Summer 2018 big trip - day 16

Sunday 12th August

I'm actually writing this, or the part about this evening anyway, on the day for a change, although it won't be published until I've caught up and written and published the rest of the days until now. It's because I've had the evening to myself in this wonderful little house we're staying in, and I want to write about it before I forget about it.

It's a quirky place, in a lovely residential suburb. The house is old and cold, and the lounge is dark. But I'm sitting here in one of the armchairs (which don't match each other or the sofa), with the tall standing lamp next to it spreading its warm light into the room, a blanket over my knees and the little gas heater on (it heats the room very well, but probably is far from energy efficient). It's perfectly cosy. The floor is dark wood, with a red rug over it. There are pictures (as in artwork, not photographs) on the walls and vases dotted around. There are DVDs of the Italian crime drama series Inspector Montalbano. The kitchen has a stovetop whistling kettle, a wooden board for bread and a bowl of lemons on the counter. There are eco-friendly chemical-free cleaning products and books on homemade things like that. Upstairs is a large lounge area which is light and open and airy, but warmer than downstairs, and there's a dining table covered in sewing materials. And, best of all, there are books in every room. Hundreds of books. Books on subjects I wish I knew more about. Travel and foreign countries and languages, cooking, history, literature/ fiction, plants, gardening, sewing and needlework and embroidery, art and crafts and more. I could spend a week here just in the house, devouring a treasure trove of books. Alas, I cannot, so I've just noted down a few that I'd like to find and read when I'm home.

My sister, mum and stepdad went to see Pink this evening. I didn't fancy going, and had a couple of options for what I could do for the evening, but after a day walking around Sydney Harbour, I felt like staying in, out of the chilly wind, and watching a bit of Netflix. I watched the last episode of Spanish drama Cable Girls, an episode of Queer Eye, and then a quirky French rom-com called Blind Date, which I loved. Such a lovely, relaxing evening :)

So, rewind... In the morning we walked from Waverton into the city centre. The route took us through the lovely suburb, which again reminded me of Vancouver, and brought us to the waterfront at Lavender Bay, where we were greeted with a view of the Harbour Bridge directly opposite. We walked along from there, eventually reaching Milsons Point and Luna Park, a fairground built in the 1930s at the foot of the bridge. The entrance gateway is the kind of thing that would be very creepy if the place was closed. I wonder why fairgrounds are like that, creepy when closed.

The suburb at the northern end of the bridge is called Kirribilli. I've since read that it's one of the city's most affluent, and it was very nice, though we only saw a very small part of it. There were trendy, quirky cafés and eateries and a wonderful market in the large underpass under the bridge road. My sister and I spent a long time wandering around the market before we went back to where our mum and stepdad were sat people-watching (they immediately told me they'd seen a woman who was me in 30 years), and we all started across the bridge.

I can't remember how long it took to walk across. The thing is enormous. It's over a kilometre long, and nearly fifty metres wide with eight lanes for cars, two for trains, one for cyclists and one for pedestrians. It's quite impressive that the designers in the 1920s thought ahead and decided that cars and other road vehicles would become commonplace enough that the bridge would need six lanes just for those (the two tramway lanes originally constructed were later converted to roadway as well). The bridge was nicknamed "the Iron Lung", as its construction brought vital jobs to the city during the Depression. In the shadow of the other end of the bridge is The Rocks, a pretty area of cobbled lanes originally established in the early days of the colony in the 1790s, when it was more of a slum. We wandered through but not really around it.

We stopped for lunch at one of the numerous waterfront restaurants on Circular Quay. Despite its name the quay is in a rather square U-shape, with The Rocks and the Harbour Bridge at one end and the Opera House on Bennelong Point at the other, with an art gallery and boats (from harbour tour boats to cruise ships) and shops and restaurants and more all along in between, and the skyscrapers of the CBD rising behind. Such a cool place! We sat outside, with a great view of the bridge, where they had notices everywhere warning customers about the seagulls, and spray bottles on some of the outer tables. One thieving bird swooped down and snatched a small fillet of battered fish from one woman's plate as she was still eating. Thankfully we were seated under a parasol, which provided a deterrent for the gulls as well as shade from the sun. I had barramundi with salsa verde and a lovely fresh salad - so simple, but so good. Fresh fish! *Grins* Yum. Also had a mocktail, a strawberry and lychee virgin mojito, which was nice.

After lunch we continued along Circular Quay to see Sydney Opera House up close. I had looked at going there while my family were at the Pink concert - there was a performance by the Australian Symphony Orchestra - but it turned out it was at 2pm rather than in the evening, and I'd rather see the city during the day. A bit of a shame, though, I would have enjoyed that. The wind was chilly but we didn't go inside, we stayed outside looking at the architecture and the plaza and the other tourists and the views and it all... then went and got a coffee to warm up before we started heading back to the house. I don't like tea or coffee or hot chocolate, which sometimes, on cold days, is something I wish was different. (Back in January I had a white hot chocolate for the first time, which I loved, but it's too sugary and sweet to have often, and not many places do them anyway.) If I had known that a babychino was just warm milk with no coffee, I would have gotten one long before now. Why don't they just call it warm milk, and have a 'small' cup option as well as an espresso-sized one? Babies aren't the only ones who like warm milk.

Earlier, outside an Italian restaurant opposite the jetties, I'd noticed a sign saying "Come and try our homemade cannoli!" or something like that. I looooove cannoli, so as we passed it again on the way to the train station I went in and asked if they did takeaway cannoli. They did, so I ordered one, and after a few minutes they brought it out in one of those plastic takeaway containers - a crisp, golden cannolo (-o is singular, -i is plural) filled half with a thick chocolate-ricotta mixture and half with a glossy, sweet, vanilla ricotta, and fixed to the bottom of the container with a dollop of the vanilla mixture to keep it from moving around. They put the container in a paper bag and I held it close and horizontal on the way back to Waverton, looking forward to enjoying it after dinner while watching some Netflix :)

Summer 2018 big trip - day 15

Saturday 11th August

We arrived in Sydney - civilisation! - on the Friday evening. I loved it immediately. It reminded me of Vancouver. It was a modern, relatively young, cosmopolitan city by the water, the evening was clear and cool and fresh compared to the last few weeks, and it was beautiful, with the lights of the buildings and the water of the harbour. I felt relieved and comfortable.

View from the train after passing over the bridge on Friday

We were staying at the house of Linda, an old school friend of my grandma's. We were met at the airport by Linda's friend Richard, who took us on the train (double-decker, spacious, efficient, I like them!) to the house, which was in the lovely suburb of Waverton, just north of the Harbour Bridge. Again, the area reminded me of Vancouver. Linda's house was wonderful, I loved that immediately too. Quirky, cosy (apart from being cold), and full of books. Very "me".

We went for dinner in one of the two restaurants in Waverton. There's an Indian and a Thai and we went to the Thai, which was very good! I do wonder why Indian and Asian restaurants give you such huge portions that are large enough for two or even three people. So much goes to waste.

On the Saturday we went on a day trip out to the Blue Mountains. I'm writing this a week and a half later on a computer in my hostel in Singapore and haven't made any notes in ages so haven't got much to say. The train took two hours from central Sydney to Katoomba, where a chilly wind was blowing. We made straight for a coffee shop, which happily turned out to be my kind of place, too. It was a quirky independent one called The Pirate Ship Coffee Shop, sold coffee they roasted themselves and had a menu of nutritious hot and cold food and homemade cakes. When my sister asked if they did hazelnut lattes, the owner replied they did not, as they believed good coffee was good enough on its own without adding flavoured sugary syrups (they didn't use those words, weren't so blunt) - good for them :)

We got tickets for the hop-on-hop-off bus tour and stopped first at a waterfall, then did a bit of a walk along a trail, got our first views of the mountains. I can't remember the details of what we did, but it was quite a bit of walking around, seeing some great views. After a few hours we had lunch at the centre at Echo Point. My mum and stepdad had wraps or sandwiches but my sister and I had hot food - she had "burnt ends", which were amazing, and I had a veggie lasagne, which was also very good. In the centre they had an area about the Aboriginal history of the area, which was interesting. Some of it since the Westerners settled was awful. The Echo Point viewpoint, which is the main one, was cordoned off. Someone was on the walkway just below, contemplating jumping. There were lots of people behind the police tape, curious onlookers and people looking at the view. We went off for another walk, which was pretty hairy and strenuous with ever so steep and narrow steps and lots of people trying to squeeze through - but the exercise was good - then went back to the point and got an ice-cream. Eventually the guy was persuaded back up and was led off with his hood covering his face to the police vans and ambulance, and the viewpoint was opened.

We headed to the nearby village of Leura and got the train from there back to Sydney, where we had dinner in a Chinese restaurant. It was one of those older, huge upstairs ones, with a patterned red carpet and loads of tables. I don't know why but I like those places. It also had tanks of live lobsters and crabs, so your meal was as fresh as possible if you ordered either of those things. They were enormous! Then back to the house. It was colder inside than out, haha.

Summer 2018 big trip - days 10 to 14

Monday 6th to Friday 10th August

Time to leave Tracy's - boooo. One last morning of waking naturally to sunlight coming though the window, the dogs pattering around upstairs, the birds singing loudly in the otherwise perfectly quiet street, smelling the wonderful mock orange flowers that smell of jasmine, and sitting outside in the softly warm early morning sunshine out the front. We said goodbye and left around 10-ish, heading off on our four-night mini road trip.

The days that followed were mostly spent sitting in the car, watching the changing landscapes go by, or sitting on the beach, and we stayed in little cabins in tourist parks. I'm not really one for sitting on a beach, I get bored and restless, and there isn't very much to write about when you're not doing much, so this post covers all of those days.

On the Tuesday we went to Magnetic Island off the coast of the city of Townsville. My stepdad and I went for a rather strenuous walk from one bay to another and back, which was good, then we all went for lunch at Cafe Nourish, which did "Heart and Soul Food" - basically healthy, nourishing, nutritious stuff. My kind of place! I had an all-day breakfast item of a fresh tropical fruit salad with coconut yoghurt, homemade granola and almond milk, with a banana-honey smoothie. Yum! After that walk all the fresh melon was very welcome. That evening we had dinner in Townsville, and it was nice to have a bit of time, even if it was just an hour, somewhere modern and cosmopolitan - "civilisation", as my sister called it. Wednesday we spent at Horseshoe Bay on the Whitsunday Coast - very pretty, with pale sand and turquoise water, but rather windy. Late afternoon we headed off to Cape Hillsborough, where we would stay for two nights. It's in the middle of nowhere and we got a little lost trying to find it as it was getting dark, but found it eventually. It's the kind of place that has no wifi and almost no phone signal, and the nearest shop (other than the park's one that sells basics) is half an hour away. But you can see wallabies on the beach just before sunrise, which is why we went there. That was cool :)

Magnetic Island

Whitsunday Coast

Cape Hillsborough

Wallabies!

We had to go out for breakfast on the Thursday, so drove half an hour to the nearest supermarket in the town of Marian. The "town centre" was funny, like a small retail park rather than a high street, but it had a big supermarket and a good cafe where we had breakfast (I had poached eggs with spinach, mushrooms and hollandaise sauce on sourdough toast). We also all sat in the cafe antisocially looking down at our phones for half an hour, taking advantage of the free wifi, which had been scarce the last couple of days and would be non-existent for the following 24 hours. Back at the tourist park it was too windy to sit on the beach so my sister and I sat by the pool for a few hours - her in a bikini in the sun, me in jeans and a long-sleeved top in the shade, haha. Lunch was turkey salad wraps, then I went for a walk along the nice, huge and almost-empty beach that was littered with volcanic rocks. For dinner we'd bought some barramundi fillets and had them pan-fried with some veg and salad - simple but tasty.

Friday we left the tropical warmth of Queensland and flew south to Sydney!

Summer 2018 big trip - day 9

Sunday 5th August

In Cairns on Thursday we had booked a trip for all six of us to go to Fitzroy Island for the day on the following Sunday. But sadly Mum was feeling even worse than the day before, and decided to not come and insisted the rest of us go anyway. The boat left at 9am from Cairns and took 45 minutes to get to the island. There are a couple of beaches, water activities (swimming, snorkelling, kayaking, stand up paddleboarding, a water trampoline), a whale-watching trip, a bar/restaurant, a general store, and a resort that day-triplets aren't lower to enter. When we arrived we went to Nudey Beach (not a nudist beach!), which was pretty, and sat in the sun there for about an hour and a half. There was a young woman there who was taking selfies for the whole time. I'm not exaggerating. Literally an hour and a half. Anyway, at one point another woman came along and said "Have you seen the whales?". Apparently they had been swimming along the channel in front of us for half an hour and nobody had noticed. She pointed out where they roughly were and a moment later one breached - not fully, just a tail slam, but still awesome!

We did the whale-watching trip a while later... and got soaking wet sitting at the front, which isn't funny when you're wearing summer clothes and cold from the wind as it is. We did see the whales though, which was great: four humpbacks, one swimming ahead and three others following a few hundred metres behind. The boat guide thought it might be it might be a female with three males chasing her and competing with each other, as they were travelling faster than they would if they were simply migrating, and weren't interested in us (whales are curious and will often come over to a boat). We stayed parallel with them (300 feet away) for about 45 minutes, then went back to the island, where we picked up a packed lunch and ate on the other beach. I had a bit of a swim and a ten-minute paddle in a kayak, and we got the 4pm boat back to Cairns. The water round the island is so clear that we saw a school of big fish, two huge tuna-like fish which weren't tuna, and a turtle just next to the jetty as we waited. We'd seen the turtle a few times over the day :) Back in Cairns we went back to the car, drove back 'up the hill', stopped off in Tolga for some takeaway dinner, and went back to the house and to Mum.

Summer 2018 big trip - day 8

Saturday 4th August

This was going to be a day of having a food tour of the relatively nearby areas of the Tablelands, but unfortunately my mum woke up with vertigo and decided to stay at the house for the day. My stepdad decided to stay with her, and my sister decided she'd rather sunbathe, so it ended up just being me and my aunt who went out for the day.

We drove first to the Nerada Tea plantation, where there's a little visitor centre. I don't like tea, but learning a bit about its production would be interesting. The centre was closed, however. On the plus side, a couple of cars parked outside the gate and people staring up at a tree with cameras, told us there was something to look at - tree kangaroos!

Next we went to Gallo's Dairyland, the visitor centre/cafe/shop of a working dairy farm that produces cheeses and chocolates. I'd never had a cheese board before, and wow was the one we had for lunch good. There was camembert, 'heritage', which was a hard yellow cheese similar to cheddar, 'rainforest', a slightly softer cheese that was kind of sour-cream-and-chive like, 'macadamia' and 'tilsit', the latter again being somewhat like cheddar but a bit sweeter. You can tell I don't know anything about cheese if I'm comparing things to cheddar.

The macadamia, though... I actually went "Oh my god" out loud at the first bite as the nutty taste flooded my mouth. It was a soft and mellow nutty flavour, but not at all subtle; it was as strong as the nutty gelato I love, but in a cheese. Strange, but very good. Both my and my aunt's favourite on that board by far. We got a board to take away too, so the rest of the family could try it when we got back. (My aunt has a little fridge in the back of her car - very useful!)

Next came the tough bit - deciding which chocolates to buy! They had a variety of bars and little bags of one type or another, and a display case of individual ones to pick and choose. I got myself several of the latter - a caramel, pistachio, marzipan, ginger, hazelnut, and cherry coconut. The shop also sold a range of other locally-produced products, including a little brick of honeycomb, thick and oozing with honey... we'd already paid, so didn't buy that, but later wished we had.

After Gallo's Dairyland we went to the town of Yungaburra. Driving through, it looks like a really nice place to wander round and explore and it's a shame we didn't have time to do that properly. It's quirky and quaint and artsy and creative and just nice. We parked the car and started walking up a street, and came across a quirky little clothes shop and went in. I don't want to describe it as 'hippie', but my vocabulary is limited enough that 'quirky' and 'hippie' are the best words I have for it. The clothes were bright and colourful, loose and flowing and cool and the kind of stuff you can layer up. The shop also sold things like mala beads and bags made of hemp, had incense burning and a couple of little have-a-go-at-weaving looms outside. The Scottish owner Carol ("without an 'E'") even chatted to us about the benefits of not wearing bras.

The bookshop a little further up the street was what my aunt really wanted to show me. Ohhh, it was wonderful! A proper independent bookshop with narrow aisles between shelves made of a myriad of different types and styles and designs of units, with books piled up and overflowing haphazardly here, there and everywhere. There are chairs dotted around for one to sit down and read in, or a crate with a cushion on if you prefer, all sorts of funny knick-knacks hung from the ceiling, and even a tiny cafe in the back. An organised mess, and utterly charming. I even came across a copy of an account of the 1693 Salem witch trials written by a minister involved, whose name I recognised as I'd read a fascinating book about it all earlier this year. I ended up buying a beautifully-written memoir about life in a town in Tuscany over the course of a year.

We drove next to Yungaburra's Avenue of Honour, a war memorial for the Afganistan War. It's a beautiful place on the shores of Lake Tinaroo. There's an avenue of flame trees, one tree for each Australian soldier killed in the conflict, a plaque for the sniffer dogs killed with their names and a poem (I thought of all those poor horses in other wars too), rosemary bushes for remembrance, and a single pine tree to commemorate the WWI Gallipoli campaign (the Battle of Lone Pine was fought by Australians). In Australia and New Zealand, they mark Armistice Day on November 11th, but ANZAC Day is a more deeply-held event, held each year on April 25th, the anniversary of the landing of the ANZACs at Gallipoli. It was originally to commemorate the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who fought at Gallipoli, thousands of which died, but now is for all Australians and New Zealanders who served and died in all wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations. It's actually a public holiday. Earlier this year we discovered we had a distant relative in the ANZACs at Gallipoli, which stunned my aunt.

Unlike most war memorials at home, this was a living one, not just a block of stone with names on. There were trees and rosemary bushes, a path to walk around and benches to sit on. It was next to a beautiful lake where people swim and kayak, with a campsite and children's playground just opposite. It was lovely.

After that we drove to another foodie stop, the teahouse at Lake Barrine, where we had cake - lumberjack cake, which is made of apples and dates, and carrot-and-ginger cake. Yum! The latter had a topping of grated carrot mixed with orange zest, which was delicious. Each came with a slice of watermelon too, which was different but nice. On the way to and from the car we passed through a small part of the gardens there, and caught the most wonderful floral smell. After a few moments searching for its source, it turned out to be a plant with teeny tiny white flowers on. They looked and smelled like miniature freesias, my favourite flower.

Our final visit before going back to the house was The Crystal Caves in Atherton town centre. It's located in an ordinary shop unit on Main Street, and the shop itself is wonderful, but at the back of the shop is the entrance to an artificial cave system, full of all sorts and shapes and sizes of crystals. We didn't have time to go round it, sadly, but we'd been in when I came over in 2012. It was awesome. So cool. Brilliant. I loved it. This time, we just looked at all the beautiful things in the shop, and I cracked a geode. They had baskets of individual geodes from a few mines around the world, available for you to buy and crack open. I couldn't not do it. I now have the two halves of my very own, unique, beautiful clear quartz geode which, after 44-million years in the making, I was the first person to see!

All in all, it was a great day! :)

Summer 2018 big trip - day 7

Friday 3rd August

Today we went to Herberton Historic Village. It's an open air museum, made of lots of historic (from the last 150 or so years) buildings from all over Queensland to make up a village, based around the Happy Jack run mine that operated on the site in the late 19th century. There's a 'manor house' (a lovely traditional Queenslander house that was the family home of the founder of the actual town of Herberton); a school; a chapel; a motor garage; a carriage house; a grocer; a blacksmith; a butcher; a chemist; a bank; a hotel; a pub; a prison; a railway station; a radio shop; newspaper printer; a dressmaker; a toy shop; an early homestead house; a miner's hut, and the mine. I'm sure there are some things I've left out but you get the idea - everything you'd want or need in a little pioneer town.

It's all really cool, you can spent pretty much a whole day there. In my experience, even museums I'm really interested in tire me out after a few hours, with all the slow walking and reading and looking closely at the exhibits. It's a bit information-overload and my mind just blanks out. Anyway, I went to Herberton on my 2012 visit, and there were some new exhibits this time, like the chapel and the traditional Queenslander house. Some things were exactly the same, like the room in the old school about the area's mining history, and the location of the dress I loved in the dress exhibit.

One part of the old school had been turned into an army museum. In there was a photo from World War One, of an Australian battalion posing on a pyramid in Egypt before they go to Gallipoli. The text below tells you some stories about the people in it. In the first row standing behind the seated officers are four men standing with their arms linked - they're a father and his sons, who would all be killed in the first week of fighting. Sitting near the top of the photo, in amongst those who had clambered up the pyramid, was a soldier without a hat - he was just 14, having lied about his age to get in. There's also a dead man. He had died a few days before the photo was taken, and his comrades felt he was still part of the battalion and shouldn't be left out, so they dressed him in his uniform, hauled him two-thirds of the way up the pyramid, and made sure he was standing, propping him up with their hands on his shoulders. The comradeship of the military in wartime is something special. It takes a long time to find all these people, the museum staff haven't circled them or anything, which means you're looking closely at every single face. It can often seem a bit abstract, looking an old photos, but they're people just like us, faces we could see passing us in the street.

We had lunch at the old hotel, which is now the museum's cafe, and the food was still very good. I had a veggie quiche which was more like a frittata. It was here that I was given the recipe for the lemon butter squares on my first visit. Then, I'd had a corned beef sandwich for lunch (not corned beef as we know it, but thin slices of actual meat, and tasty) and one of their lemon squares. It was about 1cm thick, was hard and crumbly like a biscuit, had dessicated coconut in, and a sticky lemon glaze on top. It was gorgeous. My aunt half-jokingly asked the waitress if I could have the recipe, as I lived all the way over in the UK. I don't remember the waitress' response, it was probably something like a surprised and uncertain laugh and an "Oh, I don't know..." We did not at all think that she would come back ten minutes later and actually give me a bit of paper with the recipe written on it.

Needless to say I was thrilled. I'm always envious of people who were properly taught to cook by a family member whose food they loved, or have inherited a family member's recipe book. I haven't had that, so being given a recipe at all, let alone by a complete stranger, was a gift I'll always treasure. I've made the recipe only a handful of times at home (will do so more often now) and the result has been a cake rather than a biscuit bake, but they've always tasted as good as the original. Sadly, the cafe didn't have lemon squares out on this visit.

We spent about six hours at Herberton before heading home. Dinner was simple and delicious - pan fried white fish with veggies in lemon butter.

Summer 2018 big trip - day 6

Thursday 2nd August

SKYDIVE!

We woke up at 4:30am so that my sister and I could get thrown out of a plane at 15,000 feet.

It had originally been booked for 10:30am, but they'd called us the day before and asked if we'd be willing to move to 6:30am as there was a chance of high winds later in the morning. We arrived at the centre, checked in and waited for a little while, then when the tandem instructors appeared we put on some overtrousers to protect our clothes during landing, watched a short safety video and got into the harnesses. Then it was time to go! My sister and I got into the bus with the instructors and the four Japanese backpackers who were doing it too, and our mum, stepdad and aunt got in the bus that would bring us back from the landing site. It took about ten minutes to get to the airport.

Then the cringey 'interviews' started. Between the bus and the plane the instructors were walking around us videoing with their Go-Pros as they asked questions like "So what are you guys doing today? How are you feeling? Are you nervous? Whose idea was it?" They asked a few questions on the plane too, but thankfully mostly filmed the views out the window as we climbed.

Strangely, even as we neared 15,000 feet and they started attaching and tightening harnesses and getting ready to jump, I wasn't nervous. That isn't the right word. It was just a sense that it was something new and different. Curious, perhaps? I don't know, I guess I didn't really feel anything about it. I'm quite surprised I wasn't nervous. It's frustrating how easily I get nervous and worried and overthink about some things that really don't merit it, but I don't bat an eyelid about other things like being thrown out of a plane or standing on the edge of a cliff. That said, I can't say I was excited either. I was kind of looking forward to it, but I wouldn't call it excitement. I was excited afterwards.

I went third. They slide the door up, the first pair shuffles forward, moves to the edge, pauses, disappears. Then the second. It all happens so quickly. Even as I watch them disappear as if (to use my sister's description) they're being sucked out by a vacuum, I'm not nervous. Then the guy I'm strapped to slides us forward off the bench and to the edge of the open door. You're hanging outside with your feet down and back against the fuselage of the aircraft, being buffeted by the wind. You can't look down. You have to put your head right back against the instructor's chest so you're looking up at the sky, otherwise you'd hurt your neck. Then he lets go of the bar, and you drop.

I can't describe what the freefall was like, but it was great. It can be for up to 60 seconds but I wasn't counting. In the photos which were constantly being taken by the Go-Pro on my instructor's wrist, I look most unflatteringly like Blackadder, with a pointy nose and a smile with lips pressed together, as opening your mouth dries it out!

The parachute pulls you out of your plummet with a jerk, immediately slowing you to a gentle float where you can remove the goggles (although I wasn't told that, so kept mine on), talk normally, and properly look out at the view - which was magnificent. My instructor did something with the parachute that put us in Zero-G for a few seconds, which was really cool, and gave me the parachute control cords for about a quarter of a minute.

After a few minutes (they say between five and seven but it didn't feel that long) we started to come in to land. You circle the field, getting lower and lower, and pull your legs up to slide down. And that's it! All over :( I went over to my sister as she landed and we were 'interviewed' again by our instructors and the solo guy who had accompanied my sister, filming her during the dive (so she has some really cool pictures from that). Mum and stepdad and aunt came over too, grinning and excited for us.

Back at the centre we had to wait for the videos and photos to be processed and put on USB sticks for us to take home, and then it really was all over, by only 9am.

Sadly, the excitement of the skydive very quickly faded and even just half an hour after leaving the centre it felt like it had been ages ago. We went for breakfast in Cairns, I went and got my third pre-exposure rabies jab (ugh, hate them, which is why I had to get it done there, having left it too long at home) and then we had a bit of a wander round. Cairns is nice. After a while we drove just outside the city to the Skyrail, a 7.5km-long scenic cable car system that would take us up the mountain to the town of Kuranda.

That was really cool, the views were incredible, and I loved how quiet and peaceful it was high up above the rainforest-covered mountain. My aunt had driven up to Kuranda after dropping us off, and we went for a wander around the quirky, creative town, which I immediately liked. After lunch we went to the Kuranda Koala Gardens, which had lots of Aussie animals to see. Hours later, back near Atherton, my aunt gave us a quick tour of a small and lovely area of Lake Tinaroo's shoreline, and the dam that formed it, before we finally went back to the house. Of course, after dinner, we had to watch those skydive videos!

Summer 2018 big trip - day 5

Wednesday 1st August

Paronella Park was created by José Paronella In the 1930s. He grew up in Catalonia, Spain, and dreamed of building his own castle. He sailed to Australia in 1913, spent 11 years there making money, returned to Catalonia and married the sister of his previous fianceé who had got tired of waiting for him to return, went back to Australia with her, and in 1929 they bought 13 acres of land next to a waterfall in northern Queensland. There they built his castle.

Well, it's not a real castle, but a building with some castle-like features such as turrets and decorative balconies, and there's a main one and a few smaller ones. What Paronella created was a pleasure park for the public, and North Queensland's first hydroelectric plant to power it. Despite being in the middle of nowhere, it was a very popular place. There was a theatre/ballroom, which showed movies every Saturday night and had Australia's first mirror ball; a little museum; tea rooms; extensive gardens with meandering pathways and thousands of plants, including an venue of Kauri pines; tennis courts; a picnic area next to the swimming pool (that is, the lake at the bottom of the waterfall); and the family's humble cottage.

Due to the ravages of time, fire, flood and cyclone, it stands mostly in ruins now, and has a certain charm to it, but it would be great to see it as it was then. The steep Grand Staircase, originally built to haul sand and gravel up from the waterside to the 'castle' to help make concrete, now has plaques on certain steps to mark the flood levels of certain years. The highest one was for the wet season of 1946, near the top of the 47 steps, an insane height. That flood destroyed some of the park, but they rebuilt and reopened six months later.

Paronella died in 1948, and his wife took over the running of the park. She died 19 years later, and their son took over, but he died just five years later, leaving his wife Val and their two children. Val sold the park in 1977, and it changed hands a few times until an Australian couple travelling the country with their two children in search of a new project discovered, fell in love with, and bought it. They made it what it is today, their attempt at continuing Paronella's dream, but with a focus on preservation rather than restoration. It is a very cool place, there's nowhere else like it, it's well worth a visit if you're ever in North Queensland.

Summer 2018 big trip - day 4

Tuesday 31st July

The Great Barrier Reef is a World Heritage Site that stretches for 1400 miles (or 2300km), is the largest coral reef system in the world (and so, in a way, the largest living thing on the planet), and lies off the coast of Queensland. Today we visited a very teeny part of it.

We drove to Port Douglas, north of Cairns, and had a very tasty lunch (I had softshell crab tacos) at a restaurant on the marina before catching the 1pm boat to the Low Isles on the Inner Reef for a half-day trip. After about half an hour a couple of small islands come into view, the larger one covered in trees (mangroves, which help keep the water clean) and the smaller one made of a white beach, trees, and a lighthouse. Very pretty.

The main boat anchored a little way off shore and we disembarked into a smaller boat which would serve as ferry to the island and glass-bottom-tour boat. The glass bottom boat tour was interesting, and the water was clear so we could see lots of different types of fish and corals. It's not as vibrantly coloured as the photoshopped pictures you see of the Great Barrier Reef, but there is some colour, and further out on the more untouched, unvisited parts of the outer reef the colours may be more pronounced. The boat skipper explained that if a coral reef is bleached by an increase in water temperature, that doesn't necessarily mean it's dead. There's a small window of time for it to recover - between six and ten weeks. So if, for example, in that window a storm or cyclone comes along and brings up some cold water from the deep, the too-warm-for-coral water will cool down a little and the coral can recover. If, however, the water temperature stays too warm for too long, the coral will die, and the entire ecosystem that depends on it will be affected. Which is why people are so concerned about global warming.

After the glass bottom boat tour we were given a tour of the island... basically we walked up the path to the middle of it. You can walk around the whole perimetre in about twenty minutes. There's a lighthouse with an osprey's nest on top, and a little house for the island's caretakers. The house is currently empty as they're looking for new ones; in the meantime the island is maintained by the tour boat staff and volunteers coming over from the mainland.

We spent the rest of the time snorkelling/swimming. I'd been here before on my previous visit with my grandparents in May/June 2012, during "stinger season", and we had to wear bright blue wetsuits that covered your whole body from ankle upwards, including your head, so that you were protected against jellyfish. They made one look ridiculous so thankfully this time we didn't have to wear those this time. We were given normal thigh-length wetsuits though, as protection against the sun.

After a couple of hours on the island we headed back to Port Douglas, where we arrived about 5pm and went for dinner at the same restaurant we had lunch at. I had papardelle with duck ragu, which was very tasty and filling. Then we drove the hour and a half back to my aunt's, pulling over for a few minutes at one point in the middle of nowhere to get out of the car and look up at the incredible display of stars. The sky was full of them, never seen so many, the Milky Way blazing across... I could have looked at that sky all night :)

Summer 2018 big trip - day 3

Monday 30th July

We started off the day doing the Waterfalls Circuit. There's a large route that goes all around the Tablelands but we just did a mini one of three relatively local falls: Millaa-Millaa, Zillie, and Ellinjaa.

Millaa-Millaa Falls

The countryside of this part of rural north Queensland is beautiful, and varied. Some areas are savannah-like, dry and grassy with eucalyptus trees; other areas are rainforest, or rainforest-covered mountains; some areas are farms or plantations of sugar cane or mangoes or any number of other tropical crops; some areas are dairy country, with sweeping vistas of green rolling hills of pastureland. We made a photostop at Crawfords Lookout, overlooking the North Johnstone River in Wooroonooran National Park. The lookout is basically a lay-by at the side of the road; there's a small gap in the trees and, if someone's in the passenger seat and looking to the left, they can get a quick glimpse of a stunning view. The lay-by is after that, after the passenger has gasped "Oh wow! Pull over!" You walk back to the viewpoint and look down over the rainforested valley below with the turquoise river roaring at the bottom.

Our next proper stop was the Ma:Mu Skywalk, a canopy walkway in the rainforest. It was about one and a half kilometres long and had a couple of towers that provided wonderful views over the valleys. There were information plaques all along it, telling you about the plants, the history of the area and the indigenous tribe who once lived there.

After lunch at a cafe with yet more very pretty views, we made a quick stop at another viewpoint, which I could have stayed at all day - the view was amazing, spread out below, a wide area all the way to the mountains. I reluctantly pulled myself away from gazing out in wonder so we could get to Lake Eacham before the sun set.

Lake Eacham is one of the two crater lakes on the Tablelands, formed from the craters of extinct volcanoes, and is a popular swimming and spending-time-outdoors spot. It wasn't quite warm enough for me to want to get in, but my aunt and sister did. I went in up to my knees. It was lovely there, the circular lake lined with rainforest and the water calm and clear. Then, it was back to the house for the evening.

Summer 2018 big trip - day 2

Sunday 29th July

After going to bed at 8pm the night before, I woke up at 7am to fog outside and peace and quiet. I actually decided to do a few minutes of exercise and some simple yoga stretches, which was nice. (I'd quite like to do that every morning, at home, but am forgetful, lazy and don't want to wake people up by jogging on the spot and doing starjumps on the second floor at 6:30am, so haven't made an effort to make it a habit.)

Mid-morning after everyone had woken up and breakfasted we went to Granite Gorge, which is what it says on the tin. It's a nature reserve with a couple of walking trails where you can see and feed wild rock wallabies. It quickly gets hot, walking up and down and over these bare granite rocks in the strong sun, but it's a cool place.

After that we drove to Coffee Works for lunch. It's a coffee producer, with a shop selling coffee beans and special blends and coffee liqueurs and other such stuff. You walk in to the most wonderful smell! I don't like coffee but do like the smell. There's also a chocolate shop and a cafe, where in typical Australian fashion it was all open but under cover, so it was nice and cool and airy. I had a spiced pulled lamb burger with sriracha mayo and salad. Yum! Messy though, haha. The cakes and gelato (macadamia and caramel!) looked great too but we were full up after the mains and still had the lemon squares to eat. We went for a look in the chocolate shop before leaving and I bought a bar of cranberry and pistachio milk chocolate.

We went to Golden Drop Mango Winery next. It's a warehouse on a huge, immaculately-kept mango plantation. It was Sunday so the winery wasn't in production mode, but we could go to the little tasting room and shop. We tasted dry, medium and sweet mango wines, sparkling mango wine, mango port, mango 'cello' (liqueur, like limoncello), and mandarin and dragonfruit cellos. All were nice, especially the mandarin cello, but I didn't buy any because I don't really drink so knew most of it would go to waste.

From there we went to visit my aunt's friends in a nearby town. They're lovely people, and are looking after three orphaned baby wallabies at the moment, so my sister and I got to bottle-feed a couple! The one my sister had was a bit more lively and sociable, but mine was very shy and didn't put her head out of the little sack at all. Apparently she was very comfortable though, as she hasn't really let anyone have her for that amount of time - she stayed on my lap in the sack for ages after finishing feeding. We'd brought the lemon bars with us and ate most of them there with my aunt's friends.

After that it was back to the house, relax, dinner and a slightly later but still early night.

Summer 2018 big trip - day 1

So after nearly a week in Australia with my mum and sister and stepdad, it's high time I wrote something on here about what I've been doing!

Saturday 28th July

After taking off from Heathrow around 10:30 on Thursday evening, and a few hours in Hong Kong airport, we landed in Cairns around 6:30am Saturday (10:30pm Friday UK time). Even though Hong Kong and Cairns are international airports, and the former is a large one, we were struck by how not-busy and quiet they felt, even though there were lots of people around, and the staff at Cairns were friendly. Go to Heathrow or Gatwick and you're hemmed in like sardines and greeted by staff who never smile.

We were met at the airport by my aunt Tracy and her husband Rob, who moved to Australia ten years ago, and they took us to Rise & Bake, a creperie on the outskirts of Cairns, for breakfast. I had a crepe with smoked ham, egg, cheese and garlic mushrooms - yum! It was then an hour and a half's drive up and over the mountains from Cairns back to their house near Lake Tinaroo on the Atherton Tablelands.

It's winter in this country but here in the tropical north it's still warmer than average UK summer temperatures - as we left the airport it was already in the low twenties and warm enough for a summer dress, before 8am. The Tablelands is covered in farms and plantations growing things like sugar cane, bananas, mangoes, avocados, peanuts, etc. It's the only place in the world that produces everything you need for a cuppa - tea, coffee, sugar and milk.

After a couple of hours relaxing at the house we went for a drive into Atherton, the nearest town, about fifteen minutes away, stopping at a viewpoint at Halloran's Hill on the way. We went into the tourist information centre, got some leaflets to look over, and just wandered up the main street and back. There were a couple of colonial-style buildings, and an old hotel on a corner looked like something out of an old Western film, and, as is typical across the whole country, the pavements outside the shops and other businesses on either side of the wide streets were all covered to provide shade from the strong sun. The majority of buildings are single-story, or two at the most, partly because there's so much land so one can build out instead of up, and because single-story buildings are less susceptible to cyclone damage.

On my first visit here with my grandparents in 2012, I was (to my enormous delight) given a recipe for "lemon butter squares" at one of the places we went to; my aunt had kept a copy of it and we made them after getting back from Atherton. Then we all just relaxed on the deck before dinner, which was a simple but fresh and yummy grilled chicken salad, eaten outside, before going to bed at 8pm. By that time I hadn't slept in 51 hours, so thankfully fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and woke up 11 hours later.