucalypt covered hills, use of the pool whenever we wanted it, two dogs to keep us company... some wine of course...

... Especially at new year's eve.  We spent Hogmanay with one of Matt's friends, Amy round her house.  She had a little party in her back yard lit with candles and lanterns.  It was lovely.  She'd asked everyone to wear something that they wouldn't normally wear, so I went in shorts and a cotton short sleeved top and sandals.  Well, it's not often I've worn that get up at NY.  Matt enjoyed catching up with a lot of people he hadn't seen in years, and I got to know some of them a little better.

It's been back to the grind this week in terms of job applications.  I've submitted about 6 applications now either in communications/policy type roles or university administration.  It's just something we've to keep on at until we get something.  I know this will probably end up being a relatively short period in our lives (at least I hope it is) but it seems utterly interminable at the moment.  There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to get on with your life because of lack of ongoing income.  Well, there probably is, but I can't think of it just now.  

On a positive note, we have managed to let our flat in Glasgow so the outgoings will be at least slightly smaller in the near future.  

Here's hoping that this development is the start of a domino effect that causes all the other stuff to fall into place...